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The Fundamentals
tion; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory.” As to how the spirits now with Christ are to be united with their resurrection bodies, the Bible is abso lutely silent; but we know that this will be at the coming of the Lord. (1 Cor. 15:22, 23, 42, 43.) Then, too, the bodies of living believers will be glorified, and made deathless and immortal like the body of their Divine Lord. “For our citizenship is in heaven; whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory” (Phil. 3:20, 21). Sometimes it is care lessly said that “nothing is so sure as death” ; one thing is more sure; it is this: some Christians will never die. One generation of believers will be living when Christ returns, and they will be translated, without the experience of death. What “is mortal will be swallowed up of life.” They never will be unclothed,” but “clothed upon” with the glory of immortality. “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51, 52; 2 Cor. 5 :4 ) . Then, also, will be the blessed reunion in glory of the risen and the transfigured followers of Christ. “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself shall de scend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the arch angel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4: 13-18). “Some from earth, from glory some, Severed only ‘Till He Come’ ”
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