heir glorification. He made a demand of
the Father which confirmed the promise He had previously given to them.
He prayed, "Father, I will that they, whom Thou hast given Me be with
Me where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given Me,
for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world" (John xvii:24).
In these words He asks the Father to do what He had promised His
disciples. His own are to be with Him where He is, to behold His glory.

An Unfulfilled Promise and an Unanswered Prayer

The promise of "that blessed hope" given so long ago is still
unfulfilled; the prayer He prayed is not yet answered. Some say that
when our Lord said "I will come again and receive you unto myself" He
meant the death of the believer. This is positively wrong. When the
believer dies the Lord does not come to the individual believer, but
the believer goes to be with the Lord. "Absent from the body present
with the Lord." When the believer dies his body is put into the
ground, while the disembodied part goes straight into His presence.
But the body is also redeemed and must be fashioned like unto His
glorious body. The disciples died and generations upon generations of
believers passed away and the promise is still unfulfilled and His
prayer not yet answered.

The Full Revelation

The disciples, though they knew the promise of "that blessed hope" had
no knowledge whatever how the Lord would come again and receive them
unto Himself. He did not reveal the manner of His Coming when He spoke
to them. The Lord singled out the Apostle Paul to give to him the
special revelation as to the manner of His Coming for His Saints and
how "that blessed hope" would some day be fulfilled. The Apostle Paul
is the instrument through whom the Lord was pleased to give the highest
revelation in the Word of God, so that he could say that it was given
to him "to fulfil (complete) the Word of God." To him the full glory
of the church, the body of Christ, was made known, and through this
chosen vessel, who called himself less than the least of all the
Saints, the full revelation of "that blessed hope" is given.

The first Epistle he wrote was the Epistle to the Thessalonians. The
great revelation of the blessed hope is found in the first Epistle.
"But we do not wish you to be ignorant concerning them that are fallen
asleep, to the end that ye sorrow not, even as others who have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus died and