The dead are to be raised at the last trump; by which I understand the seventh, for no other last is revealed.  This trump is mentioned by our Saviour (Matt. xxiv. 31.) and is the gospel trump which was to commence its sound at the destruction of Jerusalem.  In Rev. chap. viii, seven trumpets were given to seven angels, who are represented as sounding them in succession, and increasing woes following, till the sixth trumpet sounded.  But when the seventh angel sounded and the last dreadful wo passed away, a very different order of things followed.  Rev. x. 7.  “But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.”  Rev. xi. 15.  “And the seventh angel sounded, and there were great voices in heaven, saying, the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”  Now compare these woes and this subsequent order of things with the tribulations Christ described in Matt xxiv chap.  And the subsequent life the righteous entered into, and you will readily perceive that both refer to the destruction of Jerusalem and the commencement of Christ’s auspicious reign. (The Revelations were certainly written before that event.) When the seventh angel sounded, Christ came in his kingdom and began his reign; and that he began his reign when the trumpet sounded, and the woes recorded in Matt.  Xxiv.  And xxv.  Chapters took place, will not be denied.  This settles the point that the seventh or last trump was not to sound at the close of Christ’s reign, but at its commencement.  And under this last sounding trump the dead were to be raised immortal, and those who were alive when it commenced its sound, were to be suddenly changed in their circumstances and feelings as described in the context.  It was the day of their redemption from all their trials and persecutions, and doubts and fears.

That this was the period when the Christians entered the resurrection day as well as the judgment day under Christ is certain.  They entered into the full enjoyment of that most sublime of all doctrines in the faith of which they not only saw the dead raised immortal and free from pain, but felt themselves new beings.  They were exalted from the dust to high and “heavenly places in Christ,” were “caught up to meet the Lord in the air,” were seated “on thrones and made priests and kings to God and reigned with Christ.”  There “they shone like the brightness of the firmament and the stars forever and ever,” recognized the goodness of God in redeeming love, and sang the song of certain victory over death and Hades.  Then “the kingdom and dominion and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven was given to the saints of the MOST HIGH,” and in this “kingdom of their Father they shone forth like the sun.”  The above promiscuous quotations from Scripture justify the expression, that the living were “changed in a moment at the last trump,” which announced to the world the immortal resurrection of the dead.  That this trump, whose sound proclaims the resurrection of all mankind, is the gospel trump, the doctrine of Christ, we cannot doubt.