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When Dead Men Will Live Again!The Watchtower—1983 | July 1
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1. (a) For anyone on earth to claim to be “the resurrection and the life” would require what? (b) On what basis is the claimant able to serve as such?
CERTAINLY it would require great boldness for any human to make the assertion, “I am the resurrection and the life.” But that is exactly what that historical figure, Jesus Christ, said about himself more than 19 centuries ago. One of his apostles, named John, heard him say this and recorded it for our benefit today. (John 11:25) Jesus meant that he was such in behalf of dead and dying and already buried humankind. Of course, he himself died a brutal death on an execution stake outside the walls of Jerusalem, and so his own Father, Jehovah God, had to become “the resurrection and the life” to him in turn. On the third day of Jesus’ death, the Almighty God did raise him from the dead and clothed him with immortal life in the spirit world. By miraculously clothing himself with a fleshly body like that in which he died, Jesus revealed himself to his anguished disciples, on one occasion to upwards of 500. (1 Corinthians, chapter 15) Thus he could indeed become the resurrection and the life to humankind for whom he died.
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When Dead Men Will Live Again!The Watchtower—1983 | July 1
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But the case of Jesus’ own resurrection was the most important for all mankind. He did not die again, as the others did; but now, in his resurrected, immortal state, he can be “the resurrection and the life” for humans to an unbroken endless life in perfection, free of the condemnation of death and under God’s universal sovereignty.
7, 8. (a) How do the age lengths of Adam and Methuselah substantiate the possibility for perfected humankind to live forever? (b) How long is the life of Melchizedek reckoned as being, and what does this argue for the life of the one whom he prefigured?
7 The possibility of endless human life on earth when obedient mankind is recovered from the fall into sin and death (through the first man Adam) is substantiated by the fact that Adam, even though he sinned against God, lived for 930 years, most of that time outside the perfect garden of Eden. One of his descendants, Methuselah, lived to be 969 years old. (Genesis 5:5, 27)
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