Jump to content

Last Judgment

From Wikiquote, the free quote compendium
(Redirected from Judgement Day)
When, O crowned Jesus; when, O loving Saviour; when, O patient and just Judge — when wilt Thou come forth from Thy hiding, and change tears to smiles, and groans to joys? ~ Henry Ward Beecher
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly,
For the Last Judgement draweth nigh. ~ William Blake

Last Judgment or Judgment Day is the final and eternal judgment by God of every person or society, a concept found in all Abrahamic religions, and elsewhere in faiths like Zoroastrianism and the Ancient Egyptian religious traditions about the Duat.

See also:
Apocalypse
Armageddon
Book of Revelation

Quotes

[edit]
I have not judged with undue haste. ~ 42 Confessions to the Goddess Maat in the Papyrus of Ani
Alphabetized by author or source
Glorious transformation! glorious translation! I seem already to behold the wondrous scene. ~ Henry Melvill
I warrant you, if he danced till doomsday, he thought I was to pay the piper.
This well may be
The Day of Judgment which the world awaits;
But be it so or not, I only know
My present duty, and my Lord's command
To occupy till He come. ~ Abraham Davenport, as portrayed by John Greenleaf Whittier
With all reverence, I would say, let God do His work, we will see to ours. Bring in the candles. ~ Abraham Davenport, as portrayed by John Greenleaf Whittier
Extenuating circumstance to be mentioned on Judgment Day: We never asked to be born in the first place. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
  • Christ clearly has judicial power over the living and the dead. He exercises judgment both over those who are living in the world at present and over those who pass from this world by death. At the Last judgment, however, He will judge the living and the dead together. In this expression the living may be taken to mean the just who live by grace, and the dead may be taken to mean sinners who have fallen from grace. Or else by the living may be meant those who will be found still alive at the Lord’s coming, and by the dead those who have died in previous ages.
We are not to understand by this that certain of the living will be judged without ever having undergone death of the body, as some have argued. For the Apostle says clearly, in 1 Corinthinans 15:51: “We shall all indeed rise again.” Another reading has: “We shall indeed sleep,” that is, we shall die; or, according to some books, “We shall not indeed all sleep,” as Jerome notes in his letter to Minervius on the resurrection of the body. But this variant does not destroy the force of the doctrine under discussion. For a little previously the Apostle had written: “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). Hence the text which reads: “We shall not all sleep,” cannot refer to death of the body, which has come down to all through the sin of our first parent, as is stated in Romans 5:12, but must be interpreted as referring to the sleep of sin, concerning which we are exhorted in Ephesians 5:14: “Rise, you who sleep, and arise from the dead: and Christ shall enlighten you.”
Accordingly those who are found alive at the Lord’s coming will be marked off from those who have died before, not for the reason that they will never die, but because in the very act by which they are taken up “in the clouds to meet Christ, into the air” (1 Thessalonians 4: 16), they will die and immediately rise again, as Augustine teaches.


  • Those who have deprived themselves of this Resurrection by reason of their mutual hatreds or by regarding themselves to be in the right and others in the wrong, were chastised on the Day of Resurrection by reason of such hatreds evinced during their night. Thus they deprived themselves of beholding the countenance of God, and this for no other reason than mutual denunciations.
    • The Báb, in the Kitáb-I-Asmá (The Book of Names), XVI, 19.
  • When, O crowned Jesus; when, O loving Saviour; when, O patient and just Judge — when wilt Thou come forth from Thy hiding, and change tears to smiles, and groans to joys? When shall that choral song burst forth, sweeping through the air, and circling about Thy throne, which shall proclaim the redemption of the world to the Lord God?
    • Henry Ward Beecher, as reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 410.
  • But this we may positively state, that nobody has made any progress in the school of Christ unless he cheerfully looks forward to the day of his death and to the day of the final resurrection.
    • John Calvin, Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, Page 78.
  • N'attendez pas le Jugement dernier. Il a lieu tous les jours.
    • Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.
    • Variant translations:
      Do not await the last Judgement. It takes place everyday.
      You needn't await the Final Judgment. It takes place every day.
      I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.

  • 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.

  • I am against an adjournment. The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause of an adjournment: if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought.
    • Abraham Davenport, in a response to a call for adjourning the Connecticut State Council on New England's Dark Day (19 May 1780), because of fears that the deep darkness might be a sign that the Last Judgment was approaching, as quoted by Timothy Dwight, Connecticut Historical Collectons 2d ed (1836) compiled by John Warner Barber, p. 403.
  • Dies iræ, dies illa
    Solvet sæclum in favilla
    Teste David cum Sibylla
  • Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.
    • Book of Ecclesiastes 12 : 13-14
  • In those days the nations will be thrown into confusion and the races of the nations will rise on the Day of Destruction. And in those days, those who are in need will go out, seize their children, and cast out their children. And their offspring will slip from them, and they will cast out their children while they are still sucklings, and will not return to them, and will not have mercy on their beloved ones. And again I swear to you, the sinners, that sin is ready for the Day of Unceasing Bloodshed. And they worship stone, and some carve images of gold and of silver, and of wood and of clay. And some, with no knowledge, worship unclean spirits and demons, and every kind of error. But no help will be obtained from them. [...] And in those days, and in one place, fathers and sons will strike one another, and brothers will together fall in death, until their blood flows as if it were a stream. For a man will not, in mercy, withhold his hand from his sons, nor from his son's sons, in order to kill them. And the sinner will not withhold his hand from his honoured brother from dawn until the Sun sets they will kill one another. And the horse will walk up to its chest in the blood of sinners and the chariot will sink up to its height. And in those days the Angels will come down into the hidden places, and gather together in one place all those who have helped sin, and the Most High will rise on that day to execute the Great Judgment on all the sinners. And he will set guards, from the Holy Angels, over all the righteous and Holy, and they will guard them like the apple of an eye, until an end is made of all evil and all sin. And even if the righteous sleep a long sleep they have nothing to fear. And the wise men will see the truth, and the sons of the Earth will understand all the words of this book, and they will know that their riches will not be able to save them or overthrow their sin.
    • Enoch, Book of Enoch (Enoch 1)
  • 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 (1839).
  • 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 Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, 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 Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 360.
  • When this great concourse of men came to Babylonia upon their journeyings, they said to one another: "Behold, the time is coming when, at the end of days, neighbor will be separated from neighbor, and brother from brother, and one will carry on war against the other. Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a great name upon the earth. And now let us make bricks, and each one write his name upon his brick."
  • Noah endeavored to inculcate the ordinances and the commands known to him upon his children and his children's children. In particular he admonished them against the fornication, the uncleanness, and all the iniquity which had brought the flood down upon the earth. He reproached them with living apart from one another, and with their jealousies, for he feared that, after his death, they might go so far as to shed human blood. Against this he warned them impressively, that they be not annihilated from the earth like those that went before.
    • Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews (1909)
  • 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!
  • For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
  • There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?
    • Epistle of James 4:12, NKJV
  • Not every one that saith unto Me, “Lord, Lord,” shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in Heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? And in Thy name have cast out devils? And in Thy name done many wonderful works?” And then will I profess unto them, “I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.”
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • When the