A multitude of saints already have been raised in the Holy Spirit to the right hand of God with Christ, and then they have died physically and their souls have gone to be with the Lord. But they have not been resurrected as yet. The resurrection from the dead is not past but future.

Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some. (II Timothy 2:18)

The resurrection from the dead is a "better thing" than the saints have known thus far and it has not been experienced as yet by the heroes of faith who spent their lives searching for the "city that hath foundations."

God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:40)

Man has not been completely redeemed until he has been made whole again—spirit, soul, and body. A creature who is spirit and soul but who does not possess a body is not a member of the human race. A man, as God has created him, is spirit, soul, and body. His God-given personality has been fragmented by physical death, which is the enemy of Christ and man. Therefore he is in need of redemption.

The resurrection from the dead of which the Scripture speaks, the act of redemption that will take place at the return from Heaven of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not of the spirit or soul of the saint. The spirit and soul have been redeemed previously.

The resurrection from the dead, the raising from the grave at the sounding of the trumpet of the Lord, has to do with the body of the saint.

In several instances when the Scripture is speaking of redemption or of not perishing or of eternal life, it is referring primarily to the body of the saint. This especially is true of the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, which may be the main exposition in the entire Scriptures of the resurrection from the dead.

Notice carefully the following passage:

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. (I Corinthians 15:22,23)

"Shall all be made alive . . . at his coming." Do we wait until Jesus comes in order to receive eternal life?

Our spirit is made alive when we receive Christ as our Lord and Savior. At that point we pass from death to life.

At the moment of physical death our soul is saved into the Presence of God and the Lamb. Our soul does not sleep in our body in the grave. We go to be with the saints and the angels in Heaven and join the great cloud of witnesses.

Well then, what is the meaning of the following: ". . . will all be made alive . . . at His coming"? If our spirit already is alive and is in Christ at the right hand of the Father, and our soul already is alive and in the Presence of God at our physical death, then it is only our body that will be made alive at the coming of the Lord.

To be continued.