Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/142

138 here announced. But exclusive of these reasons for believing, that the judgment, spoken of in the Scriptures, is already accomplished, there are others of considerable weight, amounting to little less than a kind of demonstrative proof. When mention is made of the last judgment in the Word of God, it is generally represented as an event, which is to be succeeded by an extraordinary degree of illumination, and knowledge of divine things, vouchsafed to the human mind, by means of a new revelation. Thus the coming of the Son of Man is compared to "lightning shining out of the east," Matt. xxiv. 27. After the judgment of the great whore, John says, "I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse: and he that sat upon him was called the Word of God," Apoc. xix. 11, 13; evidently alluding to the understanding of the spiritual sense of the Sacred Scriptures, which was to take place after the judgment. The same is further described in chap. xxi. by the new heaven and the new earth, and the holy city New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven: which event, as it is now taking place, is a full proof, that the last judgment, according to the Scriptures, has been already performed, the one coining to pass as the certain consequence of the other.

By the Scriptures we are informed, that several general judgments have taken place, prior to that of which we are now speaking, and which is stated to have been accomplished in the spiritual world in the year 1757. The first was the last judgment of the Most Ancient Church, when all charity and faith perished, and which is described in Genesis by the flood. At that time, according to the language of the Sacred Scriptures, heaven and earth passed away, in other words, the internals and externals of the church perished, and a new heaven and a new earth were