Will I Rise from the Dead?

An article about the assurance of resurrection.

Christians say:  “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”  Christians believe Jesus when he says:  “A time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear my voice and come out.”  Essential to Christianity is the belief that every man, woman and child who has ever lived will rise from the dead on the day Jesus returns.  We call that day Judgment Day.

Right about now you may be asking yourself: “How in the world can Christians believe all those unbelievable things?”  I’ll agree with you.  The thought that all people will rise bodily from their graves someday, wherever and whatever those graves may be, is “unbelievable.”  But the God who tells us this is not in the business of only doing things that fit into the framework of our way of thinking.  In fact, Jesus once said: “With God all things are possible.”  If God brought the universe into existence out of nothing, as the Bible claims, he certainly has the power to pull our bodies back together from the dust of the earth on Judgment Day.

So, the answer to “will I rise from the dead?” is a simple “yes.”  Perhaps the more uncomfortable question is: “What’s going to happen to me when I rise from the dead?”  The fact that it’s called Judgment Day sounds ominous.  You and I are going to be judged on that day.  When you consider that God, who is holy, demands that you and I be holy and sinless in order to escape his judgment in hell forever, then Judgment Day really sounds like bad news.

But there’s more, my friend.  The one who will come to call us out of our graves, the one who will judge us, is the same one who came to save us!  That’s Jesus.  About 2000 years ago he came to live in this world and give his perfect life in your place.  When he died on the cross he covered you with his holiness.  When he rose from the dead he proved that you, too, will rise from the dead.  Right now he makes the same promise to you that he’s always made: “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.”

And there it is.  There’s the way a person can approach Judgment Day with confidence, not fear.  Jesus has taken away all your sins. Clothe yourself in his holiness and enter everlasting life when you are called forth from your grave.  Believe in the Lord Jesus and be saved.

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