ARTICLE VII
FROM THENCE HE SHALL COME TO JUDGE THE LIVING AND THE DEAD.
118. The last days are four: Death, Judgment, Hell, and Glory.
Jesus Christ will come to judge the good and the bad at the end of the world.
THE END OF THE WORLD
For each of us, the world ends at the moment of death, but there will come a day when the world will end for everyone.
No one knows when the end of the world will come. Our Lord Jesus Christ, when asked on this point, did not want to say: however, He indicated some signs that will precede it.
The signs that will precede the end of the world are remote and near.
The remote ones are:
1º General apostasy: the generality of men will turn away from God, not paying attention to His divine law.
2. The preaching of the Gospel throughout the world.
The proximate signs are:
The Jews will be converted to the Christian religion
The man of sin will appear, called Antichrist, who, with his words and false miracles, will make a very cruel war against the Church of Jesus Christ and almost the whole world will follow him.
Elijah and Enoch will come to oppose this wicked man, and will be martyred.
The Antichrist will perish miserably.
There will be a frightful combination of public calamities, such as famine, pestilence, wars, earthquakes, floods, and so on.
But the nearest sign will be the decay of nature.
The sun will be darkened; the moon will be tinged with blood; the stars will fall; the earth will tremble and split open in many places; the sea will give great roars; wild beasts will come out of the deserts, and men will see frightful visions and horrendous monsters; so much so, that the unhappy ones who will witness the last days of the world will have their flesh dried up in horror at the sight of all nature in agony.
From the four parts of the earth will come forth a fire so terrible that in a few moments it will destroy men, animals, forests, cities, and everything in its path, reducing everything to a heap of ashes.
RESURRECTION
An angel with a voice like a trumpet will say: Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment!
At the end of the world, the good will go to heaven and the bad to hell, with body and soul.
Now, the good are in heaven and the bad in hell, only with the soul.
The soul, even if it is without the body, enjoys eternal happiness in heaven or suffers terrible torments in hell.
In us, the main thing is the soul; a body without a soul neither suffers nor enjoys.
[Those fertilized in vitro are “things without soul” says Our Lady of the Roses.]
If the body suffers or enjoys, it is because of the soul; or rather, it is the soul that suffers or enjoys in the body.
Jesus and Mary are in heaven in body and soul.
At the end of the world we will all be resurrected.
For God nothing is impossible.
All of us, good and bad, will have the same body we have now.
The body of the good will be resurrected very beautiful; the body of the bad, very ugly.
After the resurrection, the bodies of the good and the bad will be immortal, that is, they will never die. The endowments of the blessed bodies are:
1º Impassibility: they will never be able to suffer any pain.
2º Clarity: they will shine like the sun and the stars of the firmament.
3º Agility: they will be able to move from one place to another in an instant, with only the act of the will.
4º Subtlety: they will be able to pass through solid bodies without any obstacle whatsoever.
The resurrection of the bodies of the blessed is one of the reasons why the Church treats the bodies of the deceased with so much respect, and forbids burning them.
[Now, in 2025, things changed a few years ago and there are cineraries in almost every parish to deposit the ashes of the deceased. It is a horror, the Church should not act as a cemetery].
UNIVERSAL JUDGMENT
All men will be resurrected and gathered in the valley of Jehoshaphat.
Jesus Christ will appear in heaven in great glory and majesty
Seated on a throne of glory, He will order the good to be placed at His right hand and the wicked at His left.
The book of consciences will be opened and all the sins of the wicked and all the virtuous acts of the good will be published.
The divine Judge will pass sentence.
To the wicked He will say: Depart from Me, you cursed; go into the eternal fire, prepared for Satan and his angels.
And to the good He will say: Come, you blessed of my Father, come and enjoy the kingdom which I have prepared for you from the beginning of the world.
When the sentence is passed, the earth will open and hell will swallow up the reprobate, who, body and soul, will be eternally buried in the infernal abysses.
The fire will torment the bodies, but it will not consume them nor take their lives.
Jesus Christ and the elect will rise to heaven, where they will reign and enjoy infinite delights for all eternity.
What a horrible end for the wicked!
For a moment of pleasure, the wicked bring upon themselves an eternity of sorrows, the most dreadful!
What a happy end for the good!
For a moment's work, the good gain an eternity of infinite glory!
DEATH
121. Death is the separation of soul and body.
We all have to die only once, we do not know when, nor how, nor where. If this time we miss the step, we have missed it for all eternity.
We must, therefore, always be well prepared to die in the grace of God.
THE JUDGMENT
Jesus Christ will judge all men at the end of His life, and will sentence the good to eternal enjoyment with God in glory, and the bad to eternal torment in hell.
After death, the judgment will immediately take place.
The judgment is the account that man must give to God, and the sentence of the Divine Jesus.
All men are to be judged twice:
The first at the hour of death; the second, at the end of the world.
In these judgments all the thoughts, desires, words, deeds and omissions of every man will be examined, from the first instant of the use of reason until the moment of death.
The judgment of the hour of death is called particular, because it is of a single person.
The judgment of the end of the world is called universal, because it will be of all men.
The sentence of the particular judgment is irrevocable.
The sentence of the universal judgment will be the confirmation of that of the particular judgment.
When one dies, the soul goes to heaven, or to purgatory, or to children's limbo, or to hell.