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ResurrectionInsight on the Scriptures, Volume 2
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The Scriptures, both the Hebrew and the Greek, therefore show that it was the “soul” of Jesus Christ that was resurrected. Jesus Christ was ‘put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.’ (1Pe 3:18) “Flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s kingdom,” said the apostle Paul. (1Co 15:50) This would also exclude flesh and bones. Flesh and bones do not have life unless they have blood, for the blood contains the “soul” or is that which is necessary for the life of the creature of flesh.—Ge 9:4.
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ResurrectionInsight on the Scriptures, Volume 2
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But those whom Jehovah pleases to raise to an earthly resurrection, what body does he give them? It could not be the same body, of exactly the same atoms. If a man dies and is buried, by process of decay his body is reconverted into chemicals that can be absorbed by vegetation. Persons may eat that vegetation. The elements, the atoms of that original person, now are in many persons. In the resurrection it is obvious that the same atoms cannot be in the original person and in all the others at the same time.
Neither is the resurrected body necessarily one constructed to be the exact duplicate of the body at the moment of death. If a person has had his body mutilated before death, will he return in the same way? That would be unreasonable, for he might not be in a condition even to hear and to do “those things written in the scrolls.” (Re 20:12) Say a person died from having the blood drained from his body. Would he return without blood? No, for he could not live in an earthly body without blood. (Le 17:11, 14) Rather, he would be given a body as it pleases God. Since God’s will and pleasure are that the resurrected person must obey the “things written in the scrolls,” it would have to be a sound body, possessing all its faculties. (Even though Lazarus’ body was already partially decomposed, Jesus resurrected Lazarus in a whole, sound body. [Joh 11:39])
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