To the Remnant scattered Abroad
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clothed with immortality. The 144,000 shouted, Hallelujah! as they
recognized their friends who had been torn from them by death, and in
the same moment we were changed and caught up together with them
to meet the Lord in the air. We all entered the cloud together, and were
seven days ascending to the sea of glass, when Jesus brought along
the crowns and with his own right hand placed them on our heads.
He gave us harps of gold and palms of victory. Here on the sea of
glass the 144,000 stood in a perfect square. Some of them had very
bright crowns, others not so bright. Some crowns appeared heavy with
stars, while others had but few. All were perfectly satisfied with their
crowns. And they were all clothed with a glorious white mantle from
their shoulders to their feet. Angels were all about us as we marched
over the sea of glass to the gate of the City. Jesus raised his mighty
glorious arm, laid hold of the pearly gate and swung it back on its
glittering hinges, and said to us, You have washed your robes in my
blood, stood stiffly for my truth, enter in. We all marched in and felt
we had a perfect right in the City. Here we saw the tree of life and the
throne of God. Out of the throne came a pure river of water, and on
either side of the river was the tree of life. On one side of the river was
a trunk of a tree, and a trunk on the other side of the river, both of pure
transparent gold.
[13]
At first I thought I saw two trees. I looked again and saw they
were united at the top in one tree.—So it was the tree of life, on either
side of the river of life. Its branches bowed to the place where we
stood; and the fruit was glorious, which looked like gold mixed with
silver. We all went under the tree, and sat down to look at the glory of
the place, when brothers Fitch and Stockman, who had preached the
gospel of the kingdom, and whom God had laid in the grave to save
them, came up to us and asked us what we had passed through while
they were sleeping. We tried to call up our greatest trials, but they
looked so small compared with the far more exceeding and eternal
weight of glory that surrounded us, that we could not speak them out,
and we all cried out Alleluia, heaven is cheap enough, and we touched
our glorious harps and made heaven’s arches ring.
With Jesus at our head we all descended from the City down to
this earth, on a great and mighty mountain, which could not bear Jesus
up, and it parted asunder, and there was a mighty plain. Then we
looked up and saw the Great City, with twelve foundations, twelve