Life After Death (Part 3) – Resurrection: David Pawson (Transcript)

The Scripture tells us that the first man, Adam, was given a natural human body, but Christ is more than that, for He was life-giving Spirit. First then we have these human bodies, and later on God gives us spiritual bodies. Adam was made from the dust of the earth, but Christ came from heaven above. Every human being has a body just like Adam’s, made of dust. But all who become Christ’s will have the same kind of body as His, a body from heaven. Just as each of us now has a body like Adam’s, so we shall someday have a body like Christ’s.

I tell you this my brothers, an earthly body made of flesh and blood cannot get into God’s kingdom. These perishable bodies of ours are not the right kind to live forever. But I’m telling you a strange and wonderful secret: we shall not all die, but we shall all be given new bodies. It will all happen in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, when the trumpet is blown.

There will be a trumpet blast from the sky, and all the Christians who have died will suddenly become alive with new bodies that will never, never die. And then we who are still alive shall suddenly have new bodies too. For our earthly bodies, the ones we have now that can die, must be transformed into heavenly bodies that cannot perish, but will live forever.

And when this happens, then at last the Scripture will come true: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where then your victory? Where then your sting?’ For sin, the sting that causes death, will all be gone, and the law which reveals our sins will no longer be our judge. How we thank God for all of this.

Let us pray.

O God, our loving Heavenly Father, we pray that You will stretch our imagination this morning. We find it so difficult to think of things of which we have not yet had any experience. We find it difficult to imagine a life with a new body. We would have found it just as difficult to think of this one before we were born. And we ask that by faith we may see the unseen, and be sure of the future as we are of the past and the present. And we ask that You will help each one of us to listen to Your word with a mind that is quite free from prejudice, a mind that is open to anything You have to say, a mind that is ready to believe what is the truth. Grant that we may love You with all our minds, that we may be ready to think hard, to think deeply, but we pray that all our thoughts may be brought into captivity to Jesus Christ. And this we ask in His name and for His sake. Amen.

On Sunday mornings we are not only speaking about the word of God, we are talking to people who have had to work this out in their daily life and think about it. And this morning I am going to talk to someone well known to many of you, better known than I am to many of you. Matt, as most of you know him, Mr. Ernest Matthews, has been a member of this church for how long?

Ernest Matthews: Since 1938.

David Pawson: They want to hear what you say, not what I say, so you stand right in the front.

Ernest Matthews: How do you know they want to hear it?

David Pawson: Well, they can tell me afterwards. Matt, your work is a physiotherapist. Could you sum that up in a few sentences? Tell us what it involves.

Ernest Matthews: Well, most of the people I think here know my stock definition of this, that it’s halfway between an all-in wrestler and a vet. But physiotherapy as such means the healing of things by physical means. And that means that largely one is dealing with what you might call the mechanics of the body, its construction, the way it’s made, the way these things get out of order, largely through muscles, joints, nerves, ligaments, sometimes other bits as well we deal with, lungs and even digestive organs occasionally, but it’s largely the mechanics of the body with which we deal.

Unlike surgeons who in these days particularly are able to put in new bits, or at least part used ones, chop soil a bit perhaps, we have to just patch up the bits of the left and make the best of what you’ve got.

David Pawson: Even so, Matt, you must have come to some similar conclusions to the Psalmist who said, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Have you come to the conclusion that the body is about the most wonderful machine on earth? Tell us some wonderful things about the body you’ve discovered.

Ernest Matthews: Well, the body itself is a simply marvellous piece of machinery for one thing. The way in which it is, I was going to say used, but I think perhaps it’d be better or more accurate to say the way in which it’s abused for one thing is something which you would never do to a piece of machinery at home. If we did the things to the motor cars and refrigerators for which we have guarantees nowadays, the same sort of treatment that we give our bodies, I don’t think any maker would ever say that he was bound by the guarantee that he gave.

We over-tire them, we over-strain them, we over-feed them, we do everything that we can almost to damage them very often, and from the point of view of the magnificence of them, the accuracy of the functions that they perform. I don’t know whether you’ve ever even thought just about walking along the street, how you put one foot in front of the other is an absolutely automatic thing.

The number of things that have to work in order to do that. Somebody once worked out, I remember, when I was listening to lectures in hospital, that a movement of one’s little finger made every muscle in the body readjust itself, and this is the way in which it’s made. It’s certainly fearfully and wonderfully made.

How much you want me to go into the mechanics of it, I don’t know.

David Pawson: Well, we could spend some hours on this. There are those who say that this body, wonderful as it is, is the result of chance, it’s just the result of atoms behaving in mutation by sheer chance. Could you believe this?

Ernest Matthews: No, I’ve never found that this is a theory which is completely true. I think there are some ways in which adaptions take place to environment, and I think this, in a way, has given rise to sometimes a theory which is just about as full of holes as a fishing net. There are many, many things which cannot be explained in that way.

One of the things, of course, is this, where the animal is very wise. I remember once we had a dog, and somebody always used to catch food from the table, and somebody threw him a pickled onion. Now, that dog never caught anything from that person again. He always let it fall on the ground first and sniff it. The human is much less wise. We make the same mistakes over and over again.

David Pawson: Well, now, let’s come to another feature of the body. Both your body and my body are wearing out. They last us maybe 70, 80, even 90 or 100 years, but there is this sad fact that this body doesn’t last forever, even though it’s better than a car and a fridge. The way we treat it, it doesn’t last forever.

It’s been a mystery to many people as to why the body can’t go on replacing itself and just go on living. Have you had any thoughts about the body wearing out?

Ernest Matthews: Yes, I know that this is a mystery. The mechanics of this, to some extent, is a mystery to the scientists and the physiologists. You see, the body is made so that almost immediately it’s formed, it begins to die. Cells die, but there are mechanics for the replacement. There’s a sort of service station which constantly replaces every part of the body. The skin that we rub off every time we touch anything, every time a policeman takes your fingerprints, he takes your fingerprints by leaving some of your skin on the paper, every time that this happens, it’s replaced, and this goes right through the body.

But for some reason or other, this mechanism gradually fails. I myself feel that this is due to something disturbing the perfect balance that was originally intended here. I think if the balance could be maintained, the body could go on forever. But either through our own weakness, our own abuse, we disturb this balance, or sometimes I think obviously by heredity sometimes it’s disturbed, or in other ways by the environment in which we live. Some people who live in too much sunshine, some people who live in too much cold, these things can disturb the balance.

But it’s an interesting thing, isn’t it, that in the first part of Genesis, the bodies of the people there lived for a thousand years. In other words, were they nearer the time of complete balance? Genesis 11, I think, is in about six or seven generations. The longevity of the body falls from about six or seven hundred years down to about a hundred and twenty. But it’s only in one family, incidentally. It’s not over the whole human race.

David Pawson: This confirms the scientist who said recently that there is no scientific reason why a person should die. They still cannot figure this out.

Now, let’s get on to the subject for this morning, Matt, the new body we’re going to have. As you find this an exciting thought, do you think about it much? Do you think you’ll be a physiotherapist in heaven?

Ernest Matthews: Well, this hinges people a little bit of sadness, you see. I’m going to have to learn a new way. And so it is that they are you.

David Pawson: That’s good. Let’s go a little further with this, Matt. All of us have handicaps of one kind or another. You have one with your sight, others have hearing, and there are limitations we all have here. Do you find yourself looking forward to a body free from this?

Ernest Matthews: Well, because the passage which you read this morning from Paul is one of the great passages that I suppose most of us have looked at in this. The idea of perfection, the absence of pain, the absence of weariness, but much more than that, the abilities that this body is going to give us. There’s going to be no imperfections, there are going to be no handicaps, there are going to be no limitations on movement. As far as one can understand, we’re told that our body will be like Christ’s, His that was able to go through material, His that was able to go off up to heaven without any problem at all. The mobility of this is going to be terrific.

But of course, for those of us I think who have experienced in life the loss of something, I will say that you never know the value of anything until you’ve lost something. We take so much for granted.

But I remember I saw a man on this Thursday when I was in London at the Royal National Institute for the Blind, and he and I first met at college. One of the things he said to me was this, he was born blind, and one of the things he said to me was one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever heard. Do you realise that the first person that I shall ever see will be Jesus Christ? And this perhaps gives a sort of colour to the extent of the thought of this wonderful situation that’s going to pertain.

David Pawson: Yes, well that’s a thought to leave everybody with if they get nothing else.

I’d like to change to a quite different line now, Matt. Not only are you a physiotherapist, you’re in the telephone Samaritans. I’m not going to publicise that because you like to do your work anonymously, but nevertheless you are contacted by people who feel that the only way out of their problems is to kill the body. What leads a person to such a desperate decision?

Ernest Matthews: Well, it’s very extraordinary. Last night I was talking to someone and we were talking about this very matter. And they said to me, look, if life beyond is going to be so much better than here, why is it that people, everybody they said, tends to cling to the life that we’ve got so hard? They try and keep their life. Why aren’t they prepared to let it go?

I said, well as a matter of fact I spend a bit of my time trying to persuade people to cling to this life and not to throw it away. But the curious thing is that the people who are also anxious to throw their life away are the people who have put all their faith in this life, in the enjoyments, the riches of this life. These are the people who come to the point where they say, the thing isn’t what I thought it was going to be, it isn’t what I wanted, and so I’m going to get out of it.

It’s a curious thing that the people who base the whole of their life on what they get from this life, when they find it isn’t what they wanted or what they thought it was going to be, these are the people who tend to get into such a depressed state that they feel that life is no longer worth having, and they’re prepared to get rid of it.

And of course, we would say, they’re not escaping from anything.

David Pawson: In fact, a belief in something afterwards could be the best thing that could help them to see this life in perspective.

Ernest Matthews: Well, I think this is true. So often one finds that the people with a convinced faith concerning the afterlife seem to find the reason and the purpose for their living in this one.

David Pawson: Yes, which is a good note to close on. Thank you very much indeed, Matt, I think there’s a seat down the side there.

Well now, I want to take that much further and take it through the Bible now.

Last Sunday we talked about WHAT HAPPENS TO A MAN WHEN HE DIES, and we said that death is essentially the separation of the body from the spirit.

And the question comes, WHAT HAPPENS TO BODY AND SPIRIT?

Now some people say in one word extinction, both body and spirit cease to be. Indeed, they might even go on to say that there is no such thing as the spirit at all. Like the man who dissected a human body to its last atom and said, I couldn’t find a soul anywhere. He was just about as silly as a man who would take an organ to pieces to find the music.

Nevertheless, this is one answer that some people give extinction, body and spirit finish. There is the answer we call immortality. And this says that while the body finishes, the spirit goes on set free from the body. And the study of the death of Socrates is quite an amazing thing. He took the hemlock, the poison, he was sentenced to death but given the choice as a free citizen of committing suicide. And as he drank the poison, he gathered his disciples around him, spoke to them peacefully, happily about the joys of the spirit set free from a body and died in complete peace. And I’ve heard someone say that Socrates died in a much better frame of mind than Jesus.

Now if Socrates was right in what he said, then this is true. And Jesus should not have shrank from what lay ahead as He did in Gethsemane but what Socrates said is not true. The soul apart from the body is not thereby freer.

The third answer that is given is the answer we call reincarnation which means that the spirit will come back in someone else’s body or in another body on earth. The Buddhists believe this and others have accepted the idea of reincarnation. Even some church ministers in this country have toyed with it.

But the answer the Christian gives is the answer of resurrection. That one day the body and spirit will be reunited and that will mean perfect freedom. And this is what we look forward to and every time we state our faith we say I believe in the resurrection of the body, body and spirit coming together one day.

We talked about the interval between death and resurrection last Sunday. Let’s talk about the actual RESURRECTION. The idea is ridiculous to many people. It was in our Lord’s day. There was a group of people called the Sadducees who just could not accept this idea. And as I’ve told you before that is why they were sad, you see and you’ll remember their name this way.

They could not believe that one day the body would rise again and be reunited with the spirit and they tried to trip Jesus up with the kind of question if a woman had seven husbands in this world each one of whom died one after the other what’s going to happen in the next, there’s going to be an almighty family quarrel. And Jesus had to tell them quite simply as He did the children — and these are His words: the children of the resurrection are not like that and He used the word resurrection in His reply.

The Greeks didn’t like this idea at all and I have stood on the Areopagus Mars Hill where Paul spoke to the Greek philosophers and they listened to him right up to a certain point. They listened to his ideas about God, about judgment, about human life, about conscience. They listened to all that and accepted it and then he used one word that made them laugh. He used the word resurrection. They believed in the immortality of the soul and the idea of a body coming back to life was so ridiculous that they began to mock and laugh.

So the Greeks couldn’t take it any more than the Sadducees. Today there are scientists and philosophers who feel that the idea of the resurrection must be discarded if Christianity is to remain a viable option for 20th century minds. On the one hand they say it’s too materialistic, it makes heaven a place but then that’s what Jesus made it; it makes the afterlife too much like this one and then if God makes it like that, who are we to quarrel?

But the main reason why they can’t accept it is it makes it too miraculous. And people say well how could God gather together the cells even of a buried person never mind a cremated person? And of course they are limiting God’s almighty power when they ask that kind of question.

There is one fact on which we base our belief that one day we’ll have a new body, and it is a fact which examined historically even scientifically according to the laws of the examination of the past stands up as an established fact, namely that Jesus rose from the dead.

I’d gladly jump out of this pulpit at this moment. We have with us Professor J. N. D. Anderson this morning who has written books and lectured on this I think in many places and he ought to be here talking about the resurrection of Jesus but he’s going to be at the university at 8.15 tonight and you can hear him then.

The evidence for the resurrection is better than for most, if not all, events of history 2,000 years ago. Anybody who will examine it with an open mind ought to come to the right conclusion. It is because the Christian is convinced that Christ rose from the dead with a body and was able to say I am not a ghost – ‘I am not a spirit, a spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones, give me some fish to eat, cooking breakfast for them on the seashore.’ It’s because of that that we dare to believe in the resurrection of the body.

He was buried — His spirit and body were separated for three days and three nights, but what happened on the first Easter Sunday proves that the two can be brought together again by God Almighty.

‘Because I live’ — He said the day before He died: ‘Because I live you shall live also.’ (John 14:19) This is not an isolated event, it’s the first of many.

Now one day Paul was on trial for his life before a man called Felix, and he told this man the one thing that puts me in this dock is ‘my hope of the resurrection of the just and the unjust.’ (Acts 24:15) And in fact he was perfectly right because the Sadducees had put him there.

And this was the one thing, because Paul knew perfectly well and he’s written it down for us that this is the kingpin of our faith: ‘if Christ didn’t rise we might as well close this church.’ We certainly couldn’t talk about these things in as happy a way as we do. And I think you must have sensed Matt’s happiness in looking forward to all that the future holds. We couldn’t talk like that if Jesus is still dead, if He was the greatest man who ever lived and like every other great man died too.

Now I want to speak about two things this morning: The RESURRECTION OF THE JUST and The Resurrection Of The Unjust. Once again you cannot escape the fact that whatever the Bible says about the life after death, it always divides it into two. It doesn’t matter where you look in Scripture, there is this profound distinction in everything it says about the future. Ultimately leading to the biggest distinction of all heaven and hell.

But from the very beginning there is this gulf — from the very beginning there are two and only two groups thought of in the Bible. And whenever the resurrection of the body is mentioned, two groups are mentioned, the just and the unjust. Now let’s look at these two groups and ask what it says about them.

First of all THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST.

Who are the just? The answer is those accepted by God, as being worthy of heaven, of living with Him forever. Those who are in God’s good books. That’s putting it very simply. The Bible uses a rather big word at this point, the word justified or justification. I felt that the Pidgin English version of the Bible translates that beautifully. You know there’s a Pidgin English, did you? Translated for many areas in the world where Pidgin English is spoken.

And in place of the word justified, which is a thoroughly Latinized word, and not even Englishmen understand it anyway. In place of that word, in place of justified it says, God [indiscernible] alright. Now that’s tremendous. That’s what justified means. And the just are those of whom God says, he’s alright, she’s alright.

Now how could you possibly enter such a category? How could you get into such a book? How could you possibly be just before God?

Well there are two ways. The first way is to be perfect. That’s one way. And if you live a perfect life and do everything that’s good from the year dot to the year dot, if you do everything you should and nothing that you shouldn’t, if you live a perfect life, you are just in God’s sight.

Now if that were the only way to be just in God’s sight, that allows one person into heaven and one only, Jesus. The only Man of whom God could ever say, you are just.

But the amazing thing is that the Bible puts millions of others in the same category. Not because they are perfect, but because they have been pardoned, forgiven. Because they have voluntarily asked that their case be taken in this life rather than the next. Because they’ve asked that God bring the judgment into the present and for the sake of Jesus Christ forgive them their sins.

And according to my Bible, the moment a man does that, his case is taken not in the last day but right now. And God takes the case and says, just, justified, in My sight alright. And that’s what forgiveness is. And any man who asks for it is just in God’s sight.

Therefore this category of the just includes not only Jesus who is perfect, but everyone else who for His sake was pardoned. And therefore it’s a mighty big company and one day there is to be a resurrection of the just.

Two questions occur, when, how.

WHEN WILL THIS HAPPEN? Now again the Bible is crystal clear, there is no need for any doubt on this point. Though there are some points, even in this subject, that are doubtful. But there’s one crystal clear point here and that is, when Jesus comes again.

Now you knew that, didn’t you? You knew that the next great event in world history is the return of Jesus to earth. Not the day men stand on the moon, not the day of the fourth or fifth world war. The next great day in world history is the day Jesus comes back. Every Christian is looking for that. And that’s why this event is linked so closely in Scripture with the resurrection of the just.

Here is a typical statement. We look for the Lord Jesus who will change our vile body that it may be fashioned anew according to His glorious body. In other words we’re waiting for Him to come because when He comes this will happen. The just will rise.

There are many Scriptures one could point to here. Here is another 1 Corinthians 15, that we read but I didn’t read this part of it. It says that Christ rose first, then at His coming those who are His, those who are Christ’s.

So once again the two events are linked. 1 Thessalonians 4 does the same thing. The Lord Himself would descend from heaven and the dead in Christ shall rise, meeting each other. Even before Christ’s feet touch the earth the dead will be with Him.

Now here are so many passages that were left in no doubt as to the when. When Jesus comes back and His return will be the same Jesus who went. His return will be in the same manner as He ascended in the clouds He will come in the clouds. And the angels on the day of ascension said it will happen just the same way in the reverse order. As He went He will come and yet so different.

Particularly will His second visit to earth be completely different from His first. When He came first He came as a humble baby that very few realized was even a king. When He came first there was a tiny little pinpoint of light in the sky, a star as a symbol of His coming. When He comes again the whole world will know who’s come. And the symbol described in Scripture is not so much a pinpoint of light. But Jesus said when I come again it will be like lightning from east to west. It will be very different, the same Jesus and yet different. The same manner and yet a different manner, the same and yet different.

And I want to convey to you that with our Lord’s second coming you’ve got to use the terms the same and yet different. Because now when I ask the question how will we rise? The answer must be the same, the same and yet different. A body related to this one and yet a body different from it.

Now let’s get down to practical things. WHAT SORT OF A BODY?

It will be related to this one and there are many ways in which we can say straight away that our experience is that we already know what it is for one body to change into another.

Matt has mentioned and I think it is scientifically true, correct me if I’m not completely accurate here. I have heard it said that the body changes all its cells every seven years or over seven years. The whole body has had a refit. Whether some parts of us remain or not I don’t know. But the cells are being replaced roughly every seven years in normal healthy life.

So here already on earth I haven’t got the body I was born with. I’ve been changing it from one into another. So the idea of the body changing into another is not completely unknown to us. Young bodies change to old bodies.

Furthermore if you’ve done any biology you must know the mystery of the caterpillar and the butterfly. Three changes of body through the chrysalis in between. Each body quite a different appearance from the other yet one has led to the second and the second to the third. And we don’t think this is extraordinary. Yet it’s been a change of body. So we already know these things in our ordinary life.

Above all in your garden as Paul says you’ve got the answer. Take a seed, a potato, plant it in your soil. It will rot, it will go back to the dust and if you dig it up in a few months time it might just be a little husk left. But the amazing thing is that one day in some months time you will dig up that soil and you will find another body and another and another. Very like the original one you planted in the earth and yet not that original one. A body that has come from it and yet the other one has died and gone back to the dust.

So in your own back garden you have at least one similar event of something being buried in the ground going back to the dust and yet from it a new body coming. So we really should have no excuse for saying this is quite out of my imagination.

And at a funeral service when we bury the mortal remains of someone we’ve loved I often think we’re just planting something in the garden. We expect a body to come from that. Like it, yet not the same body. In some way related to it beyond our understanding and yet a new one.

IN WHAT WAY WILL IT BE DIFFERENT? It is to be changed in some way. In a wonderful passage in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul gives us four. Some of you are looking a bit warm. Are you getting a bit too hot? Put your hand up if you’re a little close. The heating is on. You’re alright. Well if you’re not we can always put extractive hands on. So wave your hand if you’re feeling a bit stuffy.

As Matt says we don’t want you rushing into the next body. God still has something for you to do here.

Well now there are four ways in which Paul says the new body will be different from the one I’m using to speak to you this morning. Here they are.

First of all this body which I use now is a body of corruption. The new one will be a body of incorruption. Now let those words sink in. They’re again Latinized words, a bit long, a bit polysyllable. But nevertheless let’s look at what it means.

Matt pinched one sentence from my sermon. And that is that the moment you’re born you begin to die. This is a fact. I’m speaking as a dying man to dying people. I don’t mean we’ve all been to the doctor and had some bad news. I mean the simple fact is when I was born I began to die. My cells began to die straight away. We become more and more aware of this. Our teeth, our hair, our bones. Hair goes thinner, teeth begin to decay, bones begin to get more brittle.

We know perfectly well that we are in a body that is decaying. And it’s foolish to deny this to oneself or to anyone else. Shakespeare’s men, sans teeth, sans hair, sans everything is the man we see in the mirror.

To look forward to a body that will not age. That will not grow weaker, that will not decay. A body that there will not have to be this constant battle to overcome the decay that is setting in. A dentist is just spending his life fighting that battle. And because we don’t like to face the battle, either with decay or with the dentist, we keep it out of our minds as much as we can. But he’s fighting it.

So is the physiotherapist, so is the surgeon. We’re fighting it. There’ll be no such thing in heaven. We shall all have new professions. We shall all have to develop some new gifts. We shall all have to find some new service. But if the next world is anything like as interesting as this, and the Bible indicates that it’s more interesting, there’ll be even more wonderful things to do there than here.

It’s a new heaven and a new earth, incidentally. And the earth will be a wonderful place as well as heaven. The whole universe knew there’ll be plenty to do, but not the medical profession.

Now the second is this is a body of dishonor. That will be a body of glory. I remember visiting a dear saint in hospital who had to have so much done for him now. He was almost like a child and everything had to be done for him. And he turned to me and he said, ‘You know, I understand the phrase now, this body of our humiliation. Oh, he said, it hurts my pride. He said, it does hurt my pride to have to let others do things for me now.

This body of dishonor, a body that bears in itself the marks of our sin in some way or another. Every person over 40 is responsible for their faith. This body of ours which shows the marks of what we’ve been through. This body of ours, it’s a body of dishonor.

But the body of glory, the body of glory, it will be a body like Jesus. It will be a body like His body on the Mount of Transfiguration, which was so glorious they could hardly bear to look at it. We are to be like Him, a body of glory.

Now the third contrast, Paul says, is that this is a body of weakness. That will be a body of power. We’re very conscious of our weakness until we get to our prime and then we think we can do anything and we don’t need any help, thank you. And then that’s soon over and we begin to need help again.

We are weak and even at our very prime we are weak. We cannot do the things we want to do. Even youths shall faint and be weary, much less older ones and little ones. We are weak. There are physical limitations at both ends of life.

But then a body of power. I get the impression from the resurrection stories that Jesus had the power to do anything He wanted. As has been mentioned, the power to travel through space. No man has been in space yet except Jesus. Every other man has had to live in earth when He went up there. But Jesus had the power over His body to be free to travel. Locked doors meant nothing to Him. Body of power. We shall have this mobile body of power in its prime.

The fourth contrast is one is a physical natural body, the other is a spiritual body. That does not mean that this is a vague soul floating on in a night dress that you can’t get hold of. It doesn’t mean that. It means that this body came to me from the flesh. It came to me from the earth. It goes back to where it came from. It is a body that ties me down to this existence.

The body I have there is a body from above, not below. The evolutionists who feel that the only possible source of the body is a long process of evolution are going to be staggered in that day when a body is given to us from above. It’s the difference between coming from below and coming from above. Every skyscraper that man builds has to be built up from below. We look for a city whose builder and maker is God, the New Jerusalem coming down. It’s the difference between the way a Christian and an unbeliever thinks. The unbeliever thinks everything has to come up from earth. The believer says no. The things that really are worth having come down from heaven, including our new body.

So the first is a body that came from below and goes back. The second is a body given from above that fits me for the realms above. A spiritual body means a body that is free to move wherever the Spirit wants to move. That’s what’s meant.

And as I have borne the image of Adam, I shall bear the image of Christ. One little note here for those who are still alive when the Lord Jesus comes back. If this includes any of us, we’re going to have the great thrill of never dying. I find that exciting. Paul hoped that he would be alive to see it, but he was disappointed. Every generation of Christians hopes for this. We shall not all die, some of us will, but some will still be alive when this day of resurrection comes.

What happens to those who are still alive?

Well, they’ll need new bodies, their old ones can’t inherit the kingdom. So I tell you a mystery. We shall not all die, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye. The dead will be raised incorruptible, and we who are still alive shall be changed. And you’ve heard that sung in Handel’s Messiah so often. Did you believe it?

It’s going to be the noisiest day in history. The archangels are going to be shouting, the trumpet’s going to be blowing, and with a loud cry Jesus will descend, and it will be loud enough for the dead to hear. We talk about being so loud you could wake the dead. We can’t, but Jesus can and will.

And so we have this tremendous thought of two groups of people. I have the feeling that in a verse that is read at most funeral services, these two groups of people are mentioned. Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he die, (there’s number one group) yet shall he live. But he who lives and believes in Me shall never die. It seems to me there’s the other group. The quick and the dead, as the prayer book refers to them.

Here we have the two groups. Those who die believing in Jesus shall live. Those who are still living believing in Him shall never die. But we’ll all be caught up together. What a wonderful thought. What a meeting. That’ll be the biggest Christian rally you ever attended.

But I must come now to the other and more solemn side of the picture.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE UNJUST

It is quite clear in scripture that everybody will rise from the dead. Quite clear. The unjust are those not accepted by God, which in simple language means those who are not perfect, and are not pardoned. These are the unjust.

I’ll say more about this next Sunday morning. But let us look now first at two questions. When will they rise the unjust and how will they rise?

First of all, when? Many have assumed that it is the same time as the just. After a very careful study of Scripture, I can only say quite frankly, though I would respect other views, that my examination leads me to believe that it will not be at the same time. There is first of all, all our Lord’s teaching about one being taken and the other left, which has to be reckoned with and taken into account. And that thought has led many a husband to Christ when he realizes that his wife will be taken and he may be left.

But there are many other things. There is this unusual phrase used every time the resurrection of the just is mentioned, the phrase resurrection out from among the dead, which is used of the Christian as something that will make him different from the others.

There is furthermore the statement in 1 Corinthians 15 that the resurrection takes place in three steps. Christ the first, then at His coming those who are His, and then stage number three, the end. And it’s quite clear from a reading of Scripture that the unjust rise at the end.

Furthermore, there is the fact that when the just rise, there is no passage which mentions the unjust rising at the same time. And when we come to the final book in the Bible, there is the clearest statement of all, which talks unequivocally of the first and the second resurrection, and says ‘happy are those who share in the first.’ (Revelation 20:6)

So I take it that while resurrection is a fact for everybody, that the unjust will be well behind the just in this. I won’t go into any more details now.

The other question, how?

If the just receive a body that reflects the glory of their real life in Christ, I can only assume that the unjust will be given a body that reflects the real state of their sinful, selfish character. I find that a most frightening thought.

Already in this life, the older we are, the more our real character shows in our body. And if we take it that in the saint the beauty of Christ begins to show, in the sinner the horror of Satan begins to show.

And if the resurrection of the just brings the beauty of the saint to its perfection, it would seem to me that the resurrection of the unjust could bring the ugliness of sin to its logical conclusion.

I think this may be what may be referred to in the Bible, where it says that the unjust rise to shame and everlasting contempt. (Daniel 12:2)

My conclusion is this, Why Do We Rise From The Dead?

The answer is very simple, to make judgment possible, both of reward and of punishment. To that we address ourselves next Sunday morning. Let Jesus himself have the last word on the subject today.

Here are His own words from John’s gospel: ‘For the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the grave shall hear the Son of man’s voice, and shall come forth.’ (John 5:28)

For Further Reading:

Life After Death (Part 2) – Between Death and Resurrection: David Pawson (Transcript)

Life After Death (Part 1) – Death: David Pawson (Transcript)

Where Did The Bible Come From and Why Should We Care: Tim Mackie (Transcript)

The Cross In My Life (Part 1): Derek Prince Sermon (Transcript)

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