Most years in the Philippines, about twenty typhoons sweep across the flat, open plains of Central Luzon, destroying everything insecure, especially the many exposed and vulnerable thatched nipa palm huts high on bamboo poles. But those huts fastened to large central tree trunks set deep in the ground are still intact after typhoon seasons are over.
Wrong doctrines blow through churches like typhoons. The apostle Paul called such doctrines “winds” — strong, deceptive influences that threaten the growth to maturity of young, impressionable believers. (Ephesians 4:14) Churches able to withstand these winds are those securely attached to God’s Word — a deep, immovable source of confidence when doctrinal winds blow down others less firmly fixed.
A truth central to the Christian faith is the Resurrection of the Dead. That this is to be a physical resurrection was long ago apparent to Job, who lived in the time of the Book of Genesis. It was Job — pathetic, suffering Job — who, while scraping his painful boils with a piece of broken pottery, made one of the Bible’s greatest faith statements.
“I wish my words were written, that they were inscribed in a book! That they were engraved on a rock with an iron pen and lead forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and he shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:23-27)
Job’s strong faith in a physical resurrection was justified thousands of years later, when Jesus Christ rose from the dead physically. This truth is foundational to the Faith of every Christian who believes that when Jesus returns to this earth, the dead shall be raised physically, as Jesus was. Why?
My first reason for believing in a physical resurrection is that although through baptism we have been raised spiritually, we have been promised a physical resurrection.
By association, all believers were “crucified with Christ” in their death to self-will. We were “made alive together” and then “raised together” with Jesus Christ. (Galatians 2:20) We were then made to “sit together” in heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 2:4-6).
This is heaven’s view of our privileged position. If a Roman captain could seriously declare that he had paid a lot of money for his freedom from slavery and his right to citizenship, we Christians can declare that Jesus Christ bought our freedom from slavery to sin and our right to citizenship in heaven at the cost of his own precious, shed blood. (Acts 22:28)
We have heard the voice of the Son of God and now live free from condemnation. (John 5:25) Yet this spiritual view of our present state is but a foretaste of the future resurrection of our bodies from physical death at Christ’s return.
Our bodies are to be “conformed to His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). Christ’s body is a physical one! The ancient Greek word for resurrection, “anastasis” – found 42 times in the New Testament – refers all but once to a physical resurrection.
The exception is Luke 2:34, where the words “fall and rising again” are used figuratively of those who were to stumble over Christ. In Hebrews 11:35 “anastasis” is translated, “raised to life again” and refers to those in the Bible who were physically restored to life. In this same verse “anastasis” is also used to refer to “a better resurrection” – one to never-ending life rather than this life.
The apostle Paul clearly means the physical resurrection of the body to life when he writes, “He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells in you.” (Romans 8:11) The entire context of this chapter shows clearly that Paul’s subject is the resurrection of the physical body.
Mary, the sister of Lazarus, expected her brother to “rise again in the resurrection at the last day” — to be brought back to life, physically. (John 11:25) The fact that decomposition had already begun — “by this time he stinks” — made the raised, recomposed Lazarus a wonderful sign of the resurrection of the dead at Christ’s return!
The resurrection body is “raised” in incorruption, “raised” in “glory”, and “raised” in power (1 Corinthians 15:42-43). It also is “raised” a spiritual body. This does not mean that it will be only spiritual. If that were so, why would it need to be “raised” at all? The spirits of dead believers are with the Lord already.
The main resurrection “harvest” will be identical to that of Christ – who is the “firstfruits” of the harvest. Our bodies will be material, not immaterial, and able to eat and drink, as Jesus did (Luke 24:42, 43). Christ is also “the Firstborn from among the dead, which indicates that ”all who are raised will have resurrected bodies identical to his glorious body. (1 Corinthians 15:20, 23; Colossians 1:18)
My second reason is because the New Testament refers to the Resurrection as a universal event, not as Christ’s return in the destruction of Jerusalem.
Many texts referring to Christ’s return are in letters written to non-Jewish believers who lived far from Jerusalem. For example, the church at Thessalonica had no Old Testament heritage. Paul’s epistles to that church have no quotes from the Old Testament. Those new believers in Thessalonica copied Paul’s lifestyle and evangelized their whole area. As they did, their faith grew beyond expectation, and their love for one another overflowed. (2 Thessalonians 1:3)
End Time prophecies linking the return of Jesus to the destruction of the Jewish Temple in far-off Jerusalem would have been of little or no interest to the Greeks. In the prophetic Parable of the Vineyard, Jesus said that the owner (God) would “destroy those wicked men (the vinedressers who murdered his son) miserably.” (Matthew 21:41) God’s judgement would fall on the Jews at Jerusalem, not on Gentiles who had never even heard of Jesus Christ.
Likewise, in the prophetic Parable of the Wedding Feast, the “king” (God) whose servants (the apostles) were mocked and murdered, “sent out his armies (the Romans, who besieged Jerusalem from 66 to 70 AD), destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.” (Matthew 22:7)
When Paul preached the Resurrection to a curious group of Athenians, he warned that God had “appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He has ordained.” Paul added that “He has given assurance of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:31)
After speaking of mankind in general, Paul spoke of a specific “day” and of a “man” who would judge “the world” – the inhabitants of the whole world, not just the Jews in little-known, far-off Jerusalem.
If it be argued that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a local event that took place in far-off Jerusalem, I would respond that the gospel message to the non-Jews was built on the certainty of future judgement rather than on the crucifixion. The Book of Acts shows a clear contrast between Peter’s Pentecost message to the Jews living in Jerusalem and Paul’s “Unknown God” message to the Greeks in Athens. What point would there have been in Paul preaching a message based on guilt to those who had not even heard of Jesus Christ – much less rejected him?
The farther the apostles travelled from Jerusalem, the more they preached that God would judge the world by the Man whom He had raised from the dead. The idea that since Christ died for us all, it follows that we were all responsible for his death, may be an interesting theological abstract, but it is not the kind of down-to-earth message one would preach to ignorant pagans.
But did not the apostle Paul determine “not to know anything” among the Corinthians but Jesus Christ, crucified? (1 Corinthians 2:2) True. But even a quick read of Acts 18 makes it clear that Paul found himself “between a rock and a hard place” – sign-seeking Jews on one hand and wisdom-seeking Greeks on the other. The Cross provided Paul, a man familiar with both camps, a message that met the requirements of both groups.
Any preacher who has faced a cultural divide and chose to do the same will have experienced the “fear and trembling” which Paul recalls in verse 3. Paul did not preach a “You with wicked hands crucified Jesus, your Christ” message at Corinthians, but rather “Jesus Christ crucified – the sum of God’s wisdom and power” – an overarching message that both Jew and Greek could accept.
The wall that separated the Jewish synagogue from the house of Justus portrays the division between Jew and Greek in Corinth. When Paul’s witness was rejected by the Jews, he did as instructed by Jesus: pronounced that he was clean from responsibility for them, and declared that he would go instead to the Gentiles. He then moved next door, and Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, followed him, along with his entire household! (Acts 18:7; 1 Corinthians 1:14)
My third reason is because Jesus has not yet descended to earth visibly and physically, as two angels said he would.
The angels’ words to the disciples, who were gazing upwards at the cloud into which Jesus had vanished, were clear and unmistakable. “Men of Galilee: why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way you saw Him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11)
Origen (185-254 AD), was the theologian most influential in promoting the allegorical interpretation of the Bible. While not denying that the events in God’s word are literal, Origen looked beyond them for hidden, ‘spiritual’ meanings. In this he was not all that different from the Gnostics, who troubled the church with their ‘superior’ knowledge and spiritual mysticism.
Those who deny the physical resurrection walk in the steps of Origen, in that they teach that the promised Resurrection took place when the Jewish Temple was destroyed in AD 70. That was when Christ returned, they claim.
Not surprisingly they teach that resurrection was and still is purely spiritual – an entry by Christians into the Christian equivalent of pagan Rome’s Elysian Fields. This puzzles those who look forward to the great hope of the Church: the raising of the living and the dead to everlasting life, in bodies that are made immortal at Christ’s return.
The New Testament clearly teaches that the Resurrection will include all the dead (John 5:28; Acts 24:15; Revelation 20:13) and that believers will rise through Christ (John 11:25; Acts 4:2; 1 Corinthians 15:21, 22). We will rise first (1 Corinthians 15:23; 1 Thessalonians 4:16).
We will rise physically to eternal life (John 5:29). We will be glorified with Christ (Colossians 3:4). We will be as the angels (Matthew 22:30). We will have incorruptible, glorious, powerful, spiritual bodies that will be like Christ’s body. (1 Corinthians 15:42-44; Philippians 3:21; 1 John 3:2)
The resurrection of the “dead in Christ” will be followed in seconds by the rising of those who are still alive on earth (1 Corinthians15:51; 1 Thessalonians 4:17). In the “blink of an eye” they too will become immortal.
The promise that the Resurrection will be physical, into immortality, is a firmly-based, immovable truth. We should attach ourselves securely to it, so we will not be moved by any raging “wind” of false doctrine that teaches otherwise!