God of Resurrection

There's been much written in apocalyptic literature, even that claiming to be Christian apocalyptic literature. Many Christians have been taught to look forward to that day when Christ comes back and the righteous are swept up into the heavens while the wicked are "left behind" to toil and suffer and perish. 

So, then, it's always been important to make sure that when that day comes, you're one of the ones that Jesus is going to take with Him. 

But what if...Jesus is taking everybody? 

There are probably as many theories of resurrection and heaven as there are human beings - believers and unbelievers alike. In fact, one of the great challenges that unbelievers have when considering the Lord is the notion of a God who can choose between persons and send some to eternal hellfire while saving others. What kind of God does this? 

But Paul says, in one of the many defenses that he gives for himself over the course of the book of Acts, that he believes, as many others believed at the time, that God will raise all people from the dead - the righteous and unrighteous alike (Acts 24:15).

And in fact, I believe this, too. 

I believe that when this is all said and done, we will all meet Jesus. We will all see God face-to-face. We will all see the accounting of our lives. 

But unlike what has become recent traditional teaching in Christianity (fairly recent, in the 2000 years of Christian history, anyway), I believe that when we meet God, all of the things that He never created in us will be burned away like chaff. We will be purified and restored to the being that we were created to be and restored to the Father who loves us. 

All the broken things of this world, all the trauma, all the defense mechanisms, all the pain, all the meanness, all the rebellion, all the evil that has gotten into us on this side of Eden will be burned away. For some, that may take a long time. It will be more excruciating for some than for others, depending on how we have led our lives here, but it will happen.

That's also how Jesus can say, in Revelation, that everyone will be given the name that only He knows - they will become the creation He envisioned in them when it all began, and they will see and know themselves for the very first time in wholeness and goodness and yes, "very goodness," just as Genesis said it was always meant to be in God's eyes. 

He will rest again and so will we, together. 

And if that bothers you - if you're right now thinking about that person that you don't think deserves to go to Heaven - then try to imagine it. Try to understand what it might mean to know them as a restored being, fully and wholly as God intended them and, well, not broken. And you not broken, either. 

For Paul said it, the early church declared it, Christians across the ages have believed it until very relatively recently - God will raise all people from the dead. 

Rejoice! For this is very good news indeed.