There she was, lying in a hospital bed with crisp white sheets and monitors beeping all around. Just a few weeks ago, she was up and doing her normal routine. Today, she was lying on her back with an oxygen mask forcing her to breathe. Icema Pappas, my Greek Mom, never liked anything over her face. Like me, she was claustrophobic.
Mom was an attractive woman. Some said she looked like Elizabeth Taylor when she was younger. But what made her special was her kind, quiet spirit. Everyone who ever met her liked her immediately because she liked people. She was a praying woman like her mother before her. Even though I was in my Godless decade, having shaken my fist at God, telling Him to go away, I could feel His Spirit coming through her. I had not prayed in 10 years, but I felt moved to comfort her in some way through the God she loved.
My beautiful mom had been fervently praying for me for the last ten years, but I could not find a prayer within me.
They had done everything they could. She was dying before my eyes. My heart was breaking for her. The air seemed to be leaving the room. I asked the doctors and nurses to make her comfortable. She settled down as the morphine took over.
One by one, the family was called in to say their goodbyes. She was only 73 years old.
My parents divorced when I was six and my brother was two. She had to return to work as the switchboard operator at a trucking company. My Mom, Ronnie, and I lived with my grandmother in a small one-bedroom apartment in a section of the house. Two very loving women of God raised me. Both were good Baptists but followers of Christ first.
When I became a follower of Jesus some twenty-eight years earlier, after studying the Bible to prove my newly baptized Christian wife wrong about the whole religious thing, I shared some of the things I had learned from the Bible with my sweet mom and grandmother. The passages on the state of the dead, the second coming, and the resurrection were fresh and new to them.
They listened closely and asked questions. They found comfort in the return of Jesus, the comparison of sleep with death, and the resurrection, just as Paul instructed in 1 Thess 4: 18 (Comfort one another with these words). They, indeed, found comfort in God’s word. With a hopeful voice, I described going to sleep in death, but, in a flash, our next view would be of Jesus coming in the clouds; then we would rise above the earth with all the others who loved Him to meet Him there before going to where He promised to take us.
It was my turn to say goodbye to my beautiful, sweet mom, whose brown eyes glowed when she talked to me. That is what I remember about her. Her eyes. Sometimes, it was like Jesus conversed with me…even joking around and laughing with me through those eyes! They were closed now.
I was not sure she could hear me because of the morphine. She was quiet and not moving as I listened to the heart monitor, beginning to slow.
I took her hand like the young people shake hands by wrapping my fingers around her thumb. I felt the soft flesh of her hands, which had brushed the hair back from my eyes and wiped the tears away from my face when I was young. I leaned in to make sure she heard the last words she would hear from me. “Mom, I love you. I will see you resurrection morning.” Suddenly, I felt those sweet fingers squeeze three times. She had heard me! Her spirit was saying playfully…” “You better be there!”
As the heart monitor went silent, so did those in the room. I looked out to watch the beautiful sun setting in the west.
I had made a promise to her to be there on resurrection morning. The only way I could keep it is for God to have mercy on His prodigal son. I was dead in sin. But, praise God, I was resurrected a few weeks later.
It is a spiritual truth that we can’t feel our sinfulness until we ask God to take over. We are like a dead person that feels nothing. When the Spirit of God convicts us at the request of sweet moms, dads, grandmothers, grandfathers, friends, or strangers. We come alive to our situation, our fate of eternal death; then we die to ourselves, pleading for God’s forgiveness. Then Jesus comes into our hearts and mind, and the Spirit gives us a new birth, a new way of thinking and feeling. We are changed miraculously.
As Mary said in the series The Chosen, “I was one way…now I am completely different, and the thing that happened in between was Him.”
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Even though my mother and grandmother were Baptist, They believed what I am about to bring you from God’s word.
The resurrection from the dead is the most important promised event in our spiritual lives! Without the resurrection of Jesus, you and I have no resurrection, and our faith is worthless. I didn’t say it, Paul did.
1 Corinthians 15:14, 18-19
And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty, and your faith is also empty… And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.
Let’s consider the event that turns us from mortal to immortal, from death to life.
I’ve heard many accounts of heaven, but what will we look like? What will our bodies be like? Will we be just a wispy spirit floating on a cloud and plucking a harp? Will we be an angel?
We Will Be Like Him
“…we know that when He is revealed, WE WILL BE LIKE HIM, for we shall see Him as He is.” 1 John 3:2
What was He like physically?
The disciples, who were eyewitnesses of Jesus’ post-resurrected body. They tell us their account of a real Jesus, not a spirit. When the disciples thought Jesus was a ghost, He said,
“Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a SPIRIT DOES NOT HAVE FLESH AND BONES as you see I have.” Luke 24:39
Will we have flesh and bones? Yes! A real person! Then he asked for something to eat!
“But while they still did not believe for joy and marveled, He said to them, “Have you any food here?” So they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb. And He took it and ate in their presence. Luke 24: 41-43
Will we eat in our glorified bodies? We will have an appetite!
Jesus had flesh and bones (unlike a spirit), and He ate fish and honey in His glorified body (post-resurrection). We, too, will have a glorified body with flesh, bones, and an appetite. We will get a signal from our body that it is time to eat.
The third time Jesus appeared to the disciples (after His resurrection), he returned the favor and cooked them fish and bread!
“Then, as soon as they had come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish which you have just caught…This is now the third time Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after He was raised from the dead.” John 21: 9-10, 14
Movement by Thought
Our bodies will be like His… Our mode of travel will be walking because we will have legs, but we will be able to think our bodies somewhere, as did Jesus in a room behind locked doors. This is the spiritual side of us.
Now as they said these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them, “Peace to you.” Luke 24:36
Even though we will have real bodies, it will be fashioned after Jesus, not Adam.
The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man. 1 Corinthians 15: 47-49
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When Do We Get Real Bodies?
We will get real bodies, but when does this happen?
Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
We are changed at the last trumpet, which is the second coming of Christ. Continuing with Paul’s description of the second coming, he says,
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?” 1 Corinthians 15: 51-55
Where I am!
“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. John 14: 1-3
So when He comes, he takes us to where He is now! The City of Heaven, the mansions,-The New Jerusalem. Streets of God, the river that flows from God., and the Tree of Life on both sides of the River.
But we don’t stay there forever after 1,000 years. The redeemed of all ages return to this earth. We will get to watch God recreate this earth. (See 1,000 years for more detail.)
Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Revelation 21:2
New Heavens and a New Earth
Isaiah, Peter, and John describe the abode of the redeemed.
…we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. 2 Peter 3:13
After Jesus makes a new earth, the meek will finally inherit the earth. We will have active lives and live forever! We will continue to have worship services!
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit …And My elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain, Isaiah 66: 21-23
After working for six days, we will attend worship, not as different denominations, but as those who belong to Christ.
“For as the new heavens and the new earth
Which I will make shall remain before Me,” says the Lord,…And it shall come to pass, that from one New Moon to another,
And from one Sabbath to another, All flesh shall come to worship before Me,” says the Lord.” Isaiah 66: 22: 23
Can you see it? Time will still be measured in 7 days. On the 7th (Sabbath), people will come to the throne of God in the city, and our hearts will be filled with joy to sing and worship the one who made all this possible!
Brothers and sisters, we will be like Him but retain our different personalities and features. We will have real bodies with flesh and bones; We will enjoy eating and drinking the wine Jesus said he would not drink again until we see Him in the Kingdom (Matthew 26:29). We will have a city home (Mansions) and a country home (Earth), where we will work and enjoy the work of our hands. Once a month and weekly, we will travel worldwide by thought and attend worship services as one body of believers.
Yes! Eternity is real! But even all that is disclosed in scripture it is just the beginning of what God has prepared!
“The eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9
I want to be there! Don’t you?
Do you love Him?
HE Loves you! He doesn’t want any to perish but all to come to repentance. This is the whole gospel in three words. God is love!
To say “God is love” is to say the whole truth all at once. Everything after that is exposition. Everything contrary to that is heresy. Ty Gibson
It is because of His love that he comes back for us.
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an 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. 18 Therefore, comfort one another with these words.
1 Thess 4: 16-18
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Yes, one day, I will keep my promise to my Mom at resurrection morning, but I can’t do it myself. I must trust Him alone! Not my work, not anything I have done or will do. I will meet my Mom and Dad in the air as the power of Christ draws us to Him. The redeemed of all ages will gather together and go to where Jesus is simultaneously. What a day that will be! What a family reunion!
Will you be there too? How can you know for sure?
First, you must acknowledge that only He can get you there!
if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:9
While you were yet a sinner, he came running after you. You can’t get there by your parents’ experience with Christ; You must have your own experience. You can’t get there by church membership, not your education, or anything but Christ. It is only through Jesus. Jesus does not save groups or denominations; He saves people as individuals.
There is no other name among men whereby we are saved.
Jesus tells us we must be born again. Reborn of the Spirit. Have you been reborn? You will know by your love for others and the peace of knowing Jesus personally.
Salvation in Christ is about letting go to the pull (drawing) and convicting power of the Spirit to acknowledge your sins and shortcomings and let Him be your all and all. It is about asking Him to take over your life. It is about trusting Him every day.
The enemy will try to make you selfish and unbelieving, but stay close to Him, and no man can pluck you out of His Hand.
Won’t you talk to God today and receive eternal life? Will you be like Him?
And after my skin is destroyed, this I know,
That in my flesh I shall see God,
Whom I shall see for myself,
And my eyes shall behold, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me! Job 19: 26-27