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Yet the Millennium will not reach the standard set in I Cor. 15: 24. All delegated
authority will be ultimately set aside, and "The Son" alone "reign" until "God shall be all
in all".
Should the reader be bothered about "the baptism for the dead", a doctrine and
practice that emanates from Salt Lake City, he should read the context, viz., I Cor. 15: 29
and 30-32. The Apostle's argument is that if Christ be not raised from the dead, and if
the blessed goal is unattainable, then every one who is baptized, and so exposes himself
to persecution and martyrdom, has been surely `baptized' into death and danger.
"Else (if what has been written be not so) what shall they do which are baptized?
(They have been simply baptized for the dead) if the dead rise not. You see in my case I
stand in jeopardy every hour `I die daily', and have been exposed in the arena to the
attack of wild beasts, which is meaningless `If the dead rise not'."
Again do not misquote the close of verse 32. It does not say "Let us eat, drink and be
merry: for tomorrow we die" such cannot even be "merry", the word is an intruder here.
We pass now to the second great division of this chapter,
"How are the dead raised up?"
"With what body do they come?"
NO ANSWER is possible to the first question. Even though God should condescend
to tell us how identity can be preserved, how those who have been dead for centuries can
be raised, we should be no more the wiser than an infant would be when attending its first
day at school, supposing him to be instructed in the last words of science on the subject
of nuclear fission, or what is implied by the fourth dimension.
With what body do they come? is answered by the words "Thou fool". We are
directed to the everyday miracle of the sown seed, and the resultant grain, "to every seed
its own body". This is a point which the Apostle desires to make. There are heavenly
bodies, there are earthly bodies, with their associated glories.
"So also is the resurrection of the dead" (I Cor. 15: 42).
Further, to ensure that in the realm of the spiritual we should feel inclined to eliminate
any sort of "body", the Apostle says "There is a natural body, and there is also a
spiritual body". Those whose destiny is the New Earth, who will have access to the
Paradise of God, and to the Tree of Life. These will have resurrection bodies suitable to
that sphere and inheritance. But those whose blessings are "all spiritual", and whose
sphere of blessing is "in heavenly places", such will have "spiritual" or "heavenly
bodies" (I Cor. 15: 40, 44). The earthly image must be exchanged for the heavenly, and
though we shall not all "sleep", we shall all be "changed". Someone has said that the
main purpose of most books is information, but the chief goal of the Bible is
"transformation" (see Phil. 3: 20, 21). It seems so here.
Immortality is linked, not with the traditional "never-dying soul", but with resurrection,