Changed at Resurrection

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All matter is physical. You are made of matter—you are physical, of the dust of the ground. There is nothing permanent about your flesh. Without food, water, and air, for even a short time, you will die. Likewise, no person can gain eternal life apart from the Holy Spirit present and working within him. Without this Spirit helping to change one, to give eternal life, none has hope! Without contact with God, His Spirit, and His purpose, allowing for spiritual comprehension, all those of Satan’s world will live out their physical lives and die, with nothing to follow. But God is working with a few now!

Earlier we quoted Job. He understood that God’s Spirit worked with his spirit to grant him understanding. He was well aware of God’s Plan and purpose at work in his life. We saw that he asked, “If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my CHANGE come. You shall call, and I will answer You: You will have a desire to the work of Your hands” (Job 14:14-15). Job knew that the resurrection awaited him—when he would be “changed.” In the meantime, he had to “wait” in the grave until God called him.

Job possessed the Spirit of God and understood when and how God would resurrect and change him. He recognized that it would be the very Spirit of God in him that would make this change possible. Earlier, we saw that, in Romans 8, Paul had written, “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 dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11).

Paul also wrote to the Corinthians about the coming change at the resurrection, when all will awaken from sleep with a new spirit body. Previously, we saw part of this passage. Here is the rest: “And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot INHERIT the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit in corruption. Behold, I show 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. For this corruptible must put on in corruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Cor. 15:49-53).

This passage speaks of a mystery that Paul had to explain. It is certainly a mystery to the world that there is coming this change to spirit composition at the resurrection of the dead when Christ returns. Most suppose that they have an immortal soul that goes to heaven upon death. Yet, few seem to ask or care about how one could go from “mortal” to “immortal” (1 Cor. 15:53-54), at the resurrection, if he already has an immortal soul!

But God’s character will have already been perfected in those He “quickens” at the resurrection, leaving them no longer able to sin (1 John 3:9).

His Reward with Him

At His Return, Christ will bring the individual rewards of all those sons and daughters through whom He and the Father have worked. They will have qualified for great glory: “For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then He shall REWARD EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS WORKS” (Matt. 16:27).

Comprehend this! Your works in this life have a direct bearing on your reward in the next life. That reward involves RULERSHIP. The initial phase of that rulership will last 1,000 years. Rulers sit on thrones: “And I saw THRONES, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and REIGNED with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. THIS IS THE FIRST RESURRECTION” (Rev. 20:4-5).

But God’s Plan will not end with just those included in the First Resurrection. God intends to give all human beings an opportunity to receive His Spirit, build His character—to be finished and come to COMPLETION!

Continuing in Revelation, John described the continuation of God’s Plan to the time when all mankind will receive an opportunity for salvation. This period is called the “Great White Throne Judgment” and is described this way: “And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works” (Rev. 20:11-13).

But those of God’s Church—the one Church that Christ promised to build (Matt. 16:18)—are being taught and led now in all the truths and ways of God. This “little flock” is now feeding and preparing those who will rule with Christ. Paul wrote the Ephesians describing the responsibility of Christ’s true ministers: “… For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:12-13).

Reuniting with the Human Spirit

The spirit in man neither changes nor resurrects the person. This comes from God’s Spirit first working in the mind. We have seen that, at the resurrection, the spirit in man will UNITE with the Holy Spirit. We will be exactly the same, except made of spirit and therefore will no longer have human nature or the pulls of the flesh.

Think of the spirit in man in this way: It is like a cassette tape of everything we have ever learned or done—and it is the very mold of the mind for our coming spirit body, containing the memory, character, and experiences of each human being. In a sense, like any cassette tape, it can be “played back.” Yet, it cannot have or give life, or function by itself, because it must be connected to a physical brain—or a spirit mind at the resurrection.

Like one working with a computer, the spirit in man works with the brain to form the amazing HUMAN MIND! Science will never discover this knowledge. What you have learned in just this chapter almost no one understands.

But now you do!

Knowledge is exploding as never before. But this is happening amidst ever greater human suffering, unhappiness, discontent, violence, war, and confusion. Why is there such ever-worsening moral decline alongside astonishing materialistic progress? With weapons of mass destruction now threatening man’s very survival, we ask: Why? And where do we go from here?

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