Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/150

 natural body on earth, so destruction can only be predicable of the spiritual body in hell; destruction meaning the deprivation of all heavenly life. So that the body which may be killed in the world is not the same body as that which may be destroyed in hell. In the one case it is the natural body, in the other it is the spiritual body.

Upon another occasion the Lord said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. 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, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." If the Lord had intended by this to assert the resurrection of dead material bodies as some distant event, He certainly would not have said concerning it, The hour now is. But such bodies do not hear; the body which is dead in its natural grave cannot hear. It is the soul which hears: this cannot die, neither can it be buried. The passages say nothing about such bodies, nor is their resurrection referred to. That which is treated of is the revival into spiritual life of those who have been dead to the Divine purposes, and a deliverance of them from that grave of sensuality into which they had descended: and the hour for these results is not only coming, but it now is.

Jesus said, "This is the will of Him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day." Now the sight and the belief are here not spoken of the material body, and therefore it cannot be that body to which the promise, "I will raise him up," applies.