Resurrection 8 - 1 Corinthians 15:51-58

One thing that has always been interesting and very frustrating for me is that when Jesus ascended into heaven, the angels told the bystanders that he would return, so they thought naturally that Jesus would be back again soon. That has been the general consensus for the vast majority of Christianity since the angels said those words 2,000 years ago. But here we are 2,000 years later and we are still convinced that Jesus will be back in glory at any moment now. I think it might be because I was so indoctrinated with “end of the world” stuff when I was a kid and completely traumatized by it that I’m so sensitive to the topic. So if we have already waited 2,000 years for Jesus to return, then logically for me, it would make sense that it would be another 2,000 years until he comes back again. But we don’t believe that that is the case because modern day prophets have told us that Jesus is coming back really soon. My mom thought that it would be in her lifetime, and she’s not dead yet so it’s possible, but people have been waiting for Christ’s second coming for 2,000 years, and that’s a really long time.



One thing that probably assisted in all Christians throughout time having this “he’ll be back any second attitude,” is what Paul says next, teaching, “Behold, I shew 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 trump.” I don’t know why this statement bothers me so much. Maybe it’s because it seems like the people at the time were struggling with the fundamental principles of the gospel and that all this stuff about what will happen when Christ returns seems like too much, too soon. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much of my life “preparing” or mostly worrying about the second coming that I’m just kind of like “don’t worry about it, it’s only going to cause you stress.” But then again, if they honestly thought that Jesus was going to return in their lifetime, of course they would be concerned about how the resurrection would work for them when he came back. Maybe it was a question they asked specifically, but the word “mystery” leads me to believe that it probably wasn’t and was just some continuation of Paul’s thought process in teaching about the resurrection.



Maybe Paul is talking about this to give the Corinthians some peace of mind, saying something like “hey we don’t know when this is going to happen, but when it does, don’t worry everything will be fine, all the things that suck in this life will be removed.” He reassures them that our mortal existences will be changed to immortal and corruption will be changed to incorruption, “then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.” The article about this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com quotes David O. McKay as teaching, “Jesus is our Savior, principally, of course, because he conquered death. Death could not touch him, and yet he took upon himself mortality. When he lived such a sinless life, he conquered death and cried our in his heart, as the Apostle Paul has stated it, ‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’”



We’ve talked about it before that nothing else would have mattered, as far as the plan of salvation goes, or the atonement, if Christ was not risen from the dead or if he hadn’t extended that gift to all mankind. We could have dwelled with God again, but only in our spirit forms. We wouldn’t have been able to experience a fulness of joy, which requires both perfect body and perfect spirit. If death was the permanent, then it wouldn’t matter about anything else. If we think about how brutal the death of a loved one is, or even when facing our own mortality, it is that terrible even knowing that everyone will be resurrected and that God is a merciful judge. Imagine what it would be like if there was no resurrection and no promise of peace in the next life for the righteous. It takes some perspective and faith, but the reassurance and peace is there.



Death is not the tragedy, but “the sting of death is sin.” I didn’t really understand what this meant but the article explains, “From an eternal perspective, death is not a tragedy but a necessary passage from one portal to another. The terrible tragedy and stinging pain of death comes when the deceased has not yet repented. That’s when death, even from an eternal perspective, hurts the most… President Kimball said, ‘There is no tragedy except in sin.’” This is a very comforting concept. On the one hand, we don’t want people to die, but it is part of the process and I’ve always thought, perhaps incorrectly, that someone who is terrible dying was giving them a chance to step out of the role that they have created for themselves in this world and gives them a chance to reconcile some of their issues and heal.



For instance, my grandma was a very mean, terrible woman, but when you looked back on her life, it made sense why she was like that. She had a very hard life, her dad died before she was born of the Spanish Flu in 1918. By all accounts he was a pretty good guy, but he died a few months before my grandma was born and so her mom remarried a guy who was NOT great. He was an alcoholic, abusive gambler, that’s the man who raised her and eventually kicked her out of the house when she was 16 to be on her own. 1934 was not a good year to be a young woman on her own with no friends, family or support, but there she was. She learned typing skills and worked hard to get a stable job as a secretary, and she eventually married by grandpa who was not nice to her, cheated on her and eventually left her to raise two kids by herself.



At this stage of the game she was already pretty terrible, but it had been a rough life. She remarried another alcoholic, felon who cheated on her and treated her terribly, and this was the point where I met her. We lived with her growing up and she was very mean to my mom, sister, and I, but loved and doted on my dad and brothers. It was a difficult dynamic, and there are a lot of issue that I am still trying to work out, we all are. But my point is that when she died, I hoped that her real dad would meet her on the other side and that they could establish a relationship and that she would be able to heal from the daddy issues that have plagued her for her entire life.



Then you think about these people, like certain world leaders, who have ruled by terror and the threat of starvation, torture, and death. But in the next life, that’s not a possibility, so how would they intimidate people into doing what they wanted? God rules in the next life, so someone who left this world considering themselves to be the king of it, would show up in the next life and be just another, regular guy, no special privileges, no special powers. So when we look at the next life from that perspective, death isn’t the scary thing, and in fact, sometimes I think that it is a healing event. The real tragedy is when someone refuses to repent or rejects the gospel because it’s only going to make their existence so much more miserable in the eternities.