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Do not think that the Second Coming will be like the first: then He came quietly and silently to take away sins, and now He will come for righteous retribution; Then He was like a doctor, and now He is in the form of a judge; then He planted the vine, and now He gathers the fruit; therefore He will come to overthrow everything, so that you understand His greatness and so that you know that He could come then in the same way (4). Take your thoughts to heaven and imagine that terrible day on which Christ will come. Then you will see not a team of mules, not golden chariots, not dragons and asps, but something that inspires great fear and produces such amazement that even the powers of heaven themselves are horrified. “And the powers of heaven,” says Scripture, “will be shaken” (Matthew 24:29). Then the whole heaven will open and the Only Begotten Son of God will descend, accompanied not by twenty or a hundred, but by thousands and tens of thousands of Angels and Archangels, and everything will be filled with fear and horror; the earth will open up, and all people who have ever existed, from Adam until that day, will rise from the earth and will be raptured, and He himself will shine with such glory that the sun and moon will hide all their light, which will be darkened by that radiance (5). He will appear in the form of the Tree of the Cross, but will shine with rays of light. When the Cross appears, the sun will darken and disappear - it will not disappear, but will be drowned in the radiance of His glory; the moon will darken and the stars will go out, or, better said, will fall, as it is written: “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky” (Matthew 24:29), and then this terrible and glorious sign will appear. At the sight of Him, the Jews will curse, and the faithful will glorify. Then each of the faithful individually will respond to the infidels. Then Isaiah will tell us: “Here is He our God! in Him we have trusted... let us rejoice and be glad” (Isa. 25:9); then the appearance of the Cross will expose daring unbelief and strengthen the Church; then the opponents will be put to shame and the followers will be glorified; then all creation will worship the Son of God - both those who believed and those who did not believe, but the former with triumph, the latter with shame. Thus, in the royal paintings the royal bodyguards are depicted in glory and next to them are captive barbarians, defeated at the feet of the king; the barbarian prostrates himself before the king, and the subject also prostrates himself, but then one boldly stands before the king, glorifying his ruler, and the other, forced under his feet, bows before the king, but does not receive a reward for his worship, because he did not come here of his own free will, but under compulsion; and it thus turns out that the top row bows to the king, and the bottom row falls in front of him - and these are two different things: it is one thing to bow, and another to fall in front of someone. The same thing will happen at the coming of the great King: in the picture of His glory the face of believers will appear, triumphant along with the face of the angels, with singing and praise; and immediately the unbelievers will be prostrate at the feet of the great King; those will be free and brave, and those will be bound and depressed. The faithful do not need bonds, because they are already bound by love: for them love replaces bonds; and whoever was not bound by love was bound by coercion. And the faithful boldly approach the King of glory, but the unfaithful and opponents of the word of truth will be drawn to His throne in iron shackles; those will be in the face of those who worship - above, and these in the face of those who are cast down - in the dust. Just like in the picture: the worshipers are depicted on top, and the captives falling on their faces in the lower part; Likewise, in the Kingdom of Christ, the faithful will meet Him in the clouds, and the unfaithful will be cast into the dust before Him. So in the psalm those who worship are distinguished from those who fall down. “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the tribes of the heathen will bow before You, for the Lord is the kingdom, and He is Ruler over the nations” (Ps. 21:28, 29), says the psalmist, when talking about those who bow to God; and about those who were cast down before Him he added: “All who go down into the dust will bow before Him” (Ps. 21:30). But why does the face of the faithful appear at the top? Therefore, it is obvious that the faithful will not stand on the ground, but will surround the great Judge in the air, as His entourage. After all, the throne of God will not be established on earth: the earth will only be His footstool, so that all the defendants will be below, and above only the Judge and with Him His friends. It is precisely this, wanting to show - that the faithful will stand not on the ground, but on high - the apostle says: “we... will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17) (9). Ascend with your mind and, having become higher than the visible sky, look at the sky that is higher than this, at an infinite height - at the light that inspires horror, at the hosts of Angels, at the countless faces of Archangels and at other incorporeal Forces. And then, having descended from this height, take our picture and imagine what is around our king, such as: men in clothes embroidered with gold, pairs of white mules with gold jewelry, chariots with expensive stones, snow-white carpets, plaques rippling on chariots, dragons depicted on silk clothes, shields with golden protuberances in the middle, belts from them, speckled towards the circle with many stones, horses dressed in gold and golden bridles. But as soon as we see the king himself, we will stop looking at all this. He alone attracts our attention, his purple, diadem, seat, belt, shoes and extraordinary shine of appearance. Precisely combining all this, again raise your mind from this to that terrible day on which Christ will appear. Then you will see not pairs of mules, not golden chariots, not dragons and shields, but something that is full of great horror and produces such a striking impression that even the ethereal Powers themselves are amazed, as it is said: “The powers of the heavens will be shaken” (Matthew 24:29). Then the whole sky will open, the gates of the heavenly vault will open, the only begotten Son of God will descend, accompanied not by twenty or a hundred people, but accompanied by thousands of Angels, Archangels, Cherubim, Seraphim and other Powers, everything will be filled with horror and trembling, the earth will dissolve, and no matter how many people there have been in the world - from Adam until that day, everyone will rise from the earth, everyone will be raptured, and Christ will appear in such glory that the moon, the sun, and every light will be hidden in this brilliance. What word will depict that bliss, that splendor and glory? My poor soul! Even now I have to cry and sigh heavily at the thought of what blessings we have lost, what bliss we have been alienated from, precisely alienated (I am talking about myself too), if we do not accomplish something great and amazing. Let no one speak to me here about Gehenna, since to lose such great glory is more painful than any Gehenna, and to be alienated from this lot is worse than countless punishments. But, however, we still strive for the present and do not think about the machinations of the devil, who takes more from us for little, gives us dirt in order to steal gold or, more correctly, heaven; shows the shadow to drive us away from the truth and deceives us with dreams (this is real wealth), so that when that day comes we will be the poorest of all (11). You might be interested in: