Author : Tommy Thornhill
reprinted by permission from “Etna Enlightener”
The last issue examined the contention of the A.D. 70 proponents that the resurrection of the dead was completed in A.D. 70, so it is useless to look for a future, literal bodily resurrection.
They are as wrong in this as they are about the second coming of Christ, and so of many other things they would have us to believe. Their absurdities can clearly be seen as we study biblical passages and notice what is actually taught about a future bodily resurrection?
I pointed out in the last issue that Jesus’ teaching in John 5:28-29 dealt with a resurrection that is to be a physical, bodily, future resurrection of individuals. The phrases “all who” (verse 28) and “those” (verse 29) in the original Greek, are plural, masculine terms referring to a multiplicity of individuals, not a unified system.
In addition, Jesus said that two classes of people (good and evil individuals) would be raised. If the body to be raised is the church, and not individuals, as King contends, that would mean there was a good church and an evil church, both of them being raised together out of the influence of dominating Judaism. Who can believe that? No Bible student with a simple knowledge of words, grammar and honest attitude would ever conclude the text teaches what the A.D. 70 people teach?
Let’s notice another passage where Jesus was teaching that the resurrection of the dead is to be a bodily, physical resurrection. In Matthew 22:23-32 Jesus affirms a future bodily resurrection which the Sadducees denied (verse 23; Acts 23:8).
The Sadducees presented their argument to Jesus in the form of a story, telling of a woman (following the levirate law – Deuteronomy 25:5-6) who had been the wife of seven brothers (one at a time of course). The woman died. After they finished they asked Jesus “Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be?” (verse 28).
Jesus answered by telling them they were mistaken, “not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God” (verse 29). He went on to affirm the resurrection which the Sadducees did not really believe in. He answered, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven” (verse 30). He continued, “But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (verses31-32). “I am” is present tense, and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are physically dead, but if God is the God of the living, and not the dead, they are still alive in their spirits (Ecclesiastes 12:6). This is the design of His argument, to prove “the resurrection of the dead” (verse 31).
Another thing to consider about this incident is that the resurrection is that of the physical body. It cannot be the soul for it does not die.
Not only that, if as the A.D.70 crowd contends, this was the resurrection of the church as a body, how do they explain Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the text? They were not members of the church. Jesus was teaching about the resurrection of the physical body, the body that is now physical, but will exist in a non-physical form in the resurrection.
Another thing we learn from the passage. Jesus said about this resurrection of the dead, “in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (verses 30-31). Yet, today people still marry and die.
King asserts that Jesus didn’t literally mean that marriage and death in the natural world would actually end. Jesus just wanted to emphasize the non-physical nature of this present age.
How preposterous can one get? The Sadducees had raised the issue of marriage, death, and the resurrection in the literal sense, but here we have, according to King, Jesus using the same words as the Sadducees, but putting an entirely different meaning on them without even giving the smallest hint that he is doing so. There is no textual, grammatical, or linguistic reason to take Jesus’ words as any less literal than the Sadducees’ words.
Jesus said there would be no literal marriages, death, or resurrection in the age to come, and that age is still in the future. The A.D. 70 doctrine is not some harmless opinion as they would have us to believe. It has disastrous consequences to the faith (Jude 3; 2 Timothy 2:16-18).
