SLEEPING AND WAKING
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"God will bring with Jesus — those who have fallen asleep in Him." 1 Thessalonians 4:14
Or, as these words have been rendered: "Those who are laid asleep in Jesus." We bid an earthly friend "Good night" in the pleasing expectation of meeting next morning. The saints are "laid asleep" in the grave of Jesus, in the sure and certain hope of meeting Him in the morning of immortality!
Child of God! weep not for those who have "departed to be with Christ." It is with them "far better." Do not think of them "gone." That is a word taken from the vocabulary of death, and which, it is to be feared, is often employed with many in the heathen sense of annihilation. Seek not "the living among the dead." Think rather that their last sigh was scarcely over on earth — when their song was begun in Heaven! The Spirit winged its arrow-like flight among ministering seraphim. Hear that voice stealing down in the soft whisper of Heaven's music, and saying, "if you loved Me you would rejoice, because I said, I go to My Father!"
The body, the casket of this immortal jewel — the soul, is left for a season to the dishonors of the tomb. But it is only for a brief "night-watch." That dust is precious, because redeemed. Body as well as soul was purchased by the life-blood of Emmanuel. Angels guard these slumbering ashes; and the day is coming when God shall "send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of Heaven to the other." Oh, if there is "joy among the angels of God over one sinner who repents," then what shall be the joy of those blessed beings over the myriads of rising dead, hastening at their summons to their crowns and thrones!
Christian mourner! "Your brother shall rise again!" Do not wish him back amid the storms of this earthly wilderness. Be thankful rather that God's wheat is no longer out in the tempest and rain; but safely garnered, eternally housed. Would you, if you could — weep that blessed one back from glory? Would you ask him to unlearn Heaven's language — and be once more involved in the dust of battle? No! rather "rejoice in hope of the glory of God."
Death is not an eternal sleep. "Yet a little while, and He who shall come will come, and will not tarry." Jesus is now whispering in your ear the glorious secret hidden from ages and generations, and which was left to Him, as "the Abolisher of Death," to disclose: "Your dead shall live! Together with My dead body — they shall arise." He is pointing you onward to that hour of jubilee, when the summons shall be addressed to all His sleeping saints: "Awake and sing, you who dwell in dust!"
Oh happy day! when I shall see my Saviour God in all the glories of His exalted Humanity; and with Him, the once "loved and lost," now the loved and glorified — never to be lost again! "The Lord my God shall come — and all the saints with Him." Not one shall be lacking. In concert with those whose tongues are now silent on earth, we shall then unite in the lofty anthem, sung by the ingathered triumphant Church, "O death, where is your sting! O grave, where is your victory! Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through the Lord Jesus Christ!"
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