What Kind of Bodies Will They
Have? Isley Burns, 1888 But someone may ask, How will
the dead be raised? What kind of bodies will they
have? Many are the questions of deepest
interest to the thoughtful mind we might ask, but cannot answer. What precisely shall be the new
conditions, capacities, abilities of our immortal body? In what
respect shall it be the same? And in what respect unlike our
present earthly state? What new avenues of knowledge
shall we possess? What new organs of perception? What new spheres of activity? What new springs of enjoyment? Shall there be music, poetry,
art, science, deepening research, and advancing knowledge of the
works and ways of God in heaven, even as here on earth? Where
shall the final dwelling place of the redeemed be? Shall they
be confined, as now, to one exclusive spot, to one single orb in the
immensity of God's universe, or shall they rather roam at
large through all its wide domains, and tread freely and unrestrained
through all the streets of the fathomless city of God? Shall
we still then, as now, only scan from afar the course of the distant
planetary orbs, or shall we be permitted to visit them, and
know all about them, and be at home in them, as in so many chambers
of the Father's one majestic house? In what form or stage
of their development shall the bodies of the blessed arise,
as in youth, or in manhood, or in ripe old age? Shall the child
of this world be still a child in heaven, or shall the child
expand all at once in that wondrous transfiguration moment into the
fullness of its stature and perfection of its powers? Shall the old
man be still an old man for ever, or shall he be brought back to
the freshness and strength of his manly prime? Shall we, in
short, appear then just as we were when death took us, and
not rather as we were or might have been at our best? Shall
the Great Architect of Heaven create the true and perfect ideal
of the life of His saints, or the restoration only, though
in a glorified state of their actual form here below? We cannot
tell the answer to any of these inquiries. Now we are children
of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. 1 John
3, 2. It is enough that God knows,
and that He plans and does all things well. It is enough that
however high our conceptions of the unseen world, and however
sublime our aspirations in regard to it, it will still be something
far higher and grander than we could ever dream. No eye has
seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has
prepared for those who love Him. 1 Corinthians 2.9 It is enough
that there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, and that we
shall be made perfectly fit to possess and to enjoy it. And above all, it is enough that
Christ himself shall be there, and that we shall be with him,
and that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really
is. So will it be with the resurrection
of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable. It is raised imperishable. 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. 1 Corinthians 15 42-44 Here, then, we must pause. With this glimpse of the glory
to be revealed, grand but incomplete, we must rest satisfied.