ambassadors for the risen Christ ministries

by Shawn Brasseaux

Once, I watched a secular program on television that documented an exploration of the ruins of Titanic. It was on her maiden voyage 97 years ago that 1,500 of Titanic’s 2,200 passengers froze to death in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. It was to be Captain John Smith’s last voyage before retirement; it is highly like that he perished with his ship.

The luxury ocean liner crashed into an iceberg, which caused water to fill the ship. There was a shortage of lifeboats, and since many lifeboats left the ship not filled to capacity, a large portion of the ship’s passengers drowned. Today, the wreckage of the Titanic sits below 2.5 miles of ocean water. At age 97, Ms. Elizabeth Gladys “Millvina” Dean was the sole living survivor of that horrible tragedy (she was two months old at the time of Titanic’s sinking)—she died this past May.

Throughout the program, my mind constantly flashed back to the words of Jesus Christ in John 5:28,29 KJV: “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good [that is, the people of faith], unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil [the lost world], unto the resurrection of damnation.”

All of those corpses still aboard the Titanic will one day be resurrected. The Lord will call up their bodies, and they will literally and physically rise up. That is, those passengers who were members of the Church the Body of Christ will be called up bodily at the rapture (1 Corinthians 15:51-55; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18); everyone else in the wreckage will be resurrected with the other lost unbelievers, over 1000 years later to stand before the Lord Jesus Christ at the Great White Throne Judgment (Revelation 20:11-15). They will be given new bodies, bodies designed to last for all eternity (this applies to both believers and unbelievers).

Resurrection is something that sets Christianity apart from the world’s religions: reincarnation is something completely different from resurrection. Down through the ages, believers’ bodies have been burned, mutilated, buried, and even disintegrated to hardly anything. However, because God needs a speck of DNA to resurrect a body, there must be something left of everyone’s body.

One day, you will also be bodily resurrected: either at the rapture (if you are a believer, a member of the Church the Body of Christ), or at the Great White Throne Judgment (if you have never trusted Christ Jesus as your personal Saviour). The Christians who are alive at the time of the rapture will not experience death, but will instantly get the resurrected body!

Indeed, there is life after death.