Part 2

Now here let us pause in the sacred text, and consider what it is which we have before us. Mind, we are speaking to-day, as the Apostle is speaking in this passage, entirely of the blessed dead; of those of whom it may be said that through Jesus their death is but a holy sleep. We have clearly this before us:--at a certain time, fixed in the counsels of God, the Father, known to no created being,--mysteriously unknown also, for He Himself assures us of this in words which no ingenuity can explain away, to the Son Himself in His state of waiting for it,--at that fixed time the Lord, that is, Christ, shall appear in the sky, visible to men in His glorified body; and His coming shall be announced to men by a mighty call, a signal cry, and by the trumpet of God.

Now let me at once say that as to such expressions as this, when we are told that they cannot bear their literal meaning, but are only used in condescension to our human ways of speaking, and thus an attempt is made to deprive them in fact of all meaning, I do not recognise any such rule of interpretation. If the _words_ are used to suit our human ways of thinking, I can see no reason why the _things signified_ by those words may not also be used to affect our senses, which will be still human, when the great day comes. As to the sound being heard by all, or as to the Lord being seen by all, I can with safety leave that to Him who made the eye and the ear, and believe that if He says so, He will find the way for it to be so.

Now let us follow on with the description. With the Lord Jesus, accompanying Him, though unseen to those below on the earth, will be the myriads of spirits of the blessed dead, And notice,--for it is an important point, since Holy Scripture is consistent with itself in another place on this matter,--that at this coming none are with the Lord, no spirits of the departed, I mean, except those of the blessed dead. In other words, this is not the general coming to judgment, when the whole of the dead shall stand before God, but it is that first resurrection of which the Evangelist speaks in the Apocalypse, when he says, chap. xx. 5, "_The rest of the dead lived not again until_ (a prescribed time which he mentions, whatever that may mean) _the thousand years were finished This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ_."

Then, the Lord being still descending from heaven and on the way to this world, the dead in Christ shall rise first--the first thing: the graves shall be opened, and the bodies of the saints that sleep shall come forth, and, for so the words surely imply, their spirits, which have come with the Lord, shall be united to those bodies, each to his own.

Here, again, I can see no difficulty. The same body, even to us now on earth, does not imply that the same particles compose it. And even the expression "the same body" is perhaps a fallacious one. In St. Paul's great argument on this subject in 1 Cor. xv. he expressly tells us, that it is not that body which was sown in the earth, but a new and glorified one, even as the beautiful plant, which springs from the insignificant or the ill-favoured seed, is not that which was sown, but a body which God has given. Whatever the bodies shall be, they will be recognised as those befitting the spirits which are reunited to them, as they also befit the new and glorious state into which they are now entering.

This done, they who are alive and remain on earth, having been, which is not asserted here, but is in 1 Cor. xv., changed so as to be in the image of the incorruptible, spiritual, heavenly, will be caught up together with the risen saints in clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: to _meet_ Him, because He is in His way from heaven to earth, on which He is about to stand in that latter day.

Thus, then, the words which I have chosen for my text will have their fulfilment. Christ has been the first-fruits of this great harvest,--already risen, the first-born from the dead, the example and pattern of that which all His shall be. This was His order, His place in the great procession from death into life; and between Him and His, the space, indefinite to our eyes, is fixed and determined in the counsels of God. The day of His coming hastens onward. While men are speculating and questioning, God's purpose remains fixed. He is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness. His dealings with the world are on too large a scale for us to be able to measure them, but in them the golden rule is kept, every one in his own order. Christ's part has been fulfilled. He was seen alive in His resurrection body; He was seen taking up that body from earth to heaven. And now we are waiting for the next great event, His coming. Wisely has the Church set apart a season in every year in which this subject may be uppermost in our thoughts. For there is nothing we are so apt--nothing, we may say, that our whole race is so determined to forget and put out of sight. It is alien from our common ideas, it ill suits our settled notions, that the personal appearing of Him in whom we believe should break in upon the natural sequence of things in which we are concerned. And the consequence is, that you will hardly find, even among believing men, more than one here and there who at all realizes to himself, or has any vivid expectation of, this personal coming of Christ. Think of the Christian Church as taking its faith and hope from the New Testament; and then compare that faith and hope, as it actually exists with reference to this point, with the New Testament,--and the discrepancy is most remarkable. In the days when it was written, eighteen hundred years ago, every eye was fixed on, every man's thought was busy about, the coming of the Lord. You will hardly find a chapter in the epistles in which it is not spoken of, or alluded to, with earnest anticipation and confidence. Whereas now, when it is brought so much nearer to us, it has almost vanished out of the consideration of the Church altogether. No doubt, something may be said by way of reason why it should occupy a less prominent place in our thoughts than it did in theirs. The Lord's own words, and those of the Divinely-commissioned messengers who announced His return, spoke of it simply as certain, without any note of time being attached. Hence, those who had seen Him depart believed that they themselves should behold Him returning. There can be no doubt in any fair-judging mind that, besides these eye-witnesses, St. Paul, when he wrote that fifth chapter of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, had a full persuasion that he himself should be of those on whom the house not made with hands that is to be brought from heaven was to be put, without his being unclothed from the earthly tabernacle. He looked at such unclothing in his own case as possible, but was confident that it would not happen so. And again, when, in the over-zeal of the Thessalonians, they imagined that the coming of the Lord was actually upon them, and he in his second Epistle checks and sets right that premature assumption, he does so in words which, as he wrote them, might very well have had all their fulfilment within the lifetime of man. Those words now appear to us in more of the true sense in which the Spirit, who spoke by Paul, intended them: we see that the apostasy there predicted, and the man of sin there set down as to be revealed, are great developments or concentrations of the unbelief of churches and nations; but there is no evidence that the men of that day saw any such meaning in the words. As it was gradually, and not without conflict of thought, revealed to Peter and his side of the apostolic band, that the Gentiles were to be fellow-heirs and partakers of the peace of Christ, so it was gradually, and not without some sickness of hope deferred, made manifest to the Church, that the coming of the Lord should be for ages and generations delayed. Unmistakable indications of this truth appear in the Lord's own prophetic discourses, which we now know how to interpret.

And all this is no doubt a reason why the great subject should be less constantly and less vividly before our minds, than it was before theirs. But it is no reason why it should have dropped out altogether; none, why we should almost universally neglect the revelations of Scripture respecting the manner and details of His coming, and confuse them altogether in a vague popular idea of the judgment day; none, why we should forget the mention of the landmarks which He Himself has pointed out along the wilderness journey of His Church,--and so, as far as in us lies, provide for her being unprepared when He appears.

The end of the state of waiting of the blessed dead, the end of our present state of waiting will be, that day of His appearing. Let us fix this well in our minds; and do not let us be kept from doing so by being told that there is danger in allowing the fancy to exercise itself on the unfulfilled prophecies. No doubt there is. But I am not exhorting you to exercise your fancy on them. Faith and fancy are two wholly distinct things. To my mind, there can be hardly anything more detrimental to the faith of the Church, than always to be fitting together history and prophecy, magnifying insignificant present or past events into fulfilments of prophetic announcements. They who do this are for ever being refuted by the course of things; and then they shift their ground, and come out as confidently with a new scheme, as they did before with their old one. Nothing can more tend to throw discredit on God's prophetic word altogether; and it is no doubt in part owing to such speculations, that faith in the Lord's coming has become weakened among us. He Himself has told us the great use of His announcements of the future. "_These things have I told you, that, when the time is come, ye may remember that I told you of them_." When and as each prophecy comes to its time to be fulfilled, just as the years of the captivity predicted by Jeremiah were interpreted by the Church in Babylon, so the Lord's predictions, and the predictions of His apostles, will fall each into its place; and the Church, if she endure in faith and watchfulness, will stand on her look-out, and be prepared for the sign of His coming.

Let us, my brethren, with regard to those who have left us in the Lord,--let us, with regard to ourselves and our own future, be ever looking for and hasting to that day of God; the day when that better thing which God hath provided for us shall be manifested, and they with us shall be complete, who without us were not perfect.

And let us not be discouraged by unpromising signs, or by prevalent unbelief. Remember what our Master has said to us in the services of this day, "Heaven and earth shall pass away; but My words shall not pass away."

III.

WE have traced the condition of the blessed dead, from their departure and being with Christ, to the glorious day of the resurrection. Their spirits are safe in His keeping, till that day when He shall call their bodies out of the graves, and they shall be once more complete in manhood, body, soul, and spirit. And our present consideration is, What, on that resurrection, is the next thing which shall befall them? Now the best, because the most general text on this matter, is that in Heb. ix. 27, "IT IS APPOINTED UNTO MEN ONCE TO DIE, BUT AFTER THIS, THE JUDGMENT."

You will see that here is enounced something common to our nature. We are all to die; we are all to be judged after death. And that this is really true of all, and not merely stated generally, to be met afterwards by special exceptions, St. Paul shows, when he, speaking of things belonging entirely to his own practice, and his own justification before God, says, in 1 Cor. v., "We labour, that whether present in the body or absent from the body, we may be accepted with Him. _For we must all be made manifest_ (there is nothing about _standing_ in the original) _before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that which he did, whether it be good or bad_." You will see that here he expressly includes himself among those who are to be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ.

Now perhaps you are wondering why I am accumulating this Scripture evidence to show a matter which seems to all so plain. But I have a sufficient reason. And that reason is, because in other passages of Scripture the blessed dead, or rather the believers in Christ, whether living or dead at that day, are spoken of as if they were not subjected to the general judgment of all, but passed into the glorious life without undergoing that judgment. Thus our Blessed Lord Himself; in John v. 24, says, "_Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment_" (for that, and not "_condemnation_," is the word used by our Lord),--"_cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life_." That would seem to mean that the faithful man has already passed over out of death, and all that belongs to death, sin, and guilt, and judgment, into life; and therefore when the judgment comes he can have no part in it, cannot come into it at all, because he is acquitted already through the faith in Him who bore his guilt and took away his sin. And similarly, again, a few verses further on, ver. 29, our Lord says, "_An hour cometh in which all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man, and shall come forth: they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of judgment_." That is, I suppose, the one shall rise into eternal life,--into the full bliss of the heavenly state, and the others into the condition, whatever it be, which the judgment shall decide. Of course I am fully aware that I have not quoted these texts as they are read in our English Bibles. The matter stands thus: the word which I have rendered "_judgment_" is the word always meaning judgment--the word occurring in the very next verse where our Lord says, "_As I hear, I judge, and My_ judgment _is just;_" the word used also above in ver. 22, where He says, "_The Father committed all_ judgment _unto the Son_." In those two places, because there was no difficulty, our translators kept the word "_judgment_." But in these other two which I have quoted, because there was an apparent difficulty, they changed "_judgment_" in one verse into "_condemnation_," and in the other into "_damnation_," without any reason or right soever. Indeed, in the latter of the two passages, not only is this so, but the whole sense is broken up by their unfaithfulness. Our Lord having mentioned the resurrection of judgment, proceeds to vindicate the justice of that judgment: "_As I hear, I judge: and My judgment is just, because I seek not Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me_." So that the difficulty, which man's meddling with the Bible has tried to remove, does exist in the Bible as it came from God. And we must try to see through it, not to hush it up by being unfaithful to the plain language of our Lord.

Nor does it exist here only. Our Lord Himself has given us one great description of the final day of judgment, in His own discourses; and another by the pen of His beloved apostle. We will take the latter first, as being, for our present purpose, the fuller of the two: and we will show in what remarkable point the two agree. In Rev. xx. 4, a passage to which we made reference last Sunday, we find the first resurrection taking place, and the faithful dead rising to reign with Christ during a period known as a thousand years. And it is expressly said, "_The rest of the dead lived not till the thousand years were finished_." Now, I am not here taking upon me to explain the meaning of this, but merely to insist on the fact that, whatever may be the precise import, it is so stated. Well, and what then? When the thousand years are expired, and when the last great victory of the cause of God over evil has been gained, then we read, "_And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it; and I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them: and they were judged every man according to his works_." So far the description in the Revelation. Now, in that given us by our Lord in Matt. xxv. we find the Son of man coming in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, and sitting on the throne of His glory, and all the nations gathered before Him. But there is this singular coincidence with the other account, that when the King comes to address those on the right hand and those on the left, He says, "_Inasmuch as ye did it_ (or _did it not_) _unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye did it_ (or _did it not_) _unto Me_." Now "_these My brethren_" cannot of course mean the angels; therefore there must be some with Christ to whom the words must refer. In other words, we have here also the risen saints in glory with the Lord, as in that other account.

But we may go even further yet, and may discover more from Scripture respecting the position and employment of these the saints who are with the Lord. When St. Paul in 1 Cor. vi. is dissuading the Corinthians from taking their disputes before the heathen courts to be settled, he says, "_Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world?_" and again, "_Know ye not that we shall judge angels?_" Such expressions as these can bear but one meaning, and that is that the saints of Christ are actually to bear part in the judgment, as His assessors. Further than this we now not. It is not our duty to be wise above that which is written; but it is our duty to be wise up to that which is written: otherwise it was written in vain. What, then, are we to say respecting this apparent discrepancy in the statements of Holy Scripture concerning the dead in Christ? If it be true that it is appointed unto all men once to die, but after that the judgment; if it be true that we all, including even the apostles themselves, shall be manifested, laid open, before the judgment-seat of Christ, how can it be also true that the believer in Christ has already passed from death into life, and therefore cometh not into judgment at all? How can it be true that while others shall rise to a resurrection of judgment, he shall rise to a resurrection of life? How can those descriptions be correct which we have been quoting, of these living and reigning with Christ long before the general judgment, and even taking part in it with Him?

I believe the answer is not difficult, and perhaps may best be found by remembering another variety of expression in Scripture respecting a kindred matter; I mean the way in which the saints of God are spoken of in relation to death itself. On the one hand we know that it is appointed unto all men to die; and that the faith and service of the Lord bring with them no exemption from the common lot of all mankind. Not only is this proved every day before our eyes, but Scripture gives us its most direct testimony that those who believe in Christ must expect it. The very expressions, "_the dead in Christ_," "_those who through Jesus have fallen asleep_," show that this is so. Yet again, on the other hand, some passages would almost look as if death itself for the Christian man did not exist. Christ is said to have abolished death; we learn from His own lips that "if a man keep His word he shall never taste of death;" He has said again, "He that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." Now in this case there is no practical difficulty, yet the variety of expression is very instructive. We all know what lies beneath it; namely, the fact, that though the believer in Christ must undergo the physical suffering of death like other men, yet death has become to him so altogether without terror and curse, that it has been for him deprived of real existence and power. The apostle in Rom. viii. gives the full explanation: "_the body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness_."

Well, now let us apply this to the case before us. Let us take the same solution, and see whether it will not suffice. The Christian shall, like other men, undergo the judgment after death; thus one set of Scripture declarations shall be fulfilled. But to the believer, who has died in the Lord, what is the judgment? He stands before the judgment-seat perfect in the righteousness of Him to whom he is united, and from whom death has not separated him. His sentence of acquittal has been long ago pronounced; he cometh not into judgment, so that it should have any substantial effect in changing or determining his condition. The resurrection is for him not a resurrection of judgment, not one in which the judgment is the leading feature and characteristic, but it is only and purely a resurrection of, and unto life: one in which life is the leading feature and idea.

Thus for the blessed dead, the judgment has no dark side: "there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." But though it has no dark side, it has a bright one. Never for a moment do the Christian Scriptures lose sight of the Christian reward. Those who die in the Lord, like the rest of men, shall be laid open before the tribunal of Christ. Their sins have been purged away in His atoning blood; they have been washed and justified and sanctified in the name of Jesus and by the spirit of their God.

But to what end? for what purpose? Was it merely that they might be saved? No indeed, but that God might be glorified in them by the fruits of their faith and love.

And these fruits shall then be made known. The Father who saw them in secret shall then reward them openly. The acts done and the sacrifices made for the name of Christ shall then meet with glorious retribution; yea, even to the least and most insignificant of them,--even according to our Lord's own words,--to the cup of cold water given to one of His little ones.