Resurrection of the Dead in Christ and the Rapture of Living Saints

Resurrection of the Dead in Christ and the Rapture of Living Saints

Below is the 23rd of multiple excerpts from The Parousia, the late 19th-century masterpiece on the Second Coming by James Stuart Russell. "EVENTS ACCOMPANYING THE PAROUSIA [SECOND COMING]. "1. The Resurrection of the Dead in Christ. "2. The Rapture of the Living Saints to Heaven. "1 Thess. iv. 13-17 [1 Thess. 4:13-17]---'But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by ([literally,] in) the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent (come before, take precedence of) them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump [trumpet] of God: and first the dead in Christ shall rise; 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.' "These explanations of St. Paul are evidently intended to meet a state of things which had begun to manifest itself among the Christians of Thessalonica, and which had been reported to him by Timotheus. Eagerly looking for the coming of Christ, they deplored the death of their fellow Christians as excluding them from participation in the triumph and blessedness of the Parousia [Second Coming]. [Quoting F.W. Conybeare and J.S. Howson:] 'They feared that these departed Christians would lose the happiness of witnessing their Lord's second coming, which they expected soon to behold.' To correct this misapprehension the apostle makes the explanations contained in this passage. "First, he assures them that they had no reason to regret the departure of their friends in Christ, as if they had sustained any disadvantage by dying before the coming of the Lord; for as God had raised up Jesus from the dead, so He would raise up His sleeping disciples from their graves, at His return in glory. "Secondly, he informs them, on the authority of the Lord Jesus, that those of themselves who lived to see His coming would not take precedence of, or have any advantage over, the faithful who had deceased before that event. "Thirdly, he describes the order of the events attending the Parousia:--- "1. The descent of the Lord from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God. "2. The raising up of the dead who had departed in the Lord. "3. The simultaneous rapture of the living saints, along with the resuscitated dead, into the region of the air [Greek: aera], there to meet their coming Lord. "4. The everlasting reunion of Christ and His people in heaven. "The legitimate inference from the words of St. Paul in ver. 15, 'we who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord,' is that he anticipated it as possible, and even probable, that his readers and himself would be alive at the coming of the Lord. Such is the natural and obvious interpretation of his language. Dean [Henry] Alford observes, with much force and candour,--- 'Then, beyond question, he [Paul] himself expected to be alive, together with the majority of those to whom he was writing, at the Lord's coming. For we cannot for a moment accept the evasion of Theodoret and the majority of ancient commentators (viz. [that is] that the apostle does not speak of himself personally, but of those who should be living at the period), but we must take the words in their only plain grammatical meaning, that "we which are alive and remain" (Greek: hoi zontes hoi perileipomenoi) are a class distinguished from "they that sleep" [tous koimethentas] by being yet in the flesh when Christ comes, in which class by prefixing "we" (hemeis) he includes his readers and himself. That this was his expectation we know from other passages, especially from 2 Cor. v.' [2 Corin. 5:1-5]. "But while thus admitting that the apostle held this expectation, Alford treats it as a mistaken one, for he goes on to say: "Nor need it surprise any Christian that the apostles should in this matter of detail have found their personal expectation liable to disappointment respecting a day of which it is so solemnly said that no man knoweth its appointed time, not the angels in heaven, not the Son, but the Father only (Mark xiii. 32 [Mark 13:32]).' "In like manner we find the following remarks in Conybeare and Howson...: 'The early church, and even the apostles themselves, expected their Lord to come again in that very generation. St. Paul himself shared in that expectation, but, being under the guidance of the Spirit of truth, he did not deduce therefrom any erroneous practical conclusion.' "But the question is, had the apostles sufficient grounds for their expectation? Were they not fully justified in believing as they did? Had not the Lord expressly predicted His own coming within the limit of the existing generation? [Matt. 10:23, 16:28, 24:34, 26:64; Mark 9:1, 13:30, 14:62; Luke 9:27, 21:32, 22:69; Rev. 1:7] Had He not connected it [in Matt. 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 (the Sermon on the Mount of Olives)] with the overthrow of the temple and the subversion of the national polity [government] of Israel [which occurred under the Romans in A.D. 70]? Had He not assured His disciples that in 'a little while' they should see Him again? [John 16:16; see also Hebrews 10:37]. Had He not declared that some of them should live to witness His return? [Matt. 10:23, 16:28; Mark 9:1; Luke 9:27] And after all this, is it necessary to find excuses for St. Paul and the early Christians, as if they had laboured under a delusion? If they did, it was not they who were to blame, but their Master. It would have been strange indeed if, after all the exhortations which they bad received to be on the alert, to watch, to live in continual expectancy of the Parousia, the apostles had not confidently believed in His speedy coming, and taught others to do the same. But it would seem that St. Paul rests his explanations to the Thessalonians on the authority of a special divine communication made to himself, 'This I say unto you by the word of the Lord,' etc. [1 Thess. 4:15] This can hardly mean that the Lord had so predicted in His prophetic discourse on the Mount of Olives, for no such statement [as expressed by Paul in 1 Thess. 4:13-17] is recorded; it must therefore refer to a revelation which he had himself received. How, then, could he be at fault in his expectations? It is strange that so great incredulity should exist in this day respecting the plain sense of our Lord's express declarations on this subject. Fulfilled or unfulfilled, right or wrong, there is no ambiguity or uncertainty in His language. It may be said that we have no [historical] evidence of such facts having occurred as are here described,---the Lord descending with a shout, the sounding of the trumpet, the raising of the sleeping dead, the rapture of the living saints. True; but is it certain that these are facts cognisable by the senses? Is their place in the region of the material and the visible? As we have already said, we know and are sure that a very large portion of the events predicted by our Lord, and expected by His apostles, did actually come to pass at that very crisis called 'the end of the [Old Covenant] age.' [Matt. 13:30, 24:3; 1 Corin. 10:11; Hebrews 9:26] There is no difference of opinion concerning the [historical reality of the A.D. 70] destruction of the temple, the overthrow of the city, the unparalleled slaughter of the people, the extinction of the nationality, the end of the legal [Old Covenant] dispensation. But the Parousia is inseparably linked with the destruction of Jerusalem; and, in like manner, the resurrection of the dead, and the judgment of the 'wicked generation,' [Matt. 12:45, 16:4; Acts 2:40] with the Parousia. They are different parts of one great catastrophe; different scenes in one great drama. We accept the facts verified by the historian on the word of man; is it for Christians to hesitate to accept the facts which are vouched by the word of the Lord? [1 Thess. 4:15]