Sometimes it is called "that day" (
Mt 7:22;
1Th 5:4;
2Ti 4:8), and again it is called "the day" without any qualification whatever, as if it were the only day worth counting in all the history of the world and of the race (
1Co 3:13). To the unbeliever, the New Testament depicts it as a day of terror; to the believer, as a day of joy. For on that day Christ will raise the dead, especially His own dead, the bodies of those that believed in Him-"that of all that which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day" (
Joh 6:39). In that day He comes to His own (
Mt 16:27), and therefore it is called "the day of our Lord Jesus" (
2Co 1:14),"the day of Jesus Christ" or "of Christ" (
Php 1:6,
10), the day when there "shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven" (
Mt 24:30). All Paulinic literature is especially suffused with this longing for the "parousia," the day of Christ's glorious manifestation. The entire conception of that day centers therefore in Christ and points to the everlasting establishment of the kingdom of heaven, from which sin will be forever eliminated, and in which the antithesis between Nature and grace will be changed into an everlasting synthesis.