The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 549
But when about to leave His disciples, Jesus did not tell them that
they would soon come to Him. “I go to prepare a place for you,” He said.
“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive
you unto Myself.” John 14:2, 3. And Paul tells us, further, that “the Lord
Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the
Archangel, and with the trump of God: and 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.” And he adds: “Comfort one another with these words.”
1 Thessalonians 4:16-18. How wide the contrast between these words of
comfort and those of the Universalist minister previously quoted! The
latter consoled the bereaved friends with the assurance that, however
sinful the dead might have been, when he breathed out his life here he
was to be received among the angels. Paul points his brethren to the
future coming of the Lord, when the fetters of the tomb shall be broken,
and the “dead in Christ” shall be raised to eternal life.
Before any can enter the mansions of the blessed, their cases must
be investigated, and their characters and their deeds must pass in review
before God. All are to be judged according to the things written in the
books and to be rewarded as their works have been. This judgment does
not take place at death. Mark the words of Paul: “He hath appointed a
day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man
whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men,
in that He hath raised Him from the dead.” Acts 17:31. Here the apostle
plainly stated that a specified time, then future, had been fixed upon for
the judgment of the world.
Jude refers to the same period: “The angels which kept not their
first estate, but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in everlasting
chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” And, again,
he quotes the words of Enoch: “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten
thousands of His
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