- 40. Bodily Resurrection
Isaiah 26:19 Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.
There will be a bodily resurrection of all people. And that’s a promise; “dead men shall live.” To dwell in dust is a body that has died; it becomes dust and ashes. Bodies that have died, and whatever happens to the body afterward, will awake and sing for they will arise. The earth (the land or the sea) will cast out the dead. Wherever or however human bodies have died, they will rise again in their human bodies. All human beings who have ever lived will rise again in new bodies (even those who have died before they were born). We believe in the resurrection of all flesh, for so God has promised.
What happens to the resurrected body afterward is another story. In their resurrected bodies each and every person will stand before the Great White Throne Judgment and receive reward or punishment according to whether each has believed the Gospel or not. Then those believers, whose names are written in the Book of Life, will go on in the eternal life they have been given and enter into the joy of the Lord forever. That also is a promise, a fundamental promise for believers.
This resurrection of the body promise is a great comfort to mortals who live under the shadow of death. The first resurrection (Christ’s) is the absolute defeat of the last enemy, death. Believers in Christ are the partakers of Christ’s resurrection by faith. This promise has nothing to do with an ethereal or ghostlike afterlife where the soul floats with angels and clouds. The resurrection promise is material, substantial, solid, physical, and visible, just as real as the solid body of Jesus. This is where our hope stands, on the solid rock of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.
During this life we all get sick, injured, weak, weary, tired, and worn out. All the little deaths lead to, and are a part of, our final temporal death. Death separates the body from life and from loved ones. The Resurrection unites soul and body and reunifies loved ones. While we live we know that my dead body shall arise, and so we wait in faith. When we die the body rests where it is laid and the soul is with the Lord, and so we wait.