Micah 7:8-20; Zeph. 3:8-20), seem to warrant the expectation of a
literal fulfilment hereafter of the promise made to Abraham that his
seed should inherit the land of Canaan for ever.

16. That Christ will come again in glory to raise the dead, change the
living, and judge all nations, is a fundamental article of the Christian
faith. But the doctrine "that the fleshly and sublunary state is not to
terminate with the coming of Christ, but to be then set up in a new
form; when, with his glorified saints, the Redeemer will reign in person
on the throne of David at Jerusalem for a thousand years, over a world
of men yet in the flesh, eating and drinking, planting and building,
marrying and giving in marriage, under this mysterious sway" (Brown on
the Second Advent, who correctly states the fundamental principle of the
system), cannot lay claim to an irrefragable basis of scriptural
teaching. The arguments relied on by its advocates are drawn in part
from the very passages that have been considered above (Micah 4:1-4;
Zech. 14:16-21). How little support the theory derives from these
passages, when fairly interpreted, we have seen. Nor is it favored by
the references to our Lord's second coming in the gospels and epistles,
for they clearly connect it with the final consummation of all things.

Our Saviour says: "The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the
graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done
good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto
the resurrection of damnation." John 5:28, 29. He plainly represents
these two resurrections as simultaneous; nor is there in the record of
his words any hint of a partial resurrection ages before the reign of
death in this world shall close. The resurrection "_at the last trump_"
to which the apostle Paul refers (1 Cor. chap. 15; 1 Thess. 4:13-18; 2
Thess. 1:7-10) is universal. It expressly includes all the dead in
Christ and the change of all Christ's living disciples. If nothing is
said of the resurrection of the wicked, it is because the apostle has in
mind only the "resurrection of life," and has no occasion to speak of
the simultaneous "resurrection of damnation" which the Saviour himself
connects with it. This resurrection at the last trump is also the
annihilation of the reign of death; for when it happens, "then shall be
brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in
victory." 1 Cor. 15:54. But