Page:The Judgment Day.pdf/189

 reference to the Last Judgment generally believed to be yet future, John the Revelator declares, that he saw a great dragon cast out of heaven, and he explains this dragon to be that old serpent, called the devil and Satan. (Rev. xii. 9.) Just in the same manner the Lord says in Luke, when the disciples returned and told him that even the devils were subject unto them through his name, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." (Luke x. 18.) Evidently then, the circumstance described as the falling of Satan from heaven, is a thing essentially belonging to the performance of a General Judgment. Then put these facts together. John the Revelator says that such an occurrence would take place at the last judgment of all. Isaiah announced that it would take place at the judgment to be performed by the Lord while in the world: and Jesus himself twice declares, that it did then actually happen; how then is it possible to retain any doubt, that the Lord Jesus Christ was actually engaged in performing a judgment in the spiritual world, while, as to his assumed human nature, he was personally present in this."*******

"If the Last Judgment announced in the New Testament be not the only General Judgment ever accomplished on the natives of this earth, but, on the contrary, there have been two or three such before; then, doubtless, this would be executed in the same manner as those. It is certain that at former judgments, particularly at the most indisputable of them, that performed by the Lord while in the world, there was no gathering together, in this world, of all who had previously died, no appearing of the Judge in the clouds, and no destruction of the globe and of the visible universe: consequently, neither were such events to occur at the Last Judgment of all. All former General Judgments were executed in the spiritual world: consequently, that world must be the scene of the Last Judgment also."

In the above paragraphs are presented some strong, and as it is believed, unanswerable reasons for believing, that a General Judgment did take place in the spiritual world, especially at the time when the Jewish Church came to an end, and the Christian Church began. But if it can be clearly shown from the Divine Word, that there was a General Judgment in the world of spirits, at the end of the Jewish Dispensation, and if the language in which that Judgment is described is very similar to the language which foretells