The brightest and most glorious hope for Christ's redeemed people is, no doubt, His promise to return and remove His bride from earthly to heavenly scenes. This promise was given by our loving Lord when His followers sorely needed comfort and encouragement, as He was about to leave them. So He said to them,
"I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there ye may be also" (John 14:2,3).
"This is rightly called "the Hope of the Church." But were not those to whom the words were first addressed disappointed in their expectation?-and those- thousands who have since gone through life cheered by this promise, have they not expected in vain?-No! dear fellow-believer, No! for something more has been unfolded in the Scriptures of Truth for our comfort.
Let us notice, first, that the Lord did not say, You shall not die, but, "I will come again and receive you unto Myself." Of Abraham and others like him in the Old Testament we read, "These all died in faith (of the promises), not having received" them-they saw them afar off only, and the revelation to them went no further. But to us, the heavens are opened since our Lord Jesus has gone there. Stephen, as he was being stoned to death, saw Him, and called upon Him there to receive his spirit; and in Phil. 1:23 the apostle of the Church says he had "a desire to depart, and to be with Christ-which is far better" than to wait for Him here. Then in 1 Thess. 4:15, 16, he says,
"This we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we that are alive (that are left unto the coming of the Lord) shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout.. . and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we that are alive (that are still upon earth), shall together with them be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air:and so shall we ever be with the Lord."
Those that have died have not missed the promise, after all. The order given above is clear and definite:All shall hear that blessed Voice; and the bodies of those that have died will be quickened by the Spirit and become the glorified abodes of their spirits; and, in a moment, the living being also changed, the entire Church will stand upon the earth together, to be instantly caught up from the earth to meet the Lord coming down for His Bride!
Picture a saint walking a weary world for many years, waiting for the Lord to appear as He promised. Time passes, the frail body becomes weaker, unable to endure until He comes, the Lord takes his spirit to spend the balance of the waiting-time with Himself. This parenthetical interval is blissfully passed in rest and peace with Christ. The moment decreed in the all-wise counsels of God arrives, and again the saint finds himself in his body on the earth as though he had never left it. Removing the parenthesis, he stands as linked with the previous years upon the earth, viewing the blessed Saviour coming for him. He, too, participates in the joy that the Master has returned to take him with all the saints, to the glorious and blessed home prepared by His own hands for His Bride!
Our loving Bridegroom, the saints in heaven, and the brethren on earth are all waiting for that supreme moment when Christ and the Church shall be manifested in glory together-when we shall commence together that new and blessed life in the realm of light to which the blood of Christ gives us right and title. May we live more in the sanctifying power of this hope. It may be that the Lord is even now preparing to arise from the throne and give the glad welcome, "Come up hither." R. P. H.