Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
Resurrection, Hope of the
(From Forerunner Commentary)
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Job 14:13-15
Job did not fear death; in fact, he felt death would be a relief from the struggles, infirmities, and trials of physical life. He knew that God would raise him at the appointed time, the first resurrection. He was sure in his redemption; he trusted God to forgive, save and resurrect him. Further, he understood that his life in the Kingdom would be so much superior to his physical life (Job 19:25-27).
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Time and Life
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Job 14:14-15
Job knew what was happening, that God was creating in him. He knew that a transformation was to come into his life after he had died—"if a man dies." God has a desire to be reunited with those who have died, with those in whom He has been working. He has a desire to finish His work! As long as the person is in the grave, God's creative powers and efforts are not yet concluded! What He wants to do is to match the spiritual character He has created within the person while alive as a human being with a glorious spiritual body that He will give them upon resurrecting them from the dead! Job understood this. Thousands of years ago, he knew it! Do we know it today as well as Job did then?
John W. Ritenbaugh
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Ecclesiastes 3:11
God has endowed us with the sense of the future and with a curiosity about what goes on beyond the grave: Is there life beyond the grave? Do we have immortality? Is this life all there is? He has made man with the capacity to think about these matters. Unfortunately, as Solomon says, nobody can figure out what He is doing. Without vision, people perish (Proverbs 29:18); without revelation, people cast off restraint—they go off the path. "They do not know what He is doing from the beginning" does not refer to what He is doing in His creative acts but the purpose of life. His purpose has been revealed to us that we might have the same hope that God has for us: to share all eternity with Him and live as He does. If we have caught the vision and understand what the resurrection is—the doorway through which we step to continue in all of its fulness the kind of life that God has already introduced to us and we have begun to put into practice—we realize that we will be able to continue as His companions, His children for all eternity. This is what the resurrection represents!
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Resurrection From the Dead
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John 5:25
Jesus Christ's declaration is interesting because the subject directly involves a resurrection, and it is also tied to a vital process that sets the elect apart. The key words in this verse are "hear" and "dead." We need to add a thought from Ephesians 2:1: "And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins." Before God's calling, even though we were physically alive, we were spiritually dead because of sin. However, John 5:25 says that the dead "hear" His voice. Similarly, those who are spiritually dead cannot "hear" God's Word until they are called, made part of the elect, and enabled by God to hear and thus understand His Word clearly. Another important factor appears in Hebrews 10:38: "The just shall live by faith." Also, Ephesians 2:8 says that we are "saved by grace through faith." Romans 10:17 adds, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Finally, in John 6:63, Jesus clinches the point: "The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life." This linkage of truths makes vitally clear the importance of the calling and election by God. His enabling of us to "hear" is what begins to sweep away the spiritual blindness that has kept us ignorant of the purpose He is working out here below. This miracle of hearing gives rise to truly effective faith. It makes God's Word truly logical and believable, making commitment in obedience to His purpose possible. Yet, what if a person cannot "hear" what God is saying? None of these saving elements comes to pass in life because no faith is produced! Jesus utters another awesome, humbling truth in John 10:3-4, 6, 16: "To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice." . . . Jesus used this illustration, but they did not understand the things which He spoke to them. . . . "And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd." He describes our calling and relationship with our Shepherd—Himself—in intimate and personal terms. "He calls them by name." He personally leads them out of their pen, a symbol of the world in which we are held captive, enslaved, and spiritually dead. Conversely, verse 6 plainly depicts the spiritual condition of the uncalled: They did not understand. God had not enabled them because He was not calling them to be a part of His purpose at that time. Thus, the miracle that opens our minds so we could "hear" was not performed on them. Romans 8:30 adds another startling truth: "Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and who He justified, these He also glorified." Only the called are justified! Justification through repentance and the atoning blood of Jesus Christ is what permits us into the presence of God, enabling further growth to glorification in God's Kingdom!
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Christian Fight (Part Six)
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1 Corinthians 15:1-8
As he opens this chapter, Paul's clear purpose is to show that the hope God has placed before us is not based on men's guesses or possibilities, but on the testimony of many eyewitnesses then yet living when he wrote this in the AD 50s. Paul adds that he did not make up the gospel, but it was what he received from Christ, and what he received was exactly the same as what he had later been told by the apostles when he met with them in Jerusalem. Paul is presenting the resurrection of Christ as a historical fact. We also have available to us the witness of the apostles' lives following the resurrection. Now, people just do not do the things the apostles did without believing what they saw with their own eyes with all their heart. Thus, in the first eight verses Paul reinforces what Peter says in II Peter 1:16-21, that there is plenty of strong evidence of the proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is not a figment of these men's imaginations. It really did occur, and God did not provide a mere two or three witnesses, but hundreds of them to the fact of the resurrection of the dead. Paul establishes that our hope is resurrection into the Kingdom of God. However, we must take this hope one step farther if we want to make it a motivating force. The resurrection is, in one sense, merely a promised event given at a point in time. It does not occur merely because we believe it, or even because it has been promised. It occurs because of Who promised it. It occurs because there is a powerful Being of utmost integrity, who cannot lie and who will make it occur. This is where our hope must be, not in what He has promised, but rather Who has promised it. Is our faith in God? So must our hope be in God.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Perseverance and Hope
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Philippians 1:20-26
The apostle Paul was a human being just like us, not God in the flesh as was Jesus. Having faced the perils of life with disturbing regularity (II Corinthians 11:23-28), Paul was intimately acquainted with the certainty of death, but being better spiritually educated and experienced than most of us are, he can provide us a positive example. He realizes that it would better fit God's purpose if he stayed alive for a while longer because the Philippian brethren needed him and the teaching he would bring them, but if he had the choice, he says, he would far rather die to await the resurrection and thus be with Christ. He is torn between the two alternatives. Obviously, this is not a man who feels a morbid dread of death; like his Savior, he does not consider it an end but an interlude between physical life and eternal life with God. In verse 21, Paul uses an interesting idiom, "to die is gain," which resembles a similar "death" idiom in English, "cashing in the chips." The apostle pictures life as a kind of game that he played for all he was worth, but when he must retire from it, he would gladly cash in his chips and take home his winnings, his "gain," as it were. By using this game analogy, he does not take death overly seriously. It is without doubt sobering and grievous because a life has ended and a person's companionship will be missed, but the apostle always keeps his priorities straight: Eternal life is always to be preferred to physical life. He knows he has far greater, more eternal winnings—"treasure in heaven," as Jesus phrases it in Matthew 6:19-21—than all the so-called pleasures and possessions he could enjoy on earth. He is very willing to endure death to claim the reward that God had promised to him in the resurrection. However, despite desiring to cash in his chips, he concludes that it would be better for the game if he kept his hand in it a mite longer. Thus, like his Savior and ours, he is not morose and hopeless about death. On the contrary, he has "a desire to depart and be with Christ," because his next conscious act would be to rise from the grave to meet Christ in the air (I Thessalonians 4:16-17) and live and reign with him forever (Revelation 20:6). What a wonderful attitude to have! He would give his all in service to God while alive on the earth, but he would gladly give his life to be with Christ in His Kingdom.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Death Is Not the End (Part Three)
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Hebrews 10:23-25
Stir up love means "to arouse to love." We have an obligation to do this because of both love and faith. We see it in two different contexts: In Hebrews 3:12-14, the subject is faith or belief. In Hebrews 10:23-25, the subject is love. In both cases, exhortation within our fellowship can increase either one or both of them. The writer says that we have to confess our hope. Confess means "to make it known, to reveal." We must make our hope known. Undoubtedly, he means the great hope of the resurrection of the dead, but it is probably not limited only to that hope but includes other hopes that we have. It is the accomplishment of these hopes that we are to exhort our brethren about: "Hang in there!" "Hold fast!" "Have you tried praying about that?" "Have you sought the advice or counsel of this person?" "Do you think it would help for you to do this or that thing?" "I had a problem like that one time." By doing this, we begin to pool our resources and experiences, and there is wisdom, God says, in a multitude of counselors. It cannot help but build people up, and our fellowship becomes stronger as we share one another's hopes and dreams.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Prayer and Fervency
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1 Peter 3:18-20
Does this passage explains the fate of the lost of humanity? It actually does, just not in the way most understand it. Jesus, while dead Himself, did not bring the souls of the dead to salvation through preaching to them personally in some kind of nether world. Such a scenario is theologically ridiculous. However, His resurrection did make salvation possible for the "lost" dead. By living again, He has broken the grip of death over mankind (see I Corinthians 15:20-22, 55-57; Hebrews 2:14-17). As Paul says in I Corinthians 15, each category of individual will be resurrected in a specific order: first Christ, then His saints at His coming (verse 23), then "the rest of the dead" (Revelation 20:5, 11-13), and lastly, the incorrigible wicked to the second death (Revelation 20:14-15). The "lost" of humanity will rise as "the rest of the dead" in the Great White Throne Judgment, and have the opportunity to hear and to accept or reject the good news of salvation. This will be their first opportunity to receive God's calling, an opportunity that God will extend to every member of humanity. God is not callous by any means. Perhaps the best known of all Bible verses asserts this clearly: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). He will make sure that every human being has an opportunity to hear the gospel and have the choice to enter His Kingdom. God's victory over death and over Satan, won through His resurrection of the sinless Jesus Christ, will eventually be proclaimed to all people from all ages. That is a victory worth shouting about!
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Jesus and 'the Spirits in Prison'
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2 Peter 3:1-2
What did the apostles write? They wrote about the life and death of Christ, about prophecy, about the second coming of Christ, about the resurrection of the dead. They wrote about the establishment of the government of God on earth, about a whole nation being born in one day, about the world being filled with beauty, love, peace, and prosperity. Peter reminds them of this because this is where their hope needed to be. We too need to be looking forward to this to be able to relate what we are going through now with what is going to happen in the future. What is happening now is intended by God to prepare us for the future so that when His Kingdom comes, we are ready for it. Christ is not only preparing a place for us, He is also preparing us to be able to fill that place.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Don't Be a Prudent Agnostic
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