The time of Christ's return to judgment has not been revealed. "Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only."[156] The first Christians looked for it with joyous expectation, believing that their Lord and Master would speedily appear and redress their wrongs. Cruelly persecuted by Jew and Gentile, it is no wonder that Apostles and other believers associated the second advent with emancipation and victory, and termed it "That blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ."[157] Under the influence of false teachers, this expectation gave rise to unhealthy excitement and consequent disorder in the Church. In his second Epistle to the Thessalonians Paul set himself earnestly to counteract their teaching. He indignantly repudiated the doctrine attributed to him, apparently in connection with a forged epistle, and he supplied a test by which the genuineness of his letters might be proved. The mistake of the Thessalonians has often been repeated. Attempts have been made to fix the time of the Lord's second coming, and the work of predicting goes on busily still. Enthusiasts and impostors have been more or less successful in finding credulous followers. Again and again the progress of time has falsified such predictions, but would-be prophets have not been discouraged by the blunders of their predecessors. All men, quick and dead, are to be brought before the Judgment-seat, the faithful that they may be raised to everlasting blessedness, and the wicked to be dismissed to everlasting punishment. Paul describes the events of the great day of Christ's appearing as it will affect the saints. "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: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air."[158] He gives a similar description to the Corinthians: "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."[159] "He commanded us to testify," says Peter, "that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead."[160] And Paul writes to Timothy that "the Lord Jesus Christ shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing."[161] The most awful descriptions of the Judgment, as it will affect the wicked, are given by the Lord Jesus Himself. In Matthew xxv. we have a series of images, in which the terrors of the "great day of the Lord" are set forth. The virgins that go out to meet the Bridegroom, the servants with their talents, the Judge dividing all brought before Him as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats, are warnings of the certainty and severity of judgment, and of the doom reserved for the ungodly.