had no faith in the immortal resurrection of their friends, nor in the fulfillment of Christ’s predicted coming to raise their names to unfading honor for having labored and died in his cause.  We are not to understand that those departed saints were literally exalted to elevated stations in Christ’s kingdom on earth, any more than Christ literally came.  But as Jesus was in that day, at the end of the Jewish age, “crowned with glory and honor,” as king on the mediatorial throne of the universe, so were his apostles elevated on thrones of glory with him.  Jesus says, “when the Son of man shall sit on his throne of glory, ye also shall also sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”

Now certain it is, that Jesus did take his throne, when he came in his glory, at the destruction of the temple.  Then it is equally certain, that the apostles and martyrs also took their’s at the same period and in the same sense. Then Christ came and “his holy angels” and all the saints came with him; not literally, but in the same sense that he himself came.  Luke ix:26, 27—­“For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he shall come in his own glory and of his Father’s and of the holy angels; but I tell you of a truth there be some standing here which shall not taste death till they see the kingdom of God.”  I Thess. iii:13—­“To the end he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before God our Lord even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.”  Here we perceive, that he was to come “with all his saints and holy angels.”  By his holy angels, we are to understand his gospel messengers or martyred apostles and by his saints, those who had died in his cause.  These are the persons who are said to be dead in Christ, and asleep in Jesus.  By the words dead and asleep we are not to understand their present extinction of existence in contrast with their immortal resurrection, but the supposed low and disgraceful cause in which they died, or for which they were put to death by their persecutors, as malefactors.  This disgraceful condition, in which their murderers viewed them as unchangeably sleeping, stands in contrast with their triumphant exaltation at the coming of Christ.  Their enemies would then look upon them as having come forth from the dust of the earth and shining as the brightness of the firmament and as the stars forever and ever, and not as sleeping in perpetual infamy and dishonor. [See Daniel xii 2, 3, and John v:28, 29.] Their enemies (whether dead or alive) were to come forth to shame, contempt, and condemnation, which stand in contrast with the glory and honor to which the Christians (whether dead or alive in Christ) were to be raised in the minds of the living even to succeeding generations.