Notice Paul does not say if there is no Heaven our preaching and faith are useless but if there is no resurrection of the dead. We are not raised from the dead to go to Heaven but to live again on the earth.

Most of our thoughts about going to Heaven when we die are not scriptural but mythological. Rather, the emphasis of the Scriptures is on our resurrection. Check it out in the Old Testament and the New.

If we are willing to die in Christ, to offer our body a living sacrifice to God, pressing into Jesus every day, denying ourselves as the Spirit leads, we will have a glorious resurrection. Our flesh and bones will be raised, just as Jesus' were, and then clothed with the house from Heaven that has been formed as we have sown our body to the death of the cross.

But if we are so foolish as to spend our days (I am speaking to Christians) in the appetites of our flesh, eating, sleeping, playing, working, reproducing, marrying, giving in marriage, buying, selling, if this is all we have to show for our days on the earth, then no house in Heaven has been formed, no robe with which to clothe our resurrected flesh and bones.

Our body will be raised, animated by spiritual energy and not by the eternal Life of Christ. We will stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ. Our judgment could not begin previously because we had been unwilling to die in Christ.

Now we are in for it. All we have done in the body, good and bad, will be given back to us. If the good outweighs the bad we will be admitted to the Kingdom of God. But God Himself knows the lashes, the loss of our talents, the anger of Christ we shall experience. We may be saved as by fire, but how hot and how long will that fire burn?

The resurrection! This may be the greatest symbol of all of the program of being given something twice. We are given our body once. It must be sown to the death of the cross. Then we receive it back magnified and glorified beyond comprehension.

The greatest work is in our inward nature. Today the spirits of righteous people being made perfect dwell in the heavenly Jerusalem. When our inward nature has been cleansed from sin and taught stern obedience to the Father, then, and only then, will we be qualified to put on immortality.

Immortality, endless life in the body, cannot be given to us until we have gained the eternal Life of God in our inward nature. First eternal life is developed in our personality. Then immortality in the body will be given to us.

Every other enemy must be put down before physical death, the last enemy, is driven from us.

To be continued.