So in harmony with this reference to our Lord’s teaching is the language used by Paul in 1 Thess. 4:16, 17, that we here refer to it again: “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. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” As Christ taught that the time when his people were to be with him again was at his second coming, so Paul here teaches. We call attention to the word _so_, in the last sentence of the quotation. So means in this way, in this manner, by this means. “_So_,” in this manner, by this means, “shall we ever be with the Lord.” When Paul, as he does here, describes without any limitations, the way and means by which we go to be with the Lord, he precludes every other means. He the same as says there is no other means by which we can be with the Lord, and if there is any other means of gaining this end, this language is not true. If we go to be with the Lord, by means of our immortal spirit, when we die, we do not go to be with him by means of the visible coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the change of the living, and Paul’s language is a stupendous falsehood. There is no possible way of avoiding this conclusion, except by claiming that the descent of the Lord from Heaven, the mighty shout, the voice of the archangel, the sounding of the great trump of God, the resurrection of the dead, and the change of the living, all take place when a person dies--a position too absurd to be seriously refuted, and almost too ridiculous to be even stated. Shall we then take the position that Paul taught the Philippians that a person went by his immortal spirit immediately at death to be with the Lord, when he had plainly told the Thessalonians that this was to be brought about in altogether a different manner, and by altogether different means? No one who would have venerated that holy apostle when alive, or who has any decent regard for his memory now that he is dead, will accuse him of so teaching. Why, then, does he say that he has a desire to depart, that is, to die? Because he well understood that his life of suffering, of toil, and trial here was to terminate by death; and if the church could spare him, he would gladly have it come, not only to release him from his almost unbearable burdens, but because he knew further that all the intervening space between his death and the return of his Lord would seem to him to be instantly annihilated, and the glories of the eternal world, through his resurrection from the dead, would instantly open upon his view.