THE TRUMP OF GOD | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 7, 1881

THE TRUMP OF GOD.

WE shall hear it. It has been heard before. From amid the thunders and lightnings of Sinai, there was heard the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that were in the camp trembled. "And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake and God answered him by a voice." Exodus 19 : 16-19.

So it is written that in the end of this age, "He shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet (margin, with a trumpet and a great voice), and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." Matthew 24 : 31. Again, it is declared that "the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first." 1 Thess. 4 : 16.

Solemn and startling shall be that mighty voice. More awful than that "sound of a trumpet" and "voice of words," which caused the hosts of Israel to shrink with fear at the law of Him who spake to them from Sinai, shall be that trumpet and that voice of the Highest, "Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only but also heaven." Heb. 12 : 19-29.

No inaudible, invisible, symbolic act can answer to this representation. There were "seven trumpets" heard in vision by the seer of Patmos, whose soundings heralded great events, but none of these were that "trump of God," of which the prophet speaks. Of it he declares, "The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."

And this shall occur, not through the stretch of passing years, but "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound of the last trump." 1 Cor. 15 : 52, 53. Sudden as the lightning flash, "from the east even unto the west," the glory of Christ's presence shall burst upon an astonished world. Sudden as the cry at midnight, which heralded the coming of the bridegroom, shall be heard that thunder-peal that shall tell of the coming of the King. "The voice of the archangel and the trump of God" shall rouse a slumbering church, and startle a careless world. What a change, from mirth and revelry, from song and dance, from vanity and frivolity, to the solemn splendors of the judgment hour, when

"Louder still, and still more dread. Swells the high trump that wakes the dead."

Shall we be found ready in that day? Two shall be in the field, one shall be taken and the other left; two in one bed, the one shall be taken and the other left. The line of division shall run through families, churches, congregations, communities, nations, and all the tribes and peoples of the earth. And on which side of that dividing line shall we be found, when the last trump shall sound the knell of earthly hopes, and shall herald in the glory of the eternal jubilee? Happy shall they be who in that day are found safe beneath the shelter of the everlasting rock, washed in the blood of the Lamb, sanctified through the truth, quickened and consecrated by the power of the Holy Ghost, and prepared to hail with gladness the dawning of that day that shall end their sorrows and shall bring to them eternal joys.

"To damp our earthly joys, To increase our gracious fears, Forever let the archangel's voice Be sounding in our ears. The solemn midnight cry, Ye dead, the Judge is come; Arise and meet him in the sky, And meet your instant doom."

-Selected.