awakening, and anastasis, or standing up; after this, they ascended, and so, being clothed upon with power, their raising was complete.
Having emerged from sheol, from "the womb of the dawn," the second stage of the process finds them, after the type of the first Adam, "standing before the judgment-seat of Christ " (Rom. xiv. 10), as the result of their having been angelically "gathered together unto him" (Matt. xxiv. 31; 2 Thess. ii. 1). Adam, at the bar of Deity in Paradise, had arrived there through probation, and emergence from a hiding place, whence he had been brought forth by the voice of Yahweh Elohim (Gen. iii. 1–9); so with his descendants; they arrived at the judgment-seat of Christ through probation and emergence from sheol, in which they have been long hid; and from which the voice of Yahweh Elohim brings them forth that "every one of them may give account of himself to Deity" (Rom. xiv. 12). Had Adam been able to give a good account of himself in probation, he would have been permitted to eat of the tree of lives, that, eating, he might live for ever; but he was self-condemned in the account he rendered, so that he was sentenced to perpetual exclusion from Paradise, and to "receive through the body for what he had done evil " (2 Cor. v. 10); which evil is defined in the penalty attached to the law he had transgressed according to the exposition thereof by the law-giver and judge, in the words, "dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return"; and which, after a life of labour and of sorrow, took effect A.M. 930, when he died, and, by corruption, became dust again. Thus, "having sown to the flesh, of the flesh he reaped corruption"; as will all his descendants who elect to walk in his steps rather than after the example of the last Adam (Gal. vi. 8).
Here the similitude between the first Adam and his posterity ends. Those of them who "reap life everlasting" are such as, after the example of the last Adam, have, in their probation, sown to the Spirit; "for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." When those who have sown to the Spirit appear at the judgment-seat of Christ, they will be able to show in the account rendered, that the righteousness of the Mosaic law was fulfilled in them by their walk after "the Spirit, which is the truth," through which they mortified the deeds of the body, and crucified it with its affections and lusts (Rom. viii. 4, 13; Gal. v. 24). This was sowing to the Spirit. And who that has been engaged in this work of faith and labour of love would dread to make his appearance before the judgment-seat of Christ? They are gathered there as hopeful expectants of a verdict justifying them before angels and the Father
