one and His name one." The last book in the Bible returns to this reign of Christ again and again. For example in Rev. 19:11-16, we read, "And I saw the heaven opened; and behold, a white horse, and he that sat thereon called Faithful and True; and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. And his eyes are as a flame of fire, and upon his head are many diadems; and he hath a name written which no one knoweth but himself. And he is arrayed in a garment sprinkled with blood; and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and pure. And out of his mouth proceedeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of God, the Almighty. And he hath on his garment and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS." And again it is written in Rev. 20:4, "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them; and I saw the souls of them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, and such as worshipped not

the beast, neither his image, and received not the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years." Yes, it is clearly revealed in the Word of God that the time is coming when our Lord Jesus, who was once despised and rejected of men, is to be acknowledged as King and is to rule here on the earth. The time is fast hastening on when the angel will sound his trumpet and there shall be great voices in heaven saying, "The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever." The character and results of this blessed reign of our Lord, we shall consider later when we come to consider the results of His coming as regards Israel and human society as a whole.

II.

The Results of the Return of our Lord as regards the Church and individual believers.

1. The first result of the return of our Lord as regards believers is that immediately upon His coming in the air, THOSE WHO HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP IN HIM SHALL RISE. "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we that are alive, that are left unto the

coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first" (I Thess. 4:15, 16 R. V). Until our Lord comes the bodies of those believers who have passed out of this world before that great event "sleep in the dust of the earth" (Dan. 12:2), their spirits are unclothed (II Cor. 5:4), they are "absent from the body" and "at home with the Lord" (II Cor. 5:4, 8). But immediately upon the sounding of the trump of God and the accompanying descent of our Lord, these bodies that sleep in the dust of the earth, are raised and the spirits of believers are no longer unclothed, "but clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven" (II Cor. 5:2-4).

2. Following immediately upon the resurrection of the dead in Christ, THE BODIES OF LIVING BELIEVERS SHALL BE CHANGED FROM FROM THEIR PRESENT STATE OF HUMILIATION INTO THE LIKENESS OF THE BODY OF HIS GLORY. The bodies that we now have are not the bodies that we shall have, "We wait

for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself" (Phil. 3:21). It is then and only then, that we are fully manifested outwardly as sons of God. We cannot but feel the limitations of our present bodies, as good as they are for many purposes, and we often groan within ourselves "waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Rom. 8:23). The redempton of our body comes when He comes, then the work of redemption is completed. We shall have a body like unto His own glorious body. This body will be incorruptible, not subject to decay, imperishable, glorious, powerful (I Cor. 15:42, 43). Our days of weariness and weakness will be forever at an end, the body will be able to accomplish all that the spirit purposes. It will be free from all the limitations of earth, and clothed upon with all the glory and power that pertains to the heavenly world. In a word, it will be a "heavenly body" (I Cor. 15:47-49). Our very bodies shall be luminous, shining, dazzling, bright like the sun. This is not imagination and

poetry, but revealed fact. Our Lord says in Matt. 13:43, "Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father." This is not a part of the figurative language of the parable, but a part of the literal language of the interpretation of the parable. In a similar way centuries before it had been revealed by Jehovah to Daniel, "They that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever" (Dan. 12:3). When Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration was being glorified before His disciples, His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became white as light (Matt. 7:2, cf Luke 9:29), and our bodies are to be like His. We shall no longer be subject to death, even the death of the body, but shall be like the angels (Luke 20:35, 36). This resurrection body will be the consummation of our adoption, our placing as sons. In the resurrection body then received, it will be outwardly manifest that we are sons of God. Before His incarnation, Christ was "in the form of God" (Phil. 2:6), that is, in the visible appearance of God and so shall we be in our resurrection bodies at His coming again.