Paradise on Earth

6. The Resurrection

Earth’s coming glory

“How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?” asked St. Paul’s hypothetical critic in 1 Cor.15:35. He answers the question himself “you do not sow that body that shall be…but God gives it a body as He pleases.” (vv.37-38 NKJV). The basic principle of the future life is that the one who once lived, and died, and whose physical body has long since resolved itself into its constituent atoms and been distributed worldwide, awakens to conscious life in a new body created by Divine power, a body adapted to the environment in which the one thus, resurrected finds themself. If in heaven with the Lord Christ, a celestial body adapted to the celestial world; if on earth, a terrestrial “human” body adapted to this terrestrial earth. “To every seed” says Paul in vv.38-40 “his own body…There are...celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial; the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.”

In former times it was believed that the body which was consigned to the grave was the one which would re-appear at the Last Day, the Day of Judgment. The ancient Egyptians were persuaded that unless the body was preserved in death there could be no resurrection, hence their care in embalming the dead. The modern objection that the body will have long since disappeared and could not thus rise is met by the assertion that God can and will “reconstitute” the body so that the individual lives and breathes again. This becomes an approximate definition of the truth. “If a man die, shall he live again?” asks Job in ch.14:14-15; then he answers his own question. “All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee; thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands.” Here is an attested belief in the resurrection of the dead, in a future life even though far distant in time, expressed by a man who lived nearly two thousand years before Christ. More than a thousand years later the same positive conviction was expressed by Isaiah (26:19) “Thy dead…shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for...the earth shall cast out the dead.” This assertion is made in connection with a passage describing the exultation of humanity when they realise that the Millennial Kingdom of Christ has become a reality, and serves to indicate the time that the resurrection takes place. Martha, disconsolate at the death of her brother, Lazarus, hearing the Lord telling her “thy brother shall rise again” responded with the fixed conviction of every Jew “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the Last Day” (John 11:23-24); it would be in this sense that she understood the earlier words of Jesus “the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out.” (John 5:28-29 ESV). From the dawn of human history to the present, men and women have believed in the resurrection of the dead, and it remains now only to consider in what manner this marvellous happening will come about. When Paul addressed the learned philosophers of Athens on “Jesus and Resurrection” most of them scorned him (Acts 17:32); the most fitting response to that rejection was his own later impassioned demand when on trial before Porcius Festus and King Agrippa (Acts 26:8) “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?” Why indeed? The very foundation of the Christian faith is the promise of eternal life through Christ by means of resurrection. Death is not the end; there is life to come beyond death. Resurrection is the gateway to that life.

What then is the practical impact of the process of resurrection? Granted that the Scriptures are positive that it will happen, that all who are now dead will re-appear upon earth, how does it take place and what will be the effect upon the existing population, those who at that time will be already living? The increase of the race by means of the birth of children at the present time is so ordinary and familiar a process that everyone takes it for granted and a matter of course—that is how it has always been and no matter how wonderful a process it is no one stops to consider it as anything out of the ordinary. But the sudden and unexplained appearance of full-grown men and women from, apparently, nowhere, is a very different proposition. And when they give concrete evidence of their having been on earth before, to have lived, and died, in some past period of time, the wonder will be greater still. It can be that men will have heard so much of the Plan of God and the purpose of this new Age in which they now find themselves living that they will be expecting something like this happening, but even so, it is going to be a startling occurrence.

In the absence of more concrete details, it is necessary to go back to the only instance in the Bible of anything like this happening before—the story of the creation of the first man, Adam. Genesis tells us that “the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” (Gen.2:7) It is known that the human body is composed of the same chemical materials as everything else in the earth around us—mainly carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, with smaller quantities of other elements. These abound in the rocks, the earth, the seas and the air. They form the material out of which every plant and tree is constructed, every insect, fish and animal. A chemist could collect in a container the precise amount of each element which is used in the make-up of a human body, but they would be unable to convert it into a living body. Only God can do that. So, God brought together, one would expect in a moment of time, the right proportions of those elements, metamorphosed them into a body with its limbs and organs and bloodstream, infused that body with life, life which only He can give, and Adam awoke to consciousness, a living soul.

It seems reasonable to suppose that the same exercise of Divine power will operate in the case of every subject of resurrection. In a moment of time the elements of the newly-to-be-formed body will coalesce from the abundant supply Nature can provide, take shape and appear in human form, the spirit of life sweep down from above and take possession of the inanimate frame, the heart commence beating, the lungs fill with air, the eyes open, consciousness come into the brain, and the individual sit up as memory begins to return, wondering at first what has happened. A familiar term nowadays is the “memory bank” of a computer, a facility whereby information is stored in an electrical device which can release it at a later date in its precise original form. The function of memory in the human brain is of a somewhat similar nature. The process of remembering something, of going back in the mind to a happening that is past, sets in motion microminiature electrical circuits in the nerves of the brain which open and close various “channels,” leading at last to the formation in the mind of a picture of that past event. What man can now do with a computer God is well able to do with all his creatures and store up in a heavenly “memory bank” every thought and word and action of each who has lived so that at the resurrection He has only to impress and record upon the body He has created and the man is, and knows he is, the one who lived, it may be, thousands of years previously. Just as, when one awakes in the morning and consciousness and memory return, the individual knows himself to be the one who was alive yesterday even although consciousness has completely lapsed during the night hours, so the one thus raised will know themself, not only for what they are, but for what they were.

There is probably something more fundamental in all this which we with our human limitations cannot be expected to understand. Paul told the men of Athens (Acts 17:28) “in him we live, and move, and have our being.” It may be that at the end we shall come to realise that the mystery of our personal identities as individual beings is wrapped up with the relationship that must subsist between the Creator and each one of the creatures to whom He has given life, that in a very real sense our individual identities are bound up with him and cannot be lost the while we are in communal relationship with him, or if separated by sin, any hope remains that we can at the last be reconciled to him. All this belongs to the unrevealed, but that our conscious identity is not lost even though death intervenes is demanded by the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection.

It follows that the individual thus resurrected will possess the same character, the same virtues and vices, the same feelings and longings, as at the moment of death. In body and mind he will be complete and whole, as was Adam at his creation, but his character will have been conditioned by his past life and that can only be changed by further experience, the experiences of this new Age into which he has now come. The sinner will not be instantaneously changed into a saint by the fact that they have been given a new body and awakened to consciousness. In this new world in which the secrets of all people’s hearts will be made manifest the sins and shortcomings of the past will be brought out into the open for all to see. Isaiah, speaking of this day, says (32:5) “the vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful.” That is why Daniel, speaking of the resurrection, said that of the many who sleep in the dust of the earth, some would wake to enduring life and some to shame and enduring contempt. (Dan.12:2). Jesus, elaborating on this, said they that have done good would arise to a resurrection of life but they that have done evil to a resurrection of judgment. (John 5:29 ESV). This word “judgment” is in the Greek, krisis, which means a trial or contest terminated by a verdict. This implies that those thus resurrected are not to be immediately condemned but are subjected first to a process of selection on the basis of their response to the evangelising work of the Millennial Age. Only after that is completed is the final judgment pronounced.

There is a passage in the Book of Isaiah which bears upon this point although as it appears in the A.V. it is imperfectly translated and consequently somewhat obscure. As it stands in the A.V. of Isa.65:20 it reads “there shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days…for the child shall die an hundred years old, but the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed.” The verse as it stands does not make sense, for if there is not going to be an “infant of days” there will obviously not be a “child” there: if the child is to die at a hundred years there will be no old people who do not fill their days. In any case there will be no death in the Millennium for it is the Age which is devoted to an opportunity for all living to accept Christ and be reconciled to God. Only at its end does any question of worthiness or unworthiness of eternal life come up.

The translation is inadequate. The first phrase is understandable. Although at the beginning there will be infants and old people these will quickly attain normal human maturity by growing up in the one case and “growing down” in the other. This applies both to those living and those who are resurrected, for they must needs awaken at that stage of life they had attained at death. The expression “old man that hath not filled his days” has the verb in the future intensive tense and is better rendered “will not abundantly fill those days”; there is a demonstrative pronoun here which refers the days to the days of the Millennium, not “his” days. No one, however old, will fail to see the end of the thousand years. The preposition “for,” in “for the child,” is incorrect; the Hebrew word is a relative conjunction linking to what has just been said, “that the child” and “child” here is a word denoting youths and young men, so that the entire phrase is better rendered “from that time there will not be the newborn babe or the old man who will not abundantly fill those days, that he would die as a young man in a hundred years.” In the final phrase the word “qalal” rendered “accursed,” does not mean “cursed” in the sense of an oath or an imprecation, which in the Old Testament is usually “cherem.” It has the meaning of being despised, disgraced, disesteemed. It does not imply the ultimate fate of the sinner, but that he is in a condition of disgrace or contempt, which is precisely what Daniel has in Daniel 12:2 above quoted. If someone experiences Millennial blessings and the power of the Gospel appeal and after a hundred years still shows no signs of renouncing sin it is to be expected that they will be generally disesteemed by their fellows who are themselves making progress towards the standards of righteousness which are set before all in that day “The sinner of a hundred years will be despised” is a fair translation.

There is a somewhat similar passage in the apocryphal “Book of Jubileess” ch.23:28-29, which must have been derived from one of the ancient Hebrew texts from which both ““Jubileess” and the modern Hebrew texts have their origin. ““And there shall be no old man nor one who is not satisfied with his days, for all will be as children and youths. And all their days they will complete in peace and in joy, and there shall be no Satan nor any evil destroyer; for all their days shall be days of blessing and healing..” This passage occurs in a brief description of the Millennial Age and perhaps affords a more accurate record of the original pre-Christian Hebrew text than is presented by the present A.V. rendering..

The cynic can step in at this point with what at first sight seems a perfectly reasonable objection. If this doctrine be true, he says, and all who have ever lived are to return again to this earth, where is one going to put them. How could there be living room or even standing room for the billions who must have lived from the beginning of time? Even if there should be standing room, what about food? How can this earth, which at this present time produces barely enough food to meet the needs of the present population, be expected to supply so vast a multitude? Put like that, the idea of a resurrection of all would seem unrealistic and impossible at the outset.

Put like that, the question is based upon pure assumption. It is not known, and cannot be known, just how many have been born upon earth since the days of the first man. The facile assumption is that there was always a large population but this by no means follows. Such conclusions as ethnologists and anthropologists have been able to draw from the scanty evidence that is available tend to show that only during the last three centuries has the earth possessed a population of any appreciable dimensions. The present number of over eight billions (the eight billion mark is reported to have been reached in 2022) is fantastically in excess of anything that has been known before. In the year 1900 it was only 1.6 billion, in 1800 700 million, and in 1700 400 million, a twenty-fold increase in about three centuries. Experts such as Putnam, Carr-Saunders and Huxley have calculated that at the beginning of the Christian era only 250 millions existed and in 2000 BC a maximum of 65 million. All these added up begin to bring the total within manageable proportions.

Since the doctrine and the hope of the resurrection is bound up with the authority of the Bible it is logical—and indeed imperative—to accept the Bible story of the origin of man upon earth. If the one is not authoritative then neither is the other and the entire belief and expectation fails. The Bible declares that the human race started with one pair—nothing illogical in that; the same thing has happened scores of times since to give rise to primitive tribes on remote islands or in previously uninhabited territory. Then at the time of the Flood the human race had to start all over again with three pairs. It has to be realised also that the present life span of three score and ten or seventy years, with generations following each other about three times a century, did not obtain in olden times. The Bible accounts, when analysed, show that at the first the generations followed each other at something more like hundred-year intervals and this would make a profound difference in the increase of the race. It has been calculated that, taking into account all the relevant Bible indications and allusions relevant to the subject, the probable number of humans who have ever lived if spread over all the earth would create a population density considerably less than that at present existing in Britain. This is on the basis that the stories of Eden and the Flood, and the Biblical time periods recorded, are factually correct. The imponderables of this subject are so immense that anything like a definite figure is quite out of the question, but the indications are that the Lord is going to introduce his Millennial reign and halt the continued increase of the human race at just that point when sufficient have been born properly to fill the earth. This incidentally was the commission given to the first man at his creation “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Gen.1:28) where “replenish” is the Hebrew male, to fill fully or completely. Man was commissioned to fill the earth and this has been done.

The food question is of lesser importance. There is plenty of available land for growing all the food so vast a host will require. The Scripture says that in that day the deserts shall become fertile, the dry places irrigated, crops grow where none grew before. In every respect Nature will respond to the willing labours of humans and the food will be there in abundance.

How long will all this take? Obviously, this host cannot all be restored to life at once. There must be an orderly return to allow for the constantly increasing demand for food, and presumably, clothing and housing. If the rate of increase of population due to the resurrection is taken as equal to the rate of increase during the second half of the twentieth century then a period of something like three hundred years would appear to be indicated. If this estimate is well founded, it can be expected that the resurrection will occupy at least the first few centuries of the Millennium, perhaps in the reverse order of going into death, so that the antediluvians will be the last to come back. Something like this seems to be indicated in some scriptures: thus Daniel in the 6th century BC was told that he would stand in his lot at the end of the days (Dan.12:13) and Job.17th century BC, talking of his faith in the resurrection, asked the Lord to “appoint…a set time, and remember me” (Job 14:13-15) “All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come” he says, “thou shalt call, and I will answer.” Says Paul on the same theme “every man in his own order” (1 Cor.15:23) where the word “order” is a military term indicating the marching of bodies of men each in their own place, just as one can imagine parties of men and women returning from the grave to renewed life upon earth.

AOH
To be continued