Church of God, New World Ministries

If You Die, Will You Live Again?

You recall how man in great physical danger fights for his life! He exerts almost superhuman strength to save himself and does not give up until all of his strength is gone.

But what about death? It is the opposite of life. It takes away this very mortal life that you would defend with all your strength. All people down through the ages have had to die, but this is not a satisfying answer when you yourself have to face it.

Is death the end of everything? Just what is the chance of your coming back to life, of living again? Your only hope of living again is by a resurrection. But what is your assurance, if any, of such an occurrence?

Where can you look for such assurance? You can look to the Bible! It will give you the answers to those important life and death questions that no human mind can give! It is the revealed Word of God.

PREDICTED FAR IN ADVANCE

As usual, with great events, God has made the resurrection known for hundreds of years in advance! Job, fifteen hundred years before Christ, said: “Though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh will I see God” (Job 19:26). King David said: “God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me” (Ps. 49: 15). These two were speaking of their own future resurrection to immortality.

Isaiah 700 years before Christ, prophesied Christ’s resurrection; for in Isa. 26:19 he says: “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise.” Also, David says of Christ’s resurrection, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell (the grave); neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy one to see corruption” (Ps. 16:10). All these resurrections are resurrections to immortality!

Daniel about 500 B.C., has foretold that there is going to be, in the future, a resurrection which can also be followed by a sentencing to eternal death, to everlasting contempt. “And at that time shall Michael stand up, and many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12: 1-2). But even before Isaiah and Daniel prophesied the resurrection of Christ, in fact practically at the very time God formed man, God, referring to Christ’s coming said, “I will put enmity between thee (the serpent) and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it (the seed) shall bruise thy (Satan’s) head” (Gen. 3:15). Satan deceived Eve into eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:6), the penalty of which was death (verse 3). Had Adam and Eve not eaten of this tree, they would likely have eaten of the tree of life (Gen. 2:9) and they and we could have lived forever. A just God made it possible that through woman’s seed, Christ (Christ had no earthly father) all mankind could again have a chance to eternal life through a resurrection from death ( I Tim. 2:14, and Isaiah 7:14). Romans 5:10 says “If we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, we shall be saved by his life.”

Do you get the significance of this? We are saved, “by his (Christ’s) life.” The Holy Spirit! Christ had this by being begotten of it. (Ps. 2:7; Matthew 1:20). We who repent and are baptized receive it as a gift (Acts 2:38)! We were not born with an immortal soul. Now we are beginning to see why Christ’s resurrection was as important and the shedding of his blood for the forgiveness of our past sins! It means that if the same life (Holy Spirit) is in US that was in Christ, God can and will resurrect us to IMMORTALITY; for Romans 8:11 says: “If the Spirit (the Holy Spirit) of him (God the Father) that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit (Holy Spirit) that dwells in you.”

No wonder the resurrection of Jesus was such as important event to the whole earth! It was to prove that the Holy Spirit within a person would cause a resurrection to immortality after death!

The modern preachers of today do not grasp the fact that the whole Bible deals with one subject only, the formation of the Kingdom of God!

It can also be called the family of God. It will be a family of Spirit

Beings with God the Father as the head; Christ will be the eldest son, and those who are finally saved at the resurrection will be the other sons. (See parables on Kingdom of God, Matt. 13 & Mark4).

The resurrection to immortality represents the vital transition from this mortal body, by being“born again” into the Kingdom of God! “Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

With such a close-knit message as this to tell, can any person say the Old Testament is done away, or say that Paul’s writings should be left out or only preach from section here and there? The entire Bible is one Compact Unit and drives hard toward the subject it has to reveal, once it is properly understood!

As we go on now to study the various resurrections, let us keep in mind how the Mastermind, God the Father, reveals His Plan to us. It will build our Faith in the resurrection! We will know that we are in a world that is running according to a preconceived definite plan!

From the time Adam and Eve sinned, God foretold the coming of one who would again give man an opportunity to immortal life, and foretold of his descent through Abraham. He who was to give us the opportunity of a resurrection to eternal life, was Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ was to bruise the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15); his origin to be through Abraham (Gen. 12:3); and to be through Judah branch of Abraham (Gen. 49:10); and the Pharez branch of Judah (Gen. 38:28-30).

David foretold Jesus’ resurrection about 1,000 years B.C. (Ps. 16:10), and Isaiah about 700 years B.C. (Isaiah 7:14 and 26:19) Christ himself foretold that his resurrection would occur the third day, 72 hours (Not less than 2 days, 36 hours, as the churches teach today) and it happened in exactly 72 hours!

Now, let us look back over these happenings, a sequence of events, prophesied well in advance, and extending over a period of four thousand years and always fulfilled! Should not this inspire your confidence in the One, the Supreme God, who saw that these events were prophesied, and saw that they always came to pass? Whatever God says by His Holy Word, the Bible, will be done! The resurrection of Christ was an entirely different type of event than has ever happened on this earth before or since. The pagans had taught about immortal souls and that people returned to life after death in various other forms ( reincarnations), but they could never produce proof. Christ, before his death, raised many of the dead back to life to fill out their natural life span, (Matt. 9:24-25; Matt. 10:8, Luke 7:15 John 11:44)

These resurrections were all, only for a short return to a physical life and were of no great importance except to the ones involved!

But on Christ’s resurrection depends the resurrection and eternal life of all of us; for in I Cor. 15:17-18 says, “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.” Doomed to eternal death!

Do you understand it? Had Christ been an ordinary mortal man without the Spirit of God, he would have sinned sometime during his life and could not have paid our debt for sin! “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Eternal death! His sin would have taken his own life and God would not have resurrected him! He would have had no life left to pay for our sins, we could not expect to be resurrected to eternal life!

It took on unusual human being to go through life without sinning. He was known as the “Messiah” (John 1:41), the “Anointed One” who was to come to redeem the people. He was begotten of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35), the power which strenghthened him against temptation from birth! ( Corth. 15:17) says: “If Christ be not raised your faith is in vain.”

Suppose Christ had died but set no times as to when he would be resurrected and suppose further, that after a year or so his body disappeared, You and I would have no evidence whatever that we would ever be resurrected and become immortal! His body might only have been stolen. But Christ has given us the evidence! When the Scribes and Pharisees asked Christs for a sign (of his being the Messiah) he said he would be three days and nights in the grave (Matt. 12:40), not one and a half days as the churches today teach and believe, but three! By this teaching of a day and half the devil is trying to take our very evidence of a salvation hope away from us.

Jesus Christ rose the third day! He was put to death late Wednesday afternoon and arose late Sabbath (Saturday) afternoon. (Look for a future article: The resurrection was not on Sunday)

The thing that confuses people is that they mistake the Sabbath that is mentioned as drawing on in Luke 23:54 for a weekly Sabbath whereas it was actually an annual Sabbath, which happened to fall on Thursday in A.D. 31. After this came their weekly Sabbath on Saturday. Between these days the women bought and prepared spices (Mark 16:1).

God has seen to it that these two world important events, the death and resurrection have been well witnessed! Christ’s healing and miracles had attracted a large following. People were interested in him wherever he went. On the day of His death a large multitude was present. (Matt. 27:24). Mary (Jesus’ mother) and the other two Marys and John were present (John 19:25-26) also.

As Christ said he would rise the third day the chief priests and Pharisees took great precautions to see that his body did not disappear by being stolen by the disciples, so a guard was set and a great stone was rolled over the sepulcre entrance (Matt. 27:63-66). Christ’s body did disappear though! (John 20:19). He had been resurrected from the dead the third day and Mary Magdalene (John 20:14), the disciples (John 20:19), and after that about 500 people saw him at one time! ( I Corth. 15:6). Fifty days later in Jerusalem a large number gathered from all over the world to observe Pentecost and await the coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts. 2:2).

From this point, the news “of the resurrection was spread by the apostles” (Acts 4:2), and their converts. Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, says that the resurrection is one of the best authenticated facts in all history. Also Gibbon says, “it is no wonder that so advantageous an offer (resurrection and eternal life), should have been accepted by great numbers of every religion.”

The world was convinced of this resurrection to a different type of being! To immortal life in the Family of God. You have probably been taught that you have been born with an immortal soul which goes immediately to heaven, purgatory or hell when you die. This is not true! Your Bible does not teach it! “The first man is of the earth, earthy” ( I Corth. 15:47). The same word “Nephesh,” which means flesh, whether of animal or man was translated “creature” in Gen. 1:24 where is was associated with animals, and “soul” in Gen. 2:7 where the Bible speaks of man becoming a living soul!

In other words, both animal and man are composed of one thing, the same thing, mortal, flesh, as born into this world, one has no more an immortal soul inside him than the other! (Ecc. 3:19-20). No one would contend that any beasts are in purgatory or eternal torment.

Another passage, that shows that anyone that dies goes to his grave and is there now, is Act 2:29 which shows that David is now in his grave, “David is both dead and buried, and his sepulcre is with us unto this day.” Notice this; if anyone is in heaven, purgatory or hell where most preachers today say they are, then they are still alive; therefore they could not be resurrected, for the very word resurrection itself implies that those resurrected were dead!

Therefore a resurrection is necessary if a person who once died is brought to life again! How sadly and without reason have the Bible teachings been distorted! We could not attain immortality and God would be defeated in His main purpose of creating man, the creation of a spirit being! But we do have this Hope of a Resurrection!

“. . . There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both the just and the unjust” (Acts 24:15). Paul said this when he was being tried before Felix. Do you grasp the meaning of this? Everyone is going to be resurrected! “The hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment” (John 5:28-29). A resurrection for everyone.

Now you are going to be in for a surprise! You are going to learn of one resurrection that you never heard of before and possibly two or three!

Yet, they are in your Bible. The things that are in the Bible are just not being taught today!

THE FIRST RESURRECTION

The first resurrection of man to immortality that has ever occurred in this world (except Christ’s) will occur when Christ returns at the last trump. I Thessalonians 4:17 describes this: “For the Eternal himself shall descend from heaven with a great shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump (last trump) of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Eternal in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Eternal.” They will go immediately to Jerusalem to start their 1,000 years rule. Read Zechariah 14:4.

This is the resurrection just ahead now! I Corth. 15:51-56 describes this same resurrection and Rev. 11:15 describes the blowing (sounding) of the “last trump” which ushers this period in.

The JUST dead will be raised by the power of God exerted through the medium of Jesus Christ (John 6:44). These are they who have repented (turned from their former ways), been baptized, received the gift of the Holy Spirit, and were overcomers to the end (Acts 2:38 & Rom. 8:11).

This Holy Spirit is a gift that is given only to those who qualify to receive it! This is the nearest thing we ever have in this life to the imaginary immortal soul that people wrongly think everyone is born with. Of this resurrection, Rev. 20:6 says, “Blessed is he that hath part in the “first resurrection” on such the second death (eternal death) hath no power.”

“And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them” (Rev. 20:4). This is the resurrection to the Spirit Form ( I Corth. 15:44) just described. Now notice verse 5, “but the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.” All but the good dead stay dead through the 1,000 years! There are no resurrections in the millennium of those long dead!

A thousand year period follows Christ’s second coming and during this time Christ rules this earth. (Isa. 11, Jere. 31:1-18; Ezk. 36). This one thousand years is the time represented by the Feast of Tabernacles (Lev. 23:34) and Exodus 23:16 in God’s Holy Days. It is a time when God really begins in earnest to save people who live in the end of this age and into the world tomorrow!

ANOTHER RESURRECTION

At the end of the thousand years, during which time Christ has been ruling this earth and the earth has been full of the knowledge of the Eternal, ( a condition that certainly has not been present up to now), there will be another resurrection!

Most of you have been told by the churches ever since you could remember that if anyone is not saved in this present life then he or she is eternally lost!

But what about all those millions and millions of people back there who were born before Christ’s time who never had the chance of salvation because Christ had not yet come to make it available? Remember that your Bible says “if the Spirit (the Holy Spirit) of him (God the Father) that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit (the Holy Spirit) that dwelleth in you.” But the Holy Spirit from the Father was not available to people on the earth until after Christ ascended!

Jesus Christ had to ascend unto heaven first! Christ said in John 16:7 “For if I go not away the Comforter (the Holy Spirit) will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.” The Holy Spirit first came to this earth to be available to all men 50 days after Christ was put to death. It came on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4).

These millions are not lost forever! They never were called to be saved! God is a just God and he has provided a way whereby they can be saved! Also, what about the great number since Christ’s day who have shown very little interest in religion and have died? Are they lost forever? No, because they have never had a chance to salvation. They are blinded. God is not trying to save many now. He has blinded them! Read Romans 11:5,7,8,25; Acts 7:42, Isaiah 28:13, Matthew 13:10-13.

Now notice when God is going to give these people their first chance for Salvation! Note this carefully! You have probably never heard it explained before in its true meaning!

“. . . . . . Ye shall know I am the Eternal, when I have opened your graves and brought you up out of your graves, and shall put my spirit in you and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land” (Ezk. 37:13-14). This is speaking of ancient Israel, a people who had been scattered among the nations almost 150 years before this was written!

When does this take place? It can not take place before Christ returns to this earth at his second coming because that will bring about the first resurrection. It will not take place then but only after one thousand years have elapsed from the time of the first resurrection because as we have already seen only the good will be resurrected then!

Therefore there are only two classes this resurrection can possibly refer to, the evil dead who have knowingly rejected the truth and the dead who never had a chance! The evil dead are those who deliberately decided they did not want to be ruled by God. There is no reason to give them a second chance to attain immortality! They had their chance and turned it down!

Therefore it is the class of people, the vast blinded majority, who never really had a chance to accept God’s way of life, who are resurrected.

Read what Revelation 20:11-12 says about this resurrection: “and I saw a great white throne and I saw the dead, small and great stand before God (these people are standing, a resurrection), and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

It is the GREAT WHITE THRONE JUDGMENT!

Even the worst of the sinners who never had a chance, will be in this resurrection for even the inhabitants of Sodom will be there! “When thy daughters, Sodom and her daughters, shall return to their former estate, and Samaria and her daughters shall return to their former estate, then thou (Jerusalem, refer to Ezk. 37) shall return to your former estate” ( Ezk. 16:55). Isaiah 65:20 indicates all will live to be a hundred years old in this age at this time. God is indeed a just God (Deut. 32:4) and all will have their chance to be saved!

THE FINAL RESURRECTION

Revelation 20:13-15 describes the final resurrection in which the sea, death, and hell (Hades, the grave) give up their dead to be judged! These are they who, after being begotten by God, rebelled, and those who have lived contrary to God’s way of life and have refused to repent, be baptized, and thus receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. These are cast into the lake of fire, which is described in verse 14 as the second death. It is the everlasting death!

WHY SO MANY RESURRECTIONS?

At first glance it seems strange that there are so many resurrections, but let us examine. God the Father is forming a spirit family of his very own from us mortals here on this earth, but he is also seeing to it that we develop into BEINGS OF CHARACTER, beings that can ultimately be trusted with great power that God will give us.

This will take time in order that man may learn that his (man’s) own ways of doing things, guided by his own natural tendencies, are wrong.

And, that he must be guided by God’s laws in all his activities or only wretchedness and death will result! We are just starting to see the terrible end results now of man’s own way of running this earth! God is going to enlarge his Kingdom gradually. An increasing number will be given immortality at each resurrection. Only those who qualify to become a spirit being and are changed into spirit can enter into his kingdom; for I Corth. 15:50 says: “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.”

Matthew 13:31-32 describes the manner of growth of this kingdom: “The kingdom of heaven (or kingdom of God) is like to a grain of mustard seed which is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown, it is the greatest among the herbs, and becometh a tree.”

Only one person has been born into this kingdom so far, this is Jesus Christ. This was done by his resurrection to immortality. (Rom. 8:29 and Col. 1:18). These resurrections to immortality which are to give birth to the rest of the citizens of this spirit kingdom have not started yet, but will start at Christ’s second coming! When these do start, there will be a shorter space between each succeeding resurrection.

These people who are transformed into spirit beings, will be used to govern the mortal beings here on this earth. These spirit beings of the Kingdom will be rulers, priests, and judges. (Rev. 1:6, 20:4, I Corth. 6:2). Ultimately all mortal men must be in this spirit kingdom or cease to exist! All of the Bible does start to make sense once God’s Plan is understood.

No wonder the apostles who were all witnesses to the resurrection of Christ to immortality (Acts 2:32; 3:15) were so joyous that they went diligently up and down the land preaching this hope.

 
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