The Judgment

This teaching will try and explain the teaching and the doctrine of the “Judgment” from four (4) different perspectives:

1. AS TAUGHT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT.

Psa.96:13 -- "For He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth: he shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth." While this passage refers more particularly to the rewarding of the righteous, yet the idea of judgment is here. Both reward and punishment are involved in the idea of judgment.

2. AS TAUGHT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

Acts 17:31 -- "Because he hath appointed a day, in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead." Heb.9:27. Just as it is "appointed unto men once to die" so it is appointed unto men to appear before the judgment. There is no more escape from the one than from the other. It is part of the burden of both the Old and New Testament message that a day of judgment is appointed for the world. God's kingdom shall extend universally; but a judgment in which the wicked are judged and the righteous rewarded is necessary and in order that the kingdom of everlasting righteousness may be established upon the earth.

3. AS SEEN AND PERCEIVED BY THE CONSCIENCE

This is true of both the individual and universal conscience. The discoveries of tablets as well as the history of all peoples establish this fact. This is enforced by Eccl.11:9; 12:14 -- a book which is in a very real sense a book of worldly philosophy, narrating, as it does, the experiences and observations of a man who judged all things from the view-point of "under the sun," i.e., without special reference to any revelation from above.

4.  AS SYMBOLISED BY THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST

Acts 17:31 gave "assurance" in the sense of proof or ground of evidence. The context is suggestive: God had long borne with the sins of men, and in a sense, overlooked them. Therefore men have thought that God would continue to do so. But no, this shall not be; there is a day of judgment coming, the evidence of which lies in the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.