Wesley Corpus

In the second place Wesley adopts the view that the Last Judgement will take place at some definite time in the future history of the world, when the lives of all men will be reviewed and sentence pronounced upon them. This is certainly the obvious meaning of the teaching of the books of the New Testament which were written before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans; but when that tremendous catastrophe had taken place, and it became clear that the General Judgement and the End of the Age had not come, we find in the writings of St. John a new strain of teaching, implying that the Judgement is really continuous and is now going on. Thus "He that believeth on Him is not judged; he that believeth not hath been judged already.... And this is the judgement, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil" (John 3:18). Again, "Verily, verily I say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth Him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgement.... The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live" (John 5:24). Again, "For judgement came I into this world" (John 9:39). Again, "Now is the judgement of this world" (John 12:31). At the same time St. John also speaks of a future general resurrection, of "the last day" and "the day of judgement." It seems clear (1) that our Lord spoke in terms of the current national belief of His time, which was derived from the Old Testament prophets and the Apocalypses of the Persian and Greek periods, the time "between the Books;" (2) that He used the pictorial rather than the abstract method of conveying the truth to His hearers.