A BETTER RESURRECTION

There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated – the world is not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground (Heb. 11: 35b-38).

What a register of nameless, courageous people! What faith!

We cannot even begin to guess who these people were. A few names come to mind of those whom we can identify by the things they suffered. Many remain anonymous as far as the world is concerned, but never in God’s eyes. It’s one thing to trust and obey God when He has an assignment in mind. It’s quite another to believe God – with nothing but His promise for a future life to go on, no reward for believing Him in the present, and no hope of a fair deal in this life.

Their faith carried them beyond this life into the life to come. They had no guarantee that the promises they put their confidence in were true. They did not even have a written document to substantiate in what they put their faith. No one had come back from the dead to affirm that there was something better for those who loved and obeyed God. Their hope lay in what they knew of God from their own experience.

The world’s bitter persecution and murderous hatred of God’s people is evidence of Satan’s enmity against God which he channels through ungodly people to those who have allied themselves with the Almighty. We are a world at war. In the beginning, Satan challenged God for His place in the universe. Beaten though he was, he has not given up the challenge and will not until he and all who follow him are forced to bow and to confess that, after all, Jesus is Lord!

We continue to live in the environment of war and the evidence of it is everywhere. From the subtleties of religious prejudice and the outright promotion, even legislation in favour of everything that contradicts God’s holy standards – abortion, prostitution, Satanism, homosexuality and same-sex marriage, etc. – to the murder of Christians, simply because they believe that Jesus is the only Saviour, the war goes on.

Why did believers still cling to God’s truth when they had to pay such a high price for refusing to recant? Some suffered death in unspeakably cruel ways, and some still do today, but they refused to give up on God.  What held them to the conviction that there was something better for them up ahead? A better resurrection. Why are people still willing to face cruel torture and death today rather than recant their faith in God?

God has built into the human spirit the conviction that there is an afterlife. Some religions have fabricated fanciful ideas about the idyllic existence that awaits them beyond death. Some go through elaborate burial rituals to send the departed spirit on its way. There are a few who deny that there is anything beyond death – but that does not change the hope that exists in them whatever they choose to believe. These are all efforts to deny the truth that there are only two destinies awaiting the human race, with or without God.

Because He is our Creator, we are all accountable to Him, whether we choose to believe it or not. What we believe or do not believe cannot change the truth.

He has also set eternity in the human heart . . . (Eccles. 3: 11b).

God created human beings – people who are both body and spirit. Without our bodies we are disembodied spirits, not human beings. His plan of restoration includes the resurrection of our bodies, not the perishable state we are in now but an eternal and indestructible body like the resurrection body of Jesus. He is the firstfuits of the resurrection and, because He conquered death, we shall live again in our eternal bodies, human and complete as God intended from the beginning.

Our lives on this earth in these mortal bodies is transient.

The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more (Psa 103: 15).

Human imagination cannot venture into the realm of what lies ahead beyond the grave. This is God’s realm and He has not told us in detail what to expect. However, He had told us to anticipate something unspeakably wonderful for those who love Him, and that is enough to hold us when everything in this life turns sour. We may not all have to suffer for our reward which is the gift of faith, not of suffering. Some may gain it through suffering, others through persevering faith in everyday circumstances. The question is, “Do we love Him?”

However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” – the things God has prepared for those who love Him – these are the things God has revealed to us by His Spirit (1 Cor. 2: 9-10a).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.