The Last Judgment

Doctrinal reflection

They put it on the outside.

Most Last Judgments are painted inside churches, where the faithful gather. The Voronet Last Judgment is painted on the outside of the Church of Saint George — the entire west exterior wall — so that anyone walking past the monastery sees the sky-blue background, the cosmic scroll being rolled up, the dead rising, and Christ enthroned in glory. The artists were not preaching to the choir. They were preaching to the road.

The fresco was painted in 1547 by Toma of Suceava, ninety-four years after Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks. Moldavia in the 16th century was a small Christian kingdom on the frontier of an Islamic empire, a generation removed from the loss of the Byzantine center. The painters at Voronet had every reason to feel that Christian visual theology was a museum piece. Instead they put a Last Judgment the size of a billboard on the side of their church, in pigment so blue it has its own name ("Voronet blue") and so durable it has survived nearly 500 winters of Bucovina weather.

Look at what they kept. Christ enthroned in the deesis, the dead rising from the earth and the sea, the books opened, the rivers of fire, the saved and the damned divided. It is the same composition the Byzantines had painted at Torcello four centuries earlier. The empire was gone. The doctrine was not.

That is the witness Voronet leaves us. The Day of the Lord does not depend on what kingdom is currently ruling. "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder" (Isaiah 9:6). Not Constantinople's shoulder. Not Bucharest's. Not Washington's. His shoulder.

When you preach the return of Christ, do it where people who are not in church can see. The artists at Voronet painted the Last Judgment on the outside of their building because they believed the gospel was for the whole road, not just the sanctuary.

Be Obedient. Be Bold.