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