Carl Sagen is one of the leading minds in our world in the realm of
astronomy. He has played a major role in the space expeditions to the planets.
He is responsible for a record which was on board the Voyager's one and two.
It is now wondering between the stars, and it will tell any aliens who intercept
the space craft about earth. I was impressed in reading his book Broca's Brain
to find him in a very subtle way giving thanks to God for the kind of universe
He has given us. He writes, "For myself, I like a universe that includes much
that is unknown, and at the same time much that is knowable. A universe in
which everything is known would be static and dull--a universe that is
unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being. The ideal universe for us is
very much like the universe we inhabit. And I would guess that this is not
really much of a coincidence."
He is saying, God gives us plenty, but keeps plenty hidden also, so we have
the joy of endless discovery. This is true also for the unseen realm called the
intermediate state. What happens to us between the death of our body and the
resurrection of our body? This period is called the intermediate state. God has
revealed some fascinating facts about it, but has also concealed so much that it
is a mystery that makes men curious, and sends them searching the Bible for
every hint that opens up some light on the subject.
Here in II Cor. 5 Paul tells us some very interesting things about the
intermediate state. It seems strange that Paul wrote more about heaven to the
earthy and sensual materialists of Corinth than to anyone else. Paul knew that
the only way to get people to overcome their earthiness was to get them to set
their affections on things above. Heavenly minded people do more to change
the earth for the better than those who affections are only earth centered.
John Wesley proved this in eighteenth century England. You think we live
in a decaying society now, but the books and plays of that day were so immoral,
and language so foul, they would be considered offensive even in our day of
declining morality. Prostitution was sky high, and the way they had of
disposing of the fruit of their sin was even worse than the abortion scandal of
our time. They just gave birth to their babies and then let them die. 74.5% of
the babies in 18th century England died before the age of five. The rich
brought their way out of every sin and crime, and the poor were hung at a rate
of 10 to 15 a day for 160 different offenses. The church did nothing for it too
was corrupt.
Then came Wesley, a man with heaven on his mind. He preached it and
taught it, and people began to change their ways. Justice and morality were
restored. Babies started to live again, and the death rate fell from 74.5 to
31.8%. People's health began to improve, more flowers were planted, and the
whole earthly scene was changed, because people were challenged to become
heavenly minded. The prayer, Thy will be done as it is in heaven, can only be
answered when people know more about heaven. It is not possible to be so
heavenly minded you are no earthly good, for if you really are heavenly minded
you will do earth a lot of good.
It is important that we know all we can about heaven, for it becomes a key
factor in what we do on earth. This was certainly the case with Paul. Note,
first of all--
I. PAUL'S ASSURANCE.
Paul begins this chapter, "Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is
destroyed, we have a building from God, and eternal house in heaven, not built
by human hands." Paul was fully assured that the death of his body was a loss
of a tent and a gain of a building. It is not much of a threat to tell the
homeless, I will destroy your tent, if by so doing you made them eligible to live
in a mansion. No wonder Paul was not afraid to die, for he said it was far
better to die and be with the Lord. Paul knew he had a better body awaiting
him.
This body of time is but our temporary dwelling, and Paul calls it a tent. It
is as if this life was but a nomad journey, but our body, after we die, is a
permanent residence, where we settle down for good. Paul was a great pioneer.
He lived in tents often as he traveled the world, but no man wants to do this
forever. Even Paul longed for the day he could settle down and have a
permanent address he could call home. He knew this was what God had
waiting for him when his tent was no longer fit to house his spirit.
Paul was not putting his body down by calling it a tent. He was just
emphasizing that by comparison his earthy body was no big deal in light of the
body God had made for him in heaven. The comparison is between a tent and
a building. Take your pick, Paul would say in our day-a night in the
campground or a night at the Ramada Inn. This life is roughing it. The life to
come is luxury at its best. Having this kind of assurance makes it easier to face
death, and to except the death of loved ones. It is better than trading in your
tent for a pop up camper, or even a luxury hard top, or motor home. It is
trading in your tent for your own permanent Holiday Inn. Paul was not
frightened by that kind of trade, but looked forward to it with anticipation.
Here in the body pent,
Absent from Him I roam,
Yet nightly pitch my moving tent
A day's march nearer home.
It is surprising how many of God's people have lived in literal tents. All of
the great people of God for centuries lived in tents. There are many references
to this in the Old Testament. In Heb. 11:9-10 we read of Abraham, "By faith
he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country. He
lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same
promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose
architect and builder is God."
This life has been, for most of God's people, a tent life. It has been
temporary, and not settled and secure. They have always looked for their
security to the place God has built for their permanent residence. It has been
called the city, the mansion, the house, the building, the room, or the body.
God has built them all for His people, and designed them to fit the personally
and uniqueness of each of His children. In the light of this assurance, the
presence body is seen as tent-life. John Oxenham wrote,
Fold up the tent! The sun is in the West
This house was only lent
For my apprenticement
And God knows best.
Fold up the tent!
It's slack ropes all undone.
It's pole all broken, and it's canvas rent,
It's work is done.
Paul made tents, and slept in them for many a night. He knew it was not the
top of the line dwelling. He did not fear that men would destroy his body, for
that would only propel him into the building God had waiting to house him,
and he knew it would be far better. This robs death of its sting, when you have
this kind of assurance. If I see my house burning down, I will not be devastated
if I have been assured I can immediately move into a mansion prepared for just
such an emergency. Loss of something is not so tragic if the loss is more than
compensated for by what is superior to the loss. If I loss a hundred dollars, but
am given a thousand dollars to compensate, I will not morn the hundred dollar
loss. That is how Paul saw death, and, the thus, he was facing it with assurance
rather than anxiety.
Paul would have loved the story of the three pigs, for it illustrates his faith.
The wolf, like Satan, can huff and puff and blow our weak house down, but
that is not our last resort. The brick house awaits us, which is beyond his
strength. It was this assurance that enabled Paul to close chapter four of this
epistle with these words of encouragement, "Therefore we do not loss heart.
Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed
day by day. For our light momentary troubles are achieving for us and eternal
glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but
on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is
eternal." Paul was full of assurance, but he was no Pollyanna. He faced the
reality of troubles in his earthly tent, which was wasting away, and this lead us
to look at--
II. PAUL'S ASSUMPTION.
He says, if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, and thereby assumes that
Christians can and will die, and their bodies be destroyed. Paul did not assume
that all Christians would escape death and be raptured into heaven without
enduring this negative detour. I have known many Christians who hoped to
live till the rapture, but they did not. It is a legitimate hope, but it also wise to
assume that you will die, and that your body will be destroyed in one way or
another. The Christians who gets too attached to his body will tend to fear
death more. After all, when you live in one place for 40 or 50 years, you tend to
become attached to it and get offended by the very thought of being evicted.
It is healthy to assume that this old house will one day be unfit for
habitation, and therefore, I must give thought to my second home, which is a
heavenly habitation. Not everybody can afford a second home by the lake, but
every Christian has a second home already, by the river of life, where the
winters of this world are gone forever, and there is everlasting summer. All
death can do is make you move out of your tent into your summer home.
Paul's assumption is that the body, our present tent, can be utterly destroyed,
and it has no relevance to our being in the new place God has built. In other
words, we do not have to worry about the fate of our bodies, as if that had any
bearing on our destiny in heaven.
I have to admit that cremation of the body has given me strange feelings,
and the thought of my godly aunt being cut up in a lab so a medical student can
learn about the body has given me shivers, but the fact is, this text makes it
clear that the destruction of the body does not in any way affect a believer's
entrance into his heavenly home. The body can be buried and turn to dust, or
burned and turned to dust or blown to dust in an explosion. That does not
make any difference in terms of our eternal destiny. The Greek word that Paul
uses here for the tent being destroyed is used nine other places, and five of
them refer to the destruction of the temple, which was total, with not one stone
left upon another. The temple ceased to exist, and so does our body.
The fate of ones body does not hinder the destiny of the soul and the new
body. The thief on the cross was promised he'd be in paradise that very day.
His body was likely thrown into the city dump and burned. Christians have
been burned, fed to lions and other creatures, and have had their bodies blown
to pieces, and in other ways destroyed. None of this matters, for the building
God has prepared for us to dwell in does not depend on the tent we dwell in
now being whole and undamaged. If this was the case, Christians would have
followed the old Egyptian practice of mummification of the body to preserve it.
Christians are not anti-body, and they do not encourage disrespect of the tent
we now inhabit, but neither do they feel that its destruction is any detriment to
their destiny in the new body God has waiting for them. The third thing we
want to consider is--
III. PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENT.
Paul announces to the Corinthians the good news that they do not need to
fear that death in robbing them of their body will leave them as naked spirits.
We do not enter at death into some vague disembodied state. Paul announces
that we have a building from God, and eternal house in heaven. At no time is a
Christian like the disembodied demons who look for a body to inhabit, even a
herd of pigs if necessary. A legion will inhabit one human body if they can, for
they have no body of their own. God made man to be a body oriented being,
and so even after the death of their physical body they are immediately
endowed with an after death body. No where is there a picture of a human
being who is disembodied--that is a spirit without a body. It is inhuman to be a
spirit without a body. That is to be a ghost.
In Luke 16 we see even the rich man in hell with a body. He had eyes to look
up and see Abraham, and he had a tongue he longed to have cooled. The lost as
well as the saved have after death bodies. A human being is not a human being
without a body. There are some theologians who do not like to admit this is so
because it seems to them to detract from the resurrection of the body. If we
already have one right after we die, what is the big deal about the great
resurrection at the second coming of Christ? The big deal is that only then will
be complete as Jesus is complete. Jesus is an eternal man with His human body
raised up to be combined with His God made body. This makes Him the only
complete man in the universe right now. No one else will be complete until the
great resurrection of all God's people.
When Jesus died, His body was buried, and He took on His eternal spiritual
body. When He rose from the dead His spiritual body entered into His body of
flesh and transformed it into the final body that was both earthly and heavenly.
He could eat, talk, and the nail holes in His hands could be touched. He was
physical, and yet He could go through walls, disappear, and change His
appearance so He was not recognized. He was both physical and spiritual.
This is the ultimate body, and we will only be fully like Jesus when we too are
raised up in our earthly bodies to be combined with our heavenly body.
Meanwhile the saints in heaven do not float about like a vapor with no body.
When Moses and Elijah appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration, they were
not spirits only, but bodies that could be recognized and identified. Every
picture we have in the Bible of a person in the intermediate state has a body.
When Christ comes again, all the dead in Christ will come with Him, and be
reunited with their earthly bodies. Those who are alive will be instantly
transfigured so that their earthly and heavenly bodies become one. Then, and
only then, will all the redeemed be like their Lord.
Paul's point in his announcement is, do not fear the loss of your tent, for you
are not left naked, but are immediately given a new and greater body as a
heavenly habitation. Do not fear death, for those who have this new body will
come with Jesus, and play an active role in the resurrection. Those alive at the
second coming will be spectators as they are changed in a twinkling of an eye.
But those in the intermediate state will be in on the whole thing, and have a far
more exciting adventure. Many Christians feel it is to be a great honor to be
alive at the second coming, but, the fact is, it is a greater honor to be among
those who come with Christ. Do not feel bad for Christians who have died, for
they are the first to get their complete and eternal body.
This complete body will be able to, like Jesus in His complete body, travel
between heaven and earth, and manifest its earthly identity so that for all
eternity Christians will be able to link themselves to their earthly identity, and
be known by all who knew them in history. But just as Jesus took on another
identity in His resurrection body, so we will be able to do likewise. This is only
speculation, but it is a logical conclusion that we will be able to look like we
want to look. After all, God and His holy angels are beautiful, and all heaven
and earth will be beautiful. It is a logical assumption that all the redeemed will
also be beautiful as the eternal bride of the Redeemer.
Until that glorious consummation of the union of the resurrection body and
the spiritual body, the Christian is not waiting naked for history to end, so he
can get back into a body. This would be a worse fate than soul sleep between
death and the resurrection. If you were not conscious, you would not care that
you had no body,but to be conscious and have no body would make the
intermediate state a sort of purgatory where you wait in torment to be clothed.
There are many Christians who think this is the case, but it makes a
mockery out of Christ's promise to the thief that he would be with Him in
paradise that very day. What a false encouragement if that thief is still waiting
to be clothed with a body to replace his earthly body. Paradise loses its appeal
if for 2,000 years that thief has been there as a naked disembodied spirit,
longing like the demons in legion for a body to possess. Christians who believe
there is no body after death, until the resurrection, have robbed Christians of
the very comfort and encouragement Paul was offering the Corinthians in this
announcement.
The whole point of Paul's teaching is, we are never without a body. We have
an earthly body, and when we move out of it, we have an intermediate body,
and at the resurrection we get an eternal body which is the perfected
combination of the other two. The intermediate body is no mere shack. It is
eternal, and is a building God has made for us. Death will take us from a tent
to a temple, from a cottage to a castle. Paul makes a point of stressing this
house in heaven is not made by human hands. It is not man made, but God
made, which means it is a special creation of God.
We do not know of any body that is not man made. Made by man is the
mark on every body we have ever seen. This body which is not man made is a
mystery to us, and we have to take it by faith. It sure solves a lot of problems
that theologians have about the resurrection body. People wonder about all
sorts of problems with bodies scattered as ashes, or at sea, eaten by sea
creatures, or even buried and being taken up into the plant world. How is God
going to get it all together for a resurrection. If God can make a body for us
that is ideal and glorious, and permanent, without one molecule of our earthly
body, I don't think we have to worry about God's ability to raise up the
physical body.
This passage makes it clear, we do not have to worry about anything
concerning our after death experience, for our heavenly habitation will be far
superior, and so death will be gain and not loss. These marvelous bodies that
boggle the minds of scientists, as they study their complexity, are mere child's
play compared to what we will dwell in the moment we fold up this tattered
tent, and enter our permanent palace. In a very real sense, nothing of who we
are is ever lost, and it will be a part of our eternal being. We all follow the
three fold pattern of Jesus. His first body was the physical body which began
at conception. That is where we all begin. It is a temporary tabernacle, but
part of it will be a part of us forever, just as the body of Jesus is a part of His
eternal being.
The second body of Jesus is the one He had in His intermediate state, when
He left His body of flesh on the cross, which He entered again on Easter
morning in His resurrection. This is our second body as well. The one we have
after we die, and until we are raised again at the resurrection. The third body
of Jesus was His resurrection body, which was the combination of the heavenly
and the earthly. This is our final body as well. Of these three bodies, the most
mysterious is the middle one--the intermediate state body. Millions of
Christians believe in the reality of this body, but millions of others do not.
They are convinced of all sorts of other ideas about the intermediate state. For
example--
1. Many believe in soul sleep. The soul does not need a body after death
because it goes into a state of unconsciousness, and has no need for a body until
the resurrection. The Anabaptist held to this view, and some Baptists do to this
day. A number of the cults also follow this view.
2. The most wide spread idea is that after death the believer is in a
disembodied state until the resurrection. In other words, there are only two
bodies of man-the now body which is temporary, and the resurrection body
which is forever. There is no middle body at all. The problem with this
popular view is that it ignores the enormous amount of evidence that man is
never naked, but always clothed with the body. We will consider this evidence
in another message.
Let me close this message by going back to our first point
which was Paul's assurance. Paul says if our earthly tent is destroyed, we have
a building from God. Note his present tense which says, "We have." This
building is not something we will have at the resurrection. It is a building we
have now. If not so, Paul is still waiting to enter what he thought he had, for
the resurrection has not yet happened. He groaned, longing to be clothed with
his heavenly dwelling. If this does not happen until the resurrection, Paul is
still groaning after nearly 2,000 years. If this be so, it is a rejection of his whole
point in comforting the Corinthians. We will examine this in another message,
for I have a great deal of evidence to support the conviction that Paul expected
to slip out of his tent, and not be naked for 2,000 years, but enter immediately
into his heavenly habitation.
