Particular judgment

Particular judgment, according to Christian eschatology, is the Divine judgment that a departed person undergoes immediately after death, in contradistinction to the general judgment (or Last Judgment) of all people at the end of the world.

There are few, if any, Old Testament or Apocryphal writings that could be construed as implying particular judgment.

The first-century Jewish pseudepigraphical writing known as the Testament of Abraham includes a clear account of particular judgment, in which souls go either through the wide gate of destruction or the narrow gate of salvation. By this account, only one in seven thousand earn salvation. The Testament of Abraham is not considered a sacred writing by any Jewish or Christian group.

Many Christians believe the dead are judged immediately after death and await judgment day in peace or torment because of the way they interpret several key New Testament passages. In Luke 16:19–31, it appears that Christ represents Lazarus and Dives as receiving their respective rewards immediately after death. To support this, these figures must be regarded as types of the just man and the sinner. To the penitent thief (cf. Dismas) it was promised that his soul instantly on leaving the body would be in the state of the blessed: "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise." (Luke 23:43) (Those opposed to this doctrine point out that punctuation was absent in the original languages, so today could just as easily refer to the time when Christ said this to the thief rather than the time that they enter paradise.) Paul the Apostle generally depicts death as sleep awaiting the resurrection of a glorified body (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18), and (in II Corinthians 5) longs to be absent from the body that he may be present to the Lord, evidently understanding death to be the entrance into his reward at an unspecified time (cf. Philippians 1:21 sq.).

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