clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (I Cor. 15:51, 52; I Thess. 4:17). In several different ways God has shown that our resurrection bodies, our spiritual bodies, will be equal to the angels’ (Luke 2:36). And, what is more, they will be fashioned like unto the glorious body of the Lord (Phil. 3:21). “How are the dead'raised up?” By the power of God. This is the promise of the Almighty. Did not God create man out of dust in His own image? Did God not breathe into man the breath of life? Did not man then become a living soul? Then cannot God raise the dead body and give it back to the soul which has never died? But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you (Rom. 8:11). And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power (I Cor. 6:14). In this actual resurrection, what was buried shall rise again. What went into the tomb shall come out of the i tomb. Personal identity shall be perfectly preserved in the resurrection process. The Bible asserts the sureness of the resurrection body. Paul likens the resurrection to the sowing and sprouting of a grain of wheat. A grain of wheat always produces itself whenever it sprouts. In the resurrection of believers, their bodies shall be transformed and fashioned like “ the body of his glory.” We catch a glimpse of that glory in the transfiguration of Jesus where and when the spiritual incandescence of His deity burst out from the prison house of His flesh and made His face to shine like the sun and His garments to be whiter than luminous snow (Matt. 17:2). Concerning this resurrection change in the body, Dr. Gordon strikingly says: “The charcoal and the diamond are the same substance — only the one is carbon in its humiliation and the other carbon in its glory. So is the tabernacle in which we dwell, in comparison with our house which is from heaven. The one is mortal flesh shadowed by the curse and doomed to be sown in dis honor; the other is that flesh made immortal and mar velously transformed.” Grand will be the scene and sweet the joy of the first resurrection —- when the trumpet shall sound and the graves shall open and the sea shall give up the bodies of all believers. Weeping mother, sad father, broken hearted wife, thy dead believing one shall rise again. You who live in the house where the little chair is empty and the prattling voice of the lovely baby has been hushed in death, your dead you shall have again. You, broken-hearted, think upon the promises of Christ — and wipe away your tears; for you shall meet your believing dead again. Walk, all you Christians, out into the cemetery where the gloom of death has settled — and drive away your darkness with the light of this glorious truth and hope. Let us, faithful unto Christ in all things and in all places, rejoice that some blessed day, with all our fight ings done, our bodies shall be conformed to the body of His glory (Phil. 3:21) — a spiritual body adapted to the spiritual existence into which entrance is gained by the resurrection.
the children of the resurrection (Luke 20:34-36). Now! To be angel-like is not to be bodiless. Every angel that has appeared on the earth has appeared in bodily form. They have sat at human tables, and have taken human food; they have exercised gracious missions for men in human forms. The great difference has been that they were not mortal; that their natural home was in a higher sphere. Dr. P. M. Van Vliet speaks so wisely, even entranc- ingly, of the immortality, the incorruption, and the in dependence of the resurrection body. When the resurrec tion body shall have put on incorruption, no meat for the body will be needed any more (I Cor. 6:13). No more wonderful thing as to the eternal ages of glory could we ask—or desire. But does that mean that the resurrection body cannot take food? Luke 24:42-43 answers that question: And they gave him [Jesus] a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And He took it, and did eat before them. And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat. (Gen. 18:8) In Acts 12:6-10 we read how an angel could, or did, pass through closed doors and windows. While the angel could pass through a closed door to enter the jail and re lease Peter, Peter’s terrestrial body could not go through a closed door or barred gate, but the gate opened of its accord. So we see that was just what Jesus in His resur rection body could do — pass through locked doors into the room where the disciples were assembled. John 20: 19 and 26 makes that plain: Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you (v. 19). And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you (v. 26). Dr. Van Vliet says: “Besides this absolute independ ence with respect to material objects, we, however, see also that spiritual bodies can remove objects, as the angel who rolled back the stone from the door of the sepulchre (Matt. 28:2); the angels who gave to Moses the stone tables of the law, as the terrestrial body of Moses could not see God and live (Gal. 3:19); the angels who opened the gate for the apostles (Acts 5:19); the angels who laid hold upon the hand of Lot and his family (Gen: 19:16); and the Lord Jesus who took bread, brake it, and gave it to the disciples in Emmaus (Luke 24:30). The disciples handled the Lord Jesus as one who had flesh and bones, even though He passed through a closed door (Luke 24:39). So we see that angels can arbitrarily go through doors and also open doors; that material things do not hinder them in any way; and also that they can take or remove material objects. “Other than immortality, incorruption, and independ ence with regard to material things, we see also that gravitation has no influence on the spiritual body. The angel who appeared to Manoah ascended in the flame of the altar (Judg. 13:20); the Lord Jesus was taken up to heaven (Acts 1:9); the resurrection bodies and the changed bodies of them who will be alive when Christ comes for His own will be caught up together in the
Let us rejoice in that God has supremely honored the human body by the incarnation of His holy Son — and God has greatly honored His servants to be like Him and with Him in glory forever and forever. "We w ill have flesh an d bone in the resurrection”
SEPTEMBER, 1964
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