[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":4},["ShallowReactive",2],{"reading-0414":3},"APRIL 14\r\nFor the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with\r\nthe voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead\r\nin Christ shall rise first. then we which are alive and remain\r\nshall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. so shall we ever be with the Lord (I Thess. 4:16,  1 7).\r\nIt was \"very early in the morning\" while \"it was yet dark,\" that\r\nJesus rose from the dead. Not the sun, but only the morning-star\r\nshone upon His opening tomb. The shadows had not fled, the citizens of Jerusalem had not awaked. It was still night-the hour of sleep\r\nand darkness, when He arose. Nor did his rising break the slumbers\r\nof the city. So shall it be \"very early in the morning while it is\r\nyet dark,\" and when nought but the morning-star is shining, that Christ' s body, the Church, shall arise. Like Him, His saints shall awake when nought but the morningstar is shining, that Christ's  body, the Church, shall arise. Like Him, His saints shall awake   when the children of the night and darkness are still sleeping\r\ntheir sleep of death. In their arising they disturb no one. The\r\nworld hear's not the voice that summons them. As Jesus laid them quietly to rest each in his own still tomb, like children in the\r\narms of their mother, so, as quietly, as gently, shall He awake\r\nthem when the hour arrives. To them come the quickening words, \"Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust' (Isa 26:19). Into their\r\ntomb the earliest ray of glory finds its way. They drink in the\r\nfirst gleams of morning, while as yet the eastern clouds give but the faintest signs of the uprising. Its genial fragrance, its\r\nsoothing stillness, its bracing freshness, its sweet loneliness,   its quiet purity, all so solemn and yet so full of hope, these are theirs.\r\nOh, the contrast between these things and the dark night through\r\nwhich they have passed! Oh, the contrast between these things and the grave from which they have sprung! And as they shake off the\r\nencumbering turf, flinging mortality aside and rising, in glorified\r\nbodies, to meet their Lord in the air they are lighted and guided\r\nupward, along the untrodden pathway, by the beans of that Star of\r\n\r\nthe morning, which, like the Star of Bethlehem, conducts them to   the presence of the King. \"Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning.\" --Horatius Bonar.\r\nWhile the hosts cry Hosanna, from heaven descending,\r\nWith glorified saints and the angels attending, With grace on His brow, like a halo of glory,\r\nWill Jesus receive His own.\r\nEven so, come quickly.\r\nA soldier said, \"When I die do not sound taps over my grave, but reveille, the morning call, the summons to rise.\"",1783499792051]