A Day of Reckoning Is Guaranteed

OVER 1,900 years ago a man who was well educated in the law of his nation expressed his belief in a future day of reckoning. He did so on foreign soil before the court of the Areopagus in ancient Athens. The man was a Christianized Jew, the apostle Paul.

For a while his audience listened to what he had to say about God. But, then, with reference to the Creator, Paul made this startling declaration: “Because he has set a day in which he purposes to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and he has furnished a guarantee to all men in that he has resurrected him from the dead.”​—Acts 17:31.

The man whom God has chosen is the Son who emptied himself of his heavenly glory and then by divine power began to develop as a perfect baby in the womb of a Jewish virgin named Mary. (Luke 1:30-35; Phil. 2:7) This Son came to be known as Jesus Christ.

Of course, a dead person could not act in the capacity of judge, and the apostle Paul made it clear that God’s appointed Judge had been resurrected from the dead. This resurrection stands as an unchangeable guarantee regarding the future day of reckoning.