The Resurrection of the Dead

One of the dominant teachings of the Bible is the resurrection of the dead. The teaching is that all human beings who ever lived on planet Earth and died, beginning with Abel, will be resurrected back to life by God at His appointed time. The prophets, Jesus Christ, and his apostles taught the resurrection of the dead. The patriarch Job said, “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-27 NIV).

Prophets Isaiah and Daniel also wrote on the resurrection of the dead:

“But your dead will live, Lord; their bodies will rise— let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy— your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead” (Isa. 26:19 NIV).

“Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.” (Dan. 12:2-3 NIV).

The Lord Jesus Christ also taught his followers about the resurrection of the dead. He said, “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.” (John 5:28-29 NIV).

To the Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead he said,  “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” (Matt. 22:30-32 NIV). Luke rendered the same words this way: “Jesus replied, ‘The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.’”

(Luke 20:34-38 NIV).

Here, the Lord Jesus Christ said there will be no marriage after the resurrection because there will be no need for procreation as death will have been extinguished. (God instituted marriage in this present world so that within it procreation can take place. By this, the dying ones are replaced by the ones that are being born. But in the resurrection, there will be no need any more for procreation as death will no longer take place. This is one of the reasons marriages will not take place after the resurrection. Another reason is the fact that we will then be having spiritual bodies that are completely free of sensual desires.) The souls of those who’ll take part in the first resurrection will be made immortal and be clothed with new, imperishable, bodies in order to live forever here on earth in the age to come. They  will become like the angels in heaven who do not marry and who do not die. The resurrection of righteous people ushers them into life in the age to come – when Jesus returns from heaven to rule over God’s kingdom here on earth. Being “like the angels in heaven” is strictly in the sense of notmarrying and not dying after the resurrection. Some people have misunderstood these words as saying we will be changed to spirit beings like the angels. The Bible nowhere teaches that notion. At the resurrection, we will be given spiritual bodies (1 Cor. 15:44). Having a spiritual body is not the same thing as becoming a spirit being like an angel. More explanation on this is given in my article, “Are we going to be changed to spirits after we have died?”

The apostles preached the resurrection of the dead

The apostles testified to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.(Acts 1:22; 3:15; 4:33). They also taught the people that through Jesus there is going to be a resurrection of the dead (Acts 4:2; 17:18,31,32; 1 Cor. 15:20-23). One of the reasons they were persecuted by skeptics, especially the Sadducees, was their preaching about the resurrection of the dead (Acts 17:32; 23:6,8). At his trial before Felix, Paul said, “However, I admit that I worship the God of our ancestors as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect. I believe everything that is in accordance with the Law and that is written in the Prophets, and I have the same hope in God as these men themselves have, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man. Or these who are here should state what crime they found in me when I stood before the Sanhedrin— unless it was this one thing I shouted as I stood in their presence: ‘It is concerning the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you today.’ ” (Acts 24:14-16, 20-21 NIV, emphases added by me).

The preaching of the resurrection of the dead was one of the key messages of the first century CE. And it is a great news that no matter how long it takes, all the faithful and godly people are going to be resurrected back to life here on a renewed earth where they’ll live forever in perfect peace, health, and bliss. It also wakes us up to our need of living in faith and total submission to God so that we will be considered worthy to attain to that age which commences at the resurrection.

In all his letters to Christians of his time, there is none in which Paul did not touch on the subject of the resurrection of the dead. He even devoted the entire 58 verses of 1 Cor. 15 to this important subject of the Christian faith.

Two separate resurrections

Both the righteous and wicked people that ever lived will be resurrected to life. But the Bible teaches that the resurrection will take place in two phases. The first phase will be the resurrection of the righteous people. We have been made to understand that this resurrection will take place on the day of Christ’s return to the earth (1 Cor. 15:20-23; 1 Thes. 4:16). Only those whose souls are raised back to life in this first resurrection, and the faithful ones who will be alive on the day of Christ’s return, will be given immortal bodies to live forever in God’s kingdom here on earth (1 Cor. 15:51-54; 1 Thes. 4:16,17). These righteous people will reign with Christ during his 1000-year reign (Rev. 5:9-10; 20:4,5b,6).

After the 1000-year reign of Christ the wicked dead will be resurrected to be judged and destroyed in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:5a, 11-15; 21:8). The wicked will be made to go through a second death in the lake of fire in which sulphur (or brimstone) will be the fuel. They will be obliterated in that lake which is also called hell fire in the gospels (Matt. 5:22; 18:9; Mark 9:47).

Resurrection of the body?

Contrary to what the Bible teaches, many people teach that the resurrection will be a resurrection of the body. They are wrong. It is the soul that will be resurrected, made immortal and clothed with a heavenly body which Paul figuratively termed a “building from God, a house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens”(2 Cor. 5:1). Paul likened our natural body to a temporary “earthly tent” which will be destroyed or discarded at the time of death. It will be replaced by a heavenly one. Therefore, it will not be resurrected. He wrote, “But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they [the dead souls] come [back to life]?” How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.” (1 Cor. 15:35-36, 44 NIV, words in square brackets and emphasis added). A cursory look at verse 35 clearly shows that Paul was referring to the soul as the one that will be brought back to life. The words “the dead” and “they” used in the verse cannot rightly be taken to mean the body. If we falsely interpret them as the body, Paul’s words in the verse can be rendered like this:  “But someone will ask, ‘How is the body raised? With what kind of body will it come?’” Does this make any sense? It doesn’t! The body does not have a body. It is the soul that has a body.

The natural body of any dead person is “dissolved” (KJV) or “destroyed” (NIV) at death (2 Cor. 5:1). In the intermediate state between death and resurrection, the soul remains “unclothed” or “naked” (2 Cor. 5:2-4). It is at the resurrection that the mortal soul is divinely woken up from death and given immortality, and the perishable body, which is dissolved at death, is replaced  with an imperishable, “spiritual body”  which Paul figuratively termed an “eternal building from God.” Paul made this fact known in 1 Cor. 15:51-53 which reads, “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.”

(1 Cor. 15:51-53 NIV). Until the day of resurrection the soul of anyone is not immortal. God is the only one who is immortal (1 Tim. 6:16). He will gift His resurrected and living saints with immortality on the day of the first resurrection.

When the word “sleep” is used metaphorically in the Bible to mean death (e.g. in Dan.12:2; John 11:11-13; 1 Cor. 11:30; 15:51; 1 Thes. 4:14), it is not in the sense of the soul being asleep, suggesting a continuation of existence. It is used in the sense that God is going to supernaturally wake the soul back to life in just the same way He wakes us back to conscious living after the night’s sleep. The Bible makes it known that there is no consciousness in the grave (Eccl. 9:5,10; Ps. 6:5). What Paul wrote in 1 Cor. 15:35 and 2 Cor. 5:1-4 drives the point home that it is the soul, not the body, that will be resurrected back to life. The natural body will be destroyed or discarded at the time of death and replaced with an imperishable one from heaven for the resurrected soul, made immortal, on the day of resurrection. See also Phil. 3:20,21 and 1 John 3:2.

A Better Resurrection

What does this phrase found in  Heb. 11:35 mean? The resurrections which the author of the book of Hebrews mentioned in the verse only brought about a temporary extension of life for the sons of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:17-24), and the woman of Shunem (2 Kings 4:32-36). These sons, brought back to life after they had died, though experienced supernatural resurrections, only had their lifespans extended; they eventually died. In “a better resurrection” the first of which was that of Jesus Christ, all the resurrected ones who belong to Christ will not die anymore. They’ll be resurrected unto eternal life. This is the better resurrection.

But who were the people the author had in mind when he wrote, “There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection” (Heb. 11:35b NIV)? We do not have the list. But one of them must have been Eleazar, a Jewish scribe who was flagged to death in the second century BCE, at the age of 90 years, by Antiochus IV Epiphanes for refusing to compromise his faith in YHWH (Yahweh) (2 Mac. 6:18-31). Verse 31 reads, “So Eleazar died. But his courageous death was remembered as a glorious example, not only by young people, but by the entire nation as well.” (2 Mac. 6:31 GNBDC). Some others were a Jewish woman and her seven sons (2 Mac. 7:1-42). With his dying breath, her second son said, “Thou like a fury takest us out of this present life, but the King of the world shall raise us up, who have died for his laws, unto everlasting life. (2 Mac. 7:9 KJVAAE). They knew they will be rewarded by God by being resurrected to inherit eternal life. This is obviously a “better resurrection.”

One Implication of the Resurrection

The emphasis our Lord Jesus and his apostles placed on the subject of resurrection in the first century CE is no longer seen in today’s churches. The emphasis has, over the centuries, been changed to that of going to heaven to live eternally with God after death has taken place. But this is one teaching that has not got any tangible support in the Bible. What the Bible has taught is that our Lord Jesus Christ, as God’s ambassador, will return to the earth to rule over God’s kingdom here on earth (Luke 19:12; 1 Thes. 1:9,10; Heb. 9:24,28; Phil. 3:20,21; Job 19:25-27).

The resurrection means being brought back to life here on the renewed earth. If we were meant to go and be with God in heaven after death, there would have been no need for the resurrection. God would simply have called our spirits to heaven after death.

When God created the heavens and the earth, the ancient name for the universe, He knew what He was doing. He decided to place mankind on the earth which is the planet in the entire universe best suited for his survival, peace and happiness. This earth is what God has given mankind as his eternal habitation. God has not given us any promise that after we have spent some time on the earth, He will take us to heaven to spend the rest of our unending lifetime with Him. It has been written and revealed to us, “May you be blessed by the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he has given to mankind.” (Psa. 115:15-16 NIV). It has also been revealed that the righteous will inherit the renewed earth and live in it forever (Psa. 37:9,11,22,29; Matt. 5:5).

The hope of the ancient faithfuls was not that of going to heaven but of being made to enter the new creation of God. Apostle Peter summarised their hope in these words: “But we wait for what God has promised: new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness will be at home.” (2 Pet. 3:13 GNT). They didn’t nurse the desire of going to heaven to live forever with God, something God has never promised. If we are meant to go to heaven, why would God create a new earth? Who will live in it after all the saints have gone to heaven and all the wicked ones have been thrown into the lake of fire? God said the earth will not be left desolate. He formed it to be inhabited [forever] (Isa. 45:18). God did not make any promise to anyone that he or she will one day come and live with Him in that invisible realm which no man has seen nor will ever see (1 Tim. 6:16). The preparation we need to make is to submit totally to God in holiness and righteousness so that we may be found worthy to enter His kingdom which He will bring down to the earth at the coming of His only begotten Son who also is our Lord, Jesus Christ. The teaching that we will someday go to heaven to spend eternity is a total departure from biblical truth.

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