There’s an old song that says, “You’re going to miss me when I’m gone.” But, thanks be to God, the date for resurrection morn is circled on God’s calendar. There is going to be “a great getting up morning,” as another old hymn puts it. Scripture calls it “the blessed hope.”
If one reads the New Testament very slowly and carefully, they will find that the blessed hope is NOT the hope that we will go to heaven when we die but that we will be resurrected from the dead when Christ returns. I fear many believers do not read their New Testaments slowly and carefully. They merely parrot one another, saying what their illustrious leaders and scholars have said, speaking “the party line” of their particular denomination. Oh, of course, they have a scripture here and a scripture there that they think supports their viewpoint, but they have a plethora of scriptures they overlook – scriptures that cast an entirely different light on their beliefs. That great fund of knowledge contained in the Hebrew scriptures (the “Old” Testament) is ignored. After all, it is the “OLD” Testament, isn’t it? And something that is “old” is fairly useless, isn’t it?
When the apostle John wrote “every man that has this hope in him purifies himself, even as He is pure,” (I John 3:3) the context shows that the hope he speaks of is the hope of being resurrected in an incorruptible, immortal spirit body when Jesus Christ returns! “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that WHEN HE SHALL APPEAR (yes, then at that time) we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is” (I John 3:2).
Peter wrote, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (yes, THE GOD and Father of Jesus Christ), which according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (I Peter 1:3). And Paul concurs, writing, “But if the Spirit of Him that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken (bring back to life) your mortal bodies (but then made immortal and incorruptible) by His Spirit that dwells in you” (Romans 8:11). Yes, that is the believer’s blessed hope, that we will be raised from the dead at Christ’s return. King David saw his resurrection as the believer’s blessed hope, “for David speaks concerning Him (Jesus Christ), I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for He is on my right hand that I should not be moved. Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad: moreover also my flesh shall rest (in the grave) IN HOPE, because thou wilt not leave my soul (his life) in hell (Hades, the grave), neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life, thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance (when resurrected)” (Acts 2:25-28). Peter then says, “Men and brethren let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that HE IS BOTH DEAD AND BURIED, and his sepulchre (tomb) is with us unto this day…for David is not ascended into the heavens!” (See Acts 2:29 and 34). David, like all other redeemed children of God, is awaiting a resurrection to life. Peter declared, “He’s not yet in heaven!” If King David is not in heaven folks better rethink just what Jesus said to the thief on the cross when He assured him he would see Christ in paradise! (See Luke 23:39-43).
I would suggest that one read the 15th chapter of I Corinthians very slowly and carefully, paying extremely close attention to verses 12 through 58. Herein the apostle Paul ties a believer’s hope of living again to a resurrection, not as a soul flitting off to heaven at the moment of death. He states clearly that if there is no resurrection to come, then there is no hope, that death then ends all. And he reveals that there is no intermediate state of life in any form or fashion between the time one dies and the day of their resurrection. The dead are dead! Really, is that all that surprising?
Christ’s Aged Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley