Last Judgment
This page is about the Christian concept. For paintings of the same name, see The Last Judgement (painting). Judgment Day redirects here - for other meanings see Judgement Day (disambiguation).
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Last Judgement. 12th-century Byzantine mosaic from Torcello Cathedral. |
In
Christian eschatology, the
Last Judgment or
Judgment Day is the ethical-judicial trial,
judgment, and punishment/reward of all
individual humans (assignment to
heaven or to
hell) by a divine tribunal (God) at the end of time, following the destruction of humans' present earthly existence. Some Christians say that God does not judge, since He finds "all to be precious".
Some Christians hold that it will be the
only judgment, that the soul is
not conscious between death and the Last Judgment. The majority, however, hold that the soul is conscious and is punished or rewarded after a
particular judgment, in which the individual soul is judged and learns what the judgment is. This particular judgment is contrasted to the Last Judgment as the
General Judgment, where everyone is judged and knows every judgment.
This
eschatology has spawned numerous artistic depictions.
The equivalent in
Islamic eschatology is
Qiyama.
Jewish eschatology is concerned with the
Jewish Messiah.
Garuda Purana in
Hinduism speaks in length about trials and punishments after death.
The doctrine and iconographic features of a "Last Judgment" are drawn from many passages from the
apocalyptic books of the Bible. It appears most directly in the Apocalyptic sections of the
Book of Matthew:
When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world...Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels...And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. (Matt 25:31-34, 41, 46)
The doctrine is further supported by passages in
Daniel,
Isaiah and the
Revelation of Saint John the Divine:
And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. (Rev 20:11-12)
Adherents of
millennialism, mostly
Protestant Christians, regard the two passages as describing separate events: the "sheep and goats" judgment will determine the final status of those persons alive at the end of the
Tribulation, and the "great white throne" judgment will be the final condemnation of the unrighteous dead at the end of all time, after the
end of the world and before the beginning of the eternal period described in the final two chapters of Revelation.
Belief in final judgment is held firmly by the Roman
Catholic Church and its followers. The Roman Catholic Church believes this last judgement is not a literal trial, as those who have already died are either in Hell, Heaven, or awaiting Heaven in Purgatory, as a result of their
particular judgment on their death.
The last judgement instead will occur after the resurrection of the dead and the reuniting of the body and soul, in which the sins and judgement for each man will be made present to all before their status in eternal life is resumed. At this point both the pleasures of Heaven and the pains of hell will be perfected in that those present will also be capable of physical pleasure/pain.
Although the Last Judgment is being preached by a great part of Christian churches, the
esoteric Christian tradition,
Essenian and later
Rosicrucian [Max Heindel, The Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures (The Riddle of Life and Death), 1908, ISBN 0-911274-84-7], rejects that idea of the Last Judgment, and it assures that all beings of the human
evolution will be "saved", in a distant future, as they acquire a superior grade of
consciousness and
altruism by means of successive
rebirths. This salvation is seen as being mentioned in
Revelation 3:12 (
KJV), which states "Him that overcometh will I make a
pillar in the temple of my God and
he shall go no more out". However, this western esoteric tradition states - like those who have had a
near-death experience - that after the
death of the physical body, at the end of each physical lifetime and after the
life review period (which occurs before the
silver cord is broken), it occurs a Last Judgment, more akin to a Final Review or End Report over one's
life, where the life of the subject is fully evaluated and scrutinized
[Max Heindel, Death and Life in Purgatory - Life and Activity in Heaven]. This judgment is seen as being mentioned in
Hebrews 9:27, which states that "it is appointed unto men once to die, but
after this the judgment".
The
New Church, or Swedenborgian Church, holds that the last judgment in the Bible does not refer to events in this world but to events that took place in the
spiritual world when the former Christian church ceased to have any truth or goodness in it.
Emanuel Swedenborg wrote that this judgment took place in 1757. He discusses the last judgment and the establishment of the New Church in particular in
The Last Judgment,
Continuation concerning the Last Judgment, and
Apocalypse Revealed. Swedenborgians consider everything in the
Word, including prophecies about the destruction of the world, to have been written by means of
correspondences.
In art, the Last Judgment is a common theme in medieval and renaissance religious iconography. Like most early iconographic innovations, its origins stem from
Byzantium. In Western Christianity, it is often the subject depicted on the central
tympanum of medieval cathedrals and churches, or as the central section of a
triptych, flanked by depictions of
heaven and
hell to the left and right, respectively (heaven being to the viewer's left, but to the Christ figure's right).
The most famous Renaissance depiction is
Michelangelo Buonarroti's
The Last Judgment in the
Sistine Chapel. Included in this is his self portrait, as
St. Bartholomew's
flayed skin.
Some Bible teachers have considered that the
Day of Atonement, a future tenth day of Tishrei on the
Hebrew calendar, may well mark the last day of this present age. It would be that "day of reckoning" just before the return of the
Messiah.
*
Apocalypse*
Armageddon*
Atonement*
Day of Atonement*
End of the World*
End Times*
Eschatology*
Plan of Salvation Mormon view
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The Last Judgement (painting)*
Qiyamah Muslim view
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Pralay*
What The Hell Is Hell Good News eschatology: We all win!
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Last Judgment after the Millennial Kingdom*
The Judgment Seat of Christ*
The Great White Throne Judgement Heb 9:27*
Catholic Encyclopedia "General Judgment"
