God's Extreme Makeover - our home edition

Newsweek's religion columnist raises the issue this week that Americans are torn (as the Thessalonian church was in the first century AD) about their eternal future. Lisa Miller (Beliefwatch; http://www.newsweek.com/id/181287) reports that while 80% of Americans believe they're going to heaven when they die, "only half of Americans think of resurrection as a physical event, a revivification of flesh after death. More than a third think of it as something spiritual, an ascension of the soul that leaves the corpse behind."

Now we biblicists who love to eat the Word, should not be surprised by such apparent contradictions in or out of the church, when we know that the typical churchgoer attempts to live by blind faith or sight, as opposed to by truth. As we discussed last Saturday, the apostle Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians set out to answer and clarify the great question of destiny and to purposely comfort that suffering and troubled congregation with awesome news of Jesus rapturing his children in preparation for His second coming (1 Thess. 4:13-18). It is an event he wrapped in the promise and anticipation of the glorious resurrection that awaits believers then and now, who are confronted with the fact that if Jesus did not rise and gain victory over death and sin, our faith is "in vain" (empty or worthless; 1 Cor. 15:12-14).

Folks, consider as Paul and the early church did that as to the resurrection, there is and can be no middle ground or compromise . Either it did or did not happen, making it the seminal event in world history, the event and truth on which the Christian faith hangs or falls. If there's no resurrection, the Bible's a farce and Christ is not who He said He was and is and we are all condemned to a lake of fire. Keep this in mind as you share gospel truth. As for me and my house, we choose Christ - the Word that became flesh. How about you? Never bend or break on the promise of God's extreme makeover for us. Paul gives us the future and the resurrection in it, and that hope holds us in times like these.

"13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words (1 Thess. 4:13, 16-18)."