The house from Heaven is the reward for our behavior, the reaping of what we have sown. Because of this the house the saints receive will vary from individual to individual as to its authority, power, and glory. Our body will be like that of the Lord Jesus in that it will be eternally alive, but it will vary according to the type of person we have become through our response to the high calling He has placed on us. Our reward will be precisely according to our work (Revelation 22:12).

Not nearly enough attention has been given, in Christian thinking, to the fact that the kind of body we shall receive in the resurrection is our reward, is being fashioned and developed by our conduct today, and may prove to be our basic condition for eternity.

When the Lord descends from Heaven the righteous dead will descend with Him. Although they may be in their newly acquired spiritual bodies, they probably will be invisible to the peoples of the earth.

These saints then will be sent down to receive back their mortal bodies from the place of death.

By the power of the Father working through Christ, both of whom will be dwelling in the saints through the Holy Spirit, the victorious saints will pick up their bodies (no matter how decomposed or disintegrated) and enter this newly revived vehicle. The Ark of the Covenant was made of acacia wood covered within and on the outside with gold. So it will be true of the inner nature and the mortal body of the saint in the Day of the appearing of Christ. The inner nature will be filled with the gold of Christ and then the mortal body will be revived and clothed with the gold of the house from Heaven. The victorious personality will be covered within and on the outside with the gold of Divinity, with the fullness of eternal, incorruptible resurrection life.

Mortality will be swallowed up by life.

For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. (II Corinthians 5:4)

The peoples of the earth will see the graves burst open and these eternal beings step forth in the fullness of Divine Life. The enemies of the Lord will gather together to fight against them. But the nations of saved peoples of the earth will come to their light (Isaiah, Chapter 60). The peoples of the earth will know in that Day that God has sent Christ and that God loves the saints as He loves Christ (John 17:21-23).

What of the living saints—those who have been protected by the Lord throughout the great tribulation and the reign of Antichrist?

They will have been prepared, as we said, by the Father and the Son entering them in the spiritual fulfillment of the Old Testament feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:34).

As we understand what will take place, their house from Heaven will be brought down to them. It will clothe their physical body. The biological frailties of the physical body will be replaced by incorruptible resurrection life. They then will be joined together with those who have come from Heaven and will ascend to meet the Lord in the air, there to enter the military preparations for the Battle of Armageddon, and possibly to take their places on the thrones in the air that have been newly vacated.

To be continued.