1. The nature of the final judgment.
The final judgment is not a spiritual, invisible, endless process, identical with God's providence in history, but is an outward and visible event, occurring at a definite period in the future. This we argue from the following considerations:
(a) The judgment is something for which the evil are “reserved ” (2 Peter 2:4, 9); something to be expected in the future (Acts 24:25; Heb. 10:27); something after death (Heb. 9:27); something for which the resurrection is a preparation (John 5:29).
2 Pet. 2:4, 9—“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell ... reserved unto judgment ... the lord knoweth how ... to keep the unrighteous unto punishment unto the day of judgment”; Acts 24:25—“as he reasoned of righteousness, and self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was terrified”; Heb. 10:27—“a certain fearful expectation of judgment”; 9:27—“it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment”; John 5:29—“the resurrection of judgment.”
(b) The accompaniments of the judgment, such as the second coming of Christ, the resurrection, and the outward changes of the earth, are events which have an outward and visible, as well as an inward and spiritual, aspect. We are compelled to interpret the predictions of the last judgment upon the same principle.
John 5:28, 29—“Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment”; 2 Pet. 3:7, 10—“the day of judgment ... the day of the Lord ... in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat”; 2 Thess. 1:7, 8, 2:10—“the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God ... when he shall come ... in that day.”
(c) God's justice, in the historical and imperfect work of judgment, needs a final outward judgment as its vindication. “A perfect justice must judge, not only moral units, but moral aggregates; not only the particulars of life, but the life as a whole.” The crime that is hidden and triumphant here, and the goodness that is here maligned and oppressed, must be brought to light and fitly recompensed. “Otherwise man is a Tantalus—longing but never satisfied”; and God's justice, of which his outward administration is the expression, can only be regarded as approximate.
Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 194—“The Egyptian Book of the Dead represents the deceased person as standing in the presence of the goddess Maāt , who is distinguished by the ostrich-feather on her head; she holds the sceptre in one hand and the symbol of life in the other. The man's heart, which represents his entire moral nature, is being weighed in the balance in the presence of Osiris, seated upon his throne as judge of the dead.” Rationalism believes in only present and temporal judgment; and this it regards as but the reaction of natural law: “Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht,—the world's history is the world's judgment” (Schiller, Resignation). But there is an inner connection between present, temporal, spiritual judgments, and the final, outward, complete judgment of God. Nero's murder of his mother was not the only penalty of his murder of Germanicus.
Dorner: “With Christ's appearance, faith sees that the beginning of the judgment and of the end has come. Christians are a prophetic race. Without judgment, Christianity [pg 1025]would involve a sort of dualism: evil and good would be of equal might and worth. Christianity cannot always remain a historic principle alongside of the contrary principle of evil. It is the only reality.” God will show or make known his righteousness with regard to: (1) the disparity of lots among men; (2) the prosperity of the wicked; (3) the permission of moral evil in general; (4) the consistency of atonement with justice. “The συντέλεια τοῦ αἰῶνος (‘end of the world,’ Mat. 13:39) = stripping hostile powers of their usurped might, revelation of their falsity and impotence, consigning them to the past. Evil shall be utterly cut off, given over to its own nothingness, or made a subordinate element.”
A great statesman said that what he dreaded for his country was not the day of judgment, but the day of no judgment. “Jove strikes the Titans down, Not when they first begin their mountain-piling, But when another rock would crown their work.”R. W. Emerson: “God said: I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ears the morning brings The outrage of the poor.” Royce, The World and the Individual, 2:384 sq.—“If God's life is given to free individual souls, then God's life can be given also to free nations and to a free race of men. There may be an apostasy of a family, nation, race, and a judgment of each according to their deeds.”