Catholics: "he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead"?

Question

This is part of the creed which is said every sunday, and to me it suggests that the living and the dead will be judged when he comes again in glory. But how does this tie up with the idea of saints and that people are already in heaven?

Answer 1

Bible and the Catholic church are in sync. Paul tells us that at the end of times, there will be a final accounting. Christ also expressed this concept with the parable about the weeds and tares.

interpreting apocolyptic prophecy can be tricky. however, all prophecy in the Bible and in some other writings indicate that at the end of times, God will make a final judgement of all people, whether they are alive or dead at the time. the difference being, is that those already in heaven will recieve their final reward; those who are in h**l, will also recieve their final reward; and those alive will recieve judgement and their final reward. good luck!

Answer 2

Great question!

John Polkinghorne, a physicist and a priest, has put it this way: "God will download our software onto his hardware until the time he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves." That gets to two things nicely: that the period after death is a period when we are in God's presence but not active in our own bodies, and also that the more important transformation will be when we are again embodied and administering Christ's kingdom.

Paul writes that it will be conscious, but compared with being bodily alive, it will be like being asleep. The Wisdom of Solomon, a Jewish text from about the same time as Jesus, says "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God," and that seems like a poetic way to put the Christian understanding, as well.

There is Luke 23, where Jesus says to the good thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." But in Luke, we know first of all that Christ himself will not be resurrected for three days, so "paradise" cannot be a resurrection. It has to be an intermediate state. And chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation, where there is a vision of worship in heaven that people imagine describes our worship at the end of time. In fact it's describing the worship that's going on right now. If you read the book through, you see that at the end we don't have a description of heaven, but of the new heavens and the new earth joined together.

Answer 3

<<Catholics: "he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead"? This is part of the creed which is said every sunday, and to me it suggests that the living and the dead will be judged when he comes again in glory. But how does this tie up with the idea of saints and that people are already in heaven?>>

When the Fulness of Time is complete - the true measure of the good we've done, or the bad, will be taken - because only then can it be measured.

For example, say someone converted ONE person in their life. Well, down through all the future eons we probably still have to go, that one person is going to raise a family, and all their children will raise families, so forth and so on - all of them having found their way to Christianity because you converted ONE long-ago "lost in time" relative.

It works the opposite way as well. You drive ONE person away from God, who knows how many future people will never find Him because that one wass driven away. . . so, you see, these are the judgments of the dead 9who died before the Second Coming, and those still living on earth to witness the Second Coming.

This judgment at the end of time isn't going to change one's eternal residency. Those souls that have gone to h**l, stay in h**l. Those souls that have gone to heaven stay in heaven.

Answer 4

I have no idea where Catholics came up with such interpretation, but the Bible says:

"Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?" 1Cor 6:2

Jesus will judge the world with His saints, not by Himself. And as this Scripture clearly teaches, we are "ALL" considered saints, not just the ones that the pope thinks should be!

Answer 5

Dead in spirit.

Answer 6

I guess saints was people who very spiritual and did many good deeds while they're alive, so they automatically going to heaven. Maybe "the dead" in the creed refers to a soul in the purgatory

My answer is not official teaching of Catholic Church, so it can be wrong

Answer 7

When Jesus come again everybody will be judged those that are living ie in this World those that are dead, which is our physical bodies 'Which have passed onto the next World' Heaven and or h**l, which is our spiritual bodies our Souls.  

Answer 8

The understanding is that Mary and the Saints obtained heaven right away. The Saints because of the holy lives they led and Mary because she was sinless and the Mother of God.

Most of us do not. We have sins that make us unclean and we must be purified before we can enter heaven. That would be purgatory.

But the understanding is that once the time of tribulation begins, the dead will remain in their graves until Christ returns. Up until that time the dead are in purgatory.

So once the time of tribulation begins, those who die after that will await their judgment until Christ's return.