Judgment Day

1. In Judeo-Christian and Muslim traditions, the day at the end of the world when God judges the moral worth of individual humans or the whole human race. Also called Day of Judgment.
2. judgment day A day of reckoning or final judgment.

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The Day of the Lord appears often in the prophetic literature: in Amos, Isaiah, Joel, Obadiah, Zephaniah, and Ezekiel. Other phrases, such as "on that day" and "the day of God's wrath," are considered synonyms for the Day of the Lord. All these phrases refer to a time in the future when God will manifest His Divine rule over all by a series of destructive judgments over the other nations and Israel. There will be frightening changes in the rules of nature: a day of darkness (Amos 5:20); a day when the lights of the heavenly bodies will be dimmed (Joel 2:10, 3:4); a "day of trouble and distress, a day of devastation and desolation" (Zeph. 1:15).

The Day of the Lord will bring about the destruction of God's enemies, who are the enemies of Israel (Isa. 13:6-11; Ezek. 30:1ff.; Joel 3:1-8; Ob. v. 15). This will also mark the passing of idolatry (Isa. 2:18). Unlike the other prophets, who dwell on the punishment of the other nations on the Day of Judgment/the Lord, Amos extends the judgment to Israel as well: "Woe to you who desire the Day of the Lord! For what good is the Day of the Lord to you? It will be darkness, and not light" (Amos 5:18). If the wicked nations come to ruin, so will Israel (Isa. 2:12; Zeph. 1:7-16).

Ezekiel (13:5) regards the destruction of the Temple as the Day of the Lord. Certain prophecies of the Day of the Lord were directed against specific hostile nations: Babylonia (Isa. 13:6, 9, 13); Edom (Isa. 34:8, 63:4); and Egypt (Jer. 46:2-12).

On the other hand, the Day of the Lord is also regarded as a day of great salvation. Thus Isaiah (61:2-3) declares that God's vengeance will also bring consolation to the mourners of Zion. Ezekiel (34:12) affirms that God will deliver Israel. The day will bring purification and salvation to those who fear God (Mal. 3:2-3). For the wicked, however, it will be like a burning furnace which consumes straw. Before the coming of that "great and dreadful day," God will send the prophet Elijah, who will reconcile fathers and sons (Mal. 3:23-24).

Later eschatological literature extends the Day of Judgment even further. Before the advent of the day, all the dead will be revived, so that they too will be judged on that day. See Eschatology; Resurrection.

According to the Mishnah (RH 1:1), God judges the world on four occasions during the year. In Jewish tradition Rosh Ha-Shanah, the New Year, is the annual day of judgment (Yom ha-Din) for mankind, with the Divine decrees being finally sealed on the Day of Atonement.

Early Christians expected Doomsday to occur when the world was 6000 years old; since Creation was then reckoned at 5200 BC (not at 4004 BC, the date proposed in the 17th century), Doomsday was due around AD 800. Bede, writing in the 720s, criticised rustici, ‘country folk’, for frequently asking him how many years were left before the sixth millennium ended (De Tempore Ratione, cited in Thompson, 1996: 32). However, there is no evidence of millenial panic in 1000 or 1033.

Doomsday is of course inseparable from the concept of the Second Coming and the establishment of a just and godly world. These ideas have strong political implications; they were conspicuous in England during the Civil War and Commonwealth, but after the Restoration lost all prestige (Thomas, 1971: 140-6). Doomsday preoccupations periodically recurred at the level where popular religion and folklore meet, causing anxiety about ‘signs’ such as comets and earthquakes. There was panic in 1794 when a currently famous prophet, Richard Brothers, announced that God would destroy London by earthquake on 4 June 1795, and again in 1881, because of a fake prophecy attributed to Mother Shipton.

Some, thinking it important that their corpses should be complete and intact, ready for resurrection on Doomsday, arranged for their amputated limbs to be buried with them (Folk-Lore 11 (1900), 346; 18 (1907), 82; 19 (1908), 234; 21 (1910), 105, 387), or even their teeth. Gibbetting, burial in quicklime, and anatomical dissection, were viewed with horror on the assumption that they would prevent resurrection, and hence salvation (Richardson, 1987: 28-9).

One curious notion occasionally recorded (and parodied by Swift in Gulliver's Travels, part I, chapter 6) was that the earth would turn upside down on Doomsday. One person, a Major Labellière, was indeed buried head down on Box Hill (Surrey) in 1800, allegedly so as to be the right way up on Doomsday; whether this really was his motive is uncertain. The same is said (almost certainly falsely) about the burial of a Mr Hull in a tower on Leith Hill (Surrey) in 1772; of a miller on Highdown Hill (Sussex) in 1794; and of the Revd J. H. Smyth-Piggot, leader of an unorthodox sect, buried in a garden at Spaxton (Somerset) in 1927. Some who hear and repeat these rumours take them seriously; for others, they are jokes.

See also NUMBER 666.

J. F. C. Harrison, The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism (1979). For discussion of the year 1000, and the growth of modern beliefs about the millennium, see Damian Thompson, The End of Time: Faith and Fear in the Shadow of the Millennium (1996).

In the New Testament, the day at the end of time. According to the Gospels and the Book of Revelation, on this day the Earth and the sky will be in an uproar, the dead will rise from their graves, and Jesus will return to judge all the living and the dead. In judging their conduct, he will consider the deeds people do to each other, both good and bad, as if they had been done to him. (See Second Coming.)