King's Business - 1916-10

with the body, the raising up o f that which has fallen down in death. The bodies of believers shall be raised and transformed into the likeness o f the glorious resurrec­ tion-body o f Christ (Phil. 3:20, 21), they shall have given to them a body which is the perfect counterpart o f the redeemed spirit which inhabits and partakes with it in all its joy. And the bodies o f unbe­ lievers shall also be raised, unbelievers shall be clothed upon with a body the per­ fect counterpart o f the ruined spirit that inhabits it and partaker with it in all its miseries. (Rev. 21:28). , I notice that --------- , in his notes on the Sunday school lesson fo r last Sunday (July 9 th) says, ‘‘Eternal disembodiment o f all who are not the sons o f God.” Can you tell me where he gets Scripture to support that view? I cannot. I don’t believe that he can find any Scripture which properly interpre­ ted in its context supports any! such view; for this view contradicts the very plain teaching o f Christ and the apostles. Will a child now dying be still a r child when He comes, or will the child have grown? In the latter case will the person be, easily recognized? W e whose children have gone to be with Christ naturally think o f our children as they were when they left us, but if they had gone off to some earthly school for a long period of years without our seeing them through those years, we certainly would not wish them to stand still during those years, either physically or mentally. Why, then, should we wish their growth retarded in the heavenly school? And it certainly will not be. There will be no difficulty about our recognizing them when we “together with them” are caught up to meet the Lord in the air. The heavenly Father can easily manage that, and we would better leave it to Him to do it.

' A r e the spirits o f our departed Christian dead unclothed in Heaven? They are. Second Corinthians 5:1-8, teaches this very clearly and very explic- •itly. Paul in these versus tells us that we "in this,” i. e., as the context shows, in our present bodies ( “the earthly house of our tabernacle” ), “groan, longing to be clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven,” i.e., our resurrection bodies. He goes on to say, that what we desire is not to be “unclothed” (by the laying aside o f our present mortal bodies, as we do at death), but to “be clothed upon” (that is, with our resurrection-bodies, as we shall be at the Second Coming o f Christ, 1 Thess. 4:16, 17; Phil. 3:20, 21). Then he goes on to say still further, that we are willing, if we cannot as yet be “clothed upon” with our resurrection-bodies by our returning Lord, to be “unclothed” by death in order that being “absent from the body” we may “be at home with the Lord.” In other words, there are three experiences that the believer passes through, ( 1 ) our present state in our present mortal bodies; ( 2 ) the state that we shall be in after death until the return o f our Lord, “unclothed” from our present bodies and not yet “ clothed upon” with our resurrection-bod­ ies, “ a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens;” (3) the state that we shall know when our Lord returns,' when we shall be “clothed upon” with our resurrection-bodies, and thus “what is mortal” “be swallowed up o f life.” Do the spirits o f the unbelieving dead never recover their bodies? They do recover their bodies. W e are definitely, and distinctly taught by our Lord Himself that there is to be a resurrection o f both the just and the unjust. (John 5:28, 29; cf. Acts 24:15; Dan. 12:2). Now in the Bible resurrection always has to do

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