CHRIST’S RESURRECTION

 Jesus was nailed to the cross, died, and on the third day his body was no longer in the tomb. Jesus’ body had been de-materialized. It was not meant to be that his followers use his body as an object of worship, which so often happens with famous people. There are other stories in the bible of people’s bodies de-materializing at their death, so this was not a one-time occurrence.

When Jesus appeared to Mary and the apostles, He came as a spirit who was condensed to the point of being material again, only to keep disappearing after each visit. His de-materialized body was gone; it was not re-joined to his spirit.

All this appearing and disappearing is not what is meant by the resurrection. Remember Jesus was born of man so that he could walk among us. He had left heaven and joined the spiritually dead here on earth. Not only did he walk here on Satan’s realm with all its temptations but after his earthy death, his spirit descended even lower, into the lower regions of hell, even to its utter depths. Three days does not seem like much time to spend in the lower depths, but there are no clocks or calendars in the spirit world, so we have no idea in spirit time how long he was there.

Jesus had subjected Himself to joining the spiritually dead in order to help them abandon Satan’s realm, not knowing if he could find his way back to heaven. Satan knew full well who Jesus was. You cannot imagine the torture and the temptations he set before him. See how easy it is for us to fall into temptation for the love of money or other worldly rewards, and Satan hardly needs to tempt us much.

The resurrection of Jesus was a spiritual resurrection, leaving Satan’s realm and returning to heaven to be with the spiritually alive. At the end of our journey in Satan’s realm, we too will be spiritually resurrected but not reunited with our existing bodies, for they will have returned to earth matter. Besides, since we must return to earth many times before being resurrected from the dead, which body would

 The Rapture 

   Some Christians believe in something called "The Rapture". Nowhere in the bible is there any mention of the rapture and so what is it?

According to the believers, at the end of this era, the good people will suddenly be lifted up body and spirit and taken to heaven; leaving all of the evil people on earth to suffer through all of the calamities which have been foretold will occur at this period in time.

If heaven is populated by angels who are in spirit form, how will it accommodate all of these people who are arriving still encapsulated in a physical body? Will corporeal beings be capable of interacting with heaven’s spirits or will their bodies fall off or disintegrate on their way to heaven? If heaven cannot receive physical bodies, then why not just have these people leave their bodies on earth and ascend with only their spirits, which is how it is done now, it is called death.

Let us explore this concept of the rapture still further. At the end of this era, Christ is to return to earth and rule for one thousand years, only to leave again and to allow Lucifer to take over earth’s rule once more. If all of the good people are gone, who will still be here to rule with Christ, the evil people? Which people will populate the earth during the thousand years, the descendents of the evil people?

Do We Create Anything? 

 We create the only thing we can, which are our lives.

Thoughts and words become actions, which become the framework with which our lives are constructed. Just as a carpenter first draws the plans for his building and then builds according to what he has set on paper, we also are drawing our life’s plan by the words we use and the thoughts we have.

Certainly, some destructive forces may come from outside of our thoughts and words and tear down a portion of our lives, so also, the carpenter may have his building partially destroyed by outside forces such as fire, wind etc. But just as the carpenter sets to work and repairs the damaged section of his building so too, we must repair the part of our life that did not work out as planned.

As the carpenter rebuilds, he may notice that his original plan was flawed or that it is now an opportunity for him to improve on his original plan. When adversity strikes down some part of our life, perhaps we should re-assess our plan. God may be showing us that our plan is flawed or that there is a better way to accomplish our task. The new plan usually teaches us something we would not have learned otherwise.

Too often we spend so much time wallowing in our misfortune that we miss or delay our progress and our lives remain on hold until we recognize that we must move on to other things. Should the carpenter expend too much time reliving his loss, his building will not be completed on schedule.

Pride 

   "Pride goeth before the fall" and we could add "and continueth after it". All of us suffer from the sin of pride. What do we humans have that gives us a right to so much pride? What do we have that has not been given to us by God? I dare say "nothing". Yet, we act as though we are the creator rather than the creation. It seems the lower we are in our evolutionary process the more pride we have. The less knowledge we have, the more pride we carry.

How may times have we left good works undone because of our pride? How many times have we failed to acknowledge another or even done them harm because of our pride? How often do we refrain from forgiving someone because of our pride?

The only person we are accountable for in our lives is ourselves. No one else can assist us in attaining our goal of reaching heaven. We will not be able to blame anyone or beg from anyone when we meet our maker. When we die it is one to a box and our life will speak for itself. So why are we so concerned about what anyone thinks of us? If we do the best we can during every minute of our lives regardless of how we appear to others, we should have no problem achieving our goal. The only one we could seek to impress is God himself, everyone else’s opinion is of no consequence. And in our effort to impress God or His son, Jesus, who by the way was not too proud to be born in a lowly state and to die in a cursed manner to save us, let us remember that even our good traits were handed to us by them.

Judging Others 

We are told not to judge another, that God will do the judging. Why can we not judge? We all have enough experience from watching how people behave to draw a conclusion as to whether their behavior deserves a certain grade. In many cases we can even guess at the reason for the behavior from the person’s history or from their family history. So don’t we kind of know who is good, who is not, who deserves to go to heaven who does not? Or do we know as much as we think we do?

Each person comes to earth with certain lessons to learn, debts to repay etc. since we do not know what the plan is for everyone, it is impossible to know whether their actions deserve condemnation.

In the bible, is the story of the forty-year-old man whose blindness was cured by Jesus. The people asked, "Was it for his sins that he was born blind or for his parent’s sins?" Jesus replied that it was neither; that the man was born blind so that everyone could see the power of God working through him to heal him. These people thought they knew something about karma, but how wrong they were.