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From where did you take this quote?

The Book of John

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Verses worthy of reading that I will not cover in detail are as follows6:39-40, 6:44, 6:54, 11:24 (compare 6:44, 6:54, and 11:24 to Daniel 12:13), 12:48, 13:36, 14:2-3.


(John 5:25-29) 25 "Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 "For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; 27 and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. 28 "Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, 29 and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.


Compare to Daniel 12:2


(Daniel 12:2) 2 " Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.


There is but one resurrection so the question is "when" did that resurrection take place? Jesus said in the Olivet Discourse that it would happen at the time of the great tribulation and destruction of Jerusalem when he sends forth his angels to gather his elect. In John 5:25-29 Christ says he has been given authority to execute judgment. Think about what Christ said in Matthew 16:27-28. He said he would come to establish his kingdom and reward (judge) in the lifetime of his disciples, or "this generation". The resurrection of the saints is a past event.


I know that when I say that the resurrection is a past event some people here find this crazy. With that in mind I want to turn to scripture alone as my means for substantiating this position. In the Olivet Discourse, which I believe has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be related to the destruction of Jerusalem, Luke writes the following



(Luke 21:22) because these are days of vengeance, in order that all things which are written may be fulfilled.


What was written at that time Jesus spoke those words? The Old Testament was all. None of the New Testament books were written till at least 52-53 AD so when Christ says that the destruction of Jerusalem is the fulfillment of all things written this would include all prophetic literature, including the book of Daniel. If that is true then that would include Daniel 12:2


(Daniel 12:1-2) 1 "Now at that time Michael, the great prince who stands {guard} over the sons of your people, will arise. And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time; and at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued. 2 "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace {and} everlasting contempt.


The fact is established that the distress spoken of in Daniel is almost identical in wording with the distress spoken of in Matthew 24. Both authors tie this distress to the gathering of the elect (or resurrection), therefore the resurrection is a past event that happened in conjunction with the fall of Jerusalem, just as Christ predicted in "this generation". Note also in Daniel it says, "and at that time your people" Who were Daniel's people? The Jews! Again, this helps us to know that the tribulation spoken of was God's judgment of the apostate Jewish nation, not the whole world.


(John 14:28-29) 28 "You heard that I said to you, `I go away, and I will come to you.' If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 "Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe.


Who are the "you" in verse 29? Again, it is the disciples. As we have seen elsewhere in scripture, Jesus told his disciples that he would come in their generation, before all of them had died, and before they had evangelized all of Israel. Now he tells them, "I go away, and I will come to you". He then goes on to say "I have told you before it happens so that when it happens you may believe". The point is that he was telling them while they were still alive about an event that would happen while some of them were still alive to see it. In other words, and pointing back to Matthew 16:27-28, they would not all taste death.


(John 21:21-23) 21 So Peter seeing him (John) said to Jesus, "Lord, and what about this man?" 22 Jesus said to him, "If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me!" 23 Therefore this saying went out among the brethren that that disciple would not die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but only, "If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you?"


This is simply another scripture that points toward the brevity of time regarding Christ's second coming. It would only be possible for John to remain alive if Christ' coming would be fulfilled in his lifetime. He has already told the disciples that not all of them would taste death before he returned. Why not John? John was alive in 70AD at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem.

What do these people make of the fact that we still die today?

Revealing who just keeps on and on and on acting like there was some "conspiracy theory", ain't it, folks? Futurists keep talking on and on and on and on about "2000 years of historical Christianity" like nobody in 2000 years could possibly have disagreed with their popular tradition. Go figure.

That is not true. There IS documented proof that believers lost their life because they refused to recognize the false doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.

mtxaxax

...if you think that Paxax has any desire to look at Scripture to determine his beliefs. He has been credalized to the point of darkening his foolish heart...

I don't see how it can be any plainer than this:

Acts 2:31 -He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his SOUL was not left in hell [hades], neither his flesh did see corruption.

Christ's resurrection was of the SOUL.
Christ's resurrection was not of the body.
Hell [hades] was the realm of the dead.
It is from this realm that the dead are raised.
It is not dead corpses that are being raised - there is nobody in them

Ask any preacher at a funeral. As they look down upon the body in the coffin they always say something like this "So-and-so has departed unto a better place (or the not-so-better-place which is NEVER mentioned ). It doesn't matter if they are Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglican or Catholic. They all recognize that the PERSON PART has left the shell created from the dust - every one of them!

Why can't the futurists accept the spiritual instead of always focusing on the natural, earthly stuff.

Well let me answer that with a comparison. It is exactly like those who believe the natural, earthly, old covenant Israel is expected to be given their natural, earthly, physical kingdom. They completely ignore the transformation from the physical to the spiritual. They ignore how that old covenant Israel was just a type and shadow of things to come in Christ.

Was Christ's body made alive after His resurrection? Without a doubt! But without Christ (the PERSON PART) being in the body (the made-from-dust part), there is no way the body part could walk around and show himself to many witnesses. THE resurrection occurred BEFORE the body portion began walking around.

But it doesn't matter what the Scriptures say. They have their paradigm and they are gonna stick with it!

The Seed Analogy

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How much continuity and conformity does our resurrection body have with "His glorious body" (Phil. 3:20-21)?
We get the same kind of resurrection body that Jesus has, but we were never promised that our physical bodies would have the same privileges that Jesus' physical body had. Jesus was sinless. He is the only one who was ever promised that His flesh would not "see corruption" (Acts 2:24-31). Everyone else was told "you are dust, and to dust you shall return." This means physical death is not the "Death" that was threatened by God against Adam's disobedience, and therefore not the death that is reversed by the eschatological resurrection event. Jesus nailed the "penalties" for our sins to the cross. Physical death seems to be a planned "natural" consequence of being human and living on earth.

Furthermore, Paul's seed analogy in 1 Cor. 15:35 on indicates that the outer shell of the seed dies and decays. The outer shell is not a part of the new body that rises out of the dust.

As a one time farmer and still owner of productive farm ground I know first hand this truthful concept. When a planted corn seed first sprouts its green and lively stem from beneath the soil, the hard shell of the original seed still remains - clutching the new little seedling for all its worth. But the end for that hard shell is inevitable and soon looses its grasp and decays - becoming nothing more than the soil it was planted in. If a seed is dead on the inside the seedling never emerges and disappears within the earth just as a body of flesh would decay and disappear.

The new body arises out of the inside of the seed. It is a different kind of body. The outer shell of the seed is not "the body which is to be" (1 Cor. 15:37) "But God gives it a ... body of its own." (1 Cor. 15:38) This is a crucial point, one which many exegetes have overlooked.

The seed analogy does not teach that the new body with which the seed sprouts has the same outer shell and form that it had before. It is the same seed. The inner part of the seed definitely has continuity with the original seed. But part of that seed stays in the ground. It is the inner man which has the spiritual life and rises with a new kind of body. It is the outer shell of the seed that is raised and then later changed. The change ocurrs before it rises out of physical death. The seed's outer shell dies and stays in the ground, and a new kind of body rises out of the inner part of the seed already changed and fitted for its new existence.

For Christians before 70AD, they had to wait until the resurrection at 70AD to be raised with that kind of body. This whole section of 1 Cor. 15:35 and on is full preterist turf in the discussion about the resurrection body. It does not teach that we will have "a physical, tangible resurrection".