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p60 Dear Miss Maria Barton, - I suppose I must have perceived that this objection could be raised, for in the fourth edition,* which I got to look at it, I have, 'All this (1 Thess. 4:14-16) is a matter which belongs exclusively to the saints - to those who, sleeping or waking, are Christ's, and who will be, from that moment, for ever with the Lord.' The truth is, the mind is justly occupied with what concerns the church; and so I find in the New Testament many passages refer directly to the christian saints who form the church, because they were there and then before the writer's or Holy Spirit's mind, which yet from other places we may know to be true of Old Testament saints. Here the word 'exclusively' meant to the exclusion of the wicked dead. I do not doubt the Old Testament saints will arise, though in many a passage they are not at all brought before the mind; because the Spirit was founding and encouraging the hopes of Christians then tried, perhaps persecuted, not meaning to deny that Old Testament saints would be in the kingdom. The word 'exclusively' does not apply here to the Old Testament saints, but to the world; but the mass of passages in the New Testament apply in fact only to the church. Other passages say we shall sit with Abraham and Isaac in the kingdom, and the Lord teaches clearly their resurrection. That which the Old Testament saints do not form is the body and the bride.

Ever yours truly in the Lord.

{*[The Hopes of the Church of God, Col. Writ., vol. 2, 468.]}

[53048E]

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