Religion as a Weapon

Sing, of that appointed and most solemn Day
When Heaven's great Trumpet rent the firmament
And shook the pillars of the vaulted Deep,
That ancient Hour foretold by seers and prophets,
When all the souls of men, both quick and dead,
Should stand arrayed before the Throne of Thrones
To hear their sentence spoken, and receive
The portion due to each, the laurel bright,
Or else the burning pit without redress.

The God of Thunder on His Throne arose,
His voice a storm that broke on every shore,
His eyes two furnaces of righteous wrath,
And cried: "Not until the armies vast
Of those who believed and those who did not,
The faithful and the faithless, bone and breath,
Assemble here before this Throne of God
Shall Judgment be pronounced, shall scales be set,
Shall sentence fall like lightning on the earth."

But lo, no legions stirred in all the world.
The fields lay empty under morning light.
The meadows held their dew, the sparrows sang,
The rivers moved indifferent to the sea,
And not one soul ascended to that plain
Where God had set His dreadful altar-stone.

For in the uttermost west, where pale cliffs fall
Into the ocean's everlasting arms,
The armies of the Light had laid them down,
Had pitched their linen tents on the cool grass
And drawn their blankets close against the stars,
And fallen, one by one, to dreamless sleep.
Refusing the great drama of the end,
Refusing to be gathered, sorted, weighed,
Refusing Him the theater of their fear.

And in the eastern dark, the faithless host,
Those long condemned in every sacred writ,
Had likewise turned away from that dread plain,
Had wandered into valleys without name,
Had built small fires and spoken quiet words
And looked into each other's mortal eyes
And found therein sufficient light to live
Without the need of verdict or of throne.

Then God of Thunder, twice denied, rose up
In fury past the measure of all storms,
The Throne itself trembled beneath His weight,
The seraphim recoiled on burning wings,
The firmament grew dark with gathering rage.
He screamed with wrath for being thus denied
The blood sport of the ages, the great game
Of mercy weighed against the iron law,
The theater of torment and reprieve
That was to be the crown of all His works.

He ordered forth His armies, rank on rank,
The blazing hosts of Heaven, spear and shield,
To ride the wind and chase the Light to ground,
To drag the sleeping soldiers from their rest
And herd them to the plain of Judgment Day.

But God had reckoned poorly with the sky.
The great arch bent, whether by grace or chance
Or some old covenant older than His name,
And curved so vast and deep and absolute
That no pursuer in all Heaven's host
Could cross the bowl of it to reach the west
Where still the armies lay beneath the stars,
Their breathing slow, their dreaming undisturbed,
Their faces turned away from God and throne.

And silence fell on all the universe.
The Trumpet's echo faded from the hills.
The scales hung empty in the empty hall.
No souls were weighed. No sentence was pronounced.
No Heaven opened and no pit was sealed.

And God sat alone upon His Throne
In all the vastness of His own dominion,
The Judge with no one left to judge,
The Thunder with no ear left to be shaken,
Unmeasured, uncontested, and unknown.

Thus ends the Last Day that was never held,
And thus the armies of the Light slept on
Beneath a sky too wide for wrath to cross,
And dreamed of nothing, which was enough.

A.G. 2015

What would happen if no one showed up for the Last Judgement?

An answer in the style of Milton

The Unanswered Summoning

Being an Account of the Last Day, When Neither the Righteous Nor the Fallen Did Present Themselves Before the Throne