Q: Do you teach a resurrection of the physical body?

It depends what is meant by that term. Also, we need to understand that the Bible teaches a resurrection to immortal life and a resurrection to a physical existence.

Regarding the resurrection of those who died "in Christ," that is, in whom God's Holy Spirit dwelled when they died, we read that they are resurrected with an immortal SPIRITUAL body. God will raise them up to spiritual, immortal and eternal life. God will not first resurrect their dead "physical bodies" and then "change" them into spiritual bodies. Rather, God will resurrect or raise the Christians with spiritual bodies, as the Bible clearly indicates. We read the following, in 1 Corinthians 15:35-49, about the "first" or "better" (Hebrews 11:35) resurrection to eternal life:

"But someone will say, 'How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?' Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. And what you sow, you do NOT SOW THAT BODY THAT SHALL BE, but mere grain--perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God GIVES IT A BODY as He pleases, and to each seed its own body. All flesh is not the same flesh... there are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies... There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, IT IS RAISED A SPIRITUAL BODY. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body... And as we have borne the image of the man of dust (Adam), we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man (Jesus Christ)."

Paul tells us in the above passage that the physical body which dies is NOT the same body "that shall be." Rather, God GIVES us a spiritual body "as He pleases." He does not resurrect our physical body and then change it into spirit. In fact, Paul says that in the resurrection to eternal life, we will be "absent from the [physical] body" (2 Corinthians 5:8). 2 Corinthians 5 further explains that God will give Christians a new kind of body (verses 1-4). Only the bodies of those in Christ who are alive when Christ returns will be changed into spirit, while the dead in Christ will be RAISED INCORRUPTIBLE (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).

When we die in Christ, our bodies decay. The bodies of those who died in Christ thousands of years ago have completely decayed. They became dust and ashes, as God said that they would (Genesis 3:19). The only exception was the resurrection to eternal life of Jesus Christ, who was merely dead for three days and three nights, and whose physical body did not decay, before He was resurrected to immortality (Acts 2:25-27). When God the Father resurrected Jesus Christ, He changed His physical body (which was still in the grave) into a spiritual body. That is why Christ could later walk through closed doors, and why He could make Himself visible and invisible, as He pleased. We should also note that Christ, when He again became a Spirit being, which is invisible to the human eye, could manifest Himself as a human being, even so much so that He appeared to have flesh and bones (Luke 24:39-40). Of course, as a Spirit being, He did not really have flesh and bone, but He was able to manifest Himself in such a way. Jesus did speak of "a spirit" not having flesh and bones as He did (verse 39). However, He was speaking of demonic spirits not being able to manifest themselves in the flesh. (Compare our free booklet, "Angels, Demons and the Spirit World," pages 42-43). We have the example of Christ and two angels appearing as men and eating a meal in the time of Abraham (Genesis 18:1-8). This example shows that God (Christ in the Old Testament account) and faithful angels could manifest themselves in the physical domain as men.

HOW exactly, will God resurrect those who died in Christ? We know that God gives every man a spirit which separates him from the animals (1 Corinthians 2:11). (For more information on the spirit in man, please read our free booklet, "The Theory of Evolution--a Fairy Tale for Adults?", pages 19 -24). The spirit in man records all our thoughts and retains all of our memories, as well as our general outward appearance. We read that the spirit in man goes back to God when man dies. In addition, a Christian receives in his life God's Holy Spirit, which will also return to God, together with the spirit in man, when the Christian dies.

In his book, "The Incredible Human Potential," Herbert W. Armstrong explained the resurrection to eternal life in this way (pages 91-92, hard cover):

"If one has received the Holy Spirit, then in the Resurrection, God will provide a Spirit body, formed and shaped by the Spirit mold. The resurrected being will be composed of Spirit, not matter as the human model was... The body that comes in the resurrection is not the same body that was flesh and blood in the human lifetime... The flesh and blood physical body, after death, decomposes and decays, but the spirit that was in that body, like the sculptor's mold, preserves all the form and shape, the memory, and the character intact... After death, whether buried in the earth, cremated, or what, the physical body returns to the earth. But the spirit that was in the man, now having recorded everything--the body's form and shape, the facial identity, the memory and the character--returns to God. It will be preserved unchanged. Such saints as Abraham, Moses, David and Daniel died thousands of years ago... they were composed of corruptible flesh and blood. All that was them (man is composed wholly of matter) long since decomposed. "

It is through the spirit in man (combined with the Holy Spirit) that God will raise Christians with immortal spiritual bodies. The Bible reveals that the physical bodies of Christians will cease to exist in the first resurrection. They will be given new bodies composed of spirit--no longer susceptible to pain and suffering and no longer subject to death and destruction!

The Bible also teaches that all those who did NOT die "in Christ" will be resurrected AFTER the Millennium to be given their chance to choose God's Way of Life. This is commonly referred to in the Bible as the "second resurrection." But they will be resurrected as physical beings, not as Spirit beings. When they are raised from the dead, they will receive a new physical body--not a spiritual body. But this does not mean that God will resurrect their identical physical bodies, which they had when they died, and which subsequently decayed in their graves--or which were obliterated in atomic and nuclear blasts in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and in a nuclear war still prophesied to come, or which became ashes during the Holocaust, or which were cremated.

HOW, exactly, will God resurrect them? God will not raise their physical bodies which had been decayed and decomposed. Rather, He will resurrect them in the same way (albeit to physical life) as He will raise those who died in Christ.

Herbert W. Armstrong wrote the following in Mystery of the Ages, p. 127 (hard cover), regarding the second resurrection to a physical, mortal existence:

"At death, 'then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return to God who gave it' (Eccl. 12:7). The spirit is the depository of memory and character. The spirit is like a mold. It retains even the human form and shape of the deceased, so that in the resurrection TO JUDGMENT [that is, in the second resurrection] those who have died shall look as they did in life, retain whatever character they established in life, remember everything that was stored in their memory. But in the meantime, in death, there is no consciousness--they 'know not any thing' (Eccl. 9:5)."

When those in the second resurrection are being given physical life, God is not resurrecting their physical bodies, per se. (There are a few Biblical examples of resurrections of physical bodies, for instance of Lazarus, but in these cases, the physical bodies had not yet completely decayed so that God could resurrect the bodies, by putting the spirit of life back into them. Compare, too, Matthew 27:52. The resurrection to a physical existence in Ezekiel 37, describing the "valley of dry bones," is of course a vision, and uses figurative terms, to describe a resurrection to physical life. It cannot be used literally to teach a resurrection of the same dead physical bodies. After all, in the vision, the very dry bones speak, verse 11).

Insofar as the second resurrection is concerned of those who died more than 1,000 years or even 7,000 years earlier, and whose bodies decayed or were obliterated, God will be using their spirit in man (which returned to God upon death) to create through it a new physical body for them. God will give them a new flesh and blood physical body, as He pleases, using the spirit in man as a "mold" which has retained even the outward appearance of the person.

This is not to say that the persons will be raised exactly to the same physical existence that they had when they died. For instance, we don't believe that a person who, through an accident or a birth defect, had only one arm or one leg, will be resurrected to exactly that identical state, but, in all likelihood, with two arms and two legs. We find it reasonable to conclude that blind persons will be raised with eyesight. An aborted fetus will obviously not be resurrected as a fetus, but as a human being who will be capable of living on his own. When Adam and Eve were created, God did not create them as little children, but as grown adults, perhaps in their early or mid-twenties, and He placed in them the spirit in man, even though they were without any prior experience.

We don't know how, exactly, God will raise those in the second resurrection. The Bible does not reveal whether a person who died at age 90 will look like a 90-year old person in the second resurrection, or whether he will look like the person that he was when he was in his twenties. But it stands to reason that all will be resurrected to live healthy lives for about one hundred years, which--as the Bible indicates--is most likely the time allotted to them during the Great White Throne Judgment period, prior to the creation of new heavens and a new earth (compare Isaiah 65:17, 20, indicating that a "child"--that is a Christian who is to become like a child--will live for one hundred years, and that an unrepented "sinner," being "one hundred years old," shall be "accursed").

For more information on the second resurrection, please read our free booklets, "Do You Have an Immortal Soul?", p.28, and "God's Commanded Holy Days", pp. 31-32, 53.

Lead Writer: Norbert Link