Daniel 12:2

HOMILETICS

SECT. XLVI.—THE RESURRECTION. (Chap. Daniel 12:2.)

We come to a most precious and important part of the angel’s communication. It is that in which he declares more distinctly than had ever been done before the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, and that in connection with retribution, which had not previously been done. The object for which the statement concerning this great truth is now so distinctly made, is obviously to comfort Daniel and his faithful though suffering people, and especially to sustain and encourage those who should be called to lay down their life in the maintenance of God’s truth and worship. That the statement produced this effect in the case of those who suffered under Antiochus in the Maccabæan age, we have historical evidence in the first book of the Maccabees; and more especially in the narrative there given of the Jewish mother and her seven sons, who chose rather to endure a horrible death than renounce their religion, under the assured hope of “the better resurrection.” [348] The statement is made here in connection with the promise of deliverance to an elect remnant during the last great attack upon Israel from the hostile world-power, in which so many should miserably perish; and it is there made apparently with the view of assuring them that at that period of deliverance those who had fallen in maintenance of the truth, or had died in the faith and service of Jehovah, should also receive their reward. The comfort intended appears similar to that designed by the Apostle when he assures believers, who are mourning the departure of those who had fallen asleep in Jesus, that when the Lord should come again to take His people to glory, He would not glorify those who should then be found alive till He had first raised from the dead those that slept in Him (1 Thessalonians 4:15).

[348] “It is good,” said one of these seven sons, when his body was lacerated by the scourge “being put to death by man, to look for hope from God to be raised up again by Him.”

In connection with the passage before us, we have to notice—

I. The fact of the resurrection. “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake.” There should be little doubt that a true physical and literal resurrection of the body is here intended, and not a moral, spiritual, and figurative one, such as that described in Ezekiel 36. [349] If a resurrection of the body is not here declared, it will be difficult to find where it is, or to imagine words in which it can be so. Although the doctrine may be found in earlier inspired writings, yet it is doubtless on this passage that the Jewish martyrs more especially based their hope, and from this that the Jews in general drew their assurance that there should be a resurrection of the dead, and that both of the just and the unjust (Acts 24:15). [350] It is justly believed also that to this passage the Saviour’s words had reference when, announcing Himself to be the Lord and Giver of life, He declared, “The hour is coming in the which all that are in their graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28). Of this resurrection Jesus Himself rose as a specimen and firstfruits, in whom, as the second Adam and Head of redeemed humanity, those who died literally and physically in the first Adam, should in the same sense be “made alive.” Accordingly after His resurrection, Matthew relates, that many of the bodies of the saints which slept arose, and “went into the holy city and appeared unto many” (Matthew 27:52). To such a resurrection Paul referred in his appeal to Agrippa and his audience at Cæsarea when he asked, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?” (Acts 26:8). It is the resurrection of the body that sleeps in the grave, or “in the dust of the earth,” [351] the same, yet changed. In respect to the bodies of believers at least, “it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory” (1 Corinthians 15:42). The expression of the angel, “them that sleep in the dust,” though a similar one had been already used by Isaiah (Isaiah 26:19), and even by the Psalmist (Psalms 17:15), and still more in the book of Job (Job 14:12), that which more especially gave occasion to the practice of speaking of death as a sleep (Acts 7:60; 1 Corinthians 15:6; 1 Corinthians 15:51; 1 Thessalonians 4:13). More than from the mere resemblance between the state of death and sleep, which even the heathen recognised, the expression derives its significance from the fact that out of that sleep there is an awaking, which mere natural reason seems never to have been able to anticipate, and still less to obtain the certainty of; although the transformation of insects might well suggest the possibility, if not the probability, of a similar change for man.

[349] Grotius referred the resurrection in the text, in the first instance, figuratively, to the deliverance of the Jews in the time of Antiochus, as Porphyry had done before him; and in the second instance, to the literal resurrection of the body, as rather hinted at than explicitly declared. He has had, however, but few followers in the Christian Church. Brightman understood the resurrection here as pointing to the victories of the Jewish nation, and their being called to the faith in Christ, as John 5:25; Ephesians 5:15; Romans 11:15; Ezekiel 37:1, &c. Some, he thinks, partaking of the deliverance predicted, shall yet persist in their wickedness, and shall rise indeed, but to eternal destruction.

[350] It was a saying of Rabbi Eleazar of Capernaum: “They who are born are to die, and the dead to live, and the living to be judged; that we might know, and understand, to be informed, that He is God the Former, the Creator, the Intelligent One, the Judge.… Let not thine imagination persuade thee that the grave shall be a house of refuge for thee; for against thy will thou wast formed, and against thy will thou wast born, and against thy will thou dost live, and against thy will wilt thou die, and against thy will must thou hereafter give in thine account.”—Pirke Abhoth, Daniel 4:23.

[351] “In the dust of the earth.” אַדְמַת־עָפָר of dust, the dusty ground; the expression formed after Genesis 3:19, and denoting the grave, as in Psalms 22:30, “the dust of death.”

II. The time of it. This apparently indicated by the place which the statement occupies, and its connection with the preceding one, expressed by the copula “and.” [352] The angel appears to intimate that when the Jewish remnant experience the promised deliverance, this other deliverance shall also take place in reference to those that shall have slept the sleep of death. These two events, Israel’s conversion and restoration, and the resurrection of the dead, are elsewhere brought together in the Scriptures, as taking place soon after each other. The resurrection is coincident with the Lord’s second appearing: “Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming.” But Israel’s conversion and restoration is connected with the same glorious advent. Peter exhorts the Jews to repent and be converted, not only that their sins may be blotted out, but “that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and He shall send Jesus Christ, who before was preached” unto them, and whom “the heavens must receive till the restitution of all things” (Acts 3:19, R.V.) The Jews were not to see Jesus again until they should say, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 23:39). The promise that they should look on Him whom they had pierced and mourn because of Him, is viewed by the Apostle John as pointing to the Lord’s visible appearing: “Behold He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him” (Revelation 1:7). The Apostle Paul appears to connect the conversion of Israel with the Redeemer’s coming: “There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob;” or, as it stands in Isaiah, “The Redeemer shall come to Zion, and to them that turn from transgression in Jacob” (Isaiah 59:20; Romans 11:26). The destruction of Antichrist, too, when he has “planted the tabernacles of his palace between the seas on the glorious holy mountain,” in the great gathering at Armageddon connected with Israel’s conversion, is also apparently represented in the Apocalypse as speedily, if not immediately, followed by the first resurrection (Revelation 19:19; Revelation 20:4). Paul also appears unmistakably to connect the destruction of the Man of Sin or Son of perdition, doubtless the same Wicked or Lawless One of whom Daniel prophesied, with the personal and glorious appearing of the Lord Jesus: “whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit (breath) of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness (manifestation) of His coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:1; 2 Thessalonians 2:8, R.V.) Daniel 7 seems also plainly to connect the destruction of the fourth beast and the little horn with the coming of the Son of Man with the clouds of heaven.” The destruction of Antichrist, the conversion and restoration of Israel, the resurrection of the just, thus appear closely connected with each other, and all with the Lord’s glorious appearing.

[352] “And many,” &c. “Keil remarks that the copula ו(and) connects this verse with the preceding one, and indicates the continuance of the thought in the latter half of that verse, i.e., the further representation of the deliverance of God’s people, namely, of all those who are written in the book of life. Auberlen and some others separate the resurrection from the predicted time of tribulation, simply because they refer that time to the persecution under Antiochus. He believes, however, that the resurrection will follow immediately after the period of Antichrist, and be contemporary with the coming of the Messiah in glory. Calvin thinks that the angel passes over the intermediate state between the preaching of the Gospel and the final resurrection, because the salvation of the church is connected with that event, it being till then like a dead body. Bishop Newton connects the resurrection with the tribulation as taking place immediately after it. Dr. Chalmers, on Isaiah 26:11, remarks that “it will take a time even after they (the Jews) are set upon enlargement, ere the deliverance can be wrought, and their enemies have fallen. But it will come at length, and come gloriously. Then will there be the first resurrection.”

III. The subjects of the resurrection. “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth.” Although the Scriptures, and probably this very passage, assure us that all the dead shall rise again, both just and unjust; yet this does not appear to be expressly declared by the angel in the words before us. Not all that sleep, but many of them, shall awake. [353] “Many” are not here equivalent to “all,” as in Romans 5:15; Romans 5:19; both because of the absence of the article, and because the “of,” or from among, that follows gives what is called a partitive signification,—indicating a part, and not the whole. The “many” who shall awake are the godly,—the “some,” or literally “these,” who shall awake to everlasting life, and of whom it is the angel’s special object now to speak. That the rest of the sleepers, or the ungodly, shall also awake, appears to be also intimated; these being the second “some,” or literally “those,” who shall awake to shame and everlasting contempt. It being the angel’s object rather to speak of the future blessedness of the faithful, it is their resurrection which is here especially declared as taking place in connection with the predicted deliverance. The resurrection of the rest or the ungodly, not being here especially intended to be spoken of, though plainly intimated, was apparently indicated as taking place at a period posterior to that of the others. Such we find to be in accordance with the manner in which the resurrection is generally spoken of in the New Testament. The “resurrection of the just” is spoken of by the Saviour as a thing by itself. “Thou shalt be recompensed in the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:14). “In the resurrection”—that is, the state which it introduces—“they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God” (Matthew 22:30). Still more expressly in Luke: “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” (Luke 20:34). The resurrection here spoken of obviously includes only the godly,—the “resurrection of the just,” which only some shall be accounted worthy to obtain, even the children of God, who are therefore also called “the children of the resurrection.” This is that which the Epistle to the Hebrews represents the ancient martyrs as being so eager to obtain, called “a better,” or rather “the better, resurrection” (Hebrews 11:35). This also apparently that which in the Apocalypse is called “the first resurrection,”—that, namely, of the martyrs and faithful followers of Jesus; the rest of the dead not living again till the thousand years’ reign of Christ and His saints is finished (Revelation 20:4). The Apostle also only speaks of them that are Christ’s being raised at His coming, this being according to the appointed order: “Every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterwards they that are Christ’s at His coming” (1 Corinthians 15:23). So when Christ shall descend with a shout, the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God, it is “the dead in Christ” that “rise first,”—before the living saints are changed (1 Thessalonians 4:15). It is, however, only in the Apocalypse, which closes the canon of Scripture, that we seem to learn anything of the length of the interval elapsing between the resurrection of the just and that of the unjust. [354] It is thus that, according to the Psalmist, the upright “have dominion” over the ungodly “in the morning” (Psalms 49:14); theirs being not merely a resurrection of the dead, but a resurrection from, or from among, the dead (Luke 20:35), where it is literally and emphatically “the resurrection, that from the dead.” This general mode of representing the resurrection is not really at variance with the Saviour’s words in John 5:28, though apparently so. The resurrection of both classes is not said to be simultaneous; the “hour” in which that of both shall take place being simply the time when it shall happen, without defining it to be either at the same moment, or with a lengthened interval between. This was to be learned from other testimonies of Scripture. It may be added that, in like manner, Jewish doctors generally spoke of the resurrection as peculiarly belonging to the righteous; though they also taught that at some period or other the bodies also of the wicked should be restored to life.

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[353] “Many of them that sleep,” &c. וְרַבִּים מִיּשְנֵי (verabbim miyoshene). Keil remarks that רַבִּים (rabbim) does not mean all, and that the partitive interpretation of מִן (min), “of or from among,” is the only simple and natural one, and therefore with most interpreters he prefers it. Some, as C. B. Michaelis, following the Masoretic accentuation, separate רַבִּים from מִיּשְׁנֵי, “And [there shall be many]; of them that sleep, some, or these, shall awake,” &c. Brightman reads the word as equivalent to all, meaning the Jewish nation. Broughton understands it of the universality of them that sleep. Calvin, also, after Augustine, understands the word to mean all. Keil thinks that it is not the object of the angel to give a general statement regarding the resurrection of the dead, but only to give the information that the final salvation of the people shall not be limited to those who shall be living at the end of the great tribulation, but shall include also those who have lost their lives during that period. He thinks, however, that the Israel of the time of the end, who are here referred to, consist not merely of Jews or of Jewish Christians, but embraces all peoples who belong to God’s kingdom of the New Covenant; in which respect the resurrection of all is implied, as it is explicitly declared by Christ when speaking in John 5:28, with unmistakable reference to this verse. He adds: “As with the living (at that time), so also with the dead, not all attain to blessedness. Also among those that arise there shall be a distinction, in which the reward of the faithful and of the unfaithful shall be made known.” He considers the word “many” used only “with allusion to and in contrast with the small number of those who shall then be living, and not with reference either to the universality of the resurrection of the dead or to a portion only of the dead;” the object being merely “to add to the multitude of the dead, who shall then have part with the living, the small number of those who shall experience in the flesh the conclusion of the matter.” Osiander, Bullinger, and Vatablus understand the word many to be chosen instead of all, as some believers will be alive at the Lord’s coming.

[354] On Revelation 20:4, Bishop Newton remarks: “The martyrs and confessors of Jesus,—not only those who were beheaded or who suffered death under the heathen emperors, but also those who refused to comply with the idolatrous worship of ‘the beast and his image,’—are raised from the dead, and have the principal share in the felicities of Christ’s kingdom upon earth.… This is the first resurrection,—a particular resurrection preceding the general one at least a thou and years.” Auberlen, on the same passage, says: “Among the saints who are called to reign with Christ, the martyrs of ancient and modern times are mentioned first; because, most like to the Lord Jesus in their suffering and death, they are therefore nearer Him in His life and reign.… Next to the martyrs are mentioned all who had not worshipped the beast, be it in more remote times or in the last days;—all they who refused to take the power of this world as a reality, and to serve it instead of looking to the things invisible and future” (2 Corinthians 4:17). This he says is “the ‘first resurrection,’ as distinguished from the general one, which is mentioned in Daniel 12:12.” A Jewish tradition of the school of Elias is quoted by Bishop Newton, which states that “the righteous whom God shall raise up shall not again be turned to dust, but shall live a thousand years, in which the Holy and Blessed One shall renew His world.” The early fathers in general held the same view. Justin Martyr, in the second century, says: “A certain man among us, whose name was John, one of the apostles of Christ, in a revelation made to him, did prophesy that the faithful believers in Christ should live a thousand years in the New Jerusalem, and afterwards there should be a general resurrection and judgment.” Tertullian, in the third century, speaks of it as the belief of himself and the general Church, that “there shall be a resurrection for a thousand years in the New Jerusalem, and after that the destruction of the world, and the general judgment.” Lactantius, in the following century, speaks to the same effect. Mosheim, treating of the third century, says: “Long before this period, an opinion had prevailed that Christ was to come to reign a thousand years among men before the entire and final dissolution of this world. This opinion, which had hitherto met with no opposition, was differently interpreted by different persons; nor did all promise themselves the same kind of enjoyments in the future and glorious kingdom. But in this century its credit began to decline, principally through the influence and authority of Origen, who opposed it with the greatest warmth, because it was incompatible with some of his favourite sentiments. Nepos, an Egyptian bishop, endeavoured to restore this opinion to its former credit, in a book written against the Allegorists; for so he called, by way of contempt, the adversaries of the millennarian system. This work and the hypothesis it defended was extremely well received by great numbers in the canton of Arsinoë; and among others by Colacion, a priest of no mean influence and reputation. But Dionysius of Alexandria, a disciple of Origen, stopped the growing progress of the doctrine by his private discourses, and also by two learned and judicious dissertations concerning the divine promises.” Mr. Miles (Lectures on Daniel) observes, after Mede, that we have strong evidence that so late as the Council of Nice (a.d. 325) the current of public opinion was in favour of the orthodox primitive belief. “New heavens and a new earth,” says that Council, “we expect according to the sacred writings, when there shall shine forth the appearance and kingdom of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; and then, as saith Daniel, the saints of the Most High shall receive a kingdom, and the earth shall be pure and holy, an earth of the living and not of the dead.” After the fourth century, as the same author observes, “the leading fundamental doctrines of the Gospel were eclipsed by the rapid growth of error, tradition superseding the authority of Scripture. ‘The doctrine,’ says Bishop Burnet in his Sacred Theory of the Earth, ‘was always uneasy, and gave offence to the Church of Rome, because it does not suit to that scheme of Christianity which they have drawn. They suppose that Christ reigns already by His Vicar the Pope.’ ” Auberlen also remarks: “Chiliasm—the doctrine of the thousand years’ reign of Christ—disappeared in the Church in proportion as Roman papal Catholicism advanced.… The papacy, with its fundamental tendency to seek power and external glory, is, in its innermost essence, a false anticipation of the millennial kingdom. Bengel says: ‘When Christianity became a worldly power by Constantine, the hope of the future was weakened by the joy over the present success.’ ” The doctrine appears, however, to have revived with the Reformation. John Bradford the martyr, quoted by Mr. Miles, says: “Methinks it is the duty of a godly mind simply to acknowledge, and thereof to brag in the Lord, that in our resurrection all things shall be so repaired to eternity, as for our sin they were made subject to corruption.” And again: “Now every creature travaileth and groaneth with us; but we being restored, they also shall be restored; there shall be new heavens and new earth, and all things new.” Auberlen observes: “The Reformation protested successfully against the harlot (the papal Church) by opposing to it the original Christian principle of faith, which is opposed, not only to the works of the law, but to living by sight, and to a false externalisation of the Church.… The fundamental principle of apostolical Christianity, viz., of faith, is inseparable from apostolical Chiliasm.… The Reformers did not carry out their principle far enough to attain biblical Chiliasm.… Scholastic priestly tyranny, Cæsaropapism, besides the papacy, brought Antichiliasm.… The conscience of the Reformation protested against this new corruption of the Church in the person of Spener.” In the time of the commonwealth the ancient doctrine seems to have revived in England. Baillie in his Letters says: “The most of the chief divines here (in the Westminster Assembly), not only Independents, but others, such as Twisse, Marshall, Palmer, and many others, are express Chiliasts.” Peter Sterry, one of Cromwell’s Censors, says of the premillennial advent and the thousand years’ reign: “Like a rich coin, which hath been long buried in the earth, and lately dug up again, it begins to grow bright with handling, and to pass current with great numbers of saints and learned men of great authority.” Joseph Caryl, the author of the commentary on Job, his fellow-censor, speaks similarly in his Recommendation of Holmes’s book on the resurrection, in which pre-millennarian views are strongly advocated. “Though I have not skill enough in the exposition of hard prophecies,” says the spiritually minded Baxter, “to make a particular determination about the thousand years’ reign of Christ on the earth before the final judgment, yet I may say that I cannot confute what such learned men as Mr. Mede, and Dr. Twisse, and others (after the old Fathers) have hereof asserted.” John Bunyan expresses his views thus: “The world therefore beginning thus, doth show how it will end, namely, by the reign of the Second Adam, as it began with the reign of the first. These long-lived men, therefore, show us the glory that the Church shall have in the latter day, even the seventh thousand years of the world, the Sabbath when Christ shall set up His kingdom upon earth, according to that which is written, They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” “Christ,” says Dr. Gill, “will be in His kingdom not only by His Spirit and the effusions of His grace, but He will personally appear in all His glory; hence His appearing and kingdom are put together as contemporaneous in 2 Timothy 4:1. This glorious and visible kingdom will not take place till after the resurrection of the just and the renovation of the world. As soon as He personally appears, the dead in Christ shall rise first; this is the first resurrection, in which they who have a part shall reign with Christ a thousand years. This kingdom of Christ will be bounded by two resurrections.” Delitzsch, quoted by Auberlen, marks the general prevalence of the doctrine among believers in Germany, and traces it to the influence of Bengel and his writings. “To whom also,” he asks, “do we owe it that the orthodox Church of the present time does not brand the Chiliastic view of the Last Times as a heterodoxy, as is done in almost all old manuals of dogmatics; but, on the contrary, has allowed it to enter into her innermost life, so that there is scarcely a believing Christian now (that is, in Germany) who does not take this view?”

IV. The results of the resurrection. “Some (or these) to everlasting life; some (or those) to shame and everlasting contempt.” The results in the two cases infinitely opposite to each other. In regard to the faithful, of whom the angel particularly speaks, the result is everlasting life. Life the term employed in the Scriptures to express happiness of experience and holiness of character, and likeness to God in both; that happiness being especially found in the enjoyment of His favour, friendship, and fellowship, and that holiness in the possession of His own nature and character. “In His favour is life.” Sin is “alienation” or estrangement “from the life of God.” The term “everlasting” life, so often used in the New Testament, doubtless taken from this very passage, is here met with for the first time. It is everlasting life, as enjoyed in that kingdom of Christ and of God, which is for ever and ever (chap, 7.) It is everlasting, in contrast to the same life enjoyed in Paradise, but which came to an end through Adam’s transgression. Believers who have this life are “saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation.” It is found only in, or in vital union with, the Lord Jesus Himself, who is the Life. “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:12). It is obtained in believing on, or accepting of and trusting in, the Lord Jesus as a Saviour for lost sinners. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). The “shame and contempt” of the rest of the risen dead is that which properly belongs to sin, the abominable thing that God hates, and which makes all those abominable in whom it dwells. The first mark of true repentance is to see this to be the case, and to loathe ourselves for our iniquities. “What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?” (Romans 6:21). One part of the punishment of sin is, to be made a loathing to others as well as ourselves. “They shall be an abhorring to all flesh” (Isaiah 66:24). That shame and abhorring also everlasting. “He that is filthy, let him be filthy still,” as true as, “He that is holy, let him be holy still” (Revelation 22:11). Continuance, and perhaps growth and intensification, but no change.

Let us, from the subject before us, learn—

1. To have our minds deeply and permanently impressed with the truth and reality of the resurrection. It was for this that the statement was made to Daniel by the angel. It is one of the truths most plainly revealed and most frequently referred to in the Word of God. Christ’s resurrection is to be the object of our faith; our own resurrection the object of our hope. It was in the hope and expectation of the resurrection that the Apostle exercised himself to have always a conscience void of offence towards God and towards man. It was the source of his joy and triumph, that this corruption should put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality. In this blessed hope he cheerfully renounced the world and died daily, ready, “after the manner of men,” to “fight with beasts at Ephesus.” It was this hope that enabled the Jewish martyrs to dare all the rage of their furious persecutors; and will enable us, though not martyrs, to look not at the things that are seen and temporal, but at those that are unseen and eternal. It is our comfort when we part with beloved ones who fall asleep in Jesus, and commit their bodies to the dust of the earth, to know that that body, now sown as a precious seed-corn in weakness and dishonour, shall be raised in power and glory, the same voice of Jesus that comforted Martha and Mary speaking to us at the side of that open grave, “Thy brother shall rise again.” “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:14; 1 Thessalonians 4:18).

2. To regard everything in the light of the resurrection. It is our wisdom to view things now as they will appear on that day. Everything will then stand forth in its true character. Things often appear quite otherwise now. “That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination with God,” and will so appear at the resurrection. Paul and his fellow-apostles were regarded on earth as “the filth of the world and the offscourings of all things.” In the resurrection they will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Men tike Herod Agrippa, who had shed their blood and put them in prison to please the Jews, and who, while seated on his throne in gorgeous array, and delivering his oration to the people, was applauded as a god and not a man, will on that day be the objects of “shame and everlasting contempt.” Dives and Lazarus will then change places. Lazarus, with his ulcered body changed and transfigured into the fashion of Christ’s glorious body, will have his place among the princes of God’s people, inheriting the throne of glory, on which he will reign with Christ for ever and ever, in the enjoyment of an everlasting felicity. The rich man, appearing in a body allied to his unrenewed and sin-polluted soul, will be “an abhorring to all flesh.” The “mighty,” who only lived to the gratification of their own pride and passions, will be “put down from their seats;” while those “of low degree,” who in their poverty trusted in God and, possessing their blood-washed souls in thankful patience, waited for the coming of His Son from heaven, shall be exalted to the position of kings and priests unto God, in mansions of unfading joy and a kingdom of righteousness and peace, with the Lamb for their companion and God for their everlasting light and glory.