In a military encampment the bugle sounded in one way means one thing, and sounded in another way it means another thing.  Bugle sounded in one way means, “Prepare for sudden attack.”  Bugle sounded in another way means, “To your tents, and let all the lights be put out.”  I have to tell you, my brother, that the trumpet of the Old Testament, the trumpet that was carried in the armies of olden times, and the trumpet on the walls in olden times, in the last great day will give significant reverberation.  Old, worn-out, and exhausted Time, having marched across decades and centuries and ages, will halt, and the sun and the moon and the stars will halt with it.  The trumpet! the trumpet!

Peal the first:  Under its power the sea will stretch itself out dead, the white foam on the lip, in its crystal sarcophagus, and the mountains will stagger and reel and stumble, and fall into the valleys never to rise.  Under one puff of that last cyclone all the candles of the sky will be blown out.  The trumpet! the trumpet!

Peal the second:  The alabaster halls of the air will be filled with those who will throng up from all the cemeteries of all the ages—­from Greyfriar’s Churchyard and Roman Catacomb, from Westminster Abbey and from the coral crypts of oceanic cave, and some will rend off the bandage of Egyptian mummy, and others will remove from their brow the garland of green sea-weed.  From the north and the south and the east and the west they come.  The dead!  The trumpet! the trumpet!

Peal the third:  Amid surging clouds and the roar of attendant armies of heaven, the Lord comes through, and there are lightnings and thunder-bolts, and an earthquake, and a hallelujah, and a wailing.  The trumpet! the trumpet!

Peal the fourth:  All the records of human life will be revealed.  The leaf containing the pardoned sin, the leaf containing the unpardoned sin.  Some clapping hands with joy, some grinding their teeth with rage, and all the forgotten past becomes a vivid present.  The trumpet! the trumpet!

Peal the last:  The audience breaks up.  The great trial is ended.  The high court of heaven adjourns.  The audience hie themselves to their two termini.  They rise, they rise!  They sink, they sink!  Then the blue tent of the sky will be lifted and folded up and put away.  Then the auditorium of atmospheric galleries will be melted.  Then the folded wings of attendant angels will be spread for upward flight.  The fiery throne of judgment will become a dim and a vanishing cloud.  The conflagration of divine and angelic magnificence will roll back and off.  The day for which all other days are made has closed, and the world has burned down, and the last cinder has gone out, and an angel flying on errand from world to world will poise long enough over the dead earth to chant the funeral litany as he cries, “Ashes to ashes!”