Deeper Reflection
AT “THE COMING OF THE LORD”, THERE WILL BE BELIEVERS who have already died and those who are still “alive” (v.15). Two things will happen to believers according to a divine order. First, “the dead in Christ will rise first” (v.16). For those who are “alive”, they will not experience resurrection from death, but instead they “will be caught up…in the clouds” – the rapture – and catch up with the resurrected dead, so that “together with them” they will “meet the Lord in the air” (v.17). What will happen to our bodies when all these happen at Christ’s return? Christ “will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body” (Phil 3:20-21). Christ will return “with the sound of the trumpet of God” (v.16). Then, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet”, “we shall all be changed” and “put on the imperishable” body and “immortality” (1 Cor 15:51-53). This glorious transformation of our bodies is founded on the resurrection of Christ.We seem to be concerned with how we die. We wish that we will die peacefully in our sleep into God’s presence. Christians died in diverse ways. Godly people died of cancer. In the Promised Land filled with God’s blessings (Deut 7:12-15), one could be killed by “the head of an axe that slips from the handle” from someone cutting down a tree nearby (Deut 19:5). God’s people can die through accidents. What is more important is, while “our outer man is decaying, our inner man is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor 4:16-18).