...in the twinkling of an eye, at the Last Trumpet.

One night last week, I was sitting alone in my apartment at around 9:00, I felt the sudden urge to get up and get out of my lonesome confines.  After weighing my options, a bike ride to Atrim Park--which consists of a lake with a circumference of about 1.5 miles and probably the clearest water one could find in Columbus--won out.  I arrived there after a six or seven mile ride with the sun's light all but gone, sat on a bench a stone's throw away from the water's edge, and humbly conversed with my Lord.  After soaking in the placidity of the lake and hearing what my Lord wanted me expel from and receive into my soul, I rode that same six or seven miles in the darkness of the mostly-wooded Olentangy Trail.  The little light on my handlebars only allowed me to see the turns a few feet beforehand, but I made it out alive.  What let me know I was still alive was knowing that I was finally near Union Cemetery of all places.  With my spiritual- and adrenaline-high, I decided that my night's adventure was not quite over.

I found an entrance right off of Dodridge St. and soon found myself standing in a small cluster of gravestones.  Immediately, my soul felt the overwhelming hollowness of the ground upon which I stood.  It was not some occult fear that ghosts and spirits where dancing about, but that the gravestones stood over the bodies people that have amazing stories and on-living souls.

This is one of the gravestones that I came across:

Now, whatever one's spiritual beliefs are, these are some things that can be inferred from Sarah Frances Seward's life.  She lived 85 years here on earth.  She, if born in America, would have had the memories of the Civil War burned into the mind of her youth.  Or, perhaps she remembered the voyage across the Atlantic as an emigrant from Europe?  She would have been an older yet still cognizant woman during the First World War.  And those are a just few of the things one can gather from a modest knowledge of American history--what other things could have occurred in the life of her family?  Also, since she has been dead since before my grandparents were born, who was the last family member to visit her grave site?  Yet, all of these wonderings paled in comparison to this:

What if Sarah Frances Seward is a name written in the Book of Life, and this woman is dead in Christ?

My thoughts rushed past some of the superficial ones we tend to associate with our dead loved ones.  We can think that they are in "a better place" where there is no suffering, or even in the very presence of Christ Himself.  But, while those are all good and true for the dead in Christ, what made me tremble at the thought is the fact that, one day--on the Last Day--Sarah's feet will stand upon the same ground I was when the Resurrection of the Dead comes*.  

I am under the impression that the bodily Resurrection of the Dead is something that most Christians gloss over.  Perhaps it is something that is tied too closely with the confusion caused by the Book of Revelation and makes the average Christian avoidant of its complication, or we only briefly acknowledge it when it is mentioned in the Gospels or Paul's epistles and ignore it's references in the Old Testament.  Yet, if one dares to venture deeply into 1 Corinthians, chapter 15 contains quite a long discourse of the bodily resurrection and its implications.  Paul states that if the resurrection of the dead is false, then Christ has not been raised, and all Christians have put their hope in a dead man who has not saved us from our sins (v. 16-19).  However, if Christ has truly been raised from the dead, thus evincing that the resurrection is for all*, its induction is summed up in verses 51-52:

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep [be dead], but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we [the living]shall be changed.

Look past the mystery and complicated doctrine and see the beauty of the truth! Our Lord Jesus is coming back and the trumpets will blare to announce the Return of the King.  In that moment, the bodies of those long dead will rise never to waste away again, and those bodies still living will cease to wither at the hands of Death, the last enemy to be put under the feet of Christus Victor (v.26).  All risen Believers will bear the image of resurrected Christ--the Last Adam, the Firstborn of the Dead.  Those who dwelt in the dust will sing for joy: "Death is swallowed up in victory!  O Death, where is thy victory? O Death, where is thy sting?" (Isaiah 26:19; 1 Cor. 15:54-55).

I, for one, regularly fail to think about Eternal Life, and the joy with which I wrote that last paragraph is a rare occurrence in my walk with Christ.  I am too caught up in my present battle with sin and dying to myself every day to look away from the dying Savior that hangs nailed to a cross to see the resurrected Savior, who will quite literally wipe the tears from my eyes once for all eternity.  It took standing over a dead woman's bones to remind me that death is not the end.  I thought about if this woman's name--Sarah Frances Seward--has been written in the Book of Life by it's Author.  If not, her body will rise and be subjected to everlasting contempt and shame and the Second Death (Daniel 12:2; Rev 20:14; [and that is a topic upon which I will not expound upon here]*).  But, if the cross that is her gravestone is a symbol of the cross of the Man she claimed as her Savior, the implications of it are enormous.  There, on that green patch of grass in Columbus, Ohio, will stand a woman resurrected for all eternity, glorified, imperishable, immortal.  Union Cemetery will give berth to the eternal Bride of Christ, whose Bridegroom will arrive in full glory.

Can we Christians drive past a graveyard and not feel the weightiness of it?  Of course, we should feel the weight of death, knowing that Men have only a finite time on earth to claim salvation by His blood and go about preach salvation by His blood.  But, at least for me, there was  hope (even if it came about in an eerie situation) of the glory with which King Jesus will return.  The dead will rise.  This is not some zombie apocalypse that our ridiculous western culture has contrived from watching too many movies.  No--this is God calling forth the entirety of a Man--body and soul--to stand before His throne in Judgment.  But, for those in Christ, our verdict will be a resounding "not guilty" since Christ took our guilt and gave us his righteousness to stand justified.  To think that the saints of old will rise from the dust in the glorified image of our common Savior is astonishing and causes my spirit to grow worshipful.  Praise Him who conquered the grave and destroyed death, so that all those who love Him may follow in His footsteps into a resurrected eternity with Him.


*My use of "all" varies between speaking of "all people" and "all Believers in Christ".  Scripture says that all will rise, but not all will be raised in the glory of Christ.  But, as I said earlier, I will not expound upon the situation of those who are not saved.