For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will be the first to rise.
16 For the Lord himself. He employs the term κελεύσματος, (shout,) and afterwards adds, the voice of the archangel, by way of exposition, intimating what is to be the nature of that arousing shout — that the archangel will discharge the office of a herald to summon the living and the dead to the tribunal of Christ.
Do not sorrow immoderately for those who die in the Lord, as if you had no hope of eternal life, that is to grieve like the heathen, who imagine everything taken from the world perishes. We Christians have sure hope of resurrection; this alone is enough to balance all our griefs. Yet weep we may, for our own loss if nothing else, so long as we remember the dead sleep in Jesus and shall wake to glory.
AI summary
Commenting on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven,.... Not by proxy, or by representatives; not by the ministry of angels, as on Mount Sinai; nor by the ministers of the word, as under the Gospel dispensation; nor by his spirit, and the discovery of his love and grace, in which sense he descends in a spiritual manner, and visits his people; but in person, in...