One of the most popular axioms that everybody has on their lips continually, even the most righteous of people who say they wait for the second coming of Christ, is this: “Death awaits all of us, everybody has to die.” You see the statement over and over in church publications. It’s just taken for granted everywhere.
But the Bible squarely and directly contradicts it.
“We shall not all die,” says the apostle Paul in 1 Cor. 15:51.
Then he explains more minutely what will happen, in 1 Thess. 4: “We who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord” (vss. 15-17).
Yes, there will be some people who will be “alive and remain” at the coming of Christ, who will be ready to meet Him, and who will be translated.
Obviously they will have “overcome, even as [Christ] overcame” (Rev. 3:21). Although they are living in the same “flesh” and “nature” all of Adam’s descendants have always lived in, they will have “condemned sin in the flesh,” even as Christ did (cf. Rom. 8:3).
If everybody has to die on and on, century after century, and millennium after millennium, how could Christ win the “great controversy” with Satan? This nearly universal axiom is not good gospel news. It’s just not truth.
Just because some sincere Christians were disappointed 162 years ago does not mean that this fundamental truth of the gospel is not true. We must never abandon this good news!
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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