You may just observe, by the way, that the whole force of what the Apostle says is very commonly lost, by a wrong method of reading these words. We very commonly hear them read, "will God bring _with_ him." But thus we, as I said, lose the force of the argument, which is:--If Jesus, our first-fruits, our representative, died and rose again, so will all who die in union with Jesus rise again. And in order to that, the same power of God which brings Jesus back to us, will with Him, with Jesus, bring their spirits back, in order to that resurrection. Well, what then? "_This we say unto you by the word of the Lord_"--thus the Apostle introduces, not an argument, not a command or saying of his own, but a special revelation--"_that we, which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord_" (for notice that at first, at the early time when these Thessalonian epistles were written, first of all St. Paul's letters, the Apostle looked forward to that day of which neither man nor angel knoweth, as about to come on in his own time) shall have no advantage, no priority, over them which have fallen asleep. And why? For this reason--that "_the Lord Himself shall come down 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:_" that is, shall rise before anything else happens--any changing, or summoning to the Lord, of us who are alive. Now here let us pause in the sacred text, and consider what it is which we have before us. Mind, we are speaking to-day, as the Apostle is speaking in this passage, entirely of the blessed dead; of those of whom it may be said that through Jesus their death is but a holy sleep. We have clearly this before us:--at a certain time, fixed in the counsels of God, the Father, known to no created being,--mysteriously unknown also, for He Himself assures us of this in words which no ingenuity can explain away, to the Son Himself in His state of waiting for it,--at that fixed time the Lord, that is, Christ, shall appear in the sky, visible to men in His glorified body; and His coming shall be announced to men by a mighty call, a signal cry, and by the trumpet of God. Now let me at once say that as to such expressions as this, when we are told that they cannot bear their literal meaning, but are only used in condescension to our human ways of speaking, and thus an attempt is made to deprive them in fact of all meaning, I do not recognise any such rule of interpretation. If the _words_ are used to suit our human ways of thinking, I can see no reason why the _things signified_ by those words may not also be used to affect our senses, which will be still human, when the great day comes. As to the sound being heard by all, or as to the Lord being seen by all, I can with safety leave that to Him who made the eye and the ear, and believe that if He says so, He will find the way for it to be so.