The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 323

of the Archangel, and with the trump of God.” 1 Thessalonians 4:16.
And the Saviour declares: “They shall see the 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

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