January 16

1 Thessalonians 4:13—Sorrow not, even as the rest, which have no hope. (R.V.)

Nature will have her due. Tears will fall, and hearts seem near to breaking. Nowhere does God chide the tears of natural affection; how could He, since it is written that "Jesus wept"? But He sets Himself to extract their bitterness. Sorrow you may, and must; but not as without hope.

Those who die in Christ are with Him.—They are said to sleep, not because they are unconscious, but because their decease was as devoid of terror as an infant’s slumbers. Believers have all died once in Christ, and it was necessary to find a word which, significant of death, was not death, in order to describe the moment of our farewell to this world and birth into the next. This word was furnished by Death’s twin-sister Sleep. The catacombs are covered with the brief significant sentence, Obdormivit in Christo (He slept in Christ). But just as in sleep the spirit is conscious, of which dreams bear witness, so in the last sleep. Absent from the body, we shall be present with the Lord.

Those who die in Christ will come with Him.—They are now waiting around Him till He give the final order for the whole heavenly cortege, which has been collecting for ages, to move. The holy angels will accompany; but the beloved saints shall ride in the chariots of God as the bride beside the bridegroom.

Those who die in Christ shall be for ever reunited with us who wait for Him and them.—They shall come with Him. "God will bring them." We, on the other hand, if we are living at that supreme moment, shall be changed and caught up to meet Him and them; and then, all one in Christ, we shall be for ever with Him, to go no more out.