The whole story of Last Judgment — which looks such a horrifying experience — has been made very beautiful, and very tender, and delicate, and does not disturb you.

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"Belief in a Last Judgment became common, indeed credal, in Christianity because scripture says it; tradition asserts it; reason supports it; and literature and art proclaim it. Though the Last Judgment does not occupy an especially prominent place in the Bible, many OT and NT texts are relevant: Psalm 98.9 says that the Lord will come to judge "the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity; John 12.48 says that on the last day, the Lord will judge those who reject him. The tradition is enshrined in the Nicene Creed formulated at the First Council of Constantinople in 381 and still used in most churches: "He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead." Reason applied to scripture confirms the idea: humans have free will to choose to follow the commandment to love God and neighbor (Deut 6.5; Matt 22.37-39). The responsibility lies both on the community (the human race in Adam and Eve, the Bene Israel, the Christian

community and on the individual man or woman. Reason also shows that at the end of the world God's eternal judgment of each person will be made manifest; the end recapitulates and finalizes what has gone before in time, and eschatology declares the eternal divine knowledge of souls. Art and literature reflect this theology, the first depiction of the Last Judgment appearing in an early stage of Christian art, in the sixth century.The Last Judgment was early established as one of the four essential eschatological moments (different from the later tradition of the "Four Last Things:" death, judgment, heaven, and hell) namely the parousia (return of Christ), the resurrection of the body, the Last Judgment, and the end of this world (whether the world is understood as the end of the physical cosmos or as the end of the present world order, kosmos or aiôn). These four eschatological moments are closely linked in early and medieval Christian theology, but this present article

concentrates on the judgment, examining the idea in the Bible, patristic period, and Middle Ages. The Last Judgment was generally accepted as a necessary prelude to the reality of the kingdom of God in which all are recognized as their true selves; it is an occasion of terror for the evil and of joy for the loving, for the harvest of the kingdom is the poor, the dispossessed, the humble, the persecuted (Mt 5.3-12), who will be gathered up as rich wheat and baked into loaves that are heartwhole, heavenly, and fine. . . .Imminence of judgment was one characteristic of apocalyptic thought; another was transcendence. Whatever the end of the world and the new eon and the kingdom of God meant, they meant a complete change, whether by obliteration and new construction or by transformation of the existing world. The nature of the new eon, the kingdom of God, varied considerably among these writers. It might be a world not of this earth, or it might be a completely new order on this

earth. It might be the end of time or the beginning of a new sort of time. For all the apocalyptic writers, however, it meant the final, eternal, and complete triumph of justice, in which the good would be rewarded and the evil punished, not just on earth and in time, but in eternity. . . .The Last Judgment is now tied firmly and permanently to the general resurrection of the body. At the last day, Christ will judge both the living and the dead. Those living at the time of the Second Coming will not suffer physical death (1 Thess 4.17) and will be judged in the bodies that they have in this life. Those who have already suffered physical death will be raised in the bodies that they had in life. The resurrected human being will be, as the living human being is, an indivisible union of body and soul. The judgment would produce two effects of the resurrection, which John sometimes refers to as "two resurrections," namely a resurrection to eternal life for the just; and the

resurrection to "judgment" (here restricted in meaning to condemnation) for the unjust (Jn 5.29). John also uses a similar equivocity in the term "death," speaking of the first death as the physical death and the "second death" as the death or damnation limited to the unjust. The just, though dead, will rise and live forever, and "over these the second death has no power" (Rev. 20.60); the unjust will die and then die again in eternity. . . .The most important shift between the NT point of view and that of the fathers of the second century was occasioned by the fact that time, rather than coming to a rapid end in the generation of the apostles, was observed to continue. Though the end of the world was still believed to be about to happen at any moment, the longer it delayed, the more vague was its date in the future. Bernard McGinn has argued that there was a shift from "predictive" historical imminence to psychological imminence. Each person continued to expect judgment at

any moment, but the historical time of the judgment faded into an indefinite future. Indeed, it is a common principle that the longer an event that is not certain to occur is postponed, the less likely it becomes. Though Christians still affirm imminence psychologically, the delay of the end-time by now commands little historical credence indeed.This so-called delay of the parousia had the effect of causing a growing tension in the idea of judgment, a tension between the so-called particular judgment and the Last Judgment. So long as it was believed that no significant time would elapse between a person's physical death and the end of time, the tension itself was not significant. But it became clear by the middle of the second century that Christians were dying scores, even a hundred years, before the Last Judgment. The question whether they underwent a personal, "particular" judgment while awaiting the Last Judgment gradually became a significant problem, and though it was

not a central concern until later, it appeared early in the second century. Those historians who have mistakenly argued that the particular judgment was a creation of the later Middle Ages have been refuted by Anton Gurevic's demonstration that it was found in the early Middle Ages as well. But Gurevic did not go far enough. The ideas of the individual judgment and of the Last Judgment both existed, although in unresolved tension, together from at least the second century. . . .Yet another question left unresolved by the NT for the fathers was the defining moment of beatitude. Is it at baptism, when a person is incorporated into the Body of Christ; is it at conversio, the moment when the conscious will to surrender to Christ occurs; is it the particular judgment, when death has made changes of mind impossible; or is it the Last Judgment?By all accounts, the second coming of Christ forever breaks the power of evil, completing the conquest of the Devil, whose power has

already been broken by the Passion. The parousia ushers in the new eon, the new age, the new Jerusalem, the kingdom of God. Whether that reign of God will take place on this earth (however transformed an earth it is), or in heaven, or whether there will be a thousand-year reign of Christ on earth before the Last Judgment and the end of time are questions that form the core of millenarianism (q.v.), a phenomenon that the present article has no room to explore."Jeffry B. Russel, The Last JudgmentProfessor of History, University of Califronia Santa Barbara

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

 

 

 

 

 

"In between Jesus Christ and His destroying Incarnation of Mahavishnu called as Kalki there is time given to human beings to rectify themselves, for them to enter the Kingdom of God which in the Bible is called as Last Judgment — that you will be judged. All of you will be judged on this Earth. The population of the Earth is at the maximum these days because all those — practically all those who had aspirations to enter into the Kingdom of God — are born in Modern Times and are going to be born very soon. This is the most important times because Sahaja Yoga is the Last Judgment. It is fantastic to hear this but that's the fact. It's the Truth. Though you can understand that Mother's Love makes it very easy for you to get to your Realization and that the whole story of Last Judgment — which looks such a horrifying experience — has been made very beautiful, and very

tender, and delicate, and does not disturb you." Shri Mataji Nirmala DeviKundalini And Kalki Shakti, Bombay, India — Sep. 28, 1979

 

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