YOU DO NOT KNOW THE SCRIPTURES

⁸ Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. ¹⁹ “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. ²⁰ Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. ²¹ The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. ²² In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. ²³ At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
²⁴ Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? ²⁵ When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. ²⁶ Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? ²⁷ He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!” Mark 12:18-27

Now it was the Sadducees’ turn to have a go at Jesus. How sincere were they? If questions are a revelation of the way a person is thinking, then the question asked by the religious leaders via the Pharisees etc., as well as the Sadducees’ question, revealed how little understanding they had about things relating to the kingdom of God. None of these people were on a quest for truth. They were on a mission to indict Jesus but, instead, they were indicting themselves.

The Sadducees’ question about resurrection was probably intended to expose what they believed was error – the fact of the resurrection, but instead it exposed their own faulty belief system. They were obviously of the opinion that resurrection life, if there was such a thing, was merely a continuation of this present system, in which case, the law of Levirate marriage posed a problem. Were they trying to prove how ridiculous resurrection appeared to them?

Jesus was quick to pounce on their error. He brought two truths about resurrection life to the surface.

1. Marriage was intended to be a visual aid and a human experience of ECHAD on earth as a preparation for our eternal experience of ecstasy and intimacy with God in the kingdom. Therefore, there will be no need for marriage in the hereafter. Its purpose will have been fulfilled.
2. Death does not end our human existence. It is merely the process by which we pass into the third and final stage of life. God does not have dead sons but living sons, those who have fulfilled their apprenticeship on earth and move into the eternal realm where they are fully alive forever.

How did Jesus know this? Was it merely through the study of the Scriptures? No. Many times during the course of His public ministry He repeated His claim to have come from the Father. All their questions about the source of His authority were answered if they had only listened to Him. He had personal experience of the truth He proclaimed because He came from the other side.