57. When Christ Returns!

Carefully Chosen Texts

We now continue with Mr Martin's chosen Bible verses.

3. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot tell. For I am hard pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Phil. 1:21-23

My best response to the meaning of this Bible verse is to quote from Seventh Day Adventist literature. Of course it will be better to be with Christ, but why, it must be asked, should we conclude that the Apostle expects immediately upon death to go at once into the presence of Christ? The Bible does not say so. One might reason that the implication is to the effect that being with Christ would be immediate on his departure. But it must be admitted that such is not a necessary implication, and it certainly is not a definite statement of the text.

4. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.          1 Thes. 4:14-17.

It seems that a lot of confusion about this whole topic comes from exactly these four verses of Scripture.   Mr Martin makes a big issue of the fact that in Greek the words, together with, are used three times in these four verses and thereby he seeks to prove that there are no Christian souls (only dead bodies) left to be resurrected when Christ returns. 

He assumes, as the Evangelical church at large does, that when Paul wrote, God will bring with Him, Paul meant that the souls of the dead will be coming with Christ from heaven.  That is an unfounded assumption.   

Paul meant that the dead in Christ will rise first (v.16) and God will bring those dead saints, who were still in the grave till then, with Him to meet the living saints, in the air, when Christ returns.

That there are no souls, of the dead, left to be resurrected at the time of Christ’s return is a direct contradiction of the words of Paul in v.14, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.  Paul did not write, those who did sleep in Jesus and are now in glory; he wrote, God will bring with Him (from the grave,) those who are now dead, in Jesus! (to meet the saints who are still alive when Christ returns). 

This is a very strong argument for the doctrine that no one goes to heaven at death.  Yet, Mr Martin chose this verse to teach the exact opposite.

5. God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. 1 John 5:11-13.

About these verses, Mr Martin writes, in the grammar and context of this passage eternal life is the present possession of every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and if the term eternal life does not include conscious fellowship than the whole New Testament meaning is destroyed.  One must agree with Mr Martin in this viewpoint, but the idea that the dead are unconscious, from their death to the resurrection, as Mr Martin infers that we believe, does not agree with what the "the intermediate state" infers or the teachings of the New Testament.  

Just because we do not "go to heaven" at death does not mean that our eternal life comes to an end.

In Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at his coming. 1 Cor. 15:22-23.  Here St. Paul distinctly stated that at Christ's coming all will be made alive which means that no human, except Christ, is alive now in heaven.

The whole of our Western tradition has contrived to give death an altogether inflated significance. There has been a vastly exaggerated focus on death and the moment of death. It began when the pages of the New Testament were hardly dry, and it is one of the most remarkable silent revolutions in the history of Christian thought…The whole of our teaching and our hymnology has assumed that you go to heaven — or, of course, hell — when you die…This proposition is in clear contradiction with what the Bible says…The Bible nowhere says that we go to heaven when we die, nor does it ever describe death in terms of going to heaven.  The Coming Kingdom of the Messiah by Sir Anthony F. Buzzard.