A.--I cannot tell you.

B.--"We shall not all sleep." What place is there in that for the second death? It is ruled

out.  "At the last trump";  "We shall be changed";  "This mortal must put on

immortality". Not one of these statements can be made fit the second death. Further, the

amplification of the time period is included in the verses just read.

A.--I begin to feel that there is not much of my position left, but there is one argument

you have not met, viz., that the destruction of the last enemy takes place "at the

consummation of the ages".

B.--I look in both the English, and the Greek Original, but I do not see such a passage.

A.--I am sure it is there, for I have quoted it many times when proving the resurrection

from the second death. (Looks for the passage, but fails to find it).

B.--I think I can explain. "The consummation of the ages" is what your friends read into

the words, "then cometh the end".

There is no word for "cometh" in the original of verse 24. It simply reads `Then the

end". Some understand the words to mean "Then the end rank", but we can find no

justification for such a rendering. Cremer, in his note on to telos, says that this word does

not primarily denote the end, termination, with reference to time, but the goal reached,

the completion or conclusion at which anything arrives, either as issue or ending; or as a

result, acme, consummation, e.g., polemon telos, "victory" (literally "the end of war".

end not measuring time but object); telos andros, "the full age of man" (not the end of

man-death), also of the "ripening of seed". In Luke 1: 33 and Mark 3: 26 the idea of

termination seems uppermost.  The idea of  issue, end, conclusion, is seen in

Matt. 26: 58, "To see the end"; James 5: 11, "Ye have seen the end of the Lord";

I Pet. 4: 17, "What shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel?"

The idea of a goal reached is seen in Rom. 6: 21, "The end of those things is death";

Phil. 3: 19, "Whose end is destruction". So also II Cor. 11: 15; Heb. 6: 8. When the

apostle wrote the words of I Cor. 15: 24, "Then the end", what goal had he in view?

What is the object of resurrection? Does it not take man back into the place intended for

him in the Divine purpose, for which sin and death had for a while rendered him unfit?

The goal, this end in view, is contained in the words of I Cor. 15: 28, "That God may be

all in all". Although "the end" is mentioned immediately after the resurrection of those

that are Christ's at His parousia, it is not attained without a reign of righteousness and a

rule of iron. The uninterrupted statement of the end is as follows:--