And as We Have Borne the Image of the Earthy, We Shall Also Bear the Image of the Heavenly
How shall dust and ashes hope to ascend into the heaven of heavens if it cannot feel with alt the fullness of conviction that One who was bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh has entered those realms before us and has taken up our very nature glorified and beautified to the right hand of the Everlasting Father? — Bishop Ellicott.
The Bible declares that these bodies are to be changed, not other bodies made or developed; but these vile bodies, the earthly bodies which belonged to us, the bodies of our humiliation, shame, and weakness, are to be changed and fashioned into the form of Christ’s glorious body. It was Christ’s same body, the body pierced and dead on the cross, the body which slept in Joseph’s tomb that was made glorious. So it is to be our same body — the body which had suffered the humiliation — that is to share the glory. It is to be accomplished by his divine power, and at his second coming.
This change will follow, in point of time, im-
131 mediately after the resurrection. The change will not be secured by the gracious effects of the genial clime nor advanced by the slow stages of progress. It will be instantaneous, the immediate act of God’s creative and regenerating power.
This will be the hour of our final triumph; the last enemy, Death, will be destroyed, and no traces of the ravages of death nor the ruin of sin will be left. Then we will have proof of the correctness of the apostle’s figuring and its results: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”
Then will be realized the transmuting power of God — how the dull and dreary things of this life can be changed to jeweled brightness; how its light afflictions, which pressed so wearily and heavily upon us, have been working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Then we shall not see through this earthy glass darkly, but face to face, with full and unveiled vision; then, in the fullness of knowledge as well as light, we shall know even as we are known. Then we will realize how here, even with the highest spiritual vision, eye did not see, nor ear hear, neither did it enter into the heart of man to conceive of things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
These are the two glorious facts awaiting these bodies — *hese bodies broken and imprisoned even in this life and humbled into death and dust. They are to be raised from the dead, the long sleep of death is to be broken by the power of God when the archangel’s trump shall sound; but it also teaches that the body thus raised shall undergo a change to fit it for its glorious resurrection life. Paul declares to us that this change shall consist of several particulars, which shall distinguish it from and contrast it with the present body, described by him thus: “It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption.” Changed from corruption to incorruption. Our bodies now are wasted, wasted by sickness, wasted by age, wasted by care, wasted by toil. All, everything, mark it as corruptible — its beauty fades, its strength decays, its life grows feeble and feebler. Our heavenly bodies will not be subject to decay nor to the weakness of age; they will not be the heirs of sickness or death; by them
“Sickness and sorrow, pain and death
Will be felt and feared no more.*’
Sorrow and the labors of this earthly life break and mar the force of this body and it wastes away. Our resurrection body will not be affected by any of these.
“It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory.” Dishonor, ignominy, disgrace, the grave, the dirt, the rottenness. We bury our dead out of our sight, dishonored, lost to sight, surrendered to darkness, loneliness, silence, to rottenness, worms, and to earth, to ashes, to dust.
These bodies are dim and dishonored things, bodies of humiliation, shame, and suffering; they arrest the full flow of joy and check the rapture of the immortal spirit. The transformation which they will undergo will make them glorious, shining with a splendor which outvies the sun. Doubtless they will be luminous and attractive, shapely with symmetry and perfect in form, lustrous with an immortal life, radiant with its deathless charms.
Do we overstate the change: Raised in glory? Glory, magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dignity, grace, splendor, brightness — these all, each, are in it. Christ said of them: uThey shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” “They- that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever.”