The Saints are not to be with Christ till He Comes

THE Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, and who also denied the conscious state of the dead, assailed our Lord with reference to the former point. It is worthy of notice that their question was not framed with reference to the state of the dead, though it could easily have been made to include this also had they chosen to include it. The fact that they raised the difficulty with respect to the woman that had seven husbands, only with reference to the resurrection, and not at all with reference to the intermediate state, is strong presumptive proof that they knew Christ as a teacher of the resurrection, but did not know him as a teacher of the doctrine that men enter Heaven or hell at death. Christ said: "The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him." Luke 20:34-38.

Our Lord, having disposed of their difficulty respecting the resurrection, proceeds to prove that there shall be such an event. He brings his proof from Moses, whose writings were of the highest authority with the Sadducees. Long after the death of the patriarchs, God called himself their God. But says Christ, "He is not a God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto him." If they were then actually alive, there could be no proof in this text that there shall be a resurrection of the dead. If they were alive only in the purpose of God, who calleth things that are not yet as though they actually exist at the present time (Rom. 4:17), then the words which Christ quotes are a most decisive proof that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, shall be raised from the dead. It is manifest that this is their true sense. God purposed to raise them from the dead. On the strength of that purpose, he speaks of himself as their God. This implies the existence of the persons named, and that God recognized them as his people. He could do this on one of two grounds. 1. That they were then actually alive, in which case no resurrection was needed in order that these words should have their proper force; or, 2. That they were actually dead, but were alive to God because he purposed that they should live again. And this is precisely the point which Christ made. And thus, though this text is often quoted to prove the conscious state of the dead, such was not Christ's meaning at all. Indeed, if Christ had held that the dead are now actually alive, this text would not only have had no point to prove the resurrection, but would have told directly against it; for it would show that they needed no resurrection in order to sustain the relation to God which this passage implies.

Christ promised that some of those who stood by on a certain occasion should not taste of death till they had seen the kingdom of God. Luke 9:27. So after eight days he took three of his disciples up to the top of a mountain, and there gave them a miniature representation of it in a vision. Matt. 17:9. His face shone as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. He appeared just as he will be in his glorious kingdom. To represent the two classes of his people that shall inherit that kingdom, namely, those who shall be translated, and those who shall be raised from the dead, there appeared Elijah, who had been translated, and Moses, who had passed through death. The case of Moses is often cited to show that the dead are now in conscious bliss in Heaven. But the future kingdom of Christ, which was here represented, will have no disembodied saints in it. They will all have been raised from the dead before they enter it.

Everything in this case requires that Moses, in order to fitly represent the resurrected saints in the kingdom of God, should himself have been resurrected. Dr. Adam Clarke is of this opinion. The contention of Michael and Satan respecting the body of Moses indicates this. Jude 9. Moses, as the type of Christ, may have been an exception to the general statement respecting the resurrection. Acts 26:23. But to those who think that Moses was present on the mount as a disembodied spirit, we present these questions: The law of Moses forbade consulting the dead, or holding converse with them. Deut. 18. Christ was certainly under the authority of that law. Now, if Moses, as a dead man, was at full liberty to converse with Christ, was Christ, as subject to the law of Moses, at liberty to converse with dead Moses? If it was a great sin for Saul to seek to converse with dead Samuel, was it not also a sin for Christ to converse with dead Moses? But the questions are asked only to show the absurdity involved in the view that Moses was still numbered with the dead when he appeared upon the mount to represent the resurrected saints in the future kingdom of Christ.

"Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." John 14:1-3.

The Saviour here seeks to comfort his disciples in view of his separation from them. He tells them that the separation is not to be eternal. Though he leaves them to go to his Father, he goes there to prepare a place for them. When the place is prepared, he will come back after them and receive them unto himself. It was necessary that he should do this, in order for them to be with him once more. For thus he states the object of his return to our earth: "that where I am, there ye may be also." This fixes the time when the saints shall be with Christ. It is not at death, but at the second advent of the Saviour. If each one was going to Christ at death, he could have told them the separation would be very short, and that as each one should die he should be taken into his presence. But he fixes the time of meeting at his second coming, and absolutely excludes the idea of their being with him till then. And the same fact is implied in the preparation of the place. When that work is done, Christ returns for his people. If they were able to go thither before that time, they would go in advance of the preparation of the place. But there is divine order to this. The place must be first prepared for them. Our Lord shall then return and take his people to that place. And till that time they must wait.

Happily the period of waiting has no element of time in it to the peaceful sleeper. As there are no thoughts in death, the state of death is to the dead a blank, even as to the living it has proved to be when from brain injury the power of thought is lost. A half-finished sentence has been completed after the lapse of weeks, the moment that thought was resumed. There is the same space of time that the dead wait, so far as the lapse of time to them is concerned, that there is to the living in the act of translation. It is an atom of time represented by the twinkling of an eye. Stephen "fell asleep" with the view of the Saviour plain before his eyes. When he awakes in the resurrection, and beholds the Saviour in his glory in the heavens above, it will be to him as though there had been no period in which he had slept in death. He can be no more conscious that Christ had disappeared from his view than we are that an object disappears when we wink. The resurrection at the advent of our Lord does, therefore, rob death and the grave of all their terrors and of all their gloom.