The Wayside Pulpit No.93
More about Resurrection
(This article has been changed since March 2008 as a result of
circumstances displayed in Wellspring 70)
In the last number I wrote
about the beauties and joys of resurrection, the state we are awaiting with
much longing. In this number, I should like to quote from a few testimonies, reproduced
from chapter 27 of a book I am currently writing, entitled "Mysteries of
Science and Faith." The chapter is entitled "Caught up to
Heaven."
1. Sadhu Sundar Singh’s story is quite well known. But
his frequent excursions into heavenly places are less known. In fact he was repeatedly caught up to heaven
in visions, some of which have been recorded.
"I was told
there [i.e.
in heaven] that Christians leave behind them the physical body. The body
is buried, but the spiritual body that is within them is then free to come out,
and in this [spiritual body] we go to heaven. In the case of
those caught up without dying, the physical body is completely spiritualised,
for flesh and blood cannot inherit eternal life, but it is the same physical
body, only completely transformed. I asked whether this applied to Enoch and
Elijah, and was told ‘Yes’. An angel told me, ‘The body that
you see is the soul, or spiritual body, possessed while in the temple of flesh
on earth.’"
2. William Booth,
(1829 - 1912) was the founder of the Salvation Army. He was born in
Though attempting to
describe a person redeemed from the earth as he appeared in his spiritual form
in heaven, Booth said, "Describe the shape, the features and bearing
of this noble form I cannot, and will not attempt it. He was at the same time
earthly and celestial. I discovered, therefore, at a glance that he was one of the
blood-washed multitude, and I not only judged from a certain majestic
appearance, which he bore, but from instinct, I felt that the being before me
was a man, a redeemed and glorified man. He looked at me and I
could not help but return his gaze. His eyes compelled me, and in doing so I
confessed to being ravished by his beauty. I could never have believed the
human face divine could have borne so grave a stamp of dignity and charm, but
far beyond the entrancing love-lines of those celestial features was the
expression through every ligament of that countenance, and through
those eyes that were gazing upon me. It was as though that face was only a
sun-lit window through which I could see into the depths of the pure benevolent
soul within. He spoke first. Had he not done so I could never have summoned
courage to address him. His voice was soft and musical and fitted well with the
seriousness of his aspect."
Concerning a certain lady
he met in the heavenly vision, General Booth wrote as follows - "She
told me her name. I had heard it on earth. She was a widow who had struggled
through great difficulties. After her husband’s death she had given
herself up unreservedly to fight for the Lord. Her children had been her first
care and all but one had been saved.
"There was a
dignity of bearing of inward power, the same marvellous expression and purity
and joy as in the case of the man just described, but in this case combined (I
could imagine) with a beauty of more delicate and enthralling mould. Beautiful as
I thought my first visitor to be, more beautiful than conception or dream of
earth could be, yet here was a beauty that surpassed it - not, perhaps if
judged from inherent
rules, but judged from my standpoint. My former visitor, I have said, was a glorious
man; this was the more glorified form of a woman.
"I had, when on
earth, sometimes thought I could have wished the privilege of beholding Eve in
the hour when she came forth from the hands of her Maker, and I had imagined
something - only something, of what her beautiful form must have been as she sprang into being on that
bridal morning, young and pure and beautiful - perhaps the sweetest work of
God. No, here I saw her - I saw Eve reproduced before my eyes as young, pure
and beautiful, nay, more beautiful than her first mother could possibly have
been, for was not this God’s finished workmanship?"
But some who read these
lines will be asking, "Surely, these people are not in their resurrection
bodies yet?" Indeed, no. But the following extract will be helpful here,
in order to clarify the matter.
3. In the writings of
H.A.Baker we find his description of the
salvation and subsequent filling with the power of the Holy Spirit of a group
of over twenty Chinese orphan children, varying in age between 8 and 18, in the
years prior to the Communist take-over in China. Baker and his wife Josephine
were working there in the south-west corner of
During the days when the
Spirit’s power fell upon these "street urchins," now washed in
the precious blood of Christ, they were taken up to heaven in vision and in the
spirit, much as the Apostle John was when he wrote the Revelation. And like
General Booth, they had converse with some of the redeemed from earth who had
died in former years. On returning from their "heavenly adventures"
Baker quizzed them extensively about the experience, comparing their answers
with the Scriptures he knew so well. Although the orphans were illiterate,
unlearned, and had only that brief knowledge of the Bible which they had heard
at the Adullam Home, they gave accurate answers, and each confirmed the next
about what they saw. This became the subject of Baker’s best-selling book,
"Visions beyond the Veil", together with his other lesser-known
works- ("Heaven and the Angels", & "Planes
of Glory and Gloom") This is what Baker had to say -
"I have already
told how our children had visions of some of our Adullam people already dead
and now in heaven, clothed in white and enjoying Paradise, and of their seeing
the saints of old clothed in white. The Scripture teaches that between death and the resurrection
the saints have spiritual bodies and are clothed in white. (Rev. 6:9-11) When I
cross-questioned the children as to how they knew whether the saints they saw
in heaven had been resurrected or not, they said they did not know until the
angels told them that they saw only the souls of the saints and that
their bodies had not been resurrected. I questioned and cross-questioned in
some of these matters and always got a uniform testimony."
Here then is the answer to
a puzzle that has perplexed a number of students of the Word of God. They
accept that in vision and in near-death experiences, people have seen
white-robed saints, but have doubted the testimony insofar as it seems to
contradict the Scriptural statements about the day of resurrection. But
apparently in this interim period the "soul" is clothed upon with a
form that enables recognition and is a sort of foretaste of the resurrection
body, whereby the saints may have converse with each other in those higher
regions.