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The church’s steeple stands forlornly against a clear blue sky. Worn from years of wind and rain, the building’s exterior reveals its age. The doors are open, but only for tourists, interested in the architecture. Floors creak; dust fills the pews. Once the platform for Bible preaching, the altar now stands simply as a museum curiosity, untouchable in a cold, glass case.

The cemetery outside the museum-church compels me. Surely, we 21st-century Christians are too sophisticated to pass by a graveyard on our way into church every Sunday. Only morbid fascination could have led Christian saints to bury their dead so close to the house of worship.

Yet, the gravestones tell another story. “With Jesus, I shall rise,” says one. “The grave cannot confine me here. When Christ doth call, I must appear!” says another. “I know that my Redeemer lives,” affirms a third. Preoccupation with death doesn’t explain the cemetery’s strange location. Instead, it was the church’s understanding of the power of new life! The tombstones reveal the joyous truth: Resurrection is coming! Death has lost its sting! God’s promises of new heaven and earth will soon be fulfilled.

Teaching the Final Resurrection “passed away” long ago in most evangelical circles. Whenever we mention rising from the dead, we almost always reference Jesus’ resurrection. Sadly, we forget the link that connects Jesus’ rising to our own.

When we lose sight of our future Resurrection, the Easter message loses power and relevance. Only when the disciples saw the Risen Lord did they begin to understand that the “age to come,” for which they had been waiting, had flooded the present age. The old age and new age were taking place simultaneously, with Jesus’ Resurrection as the signpost that marked the beginning of God’s new world. Jesus’ victory over the grave also solidified their hope that God would one day vindicate all His chosen people, by reversing the curse of death, raising them bodily from the dead, and giving them eternal, incorruptible and transformed bodies. The Messiah’s past is our future!

Christians believe that the defining moment of human history took place on Easter morning – when Jesus came out the other side of death. His Resurrection was not just a return to His old body, though it did indeed involve the matter of his former body (thus the nailprints). Neither was He a phantom or ghost. Jesus did not rise to His old existence, just to face death at some future date (like Lazarus, or Jairus’ daughter). Jesus died, and then rose in a transformed physical body altogether. His new body was incorruptible! Death had been defeated. Jesus’ Resurrection is the foretaste – the firstfruits – of the Resurrection in which all Christians will one day share. (1 Cor. 15:20) For what is true of our Messiah will one day be true of us. (2 Tim. 2:11)

Losing sight of the Final Resurrection turns Christianity into a religion that concentrates only on going to ‘heaven’ when we die. Biblically, the Christian’s hope is much richer. What we usually call ‘heaven,’ is what the New Testament writers would have considered an intermediary state – a holding place for the saved until the Resurrection of the Last Day. Don’t think, though, that this “Paradise” was just a place for “soul sleep.” Paul proclaimed that to be “absent from the body was to be present with the Lord.” (2 Cor. 5:8) Nonetheless, as nice as the temporary afterlife may be, the apostles seldom spoke much of the ‘heaven’ which dominates today’s present thinking. The intermediary state was simply a stop on the way to the glorious new heaven and earth that God had promised to bring about.

We often miss the big picture because we gloss over the Bible passages that speak continually about, not life after death, but life after the afterlife – the promised new heaven and earth. We are like travelers on our way to the Grand Canyon, giving all our attention to the Hilton we’ll be resting at overnight on the journey. As nice as the Hilton may be, it is only a stop on the path to the splendor ahead.

Maybe our misplaced emphasis is what causes so much confusion about what God’s eternal Heaven will be like. People picture themselves floating around on clouds, in a disembodied state, or shining like stars in a galaxy where Jesus shines brightest. We are eager to shed our mortal bodies and head to the skies, where we will spend eternity.

Yet, the biblical view of the afterlife is never about escaping earth to get to heaven. It’s about heaven coming on earth – the New Jerusalem coming from God’s dimension onto a physical newly created and transformed earth. (Rev. 21:2) It’s not about shedding our bodies; it’s about God transforming them into an incorruptible state. (2 Cor. 5:2-4) The final dwelling place of man is not to go to ‘heaven’ to be with God. The final dwelling place of God is to come from ‘heaven’ to be with man! (Rev. 21:3-4)

That is why all creation is groaning and longing for the day of Christ’s appearing. (Rom. 8:22) Transformation lies ahead! God’s creation will be renewed. Satan will be forever defeated, and the curse of sin and the stench of death will be cast off for all eternity. We will walk an incorruptible earth in incorruptible bodies. This is the final hope for the Christian! The “half-way house” of heaven simply serves as a holding place on the way to the Promised Land.

Cemeteries once surrounded churches because the saints knew that the coffins they nailed shut would one day be thrown open. The decayed and dusty remains of a once-vibrant body would be transformed into a new type of physical reality – one that will never know death. Believers wanted to be near their church house when the trumpet sounds.

The tombstones continue to speak: “My flesh shall slumber in the ground, ’till the last of trumpets joyful sound. Then burst the chains with sweet surprise, and in my Savior’s image rise!” Another simply says: “Waiting.” Curiously, the more recent the gravestones, the fewer the references to the Christian’s glorious hope. The church must have moved away from speaking on the Resurrection. Suddenly, the realization dawns – maybe that’s what turned the church into a museum.

written by Trevin Wax  © 2007 Kingdom People blog

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