God of the Living

God instructed Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  If he did eat, God said the consequences would be that dying, you shall die.  In time, both Adam and Eve, did eat the fruit, and so death entered the world.  Ever since then, humanity has been cursed with a physical death.  The question came up soon after: what happens after death?

Throughout history, man has developed many different explanations and ideas related to what happens after death.  However, man’s thoughts are not God’s thoughts. 

A particular philosophy that’s gaining increased acceptance about the afterlife comes from the materialists.  Those who believe whatever exists, is all that there is.  It must be material, something that your senses can detect.  Their claim is that there is no afterlife.  When you’re dead, you’re dead.

The truth to the question about what happens after death is discussed in Mark 12 in Christs’ answer to a challenge from the Sadducees. The Sadducees did not believe in the afterlife. 

The Sadducees were the elite. They were the ones that led or guided society.  They were the ones that you would look up to.  They were the “media darlings” of the time.  They took care of the temple, but they only accepted the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible as authoritative.  Again, they did not believe in a bodily resurrection. 

The challenge begins in Mark 12.  The Sadducees proposed a hypothetical case. This parable is about One Bride for Seven Brothers.  She married the eldest brother.  They didn’t have any children and he died.  She married the second brother.  The same thing happened.  No children and he died.  This went on all the way through the 7^th brother.  The 7^th brother dies, and they have no children.  Then the widow dies.  The question they had for Jesus Christ was this, “If there is a resurrection, whose wife will she be?  Which of the seven brothers?”  Christ’s answers in Mark 12: 24-25:  He says that the Sadducees are ignorant. They don’t know scripture and they don’t know God’s power.  He says when they rise from the dead, they’re like angels. They don’t marry. But that wasn’t the real question. That’s not what the Sadducees were actually asking. 

They were asking about the resurrection.  Christ answers their real challenge.  “But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore greatly mistaken” (Mark 12: 26-27). 

There wasn’t a question of physical death.  Going back to Genesis, God said that people would die.  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were truly physically dead.  But not dead the way the Sadducees believed.  It wasn’t that they were wiped out of existence.  They were dead but they would live again.  Luke adds in his account, a little phrase that “all live to God” (Luke 20:38).  As far as God is concerned, they are not dead other than physically.  The power of God would raise them again. Christ confirmed that there is a resurrection of the dead.

Job asks and answers the question as well: “If a man dies, shall he live again?  All the days of my hard service I will wait, till my change comes” (Job 14:14).  Job understood that there would be a resurrection.

We also have the example of Lazarus.  Christ delayed coming to see his friend, and Martha knew that her brother was dead.  She believed that if Christ requested of God for her brother to be brought back to life, that God would honor it.  Christ said that truly Lazarus would rise again.  Martha stated, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection of the last day” (John 11:14, 23-25, 41-44).

Christ also stated that the population of cities would be resurrected.  Nineveh would rise up in the judgement against this current generation of the decedents of Judah: “The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here (Matthew 12:41). So, we have gentiles resurrected and condemning that generation of Israelites.

 From Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones, we also know that Israel will be resurrected. God asked Ezekiel, “. . . Son of man, can these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37.3).  God continues: “Thus says the Lord God to these bones: ‘Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. I will put sinews on you and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin and put breath in you; and you shall live. Then you shall know that I am the Lord’” (Ezekiel 37:5–6). These dry bones will be resurrected to a physical flesh and blood life.  Thus, the whole House of Israel will be resurrected to a physical life and given the opportunity to live God’s way of life (Ezekiel 37:11-14). 

Revelation also reveals that all of mankind, whoever lived, will be resurrected at the end of the millennium (Revelation 20:12-13).  This is described as the small and the great, those that never had the opportunity to truly understand God’s purpose for them and to choose eternal Life.

There is no philosophy, no other way of thinking devised by man that gives a true explanation of what happens after death. The Sadducees challenge was about disbelief in a resurrection. They also denied God, His Holy family, His spiritual family.  If everybody just died and became nothing, there would be no heavenly or godly family because everybody is dead and gone.  All the work that God had done through all the ages would be for naught.  But that’s not God’s plan. God seeks godly offspring: “But did He not make them one, Having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. “Therefore take heed to your spirit, And let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth” (Malachi 2:15). He is creating a family in His image and likeness.  No resurrection means no godly offspring, but God will not be denied.  His plan will be fulfilled for all of mankind.

All who have ever lived have that opportunity to be in God’s family.  Every human being since Adam and Eve. There is only one race, the human race, and we are all one physical family.  Everyone from the least to the greatest will have the opportunity to learn God’s way of life and freely choose Life.

“. . . For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will dwell in them And walk among them. I will be their God, And they shall be My people” (2 Corinthians 6:16).

God truly is the God of the living: “But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. . .”’ (Mark 12:26–27).

John Grabara