After summing up the history of this earth and humanity, and awarding to the just and unjust what each has merited, the Lord Jesus Christ will rise up from the now vacant, silent, and exhausted earth, and will lead the whole of His heavenly court of angels and men to that larger universe of heaven where the new eternal era will begin. "We . . . shall be taken up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ into the air, and so shall we be always with the Lord" (1 Thess. iv. 16). In His first Ascension, Jesus Christ ended His own personal course on earth; He ascended corporally to His throne; the souls only of a few of His elect mounted with Him; their bodies remained in the dust; and the rest of His saints had yet to be called into being to carry out their long struggle. The final Ascension will be complete. Then will Christ ascend with the whole of His mystical body the Church, a great multitude whom no man can number, glorified both in soul and in body. "The chariot of God is attended by ten thousand, thousands of them that rejoice; the Lord is among them in Sion, in the holy place. Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led captivity captive" (Ps. Ixvii. 18, 19). Imagine to yourself the exultation of Christ and His elect, and the glory rendered to God beyond all that has ever gone before. How magnificent that triumph ! How blessed those who shall take part in it!
