Not all will die, will they?
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QUESTION: In your Article “the visible Presence of Christ”, page 2, you say that according to 1 Thess. 4:15-17 “the living, who subsequently die “during his presence” will be resurrected. But isn’t it so that Paul was speaking of those who are surviving? Why do you say that they have to die? The apostle says “we the living who are surviving” will be caught away in the Clouds. I think that not all have to experience the death, those still living at the Parousia will be caught away and changed in spiritual creatures, to meet the Lord in the air. This was also what Br. Russell believed to happen to the livings at the Parousia, wasn’t it?
ANSWER: In context Paul was discussing the resurrection of the holy ones, those who are in union with Christ. And he was contrasting the difference between those who have already died before the return of Christ and those who are living at the time Jesus commences his so-called parousia. Those who die before must sleep in death. But those who are alive when Jesus returns and who prove faithful unto death will not have to sleep in death, but will receive an instantaneous resurrection.
In the text above it is plain that Paul was not meaning to say that the holy ones would survive death, but the apostle was merely referring to those who survive to the presence, at which point the first resurrection begins.
In the context Paul reproved doubting Corinthians for not accepting the resurrection. Paul wrote: “You unreasonable person! What you sow is not made alive unless first it dies…” Paul then gave an illustration of a grain of wheat that must die to produce the wheat plant itself, so the grain no longer exists – having died to produce the plant. In that way Paul was illustrating that the flesh must die in order for God to give them a glorious body.
But in a sense the holy ones who survive to the presence do not die. Ironically, similar to the lie that humans inherently have an immortal soul, those precious few who have the glorious privilege of being adopted will become immortal at the very instant their physical bodies die. And “in the twinkling of an eye” they will be changed. That is why Paul went on to say that at that point death is abolished, at least for those who experience the first resurrection.
But according to Paul’s illustration what happens to the flesh? Like the kernel of wheat, it dies. So, from the standpoint of a human observer there is definitely a death involved, because there will be a lifeless corpse left behind, even as was the case when Jesus died. But from the standpoint of the one in Christ who dies during the parousia there will only be a the awareness of changing from human nature to the exact image of the glorious Christ in the blink of an eye.