Category: Return of Jesus – Book
Glory in Restoration
This is another in a series of excerpts from What Every Christian Should Know About the Return of Jesus, released by High Street Press and available at Amazon.
The glorified body of Jesus easily navigates a world still under the curse of sin. After his emergence from the tomb, Jesus eats, travels, speaks with befuddled eyewitnesses of his resurrection, passes through closed doors, transports himself instantly from one location to another, and finally launches from the Mount of Olives into heaven.
Our resurrected bodies will have many of these same capabilities. Yet the redemptive work of God isn’t finished at our resurrection. The world in which we now live was not always cursed, nor will it always be cursed. A day is coming when our sovereign Lord makes all things new (Rev. 21:5).
We’ll explore the new heavens and earth in future columns. For now, let’s survey three New Testament passages that address the restoration of our bodies.
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Glory in Resurrection
This is another in a series of excerpts from What Every Christian Should Know About the Return of Jesus, released by High Street Press and available at Amazon.com.
The glory we experience now as Christ lives in us, and the glory we experience in death as our souls and spirits ascend into heaven, are partial works of glorification. But full glorification for followers of Jesus takes place when he calls our bodies from the grave and gives us incorruptible bodies like the body he bore when he rose from the dead.
Physical resurrection is the pinnacle of personal glorification, for in it we shrug off the last vestiges of sin, which have clung to our mortal bodies. In glorification, the effects of the Fall are fully and finally reversed.
At the return of Christ, all who have died in the Lord are resurrected. Their souls and spirits, which are in heaven with Jesus, are reunited with their bodies, resulting in complete personal glorification; the body, soul, and spirit are fully conformed to the image of Christ and thus free of any effects of the Fall.
Christians alive on the earth at the return of Christ are instantly transformed as they are given glorified bodies; their souls and spirits are perfected at the same time.
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Our Once and Future Glory
This is another in a series of excerpts from What Every Christian Should Know About the Return of Jesus, released by High Street Press and available at Amazon.com.
The Bible speaks of at least four phases of glory for Christians: glory now, glory in death, glory in resurrection, and glory in the restoration of the cosmos. We explore the first two in this column, and the final two in future columns.
Glory now
It’s our Christian duty to glorify God. As we honor the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for their divine attributes and redemptive work, we replicate God’s glory in our thoughts, words, and deeds.
This requires more than mere reflection. Consider how the moon, which generates no light, reflects the brilliance of the sun. In a similar way, all of God’s creation declares his glory, including his eternal power and divine nature (Ps. 19:1; Rom. 1:20).
But followers of Jesus have something more: the Shekinah glory residing in our human spirits; thus, we radiate God’s eternal light from within. This should lead us to shine in such a way that others see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven (Matt. 5:16).
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The Glorification of the Saints
This is another in a series of excerpts from What Every Christian Should Know About the Return of Jesus, released by High Street Press and available at Amazon.com.
Memphis Belle is one of the most celebrated aircraft of World War II. Named after the girlfriend of chief pilot Robert Morgan, the lumbering B-17F Flying Fortress carried the first U.S. crew to complete twenty-five combat missions over Europe before returning to America.
Based in England, Belle coursed through flak-filled skies over France and Germany in 1942-43. The 10-man crew battled Nazi fighter planes and delivered its payload before returning to base through the same menacing skies. The crew’s survival through more than two dozen missions was rare indeed. The Army Air Forces lost 30,000 airmen in battles against Nazi Germany. During the heaviest fighting, U.S. bomber-crew airmen had a one-in-four chance of survival.
For a time after the war, however, Memphis Belle sat outdoors, neglected, until an ambitious restoration project began, requiring more than 100 workers and thousands of hours to scrape paint, bend metal, and fabricate parts. In 2018, on the 75th anniversary of Belle’s historic 25th mission, the fully restored legend was reintroduced to the public at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
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Everyone’s Day of Reckoning
This is the 22nd in a series of excerpts from What Every Christian Should Know About the Return of Jesus, released by High Street Press and available at Amazon.com.
One day, every person is resurrected and summoned before Christ in final judgment. While salvation is a gift of God, received by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, our lifestyles reflect our beliefs. That is, our words and deeds reveal our citizenship, either in the kingdom of God or in the domain of the evil one.
Put another way, our works count for something. Heaven is not the same for every believer, nor do all those who reject Christ experience hell identically. Our final, personal, individual judgment before Christ is his way, as the righteous judge, of setting things right for eternity.
Our short stay on earth is a dress rehearsal for life beyond the grave. One day, we all stand before Jesus to give an account of what we did with the gospel, as well as our time, talents, opportunities, and other gifts God has entrusted to us. This results in varying degrees of reward for believers, and varying degrees of punishment for unbelievers.
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