The Scourge Of Racism
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Since God has purposely planned for His sons to inhabit eternity with Him to fulfill roles and purposes of His design, then this should be revealed in some measure in His Word as has been the case with His mortal plans. Truly, it is as Scripture teaches: faithful Christians on earth are now receiving a radical make over inwardly that will also thoroughly affect what bodies we have for eternity. This edited part one is the first of a three part previously published 2013 celebratory treatise briefly exploring the resurrection to immortal glory first accomplished by the Father in His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and promised also to His followers at His return to earth!
Originally Published April 2013
Besides the creation of man by God, the permanent, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is among the greatest displays of divine power in history! Coming on the third day after His death on the cross, His spirit that had departed returned to His lifeless body and it lived a second time; no more ever able to die. While He had previously displayed the divine power to raise others from the dead, they eventually died again. Jesus Christ, however, is the first and only Person until now to die, be raised to immortality and glorified after ascending to Heaven (Daniel 7:13-14; Luke 24:26, 50-51). He wills that all of His followers have His experience (John 6:40, 17:22).
As the Lord led me to write in a June 2012 Commentary titled, Man As God Designed Him, it was the divine intent that human mortality be only temporary. The possibility of immortality through the “tree of life” was already in the Garden of Eden when Adam was brought to it by God (Genesis 2:8-9, NKJV). All he had to do was eat from it which was not forbidden until after he sinned (Genesis 2:16-17; 3:22-24)! Clearly, mortality was the divine intended stage one of human existence to allow for death as the consequence for foreknown sin (Revelation 13:8). Truly, contrary to the consequential pain and grief it has caused us from Adam, physical death is an act of divine mercy!
He who foreknew Adam's fall and planned for it, also forever dismissed the prospect of his living forever to father children of sin when "the LORD God sent him out of the Garden of Eden," (Genesis 3:23, NKJV). Thus, the original divine directive to man as male and female to “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth” remained in effect as a mission of mortality in a temporary age of mortality dominated by death (Genesis 1:28, 3:16-19, 5:1-5, 8:20-9:1, NKJV). So used to the temporary routine of mortal life and death is mankind that many--including professing Christians--live hopelessly as though this is the eternally inevitable norm (Ecclesiastes 1:2-15, 2:1-24; Isaiah 22:13b, 56:12).
However, God who knows the end from the beginning permitted this routine of mortal life and death as part of His important plans for man and his salvation, for the Creator of man created him seeking eternal sons upon which to confer the inheritance of His eternal riches. Sin and death interrupted but did not finally thwart His plans. Therefore, God has been working during this mortal age to bring forth sons in the number of His will through Christ (Genesis 22:15-18; Romans 8:14-17; Galatians 3:7-29; Ephesians 2:4-7; Hebrews 2:10-16; Revelation 21:7). Indeed, He is the "firstborn from the dead" (Romans 8:29; Colossians 1:9-23; Revelation 1:4-8, NKJV).
The Lord's permanent, bodily resurrection from the dead was of monumental magnitude concerning immortality and opened a wide vista of consideration about it. While God did not reveal every detail about immortality and His future plans in His Word, there is enough information provided by the prophets, Christ and His apostles to keep us who believe joyfully thinking about it like dreamy eyed children lying in bed on Christmas Eve until the Lord returns. As with every other aspect of this eternal life we have in Christ, the redeemed sons of God are expected by Him to search out by the Holy Spirit the instruction in His Word related to our immortal future (1 Corinthians 2:9-12).
Authors down through the centuries and Hollywood more recently have either struggled to grasp or purposely took improper creative license with how Christ exited the tomb. The now false consensus that the stone was rolled away and he walked out in shining glory is popular, but not Scriptural. The New Testament accounts have folk arriving to find an empty tomb with angels in three of the four Gospels announcing the Lord's resurrection (Matthew 28:1-6; Mark 16:1-6; Luke 24:1-7; John 20:1-10). Why does this matter? It matters because the truth reveals that after His resurrection, the Lord stayed long enough to carefully fold a burial item, then in His immortal body, vanish from the sealed tomb as He did later seated amid disciples (Luke 24:30-31).
Clearly, the laws of physics, space or time did not limit the immortal body of the Lord as is powerfully seen too in His ascension into the spiritual dimension where Heaven is located above this present universe (Acts 1:9-11, 9:3-7; 2 Corinthians 12:1-4). Yet, in His immortal body, He could eat food and be touched (Luke 24:36-43; John 20:24-29). The resurrection of Jesus Christ into an immortal body matters because it is the eyewitness anchor of the Gospel that saves those that have believed and hope in His promise that we too shall be raised from the dead into immortal bodies (1 Corinthians 15:1-23, 29-34). The risen, living Christ continues His cry among American churches, "Who is on the Lord's side?"
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