Day of Judgment

“ Thus the Day of Resurrection is also the Day of Judgment, in which corruptions and imitations of the truth and outworn ideas and customs are discarded and destroyed, in which the ice and snow of prejudice and superstition, which accumulated during the season of winter, are melted and transformed, and energies long frozen and pent up are released to flood and renovate the world. ”

“ Amid all this anarchy and misery, at the close of the thousandth year from the birth of Christ, the belief was quite common throughout Europe that the Day of Judgment was at hand for a world grown old in wickedness and ripe for its doom. ”

“ MAN. Why, I thought that the day of Judgment was come, and that I was not ready for it: but this frighted me most, that the Angels gathered up several, and left me behind; also the pit of Hell opened her mouth just where I stood: my Conscience too afflicted me; and as I thought, the Judge had always his eye upon me, shewing indignation in his countenance.
Then said the Interpreter to Christian, Hast thou considered all these things? ”

“ The place, the day, and the individual, have each a real existence, and not merely a symbolical or mystical one. Thus John, almost at the close of the first century, and long after those texts were written which are now adduced to prove that no distinction in days exists, shows that the Lord’s day has as real an existence, as has the isle of Patmos, or as had the beloved disciple himself.
What day, then, is intended by this designation? [188] Several answers have been returned to this question. 1. It is the gospel dispensation. 2. It is the day of Judgment. 3. It is the first day of the week. ”

“ All is accomplished, all has terminated there. It is there, in that circle narrow as a well that the descent into the raging heart of hell was halted, the descent into slow tortures, into unrelenting fatigue, into the flashing tempest. We came here because they told us to come here. We have done what they told us to do. I think of the simplicity of our reply on the Day of Judgment. ”

“ I believe and confess also that thence thou wilt come to judge the quick and the dead on the day of the last judgment, which will be to all godly men a specially longed-for and joyous day. Then shall we see face to face our God and Saviour, in his great glory and majesty coming in the clouds of heaven. ”

“ But let us never forget that every day of our lives is a day of judgment, in which Christ is searching our hearts and judging our lives, condemning the evil and blessing the good, and seeking to separate the one from the other. ”

“ But more intense, more far-reaching, more sudden, swifter and more tremendous is the headlight of an advancing Judgment Day, under which all the most hidden affairs of life shall come to discovery and arraignment. I quote an overwhelming passage of Scripture, in which I put the whole emphasis on the word "secret." "God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or evil."
What a time that will be in which the cover shall be lifted from every home and from every heart. ”

“ And what change could there be adequate to the production of so great a change as we are witnessing here, but the performance of the Last Judgment,—the entirely new state which is thence induced on the intermediate region of the spiritual world, the seat of man's most immediate spiritual association,—and the consequent outpouring from heaven of new streams of light and life into the world of nature? ”

“ As Christ would have us to be certainly persuaded that there shall be a day of judgment, both to deter all men from sin, and for the greater consolation of the godly in their adversity, so will he have the day unknown to men, that they may shake off all carnal security, and be always watchful, because they know not at what hour the Lord will come, and may ever be prepared to say, Come Lord Jesus ”

“ Yes, we are all going to judgment, the trial of eternity before the all-seeing Judge. We are all formed in a great procession. No matter whether we are good or bad, in a state of grace or of mortal sin, no matter whether our case is a good one or a bad one, no matter if our cause be just or unjust, we are all going to judgment—all going to the great trial, in which every living soul, each man and woman and child, shall be the prisoners at the bar, and God, the judge of all, shall sit upon the great white Throne. When will that trial-day come? No one knows, not even the angels, our Lord says. ”

“ Ten thousand human beings, more or less, swarming on the floor, clustering on the walls, rising tier above tier, until in dim distance the pigmy throng seems soaring up into the very heavens, is a tremendous, a solemn, a heart-stirring sight, suggestive—I write with reverence—of the Judgment Day. ”

“ "This well may be The Day of Judgment which the world awaits; But be it so or not, I only know My present duty, and my Lord's command To occupy till He come. So at the post Where He hath set me in His providence, I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face,— No faithless servant frightened from my task, But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls; And therefore, with all reverence, I would say, Let God do His work, we will see to ours. Bring in the candles." ”

“ Rent Vail, revealing God to man,—
Help, Lord! Lest I should crucify,
By thought or deed, Thy Love again.
JUDGMENT DAY Every day is Judgment Day,
Count on no to-morrow.
He who will not, when he may,
Act to-day, to-day, to-day,
Doth but borrow
Sorrow.
DARKNESS AND LIGHT There is darkness still, gross darkness, Lord,
On this fair earth of Thine.
There are prisoners still in the prison-house,
Where never a light doth shine. ”

“ For that day is properly called the day of judgment, because in it there shall be no room left for the ignorant questioning why this wicked person is happy and that righteous man unhappy. In that day true and full happiness shall be the lot of none but the good, while deserved and supreme misery shall be the portion of the wicked, and of them only. ”

“ He will bring forth your justice as the light: and your judgment as the noon-day." For this purpose is fixed the day of general judgment on which all in heaven, on earth, and under the earth shall be summoned to the same place by the sound of the trumpet, and there, as it were, on a vast public stage shall be exhibited with the utmost pomp and splendor the hitherto hidden virtues and good works of the elect. How the an gels will then wonder, as well as men and demons, at the sight of so many unknown souls! ”

“ It will be remembered that that Word often teaches that all judgment has been committed unto the Son of Man, and that He will judge all men at the last day. By the Son of Man,—as was briefly shown on a former page, and as is very fully demonstrated in the writings of our author,—is meant the Lord himself, as Divine Truth. To be judged by the Son of Man in the last day, means therefore, that at the close of each spirit's probation for eternity, his internal and real character will be laid open in the light of Divine Truth. ”

“ It is the time of the judgment hour, when God was to lift up the standard of truths long trodden underfoot. In the heavenly sanctuary Christ's closing judgment work is going forward, preparatory to His coming in consuming glory to end the reign of sin. On earth the Lord is sending the last gospel message to men, warning against sin and error, and calling all men to worship God, and to keep "the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." ”

“ Truly, at the day of judgment we shall not be examined as to what we have read, but as to what we have done; ”

“ But there is a class of minds to whom it seems just and reasonable to believe, that the last judgment will take place in accordance with the laws of our spiritual nature, and will leave the laws and operations of the natural world undisturbed; on minds of this class, the old and popular views of the judgment day have ceased to exert the least influence. They seem to them more like the creations of the imagination, or the visions of poetry, than like the stern and sober realities of our spiritual destiny. ”

“ If it be true that the long expected Last Judgment has at length been performed,—that the long looked-for time of the Lord's second coming has at last arrived,—in what man pner would it be reasonable to conclude that the important tidings would be conveyed? Are we to behold a multitude of angels in the air, sounding great trumpets, and vocally calling the attention of the world to the crisis which has arrived? ”

“ Here is a plain prediction of a General Judgment, described with the symbolic accompaniment of the burning of the earth, as immediately to precede the establishment of the Christian religion. "I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come." ”

“ We do not profess to find in the Divine Word any direct testimony in regard to the precise time when the Last Judgment would take place, yet knowing that every change which takes place in the natural world is the effect of some corresponding but more important change in the spiritual world, we are compelled to regard the political, social and moral revolutions, which are now taking place, as very unequivocal evidences that the Judgment foretold in the Divine Word, has been already accomplished. ”

“ On the Sabbath day all worldly labors ought to be abstained from. If, therefore, you cease from all secular works, and execute nothing worldly, but give yourselves up to spiritual exercises, repairing to church, attending to sacred reading and instruction, thinking of celestial things, solicitous for the future, placing the Judgment to come before your eyes, not looking to things present and visible, but to those which are future and invisible, this is the observance of the Christian Sabbath. ”

“ The cultivation of demonic, animal, or angelic qualities results in the production of corresponding characters, which in the Day of Judgment will be manifested in visible shapes, the sensual appearing as swine, the ferocious as dogs and wolves, and the pure as angels. ”

“ When the judgment is set, the books opened, we shall suddenly stand before the Judge, precisely in that state of preparation in which we were found at the moment of our departure out of life. Those who have lived as children of God, as servants of Jesus Christ, under the solemn, yet not fearful, expectation of that day, will then be able to lift up their heads and raise the song of joyful recognition. ”

“ The events which have passed in our times, and which are transacting still, upon the theatre of the globe, are indeed such as proclaim, with a voice of thunder, that some most extraordinary operation from the spiritual world upon the world of nature is in action; they are indeed such as demonstrate, when looked at under the proper aspect, that the last judgment has been performed, and that the second coming of the Lord is taking place ”

“ All nature struggling in the pangs of death!"
I am not disposed to intimate that such imaginative and poetical descriptions of the judgment day have been entirely useless. They consist in substituting the changes of the external and natural world for those of the internal and spiritual, and for many persons such apparent truths are undoubtedly of great use in keeping alive in their minds an impression of a future state of moral retribution, which impression might otherwise perish entirely. ”

“ We have already shown that the judgment of the world is called the "last day," in which all human beings are to stand at the Judgment Seat of Christ, and receive according to their deeds. We have shown, that this day commenced at the end of the Jewish age, and is to continue down to all succeeding generations, so long as human beings shall have a habitation on earth. ”

“ Many of the people who ridicule his demonstrations that the fantastic monsters of the book of Revelation are among us in the persons of our own political contemporaries, and who proceed sanely in all their affairs on the assumption that the world is going to last, really do believe that there will be a Judgment Day, and that it MIGHT even be in their own time. ”

“ But when we pass beyond the simple reception of this doctrine in a general form, and inquire when and how this judgment will take place, we instantly find ourselves surrounded by opposite and conflicting opinions. The most popular and general impression appears to be that the last judgment will take place on this earth, and that it will be accomplished by the Son of God, who will personally descend from heaven for that purpose. ”

“ It was shown above, in the article for the purpose, that the last judgment does not exist on the earth, but in the spiritual world, where all who have lived from the beginning of creation are together ”

“ In the Book of Matthew, where the Judgment Day is depicted for us in the imagery of One seated upon a throne and dividing the sheep from the goats, the test of a man then is not, "How have I believed?" ”

“ This the Divine Speaker himself explains to be a figurative description of the Last Judgment still generally expected: "The good seed," he says, "are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one:—the harvest is the consummation of the age:—as therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be at the consummation of the age. ”

“ But, according to the scheme of absolute predestination, all is settled and fixed already; then there is no judging of every man “according to his works,” but according to what is before ordained concerning him. So that the clay of judgment is a solemn farce, or rather we may call it the day of execution, seeing it is only to execute what was long ago determined. What a ridiculous idea does this give us of the proceedings of that great and awful day! ”

“ His coming is the coming of the Internal and spiritual meaning of the word, in glory and power. It will be seen that this view will at once reconcile and harmonize many passages in the word, which, otherwise appear very contradictory and discordant. As, for example, after having been repeatedly taught in the word, that judgment will proceed from the Son of Man, the Lord says: "If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world but to save the world. ”