HEAVEN
What Will Our Bodies Be Like in Heaven?
“Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body." Philippians 3:20-21(NIV)
"What we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him" 1 John 3:2 (NIV)
This means that believers will live forever with renewed bodies which will be like Jesus’ resurrected body. We will live clothed in new bodies on a renewed and restored planet earth where heaven and earth will have been merged.
Those who have embraced God in this life will, just as Jesus did in his resurrection body, talk, eat, drink, and live. Jesus’ soles didn’t hover above the road, he walked on it. He started a fire, cooked a meal, and caught fish. His new body was structured in such a way that its molecules could pass through solid materials.
Don’t worry. No offense to the harpists, there will a place for them, but the picture of harps and clouds is simply not biblical. We were made for earth and it is for earth we are destined.
Prayer
“Lord, replace my insipid view of the afterlife with vivid images of an unimaginable reality to come. Please replace fear with trust and, if it be your will, even anticipation. Amen”
Does it matter if we are buried or cremated? I know that it says in Revelation 20:13 that the sea will give up the bodies in it. I also know that martyrs' were burned at the stake, criminals were scattered throughout a country as a warning, etc. Does the Bible speak specifically on any preferred method?
ReplyDeleteHi Mike,
DeleteGood question - thoughtful as always. There's an "okay" side to cremation and a down side. The okay side, as I see it, is cost saving and the reality that ashes and a corpse are just two different stages of the same thing, which God will resurrect. The down side is the possibility that some people might begin to fall into the fallacy that many Christians already accept, which is that the body is bad and will be gone anyway, so what about this material world. That's Plato not scripture. This body matters so much that God will resurrect it. Hope this helps. God is Great! Pastor Jeff