The Resurrection of All

“Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake:  some to everlasting life, others to everlasting contempt.”  Daniel 12:2

One huge surprise with respect to the resurrection of the dead is that everybody, not only the saved, will be resurrected.  This clearly not the same as everybody being saved.  Some will rise to “everlasting contempt”.

The Bible would place this event as a part of Judgment Day.  Just think about the situations of all who participate in the “general resurrection”.  Some have been dead for years, centuries, millennia.  If they have been saved through their connection to Christ, Heaven has been their place of residence.  Their physical body would probably be long decayed with its elements returning to the Earth in some way.  If a person had died without Christ, their abode has been Sheol–a place of suffering.  Like the others, their bodies have decayed away.  Then there are those who are still alive to that Day.  Some will belong to Jesus but most will not. What happens to them?

1 Thessalonians 4:13f speaks of the residents of Heaven returning with Jesus.  That passage only speaks of their resurrection, though there is no solid reason to imagine that this is at a different time than the resurrection Daniel speak of above. 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 gives us this information:

Listen, I tell you a mystery:  We will not all sleep, be we will all be changed–in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, the last trumpet.  For the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

So everyone, at the same moment,  the last trumpet, will be resurrected or changed to a resurrected, imperishable body.  That is quite a picture.  Is it too much for you to believe?  One need not balk at logistical questions like, “What if someone was cremated or utterly destroyed in another way?” or “What if my atoms were shared by multiple living people?”  Our resurrected body will be ours not because it uses the exact same material we had while we lived.  So the final disposition of a body means little.  I doubt that we will resurrect where we were planted.  God is capable of reforming and reanimating.  There is nothing you need to do to help nor is there anything you can do to stop it.

The resurrection is completion of the promise of everlasting life for some and it is the whole person sealing of everlasting contempt for others.

Author: tdwenig

Tom is the Senior Pastor of the Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer in Evansville, IN. He has served his congregation since 2000. He has a Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, MO View all posts by tdwenig