The victorious saint is living in the Presence of the Lord. His relationship with the Lord will not change when he is separated from his body. He will continue living in the Presence of the Lord, drawing eternal life from the Head—Christ.

He who lives and believes in Jesus shall never die.

At the last trumpet the bodies of the righteous dead will be awakened from their sleep in the dust of the earth. Therefore we do not grieve excessively over the death of our saved loved ones. We know we shall see them again. We shall be joined together with them in the spirit realm after we die. Also, we shall see them again in their bodies in the day when Christ returns to the earth.

Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead. (Isaiah 26:19)

We yet shall hear the dead singing for joy.

"That ye sorrow not." We who are Christians do not wail in anguish when a relative or friend passes into the spirit realm. We believe our deceased loved one has been gathered to his friends in Heaven, old acquaintances being renewed there. Our relationship with him or her will be restored fully and wonderfully when the Lord comes.

It is the writer's belief that we shall be gathered to our loved ones when we die. But it is interesting to note that in the present passage (I Thessalonians 4:13-5:23) Paul does not point toward our going to Heaven as being the time of our reunion with the deceased. Paul indicates that our reunion with our loved ones will take place in the day of the Lord's return to earth.

One may suppose from this that Paul expected the Lord to return with His saints in a year or two and that the Christians of Thessalonica would not die but would be changed into an eternal form. They would meet their deceased loved ones in the Kingdom that soon was to come from Heaven.

No doubt this was part of the reason why Paul stressed the coming of the Lord as being the hour when we would be reunited with our loved ones. But we feel there was a deeper reason for Paul's emphasis on the Lord's coming.

A careful study of the New Testament writings will demonstrate that little is said about what happens to the Christian after he or she dies. We Christians have developed fables about "mansions in Heaven." But there is no such emphasis in the New Testament.

The emphasis of the New Testament is on what will happen to us in the Day of Christ—in the day when Jesus appears in the clouds of the sky. All of us need to reexamine our ideas concerning what happens to the believer when he dies, realizing that our conscious life will continue in the spirit realm. What we are, we are. If we are disobedient to Christ, following Him afar off, there is no Scripture that indicates this will not continue to be our pattern when we die physically.

To be continued.