give account of himself to that Righteous Judge in presence of the angelic apparitors of his court; afterwards, when these proceedings are closed, and sentence in accord with the accounts rendered, has drawn the line of separation "between him that serveth Elohim, and him that serveth Him not" (Mai. iii. 18)—between the just and the unjust; then spirit-power, administered by the Judge, quickens or imparts incorruptibility and life to "the just"; who, in the instantancity of the operation, ascend to the Father who is spirit, or are corporeally transformed into identity of nature with the body of Christ. Such is resurrection from conception in the dust of sheol to the quickening inception of a life that ends no more.
Some idea of the extraordinary change wrought upon the "mortal body" by its quickening, may be formed from Daniel's description of the "certain man" he saw in the third year of Cyrus, which was the year in which he was consigned to sheol, now 2,406 years ago (Dan. i. 21; x. 1, 5). That certain man represented to him, was what Paul styles in Eph. iv. 4: i. 22–23, the "One Body, the Ecclesia," of which Christ is "the Head." Daniel describes this body corporate of the quickened just ones, as "a man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz: his body also like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude." Of this host, Daniel was assured he should be one, "at the end of the 1335 days": which would reach from a given event to the epoch of resurrection "in the latter days." Now, while contemplating "this great vision," he was subjected to an operation indicative of his approaching decease; and of the process he and others would have to go through, in passing from the death-sleep of sheol, to the firmamental and enduring brightness of the kingdom.
The decease he was about to accomplish, and which he speaks of as though he were already in the dust of death, is specified in the words, "I was left alone, and there remained no strength in me; for my vigour was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength. Then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face upon the earth. I was dumb; nor was breath left in me." Now, after remaining thus an indefinite period, the time arrived for him to awake from this death-sleep; and to be raised from his recumbent position on the ground. He did not make a sudden and vigorous leap to an upright position in which he was fearless, fluent of speech, corruptionless and strong, as some imagine the dead to be, when they dream of their leaping forth incorruptible and immortal. No, he had to progress by stages from his proneness in corruption, to a
