The destiny of the believer is to be "forever with the Lord." His everlasting home is the New Jerusalem, the consummation of his hope the eternal glory of God and the Lamb. Like the pilgrim patriarch of early days, he passes through the world as "a stranger and sojourner," with his eye on the "city which hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God." There the pilgrim pathway ends; the land of his possession is reached; he is at home. Even now his longing spirit is in love with the place, and he sings as his feet press on—
"My heart is onward bounding,
Home to the land I love;
Its distant joys and pleasures
My longing passions move.
Fain would my thirsty spirit
Its living freshness breathe,
And wearied feet find resting
Its hallowed shades beneath."
The first stage of this pathway of glory will be at the descent of the Lord Jesus into the air to meet His saints. "The Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God." The immediate response to this shout of the returning Lord will be a resurrection from among the dead of all the sleeping saints. The graves will yield their ancient charge; the dead in Christ shall be raised incorruptible, in bodies of glory, in the image of their Lord. At the same moment, "in the twinkling of an eye," the living saints on earth shall be changed, their bodies shall be fashioned like unto Christ's, mortality swallowed up of life, and both caught up together to meet the Lord in the air. Gathered together thus around Himself, He will lead them in triumph to the Father's house. This translation will end the pilgrim pathway of the living saints who, like Enoch of old, shall "go without dying," and it will also sweep the graves of all who have fallen asleep, and whose unclothed spirits have been resting in paradise with Christ.
Now they receive that fullness of salvation, that redemption of the body, for which in the days of their faith and hope they longed and sighed. Now their sighs are turned to songs, their expectations to realization. They have been awakened in His likeness, and they are satisfied—fully, perfectly satisfied. So also is their Lord, for looking upon His gathered flock, His blood-bought Bride, He shall see the fruit of the travail of His soul and "shall be satisfied." His saints are with Him now, He has presented them faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, and their cup runneth over. Goodness and mercy hath followed them all their earthly days, and now they have come to "dwell in the house of the Lord forever."
"To find each hope of glory gained,
Fulfilled each precious word:
And fully all to have attained
The image of our Lord."