They do not follow in sequence, but co-exist; for elsewhere he says, "We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (1 Cor. xv. 44; 2 Cor. v. 1).
Each one of us has, then, a spiritual body; and, when the change occurs which we call death, we shall enter consciously into the use of this body—each having his own—in the Spiritual World; just as, after death, Abraham entered consciously into the use of his spiritual body, being able to see, to hear, to address and to reason with the rich man, who is said, on his part, to have called upon Abraham (Luke xvi. 24). Such conscious entrance into the Spiritual World and use of mental and bodily powers there are given through the resurrection.
The Lord Jesus Christ declares Himself to be "the resurrection" (John xi. 25). Replying to the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection. He said, "Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when He calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For He is not a God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto Him" (Luke xx. 37, 38).
The Apostle Paul, also, cites as confirmatory evidence of the Lord's resurrection the present fact of man's resurrection, thus: "We have testified of God that He raised up Christ: Whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is Christ not raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins" (1 Cor. xv. 15-17).
Can we not accept the obvious teaching of these most emphatic and incontrovertible statements; and acknowledge that resurrection occurs at a very brief interval after the change called death? The Lord rose on the third day; and doubtless, as a general rule, the resurrection takes place on the third day: certainly there is then observable a change in the mortal frame. In the prophet
