I think it would be good for us to compare our own position on this one-time judgment day, which is coming, with the position that some believers have who teach that there is more than one judgment day. This is mistaken, but we can understand where they got it from. It comes as a result of confusion over the Millennium that we talked about last week. If the Millennium is not taken to be happening right now, and if there is to be a return of Christ before a 1,000-year period, then there need to be at least two judgment days. The thinking is that “the nations need to be judged, and then there will be another period of time, which is 1,000 years, where Jewish people will be saved, and it will be a great victorious period of time. After that, there is a judgment of believers, and then again, another final, final judgment.” So the final judgement is protracted, and each of the passages that talk about judgment day speak about slightly different aspects of judgment day.
But I want us to see that the reality is that we are all going to be judged on one day, the day of judgment. As we said last week in reference to the 1,000 years, Revelation 20 is the only place that speaks about that thousand years. If we were to expect there to be a judgment day followed by 1,000 years, we would expect the other passages which speak about judgment day to also mention the 1,000 years, but they don’t. The passages instead speak about judgment day leading to either eternal punishment or eternal life, nothing else.
