spiritual life, through the
gift of the Holy Spirit bestowed through the Manifestation of God. The
grave from which he arises is the grave of ignorance and negligence of
God. The sleep from which he awakens is the dormant spiritual condition in
which many await the dawn of the Day of God. This dawn illumines all who
have lived on the face of the earth, whether they are in the body or out
of the body, but those who are spiritually blind cannot perceive it. The
Day of Resurrection is not a day of twenty-four hours, but an era which
has now begun and will last as long as the present world cycle continues.
It will continue when all traces of the present civilization will have
been wiped off the surface of the globe.

Return of Christ

In many of His conversations Christ speaks of the future Manifestation of
God in the third person, but in others the first person is used. He says:
"I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come again, and receive you unto myself" (John xiv, 2-3). In the
first chapter of Acts we read that the disciples were told, at the
ascension of Jesus: "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into
heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven."
Because of these and similar sayings, many Christians expect that when the
Son of Man comes "in the clouds of heaven and with great glory" they shall
see in bodily form the very Jesus Who walked the streets of Jerusalem two
thousand years ago, and bled and suffered on the cross. They expect to be
able to thrust their fingers into the prints of the nails on His hands and
feet, and their hands into the spear wound in His side. But surely a
little reflection on Christ's own words would dissipate such an idea. The
Jews of Christ's time had just such ideas about the return of Elias, but
Jesus explained their error, showing that the prophecy that "Elias must
first come" was fulfilled, not by the return of the person and body of the
former Elias, but in the person of John the Baptist, who came "in the
spirit and power of Elias." "And if ye will receive it," said Christ,
"this is Elias, which was for to come. He that hath ears to hear, let him
hear." The "return" of Elias, therefore, meant the appearance of another
person, born of other parents, but inspired by God with the same spirit
and power. These words of Jesus may surely be taken to imply that the
return of Christ will, in like manner, be