A Special Love - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2025

And the dead in Christ will rise first.
1 Thessalonians 4:16

A Special Love
Departed saints have not yet got full blessing, but an immense step onward. The position of believers is not changed by death. They were waiting when down here; they are now waiting still in the glory with the Lord in that state of separation from the body.

In the case of Stephen, we see how the Lord takes the soul at once to be with Himself; and all beloved departed ones who have died in Jesus are in the experience of that state. This meets the heart when sorrowing under bereavement, and tasting the bitterness which there is in the removal of such from earth. It is a bitter thing, and death is humiliating, having all plans broken up, and all natural affections rent in twain by it; but there is something deeper, which these saints could not have experienced if they had not passed from earth into the presence of the Lord—and that is feeling all the sympathy of the Lord when death came and carried them off.

The Lord Himself shall come to take His people up to Himself. There is something inexpressibly sweet in the Lord Himself being thus brought forward; this Jesus who left the grave putting Himself in connection with the dead in Christ; the Lord Himself, the Son of Man, rising up from that place of glory in which He was before as Son of God. The glory is all enfolded in Him now, but soon to be revealed. The Lord Himself shall descend with a shout; the Lord’s own voice, a blessed thrilling sound, heard by all His own, whether their bodies are in the dust or in life down here. The dead in Christ shall rise first. I would not let the word “first” be erased for worlds, because it is just what I always observe in the Lord: that is, His love specially going forth where there is the expression of weakness. I want that special love, my heart wants it in my weakness; but that is what my Lord is, and that is just where His love flows forth.

G. V. Wigram