How different from our current viewpoint! We are stressing today that the important thing is to die and go to the spirit Paradise. But Paul ignores this unscriptural emphasis and points to the resurrection of the body in the Day of the Lord.

Why was it not sufficient that Christ gain the victory of having His Spirit and Soul raised from the depths of spiritual darkness? Why did it matter that His body did not experience decay (Acts 2:27,31)?

Why did the Apostle Paul treat the resurrection of the body as though it is this that is salvation and eternal life?

Why did the Apostle Paul speak of the redemption of our mortal bodies as being our adoption as God's sons? (Romans 8:23).

The fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians reminds us of a fact we observed earlier, that when God condemned Adam and Eve to return to the dust of the ground He gave the impression this would be the end of them—as though their body were their entire personality. There was an ignoring of their spirit and soul (Genesis 3:19).

Speaking of the resurrection of the body :

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (I Corinthians 15:22)

Again:

Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. (Acts 2:27)

He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell [Hades], neither his flesh did see corruption. (Acts 2:31)

The soul of Christ went to Hades while His body remained in a state of incorruption in the cave of Joseph of Arimathea.

Also, it appears from the above that there is a connection between the soul and body of man. In order for us, after we die physically, to regain what we were as a human being, our body must be raised from the dead.

The kind of resurrection of the body experienced by the human being is important in the Kingdom of God. The resurrection of the body is not an afterthought but is central to salvation, to eternal life.

The current stress on the raising of the soul and spirit to Heaven, whether in a "rapture" or however else, is not scriptural. It is not of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.

By the term resurrection of the dead, or resurrection from the dead, is meant the restructuring and reviving of the physical body of the human being.

The Scriptures do not always use the term resurrection this precisely, sometimes adding to it the endowments of life and glory that are the inheritance of the overcomer. But we think we are correct when we state that the meaning of the term resurrection, as it is used in the Scriptures, is the restructuring and reviving of the physical body without reference to its destiny, whether glorious or disgraceful.

To be continued.