Page:Anastasis A Treatise on the Judgment of the Dead.pdf/13

14 nature. The lower nature is that exhibited in Adam on the day of his formation. It was "very good" of its kind, but not equal to the nature of the Elohim. This is the higher nature, and styled by Paul the spiritual body. The lower nature is human; the higher, divine. From the one to the other is an ascent; and he who ascends from an earthly body to a heavenly, is said to have been raised.

When spirit became flesh in the evolution of Jesus from the substance of Mary, he is said to have been "made a little lower than the angels," whose nature He did not assume (Heb. ii. 9, 16). It is the inferior nature of which resurrection, in its broadest sense, is affirmed. If Adam had continued faithful and obedient, his "body of life" would have been raised to equality with the Elohistic body by the transforming energy of spirit forth sent from Deity. His body of life, just evolved from the dust, would have been clothed upon by a house from heaven; or, in other words, having been permitted to eat of the tree of life, his body would have "put on incorruption and immortality." But, in his case, this was not permitted. It was reserved for the last Adam to illustrate, in his own person what would have been if the first had been faithful; and what will be to all of his descendants who walk after the example of the last.

The resurrection, or raising of Jesus from the lower nature with which he emerged from the tomb to the divine nature, his "house from heaven," the white robe of spirit in which he was "taken up," supplies the deficiencies in the case of the first Adam; and exhibits to his brethren the stages of the raising process they have to pass through before it can be said they are like Him (1 Jno. iii. 2).

The first stage is the formation of their dust after the image and likeness of the first Adam, which were Elohistic; and then, being thus Elohistically formed, to be caused to exist by "the breath of lives" being breathed into their nostrils. By this process of formation and inspiration they become —naphshoth chaiyah. Before the inspiration of the breath of lives, their condition answers to that of the lifeless body of Jesus in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, when he deposited him there. In this parallel, they are naphshoth maith, "bodies of death," such as Paul prayed to be delivered from in Rom. vii. 24. But when the breath of "the spirit of life from Deity enters into them," they awake "and stand upon their feet," bodies of life, styled by Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 44–45, "psychical bodies" and "living souls." This stage of the raising process is strikingly illustrated in the resurrection of the witnesses apocalytically exhibited in Rev. xi. 11. These were bodies of death during three symbolic days and a half; but, as soon as spirit from Deity entered into them they became subjects of egersis, or