A Thawed and Flawed Resurrection
Our earthly bodies, which die and decay, will be different when they are resurrected, for they will never die. Our bodies now disappoint us, but when they are raised, they will be full of glory (1 Corinthians 15:42, NLT).
Dear friends:
When legendary baseball player Ted Williams died in 2002, his son made the controversial decision to freeze his father’s body, assuming, I suppose, that someday his father could be resurrected.
Others have had similar hopes. Leslie Flynn, in The Sustaining Power of Hope, describes a young man in New York who took a step before his death at 24 which he thought would safeguard his future.
Upon his death, Steven arranged to have himself frozen solid until a medical cure was found for the intestinal infection that had made him a chronic invalid and was leading to an early death.
When Steven’s infection stubbornly refused to respond to medical treatment, he followed up an intriguing ad placed in a science-fiction magazine by the Cryonics Society of New York. This society had been founded on the premise that bodies of the clinically dead can be put in a deep freeze and later brought back to life.
He instructed his mother to make sure that once he was pronounced legally dead, his body would be neither buried nor cremated, but frozen.
When he died, the Cryonics Society promptly took charge. Steven was placed in “cryonic suspension” in a “Crypt-Capsule,” a giant bottle filled with liquid nitrogen. In that state, Steven will remain indefinitely.
His mother commented that Steven’s death was easier for her to bear because there wasn’t the same finality of putting someone away under the earth. When asked if she expected Steven to be raised from his Cryonic Capsule, she made this tragic comment, “I have only a remote hope for my boy’s resurrection.”
What a contrast from this remote and unlikely hope is what the Bible teaches! We have the absolute assurance of the resurrection of those who die trusting in Jesus.
In fact, we have a much better hope. Not only is our hope certain, but we will not be thawed in these weak, fallen and temporal bodies, but actually resurrected in a new and glorious body!
Because Jesus Christ conquered death and rose from the grave, He will someday bring back to life all those who have put their faith in Him, giving them perfect bodies, just like His own resurrected, glorified body.
“We are already God’s children, and we can’t even imagine what we will be like when Christ returns. But we do know that when he comes we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is” (1 John 3:2, NLT).
That beats freezing and thawing any day!
Yours for helping to fulfill the Great Commission each year until our Lord returns,
Bill Bright
About the Author
The late Dr. Bill Bright was Founder and President/Chairman Emeritus of Campus Crusade for Christ, an organization which began as a campus ministry in 1951 and now has more than 27,000 full-time staff and up to 500,000 trained volunteer staff in 196 countries in areas representing 99.6 percent of the world’s population. In the past 50 years, Campus Crusade for Christ has seen approximately 6 billion exposures to the gospel worldwide. The film, “JESUS,” which Bright conceived and funded through Campus Crusade for Christ, is the most widely translated and viewed film of any type ever produced. Since its use began in 1980, the film has been translated into 839 languages and viewed or listened to by over 5.7 billion people in 228 countries. Dr. Bright was also the author of more than fifty books. Dr. Bright recently co-founded Global Pastors Network to “Touch, Teach and Train” a group of 5 million new house churches around the world 24/7/365 at http://www.globalpastorsnetwork.org.
Copyright (c) 2003, Bill Bright. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
