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But the apostle has said nothing here regarding, the resurrection of
the dead; but in his first Epistle to the Thessalonians he says,
"We would not have you to be ignorant brethren, concerning them which
are asleep," etc. These words of the apostle most distinctly
proclaim the future resurrection of the dead, when the Lord Christ
shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
But it is commonly asked whether those whom our Lord shall find alive
upon earth, personated in this passage by the apostle and those who
were alive with him, shall never die at all, or shall pass with
incomprehensible swiftness through death to immortality in the very
moment during which they shall be caught up along with those who rise
again to meet the Lord in the air? For we cannot say that it is
impossible that they should both die and revive again while they are
carried aloft through the air. For the words, "And so shall we ever
be with the Lord," are not to be understood as if he meant that we
shall always remain in the air with the Lord; for He Himself shall
not remain there, but shall only pass through it as He comes. For we
shall go to meet Him as He comes, not where He remains; but "so
shall we be with the Lord," that is, we shall be with Him possessed
of immortal bodies wherever we shall be with Him.
We seem compelled to take the words in this sense, and to suppose that
those whom the Lord shall find alive upon earth shall in that brief
space both suffer death and receive immortality: for this same apostle
says, "In Christ shall all be made alive;" while, speaking of the
same resurrection of the body, he elsewhere says, "That which thou
sowest is not quickened, except it die." How, then, shall those
whom Christ shall find alive upon earth be made alive to immortality in
Him if they die not, since on this very account it is said, "That
which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die?" Or if we cannot
properly speak of human bodies as sown, unless in so far as by dying
they do in some sort return to the earth, as also the sentence
pronounced by God against the sinning father of the human race runs,
"Earth thou art, and unto earth shalt thou return," we must
acknowledge that those whom Christ at His coming shall find still in
the body are not included in these words of the apostle nor in those of
Genesis; for, being caught up into the clouds, they are certainly
not sown, neither going nor returning to the earth, whether they
experience no death at all or die for a moment in the air.
But, on the other hand, there meets us the saying of the same apostle
when he was speaking to the Corinthians about the resurrection of the
body, "We shall all rise," or, as other manuscripts read, "We
shall all sleep." Since, then, there can be no resurrection unless
death has preceded, and since we can in this passage understand by
sleep nothing else than death, how shall all either sleep or rise again
if so many persons whom Christ shall find in the body shall neither
sleep nor rise again? If, then, we believe that the saints who shall
be found alive at Christ's coming, and shall be caught up to meet
Him, shall in that same ascent pass from mortal to immortal bodies,
we shall find no difficulty in the words of the apostle, either when he
says, "That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die," or
when he says, "We Shall all rise," or "all sleep," for not even
the saints shall be quickened to immortality unless they first die,
however briefly; and consequently they shall not be exempt from
resurrection which is preceded by sleep, however brief. And why
should it seem to us incredible that that multitude of bodies should
be, as it were, sown in the air, and should in the air forthwith
revive immortal and incorruptible, when we believe, on the testimony
of the same apostle, that the resurrection shall take place in the
twinkling of an eye, and that the dust of bodies long dead shall return
with incomprehensible facility and swiftness to those members that are
now to live endlessly? Neither do we suppose that in the case of these
saints the sentence, "Earth thou art, and unto earth shalt thou
return," is null, though their bodies do not, on dying, fall to
earth, but both die and rise again at once while caught up into the
air. For "Thou shalt return to earth" means, Thou shalt at death
return to that which thou weft before life began. Thou shalt, when
examinate, be that which thou weft before thou wast animate. For it
was into a face of earth that God breathed the breath of life when man
was made a living soul; as if it were said, Thou art earth with a
soul, which thou wast not; thou shalt be earth without a soul, as
thou wast. And this is what all bodies of the dead are before they
rot; and what the bodies of those saints shall be if they die, no
matter where they die, as soon as they shall give up that life which
they are immediately to receive back again. In this way, then, they
return or go to earth, inasmuch as from being living men they shall be
earth, as that which becomes cinder is said to go to cinder; that
which decays, to go to decay; and so of six hundred other things.
But the manner in which this shall take place we can now only feebly
conjecture, and shall understand it only when it comes to pass. For
that there shall be a bodily resurrection of the dead when Christ comes
to judge quick and dead, we must believe if we would be Christians.
But if we are unable perfectly to comprehend the manner in which it
shall take place, our faith is not on this account vain. Now,
however, we ought, as we formerly promised, to show, as far as seems
necessary, what the ancient prophetic books predicted concerning this
final judgment of God; and I fancy no great time need be spent in
discussing and explaining these predictions, if the reader has been
careful to avail himself of the help we have already furnished.
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