Christ came forth from the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. In like manner we shall come forth from our place of burial. In one sense, His resurrection and our resurrection are one resurrection just as His crucifixion and our crucifixion are one crucifixion. We have been crucified with Christ and resurrected with Christ.

"The firstfruits of them that slept." "That sleep in the dust of the earth." We do not often refer to physical death as sleep. This is because we have emphasized that salvation will result in our discarding our physical body so that our born-again inner nature can go to the spiritual realm and receive a spiritual body.

But God regards physical death as a sleeping of the physical body because He intends to awaken the body from its sleep in the dust of the earth.

He said unto them, Give place: for the maid is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. (Matthew 9:24)

The Lord Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. The body of the maid was sleeping in physical death. Her body awoke at the voice of the Lord. The same is true of every mortal body that has lived on the earth.

The girl awoke amid much rejoicing. So shall we if we have served the Lord diligently.

For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. (I Corinthians 15:21)

The death referred to here is physical death. Adam and Eve were alive physically, living in Paradise on the earth.

When speaking of them, God did not refer to their eternal souls. God told them they were dust and that they would return to the dust. We see here the emphasis on the physical body.

God warned that in the day they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would die; not that they would be cast into Hell but that they would die.

Today we preach as though the main message of the Gospel were escape from Hell and residence in Heaven. There is an actual Hell and there is an actual Heaven. The truth is, however, that the main message of the Gospel is escape from death and entrance into eternal life. The Lord Jesus came that we might have more abundant eternal life—the resurrection Life that comes from God the Father.

In the day Adam and Eve disobeyed God, the Presence of God withdrew from them and from all nature. Man and nature died, being denied the renewal of the Life of God. Cherubim were stationed to guard the way to the tree of life, the eating of which would have given immortality to the bodies of Adam and Eve.

By man came death, not Hell, but death. Through the obedience of the Man, Christ, came the raising of the dead, the renewing of human bodies so they can walk once again on the earth.

Whoever believes in Jesus shall not perish, not be doomed to exist forever in corruption, but shall gain eternal life—immortality in a renewed body. The Kingdom of God, the will of God, is coming into the earth. Everything of worth shall be restored through Christ. This is not to say that all people eventually will be saved, for that is not true.

To be continued.