Judgment

Judgment, Day of. The Old Testament is full of declarations of coming judgments of God, sometimes executed by virtue of prerogative as King, sometimes as one of the works of the promised Messiah. When our Lord declared his kingdom he spoke emphatically of this judgment, and connected it, not with ideas of abstract justice and retribution, but with his own especial work. He (the Father) hath given him (the Son) authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man. It is evident that there have been many rehearsals of the great consummating judgment to come. The language of our Saviour respecting the fall of Jerusalem in Matt, xxiv. cannot be taken as other than a prediction of judgment, and the Book of Revelation so treats the downfall of imperial Rome. And we need none to tell us that the judgment of God upon sin is a part of the individual experience. But all creation moves to ‘ * one far-off event;” “it is groaning and travailing, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.” How far the sublime passage which closes the prophecy of Matt. xxv. has been realized by human imagination we cannot tell. It is one of the hidden things of God. To some writers that passage has appeared as “the Great Assize,” the gathering together in one view all who have ever lived on the face of the earth. Pictorial art, as in the great picture of Michael Angelo, has striven to realize it, and it is one of the commonest subjects of elaborate sculpture on cathedral doors. But the inadequacy of any such attempts becomes to other interpreters an argument against such views, which seem to them, at best, only parables of a truth too tremendous for the intellect or imagination to grasp. They maintain that the prophecy is a declaration that, as with individuals, so with churches and with nations; they are all gathered before the throne of the Judge. Not only Christians but heathens are judged by him “because he is the Son of man.” To realize that Christ is the Son of man exalted to the throne of God—this is the foundation of all Christian belief and knowledge. Those who have so realized it can wait for his second coming, and humbly and prayerfully await the fulfilment and explanation of the profession that then “he shall judge the quick and the dead.”—Benham: Diet, of .Religion, See Eschatology.