Page:Anastasis A Treatise on the Judgment of the Dead.pdf/22

Rh the greatest of them all; because it culminated in "the apocalypse of the Sons of the Deity" (Rom. viii. 19). In the vision John had in Patmos, a like instance occurs in Rev. xi. 1, in which a prophecy ending in resurrection and judgment (verses 18–19) is prefaced by the dramatic rising of the prophet himself. The things seen by Daniel in his last vision began to transpire "in the first year of Darius the Mede," which was two years before he had the vision; and are strewn along a period reaching "to the time of the end," in which is the resurrection of himself and people. It is an amplification of what he saw in the third year of Belshazzar, when he was also a subject of symbolic resurrection (ch. viii. 18); and for the same reason. From the tenth chapter to the end of his book, is one continuous record of "that which is noted in the Scripture of truth."

But, in connection with this extraordinary evolution of living beings from apparently nothing but a little incorruptible dust, the question of identifying them as men and women flourishing in society thousands of years before, has wonderfully perplexed the astuteness of the wise and prudent. But the restoration of identity with Deity is neither impossible nor difficult. The dead are historical characters, who lived and moved and had being in Deity (Acts xvii. 28). Hence, all their thoughts and actions, constituting their characters, are recorded in Him as in "a book of remembrance" (Mal. iii. 16). Therein is written their history; and, with the exception of their incorporeal dust in sheol, their characters inscribed upon the divine page, are the all that remains of them in the universe. This scroll of record is the broad sheet of spirit, styled by philosophers, ether and electricity, which, filling the universe, enwraps the world. All thoughts and actions are vibrations excited in this spirit of the Creator, by corporeal agents. These subtle vibratory impressions are never obliterated, unless He wills never to revive them. Many such impressions He has willed to blot out; as in the case of those who are consigned to "a perpetual sleep"; and of sins that have been forgiven. But there are impressions, at present latent, that are to be intensified and made manifest; and "whatsoever doth make manifest is light" (Eph. v. 13). The electrical, and electrically recorded, thoughts and actions to be manifested, are "the hidden things of darkness, and the counsels of the hearts" of the just, who have accepted, and of the unjust, who have rejected or extinguished, the light. These two classes, evolved from the dust of sheol, in the first stage of their raising, are "earthward and speechless." They may be said to be like a man newly aroused from deep and heavy sleep, who fails to realise his exact condition; and is in doubt where, what, and how, he is, being