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Sources 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 Sheep and the Goats section 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. Also, Acts 17:30-31: In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead. Catholicism 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. Esoteric Christian tradition Although the Last Judgment is preached by a great part of Christian churches, the esoteric Christian tradition, Essenian, Christian Science, Rosicrucian , and some liberal theologies reject the traditional conception of the Last Judgment as inconsistent with an all-just and loving God, in favor of some form of universal salvation, in the Rosicrucian case teaching that all beings of the human evolution will ultimately 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 . 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". New Church 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. Artistic Representations 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. The Last Judgement and the Day of Atonement 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. See also | ||||||||||
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