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to). Some readers may say, Why refer to this awful subject? Scripture abounds with
warnings concerning this characteristic of the end. Spiritism is the present-day forerunner
of the counterpart of the days of Noah, even as the "sons of God who saw the daughters
of men that they were fair," etc., in Gen. vi were the cause of the corruption that
necessitated the flood. Let us heed the warning, and have nothing whatever to do with
this awful thing. Continuing our study of the use of the word parousia, in I Thess.
4: 15, 16, we read:--
"For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain
unto the parousia of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep. For
the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the
archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first."
One archangel is mentioned in Scripture, "Michael the archangel" (Jude 9).
According to Dan. 12: 1, Michael is "the great prince which standeth for the children of
thy people" (see also Dan. 10: 13, 21). When Michael stands up there shall be
"a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time,
and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the
book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake."
Here we have the connection between I Thess. 4: and Dan. 12:, where the archangel
is directly related to the resurrection (even as Jude 9), and the people of the kingdom--
Israel. James and Peter refer to this parousia of the Lord. Those to whom James wrote
attended the synagogue (2: 2), they were the "twelve tribes scattered abroad" (i.1).
Patience during the time of trouble is the exhortation, "Be patient, therefore, brethren,
unto the parousia of the Lord" (5: 7, 8). Peter speaks of the parousia several times in his
second epistle:--
"For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you
the power and parousia of the Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye-witnesses of His majesty,
for He received from God the Father honour and glory" (II Pet. 1: 16).
This passage has reference to the "Transfiguration" (Matt. 17: 1). The words,
"honour and glory" are terms which belong to the kingdom (see Heb. 2: 6, 7, and
Psa. 8: ). They further refer to the consecration of the priest in his robes of "glory and
beauty." "We see not yet. . . . but we see Jesus. . . . crowned with glory and honour"
(Heb. 2: 8, 9). The "not yet" of Heb. 2: 8 was a difficulty which Peter confessed. In II
Pet. iii.1-13 the scoffers are reported as saying, "Where is the (fulfilment of the) promise
of His parousia?" The apostle assures his hearers that the non-fulfilment of the promise is
not the result of "slackness" on the Lord's part, it was rather His "longsuffering." He
continues by speaking of the day of the Lord coming "as a thief in the night," exactly as
Paul does in I Thess. 4: and 5: Peter, however, had to refer his readers to Paul's epistles,
saying:--
"Our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written
unto you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which there are
some things hard to be understood" (II Pet. 3: 15, 16).