Resurrection

In the Bible, the resurrection is when the dead are raised back to life. The central part of the gospel message of Christianity is that Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, has risen from the dead on the third day. Those who are believers in God and Jesus Christ are resurrected unto eternal life, and those who are not believers are resurrected unto eternal judgment. Those who are worthy to obtain the resurrection unto eternal life will receive a glorified body like that of Jesus, who has proven this by being raised from the dead after three days of being laid in the tomb following His crucifixion.

The notion of resurrection, where the dead come back to life corporeally, is preposterous to some cultures. In the Acts of the Apostles, when Paul was speaking to the devoutly pagan people of Athens, the audience started to scoff when Paul spoke of the resurrection of the dead (anastasis). Paul was first speaking to the Stoics and Epicureans before he was invited to present his foreign ideas to the Areopagus/Mars Hill. Typically, the Greeks believed that salvation was the liberation of the soul from the body, as opposed to resurrection.

The resurrection of believers occurred twice in the Left Behind series — first at the Rapture of the church, and then later at the Glorious Appearing of Christ when those who were martyred for their faith were resurrected along with the Old Testament saints. The resurrection of unbelievers took place at the Great White Throne judgment following the Millennial Reign in Kingdom Come.

Satan resurrected Nicolae Carpathia from the dead by dwelling within him from the midpoint of the Tribulation until the Glorious Appearing, when Satan was cast out of Carpathia. Tsion Ben-Judah emphasizes that Carpathia really did die and became indwelt by Satan during his prophesied resurrection, in contrast to those who claim that Carpathia would just appear dead. Orcus, the "wonder worker" agent of Carpathia, used his power to briefly resurrect those who he had slain with the same power before he caused them to die again.

After Carpathia's resurrection when he was indwelt by Satan, he did not require sleep, drink, or food. However, when Satan's momentarily withdrew his presence from Carpathia while Carpathia was in the Global Community One World Unity Army command bunker in Solomon's Stables, Carpathia became wizened, decrepit, and enervated to the point that he was nearly dead. In contrast, the faithful who are resurrected by God are given glorified bodies not liable to corruption.

The power of resurrection is intuitively understood to be in the sole province of God. The resurrection of Carpathia is one way that Satan was able to deceive and captivate the world during the Tribulation. Shortly after Carpathia's resurrection, Carpathia rhetorically asked, "Who but the most high god has power over death?" In the Kids Series installment The Rise of False Messiahs, Janie McCanyon was perplexed while she was watching a Global Community broadcast of a false messiah resurrecting a deceased young woman named Talitha. Janie thought that only God could resurrect the dead. In Qur'an 2:73, Allah commanded (in one instance) that one should strike the body of the deceased with a piece of a cow. That would be a sign of God's power because only God could produce an extraordinary effect, resurrection, through a rather mundane, preposterous cause, as striking a dead body with meat normally would not resurrect it. Under an occasionalist causal regime, where God is the only entity that has true causal efficacy and created objects have no power, it is trivial that God only has the power of resurrection because it is only God that has the power to cause any event and thus resurrection is not merely a special power of God.

Elsewhere in the Kids Series, Z-Van mocked the resurrection of Jesus while proclaiming the resurrection of Carpathia: “Nobody’s ever experienced what we did today. I know you guys believe Jesus came alive, but that was in some cave in Israel, and nobody saw it happen. This was live, in front of cameras and millions of people. His Excellency doesn’t do anything in secret.” Some people such as Patrick Rose doubted that Carpathia supernaturally resurrected himself, saying that it was a "medical miracle" but that he saw through the act.

Members of The Other Light believed that Satan would be given power to resurrect those who have died as martyrs for the cause when he successfully leads the last generation of its members to victory against God and Jesus Christ. However, Abdullah Smith points out to Sarsour, a former member of The Other Light, that Satan would not be given that power, so that even if their army wins, the whole cause still loses.

External links

• Resurrection at Theopedia