Last Judgment

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This page is about the Christian concept. For paintings of the same name, see Last Judgement (painting). Judgment Day redirects here - for other meanings see Judgement Day (disambiguation) Image:Torcellomosaic.jpg

In Christian eschatology, the Last Judgment or Judgment Day is the ethical-judicial trial, judgment, and punishment/reward of 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".

This eschatology has spawned numerous artistic depictions.

The equivalent in Islamic eschatology is Qiyama. Jewish eschatology is concerned with the Jewish Messiah.

1 Sources
2 Catholicism
3 Esoteric Christian tradition
4 Near-death experiences
5 Artistic Representations
6 See also
7 External links

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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 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.

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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. Those who have already died are either in Hell, Heaven, or awaiting Heaven in Purgatory. The last judgement is the resurrection of the dead, and the reuniting of the body and soul. Jesus will then cast the deceased into Eternal Life (Heaven) or Eternal death (Hell).

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Esoteric Christian tradition

Although the Last Judgement is being preached by a great part of Christian churches, the esoteric Christian tradition, Essenian and later Rosicrucian, rejects that idea of the Last Judgement, 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.

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Near-death experiences

Many near-death experiences (NDEs) include a Last Judgement, where the life of the subject is fully evaluated and scrutinized. The people having had NDEs say that in the Last Judgement they may feel the actions and their consequences not on behalf of themselves, but also on the behalf of the other people who have been subject to their actions. Interestingly enough, the NDEs with Last Judgement involve an universal memory bank, such as Book of Life or Akashic records, where the data of each and every individual's earthly life is stored. The Last Judgement is performed by Christ or other religious figure, but that figure never sentences the subject; the subject evaluates his life and gives the sentence by himself. While often very traumatic, the Last Judgement almost never leads into perdition, but either being allowed to remain in Heaven, to return back on Earth to complete their lives, or to remain in Heaven and later reincarnate back to Earth to fulfill their missions and to settle any wrongdoings. In the light of NDEs, the Esoteric Christian tradition and the Jewish concept of gilgul is correct. The Last Judgement in the NDEs is more akin to a Final Review or End Report over one's life rather than a judicial sentence; those NDEs with experiences of Hell, Perdition or Void never involve the Last Judgement, but the separation from God begins at the moment of death. The Perdition is seen as a result of one's actions and choices rather than as a result of a divine sentence..

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Artistic Representations

Image:Last judgement.jpg

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 aa 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.

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