Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory ." " For as the lightning cometh out of the east , and shineth even unto the west ; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be ." Matthew 24:30 , 27 . He is to be accompanied by all the hosts of heaven . " The Son of man shall come in His glory , and all the holy angels with Him ." Matthew 25:31 . " And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet , and they shall gather together His elect ." Matthew 24:31 .
At His coming the righteous dead will be raised , and the righteous living will be changed . " We shall not all sleep ," says Paul , " but we shall all be changed , in a moment , in the twinkling of an eye , at the last trump : for the trumpet shall sound , and the dead shall be raised incorruptible , and we shall be changed . For this corruptible must put on incorruption , and this mortal must put on immortality ." 1 Corinthians 15:51-53 . And in his letter to the Thessalonians , after describing the coming of the Lord , he says : " The dead in Christ shall rise first : then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds , to meet the Lord in the air : and so shall we ever be with the Lord ." 1 Thessalonians 4:16 , 17 .
Not until the personal advent of Christ can His people receive the kingdom . The Saviour said : " When the Son of man shall come in His glory , and all the holy angels with Him , then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory : and before Him shall be gathered all nations : and He shall separate them one from another , as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats : and He shall set the sheep on His right hand , but the goats on the left . Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand , Come , ye blessed of My Father , inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world ." Matthew 25:31-34 . We have seen by the scriptures just given that when the Son of man comes , the dead are raised incorruptible and the living are changed . By this great change they are prepared to receive the kingdom ; for Paul says : " Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God ; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption ." 1 Corinthians 15:50 . Man in his present state is mortal , corruptible ; but the kingdom of God will be incorruptible , enduring forever . Therefore man in his present state cannot enter into the kingdom of God . But when Jesus comes , He confers immortality upon His people ; and then He calls them to inherit the kingdom of which they have hitherto been only heirs .
These and other scriptures clearly proved to Miller ' s mind that the events which were generally expected to take place before the coming of Christ , such as the universal reign of peace and the setting up of the kingdom of God upon the earth , were to be subsequent to the second advent . Furthermore , all the signs of the times and the condition of the world corresponded to the prophetic description of the last days . He was forced to the conclusion , from the study of Scripture alone , that the period allotted for the continuance of the earth in its present state was about to close .
" Another kind of evidence that vitally affected my mind ," he says , " was the chronology of the Scriptures . . . . I found that predicted events , which had been fulfilled in the past , often occurred
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