JUDGMENT, FINAL (JUDGMENT, ante), a point on which various theories have been held. One is that of the common school of rationalists denying a general judgment or a final judicial period, and asserting that men in this life are under a moral government, whereby, in the future world, rewards will come to the good and punishments to the wicked. Another view is that the last judgment is a process now in progress, and even continuous through all history; the history of the world being a continuous manifestation of God is therein necessarily a continuous judging of the world. The Messianic period being in the Old Testament spoken of as the "last day," the "last time," the "end of days," the "end of the world," the Jews believed that at the coming of the Messiah the heathen would be punished, and the chosen people exalted. The view of the pre-mil lenarians is, that to judge is to reign; and that the last judgment will begin when the personal reign of Christ upon earth begins. Another theory is that the day of judgment is a protracted future dispensation, commencing with the second advent of Christ, and continuing through the thousand years of his personal reign upon earth. The theory of Swedenborg is tnat the spiritual history of mankind is divided into dispensations of truth, i.e., into a succession of churches, and that a final judgment takes place in the spiritual world at the close of each dispensation. According to him there have been several " final " judgments; first, at the flood, to close the Adamic or antediluvian dis pensation; second, at the Tied sea and through the ten plagues, to close the Nordic dispensation; third, at the coming of our Lord, to close the Mosaic dispensation; fourth, at the time of the reformation, or a little after, iu 1759, to close the dispensation of the first Christian church. The doctrine held in common /by Protestants, Romanists, and
the Greek church is that the final judgment is an event at the end of the world, when the eternal state of men and angels, good and bad, will be determined and publicly manifested; that the rule will be the light enjoyed, either from nature and conscience or from these with the law and gospel containld in the Scriptures; that the ground or matter of judgment will be, not professions, or relations, or reputation, but the "deeds done in the body," and these deeds not as external, but as man's vital, spiritual acts " the secrets of the heart," in other words, real character; that the time will be at the second coming of Christ, and at the general resurrection; that the place (as some think) will be in the air, because the judge will come in the clouds of heaven, when the living saints will be changed, the dead saints raised, and both caught up to meet the Lord in the air; or (as others think) the place will be the new earth to which the glorified will descend with Christ. Holy Scripture, while plainly and repeatedly announcing the final . judgment and establishing the principles of its process, seems to be silent on the details of time, place, and circumstances—revealing only that it will be the world's great natural, historical, and moral consummation under the ultimate -manifestation of Christ in his divine humanity, and accompanying the resurrection of the dead.