Last Judgment

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Last Judgment or Judgment Day is a concept common to all Abrahamic religions, and elsewhere in faiths like Zoroastrianism and Duat, under which God will bring about the destruction of the Earth and individual humans will then be judged to determine their place thereafter.

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  • Avoid cruelty and injustice for, on the Day of Judgment, the same will turn into several darknesses; and guard yourselves against miserliness; for this has ruined nations who lived before you.
    • Muhammed, Riyadh-us-Salaheen, Hadith 203
  • Dies iræ! dies illa
    Solvet sæclum in favilla
    Teste David cum Sibylla!
  • Certe adveniente die judicii, non quæretur a nobis quid legimus, sed quid fecimus; nec quam bene diximus, sed quam religiose viximus.
    • At the Day of Judgement we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done; not how well we have spoken, but how holy we have lived.
    • Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ (c.1418), Book I, ch. 3
  • Now shall the promises made to Christ by God the Father before the foundation of the world, the promises of the covenant of redemption, be fully accomplished. Christ shall now have perfectly obtained the joy set before Him, for which He undertook those great sufferings in His state of humiliation. Now shall all the hopes and expectations of the saints be fulfilled. The state of the church before was progressive and preparatory; but now she is arrived at her most perfect state of glory. All the glory of the church on earth is but a faint shadow of this her consummate glory in heaven.
    • Jonathan Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption including a View of Church History (1739)
  • Cependant la terre chancelle sur ses bases, la lune se couvre d'un voile sanglant, les astres pendent à demi détachés de leur voûte: l'agonie du monde commence. Tout à coup l'heure fatale vient à frapper; Dieu suspend les flots de la création, et le monde a passé comme un fleuve tari.

    Alors se fait entendre la trompette de l'ange du jugement; il crie: Morts, levez-vous! Surgite, mortui! Les sépulcres se fendent, le genre humain sort du tombeau, et les races s'assemblent dans Josaphat.

    Le Fils de l'homme apparaît sur les nuées; les puissances de l'enfer remontent du fond de l'abîme pour assister au dernier arrêt prononcé sur les siècles; les boucs et les brebis sont séparés, les méchants s'enfoncent dans le gouffre, les justes montent dans les cieux; Dieu rentre dans son repos, et partout règne l'éternité.

    • Meanwhile the globe begins to tremble on its axis; the moon is covered with a bloody veil, the threatening stars hang half detached from the vault of heaven, and the agony of the world commences. Then, all at once, the fatal hour strikes; God suspends the movements of the creation, and the earth has passed away like an exhausted river.

      Now resounds the trumpet of the angel of judgment; and the cry is heard, "Arise, ye dead!" The sepulchres burst open with a terrific noise, the human race issues all at once from the tomb, and the assembled multitudes fill the valley of Jehoshaphat.

      Behold, the Son of Man appears in the clouds; the powers of hell ascend from the depths of the abyss to witness the last judgment pronounced upon the ages; the goats are separated from the sheep, the wicked are plunged into the gulf, the just ascend triumphantly to heaven, God returns to His repose, and the reign of eternity commences.

    • François-René de Chateaubriand, Le génie du Christianisme (1802), trans. Frederic Shoberl, part VI, book VII: Le dernier jugement
  • The ink of scholars is weighed on the Day of Judgement with the blood of martyrs and the ink of scholars out-weighs the blood of martyrs.
  • Oh, on that day, that wrathful day,
    When man to judgment wakes from clay.
    Be Thou, O Christ, the sinner's stay,
    Though heaven and earth shall pass away.
    • Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), canto VI, stanza 31
  • Then, when the glorious end,
    The day of God shall come,
    The angel reapers shall descend,
    And heaven sing, "Harvest-home!"
  • Winds, storms, tempests, thunders, lightnings, raging flames, dissolving elements, the archangel's trump smiting the silence of the tomb, the universal air blazing with disastrous splendors, " the tribes of the earth mourning and beating their breasts," the wicked calling on rocks and hills to fall upon them and cover them, the shouts of the saved, the howlings of the damned—all, all will then utter one voice, all will pierce our very souls with their tones; all will repeat these words, "God alone is great, and God's salvation alone deserved the cares, toils, sacrifices of an immortal spirit."
    • Richard Fuller, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 359.
  • We are all approaching that dread tribunal. However diversified our paths, they all converge toward that common centre. The young, with their elastic tread, are striding to the judgment; the old, with their tottering limbs are creeping to the judgment; the rich in their splendid equipages are driving to the judgment; the poor, in rags and barefooted, are walking to the judgment. The Christian making God's statutes his song, is a pilgrim to the judgment; the sinner, treading upon the mercy of Jesus, and trampling upon His blood, is hastening to the judgment. "We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ."
    • Richard Fuller, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 360.
  • Standing on my watch-tower I am commanded, if I see aught of evil coming, to give warning. I solemnly declare that I do discern evil approaching; I see a storm collecting in the heavens; I discover the commotion of the troubled elements; I hear the roar of a distant wind — heaven and earth seem mingled in the conflict — and I cry to those for whom I watch, " A storm! A storm! Get you into the ark or you are swept away." Oh! what is it I see? I see a world convulsed and falling to ruins — the sea burning like oil —nations rising from under ground — the sun falling — the damned in chains before the bar, and some of my poor hearers among them! I see them cast from the battlements of the judgment scene. My God! the eternal pit has closed upon them forever!
  • Glorious transformation! glorious translation! I seem already to behold the wondrous scene. The sea and the land have given up their dead! the quickened myriads have been judged according to their works. And now, an innumerable company, out of all nations and tribes and tongues, ascend with the Mediator towards the kingdom of His Father. Can it be that these, who were born children of earth, who were long enemies to God by wicked works, are to enter the bright scenes of paradise? Yes, He who leads them has washed them in His blood; He who leads them has sanctified them by His Spirit.
    • Henry Melvill, Sermons 1833-8, vol. II (1870), sermon VII: "The Ascension of Christ"
  • The deeds we do, the words we say,
    Into still air they seem to fleet;
    We count them ever past;
    But they shall last —
    In the dread judgment they
    And we shall meet.
    • John Keble, "Early Warnings," from Lyra Innocentium (1846)
  • Oh, remember that as certain as the historical fact,— He died on Calvary; so certain is the prophetic fact, He shall reign, and you and I will stand there. I durst not touch that subject. Take it into your own hearts, and think about it,— a kingdom, a judgment-seat, a crown, a gathered universe; separation, decision, execution of the sentence.
    • Alexander Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Union Chapel, Manchester (1859), sermon XIII: "The Dying Thief"
  • We should not hold on so strongly to those who are going to leave us some day anyway. We should not feel excessive attachment for them. We have to keep it in moderation. But there is One who will never leave us, One who will never perish. God will never leave us, not in the kingdom of heaven, nor in the kingdom of hell, nor in this world. And since judgment is in His hands, He is the only attachment we must have. If we hold on to only that one attachment, then we will have joy throughout our lives and even at the time of death. On Judgment Day we will know that joy, because we will be with Him.
  • Surely they think it to be far off, and We see it nigh: on the day when the heaven shall be as molten copper, and the mountains shall be as tufts of wool, and friend shall not ask of friend (though) they shall be made to see each other.
  • When the sun is overthrown, and when the stars fall, and when the camels big with young are abandoned, and when the wild beasts are herded together, and when the seas rise, and when souls are reunited, and when the girl-child that was buried alive is asked for what sin she was slain, and when the pages are laid open, and when the sky is torn away, and when hell is lighted, and when the Garden is brought nigh, (then) every soul will know what it hath made ready.
  • When the Judgment Day comes civilization will have an alibi, "I never took a human life, I only sold the fellow the gun to take it with."
    • Will Rogers, as quoted in Joseph H. Carter, The Quotable Will Rogers (2006).

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