up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in air, and so we shall be evermore with the Lord.”  That Paul here refers to the coming of Christ in his kingdom to establish his reign, and to elevate the Christians who were alive at that period, the preceding and succeeding contexts fully justify.  And so I must understand his language, till some one can prove a third coming of Christ, and an eighth sounding trump at the end of time.  In the two preceding chapters, he dwells largely upon the persecutions of the Christians, exhorts them to be faithful, expresses his desire “to perfect that which is lacking in their faith,” and concludes by saying—­“To the end he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints." No one will deny that this has reference to his coming at the end of the Jewish age.  Now would it not be doing injustice to this powerful and cogent reasoner to say, that he suddenly drops this subject without giving his brethren any warning, and runs off to the end of time, speaks of another coming of’ Christ at which he is to raise, at the same instant, all the dead and change the living to immortal beings?  And that he should again, as suddenly, drop this subject, and hasten right back to the coming of Christ at the destruction of Jerusalem?  To charge him with this is certainly ungenerous.

After stating that Christ should descend with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God to exalt the dead and living, he adds—­“But of the times and seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write for yourselves perfectly know that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.  For when they shall say peace and safety then sudden destruction cometh upon them, and they shall not escape.”  There is no resisting the conclusion, that "the day of the Lord" in this passage refers to the same period when “the Lord himself shall descend from heaven” in the passage above; which must be at the destruction of Jerusalem.  He quotes Christ’s own language, Matt. xxiv:43.  See also 2 Peter iii:10.  In both places, the sudden coming of Jesus is compared to a “thief in the night.”  But where is a general resurrection, at the end of time, clearly stated, that he had no need to inform them of the times and seasons, because they already perfectly knew?  Where is sudden destruction to come upon any in that day?  For one, I find no such revelation.

Though the doctrine of immortal resurrection of all mankind was fully revealed, and established in the world at the coming of Christ in his kingdom; yet that particular point is not argued by the apostle in the scripture on which we are commenting.  He is not speaking of all mankind, nor of the immortal resurrection; but as in Phil. iii:20, 21, so here he is speaking of the Christians only who should be alive when that scene burst and of those dead only