”But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?

Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:

And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:

But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body”.

1 Cor 15:35-38 KJV

The aim here is to bring to attention an alternative view of ‘the resurrection passage’ of 1 Cor 15 by putting the passage under the microscope and hopefully leaving you wondering, as I did, whether this might be yet another example of teaching we received as spiritual infants that needs to be reconsidered. It is presented in two parts, a basic but adequate overview followed by the more detailed, supporting section. Can I encourage you to at least read the shorter part, which is

Part One -The Straightforward Part

Like virtually everyone else in Church I was taught and believed this passage is talking about our physical bodies being resurrected in the future. It’s quite obvious really isn’t it and you’re probably thinking “goodness, what’s he coming out with now?”!
But, can I encourage you to hang around and do a bit of thinking for yourself again just like I did with this subject. Please don’t click out after the first paragraph, there are some very genuine orthodox points or queries that follow, maybe the same ones you raise too.

We know that Jesus said on the Cross ‘It is finished’, and when my journey had eventually led me to start making sense of all my difficult biblical questions in general by looking through the Preterist lens, and I realised Jesus had bought to completion (fulfilled) the Law and the Prophets, and that therefore all the Feasts were fulfilled too, this in due course naturally led me to look deeper into this issue of The Resurrection because this is intrinsically tied to the Day of Atonement and if that really was fulfilled then that meant The Resurrection must have already happened too. But that’s crazy isn’t it. Umm. So now I had a real problem. A real challenge to my Preterist beliefs. So, I needed to rethink. Are all the Feasts really fulfilled?

And here’s the results of my searching but please remember now though, that you can’t do complex mathematics before going to elementary school first and whilst I’m not saying this is an issue of intelligence here, I am saying that if you haven’t already been made aware of and subsequently de programmed from today’s standard church futurist dispensational theology (see section two on this site) then you will need to do that first, otherwise you won’t necessarily read and see this through the correct lens and you may well just ridicule what you read below – just like I initially did decades ago when I was a naive young Christian who blindly believed what the Pastor told me. I would still encourage you to carry on reading this though because the questions below that arise from todays standard interpretation might just be the catalyst to get you thinking too. So here’s some of the problems I’d always had with what I’d been taught about resurrection, even though I’d largely ignored them for years. Have you ever asked these questions below like I did (and I couldn’t find an answer for them, can you? Or will you just pass them by like I did for so long?).

Firstly then, the second line in the opening passage, v36 ‘Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die’. If we think about that, the seed is sown first and it dies AFTER it is sown, because it says the seed is not quickened unless ‘it dies’. It does not say ‘except it be dead first’ (the scholarly stuff backing that there is in note¹). Therefore, if our bodies are the seed in Paul’s analogy then that would require us to be buried alive BEFORE we died, think about it. And nature too supports my query. We know that a seed can live for decades, and it is not until it is finally sown that it “dies”. So was using seed as an analogy a poor choice from Paul or am I looking at this wrongly?

Secondly, sowing, death and “resurrection” occur simultaneous and ongoing ie once the seed is sown the husk part slowly perishes whilst at the same time the germ part slowly emerges, feeding from the nutrients contained within. If we apply Paul’s seed analogy to the physical body being the seed that is sown then we should start to slowly die after burial and start being slowly resurrected as soon as we are buried, our resurrection body feeding from our old bodies. Not only is that absurd but it leaves no room after death for a 6000 year plus wait for resurrection for those early ‘sown seeds’, the faithful saints like Adam, Abel, Abraham, etc plus both the OT and the NT speak of a general future bodily resurrection which must be incorporated into my framework. So I ask again, was that a poor analogy from Paul? And also from God, because many of us know that things in nature are God’s way of showing us a type of a spiritual reality, so did God get His typology wrong?

Thirdly, here we have a genuine translation query. Verse 35 is present tense and perhaps should read more like ‘How are the dead being raised? And with what body are they coming? This is yet another case of futurists doctoring the original Greek present tense text by implying things to be in the future that are actually present tense realities (and I have a whole list of those, along with a keen eye to spot them all now!). Unlike the Sadducees, the Corinthians were not denying the resurrection doctrine per se, they were simply denying it was going on for them right now, that’s very important to note and that’s why the Greek uses the present passive indicative tense ‘are being raised’. Similarly v37 should read ‘and that which thou are sowing’, present ongoing tense (note²). Think about that, that’s is very interesting.

And then we’ve got all the usual practical issues like if Jesus said all who believe in me will never die, then how can I possibly ever be resurrected if I never die? Think about that, and please don’t say it’s spiritual otherwise I’ll just quote Jordan Peterson, ”gotcha!”, and ask you to continue reading this page keeping your ‘spiritual’ lens of interpretation in mind. Also, how old will our resurrected body be, will it be my superfit body and brain when I was 30 years old or a decrepit 57 year old one like it is now that can only concentrate on study like this for a short while in the early mornings? Also. How can a body that has been pulverised, turned to dust and blown away in the wind like those on 9/11 be resurrected when it hasn’t even been planted…..? No doubt you’ve got your own questions to add to that list if you’re honest, and please don’t just accept the Pastors ‘well God is capable of sorting and collecting all those molecules back together again’, things like that just add one more reason as to why churches are emptying today. If we are honest with ourselves we should at least start to question our own interpretation here with regard to whether the seeds in Pauls analogy are/can or could be our physical bodies. Please, don’t ignore those very valid questions because you will be rewarded, there is treasure here!

Most people do tend to be happy thinking something like ‘our thoughts are not God’s thoughts’ and leave those problems to Him. But being inquisitive, I tend not to dismiss these issues and can I encourage you not to ignore things you maybe don’t fully understand. True, maybe you don’t feel called to investigate and that’s absolutely fine but I’d encourage you, if you are taught stuff that doesn’t make sense to you, do consider the findings of those who do feel more called to delve into these issues, and see if they make sense. If they don’t, then just move on, but please remember we are all members of the one ‘body’ (and there’s a clue to where this is going!) and this is what I do. Similarly, to keep the whole body healthy I need what you are called to do too – to keep my body part in the body of Christ from getting sick. If I’m the little toe and you’re the heart, and you don’t function as you’re intended to then I suffer from blood supply issues! We need each other.

Nowadays, having learned from past experiences, I assume that if something is unclear, and because God is not the author of confusion, it’s quite likely that I’m looking through the wrong lens, or being really cynical I assume that all my life I’ve been taught the wrong lens with which to look through.

I had a really challenging debate with my good friend in 2025 , in which I got stuck once or twice when it came to answering some objections to my Preterist view of resurrection, and that led me to deep search these issues, not to win debates but because of my own conscience before God which must ensure everything I write here and proclaim elsewhere must stand up to biblical scrutiny 101%. And if it doesn’t then I need to rethink. Several months later and with much intense wrestling over the issue I’m much better equipped for debating this issue now, so if you’ve ever had questions over our Resurrection hope, see if this new found lens of interpretation clears anything up for you in this department like it did for me. Here it is.

The Corporate Lens not the Individual Lens

Our modern English mindset or paradigm is very sadly generally nowadays one formed looking through the lens of “me“ and “I“, eg what can I get out of this or how does it benefit me? But it hasn’t always been like that, I used to wonder why all those such young lads climbed into those aeroplanes of ours during the Second World War when it was highly likely that they wouldn’t return and I discovered that their education (rightly or wrongly we won’t discuss…) gave them a different mindset – that of “for King and Country”. This sort of corporate mindset can also still be seen amongst the Japanese today for the first example that springs to mind, like during the World Cup when we saw their football fans cleaning the stadium after a match, they have a corporate pride for their nation, not a ”cleaning is tedious, that’s someone else’s job” attitude.

And relevant to us, the Hebrews too had a similar corporate interest mindset rather than an individual one. Now let’s apply that to The Resurrection.

The Corporate Body View

In regard to The Resurrection, when I began to think through a corporate body mindset rather than my old individual oriented mindset then everything started to make sense.
When a nation goes to war, it doesn’t matter to a certain extent what the individuals think, there is one leader who makes a decision and then every citizen “in that nation” is now ”at war”, solely due to the decision of one man. In the Bible, the words body and man are often used interchangeably and that works in modern English too, it would be quite correct to say/view the nation as ‘one body’ of people at war.

Now think of Adam. Adam as humanities federal head similarly made a decision by which the status of everyone “in Adam” became ”a sinner” (think back to the status of everyone “in that nation” is now ”at war”). And that’s how we need to learn to think, corporately. ”I am a sinner not because of what I do but because of what Adam did, past tense”.

The Bible actually speaks of just ‘two men’, the first man Adam and the second man Christ. Now think ‘two corporate men’. We have just looked at Adam as a federal head, now let’s look at Christ as a federal head, and this here also happens to be for me one great simple take on the Gospel message too that you can share with anyone in just ten seconds when you’re out and about –

”Jesus, as a representative, or federal head, by the way that He lived a perfect life then the status of everyone ‘In Christ’ becomes ‘perfect’ too”.

To repeat, that’s how we need to learn to think, corporately. ‘I am perfect not because of what I do, present tense, but because of what Jesus did, past tense. That’s in a positional or judicial sense of course, and it’s not my conditional state, I’m not that deluded! (See note* at very end. And, the gospel really is that simple that it needs a preacher to complicate it)!

Back on track. Remembering now the body/man interchangeability, we’ve mentioned already about the body of Christ and how Paul tells believers they are all members of the ONE BODY OF CHRIST but how many people have considered all those unbelievers outside of Christ similarly forming the ONE BODY OF ADAM?

So, have you worked it out yet? I’m proposing that yes, it really is the body that is sown and the body is the seed in Paul’s analogy, but, it is the corporate body of Adam that is sown (obviously including ethnic Israel, and Jesus, too), not our individual physical bodies. And The Resurrection of 1 Cor 15 is the raising of that corporate body to new resurrection life. And yes, that did happen a couple of millennia back in our past. And please note, I am not saying there is nothing else after we physically die nowadays, but what I am saying is that ‘the resurrection passage’ of 1 Cor 15 is not concerned with that, and like everything else biblical, it is primarily concerned with Jesus Christ AND HIS DEATH AND RESURRECTION. Some clever guys show how the The Torah chiastically mirrors around Leviticus 16, the Day of Atonement, and I too believe the whole of Scripture is actually a chiasm with The Resurrection being the central pivot point – ie it’s all about Jesus, everything is about Jesus, not me, you or Israel or the Church but Jesus first and foremost. Amen!

That’s the straightforward statement of my new view of The Resurrection, and just believing that basic overview would be advisable because I have found showing this in a biblically sound way to be extremely mentally taxing to say the least! I hope you can simply take that new lens and hopefully your clearer view of Bible interpretation will be the confirmation, not simply blindly believing me, but your confirmation being when Scriptures instantly make more sense to you now as you read them in a new way. (That’s actually how I came to believe in what I later found people labelling as Preterism, no one hoodwinked me into this, (it was weeks after I’d received the illumination that I even learned it had a label!) but for those who really study, it’s the only hermeneutic that really makes sense once we put Scripture under a microscope and turn up the magnification).

But for those like myself who love digging in, here’s my theology below (or is it doctrine?, which I must say just might need some very minor tweaking still because I am losing the capacity to keep multiple ‘windows’ of reasoning running simultaneously nowadays, but essentially this would be in technical rather than practical points (a little like trying to understand the technicalities of the law of the offerings in Leviticus. Those offerings are so so complex to understand. Can anybody today really teach that in detail and bring clarity to it? Can your Pastor? I doubt it but you don’t write him off do you? So please don’t write this off either ). I’ll mention the part I am open to being corrected on when we reach it).

Part Two – The Theology Section.

As I mentioned somewhere in the main section two on this site I don’t like the word Theology, capital ‘T’, as I think many a truth is ‘bent right out of shape by the pliers of Theology’ – that’s such a great quote isn’t it, I can’t remember where I read that but it was written well before Bob Dylan tailored it, because I don’t read modern books!

Even though some of what appears below may be seen by some as what’s called the Corporate Body View (CBV) doctrine, I haven’t really studied that too much and as with the Individual Body View (IBV), I definitely don’t let any recognised doctrine define my beliefs. I’ve just pondered over scripture way more than learning the theology of others but I really do believe this interpretation here actually gels all these various differing views, doctrines and objections together, even the dispensational ideas – they are essentially all correct, within their own framework, and complement each other once we look through the correct lens that brings them all together. There is a summary at the end of what I mean by this if you haven’t worked it out for yourself by then.

I want to carry on by looking at…

The Flesh v The Spirit – The Two Different Corporate Identities

Here again we need to stop thinking in terms of our ”I” and ”me” mindset regarding our individual bodies when we read “flesh” and instead, when context dictates, think of individuals within the corporate body in Adam, especially with regard to Jesus. Ditto with “Spirit” and the individuals within the corporate body of Christ.

My aim is always to write my layman’s interpretation here so as to reach other average everyday folk, but I do here want to borrow two great definitions now from a clever guy called Tracy Vanwyngaard to do this part justice, before converting back into layman’s English with my continuing broader interpretation!

”The realm or sphere of the flesh is the realm or sphere of human existence apart from God. The flesh is the state of being in which sin adheres to man, the Law has jurisdiction over the man, and death is the result of the man. The sphere of the flesh is the sphere in which man, by his own works, ability, strength, and power, regardless of his intention to achieve right-standing before God (Gods righteousness), will always fall short”.

”The realm or sphere of the spirit is the realm or sphere of human existence joined to God through Christ (reconciliation to God). The spirit is the state of being in which God’s grace adheres to man, the Law has no jurisdiction over the man, and life is the result of God’s action, not man’s. The sphere of the spirit is the realm, or state of being, in which God, His works, His ability, His strength, and unlimited power achieves right standing (righteousness) of man before Him, Not man himself”.

Now the application.

The Flesh.

Jesus was born of a woman, born under the Law ie Jesus became flesh, and identified as being ‘in Adam’, and it was in this identity of Son of Man that Jesus died**, both in and for the corporate body of Adam – 2 Cor 5:14 says “one died for all, therefore all died”.

The Spirit.

Regarding His resurrection, Jesus’ identity is different here and is now Son of God. That’s crucial. Paul says in Romans 1 that Jesus, by the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by His resurrection from the dead**.

And we as individuals therefore become ‘in the spirit’ when we are, or identify as being, ‘in Christ Jesus’ or ‘in Him’ after first identifying, by faith, with His identity in Adam and subsequently dying with or in Him to that identity.

**Please note this. So many preachers get this confused or use these terms interchangeably but Jesus was specifically the Last Adam and specifically The Second Man, He was not the second Adam nor the last man . Here we see why knowing the difference is vital. Jesus died in the identity of the Last Adam. He was resurrected though on the Third day as the Second Man, the Man from Heaven, because death couldn’t hold Him, it had no power over His identity as The Second Man. We will come to His resurrection in the identity of the Last Adam next and this paragraph following this one is actually the part I mentioned earlier that I’m still not absolutely 101% certain on yet so if you see that I’m confused on this part, please do recognise that and don’t write everything else off here, the rest of the jigsaw is built together fine, there’s just the last few stubborn pieces left to fit into place, and it’s not easy because not only do I find all the combinations of these different identities of both Jesus and ourselves, both in the flesh and in the spirit, along with two different resurrection time combinations all so very complex to fathom out, and then work out if ALL scripture will go through each particular lens of interpretation without chopping off any edges, but it is also not easy to find others doing this kind of study to go to for help. But, just as with my lack of understanding of the ‘return to the land’ promise being fulfilled when I first embraced the Preterist view, I didn’t let that lack of understanding hinder a journey that I knew I was on the right track for and indeed it wasn’t until several years later that that stubborn jigsaw piece finally found it’s place – but my point is that I knew the bulk of the jigsaw was correct and in due course the understanding did come, eventually. And it will clear up here one day too.

Bodily Resurrection

Jesus Himself said “I am The Resurrection“ and whether He stressed the “I” or the “am” His statement clearly makes sense when we now ‘think corporate’. Biblical resurrection in 1 Cor 15 is bodily, but, it is corporate, just like ‘the death’ was also bodily, the corporate body of Adam – ‘For since the death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.  For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive’ – 1 Cor 15 21-22. And yes, I know that is future tense but that is very easily understood and does not contradict the Preterists viewpoint or what’s been said so far, it’s when Jesus’s Adamic body/identity or the corporate body of Adam is resurrected in 70AD (which is still future to Paul) into the life of the Second Man (the resurrected Adam/Israel) which is the ‘redemption of the body’, corporate. Prior to this believers were spiritually resurrected individually but still stuck in or certainly alongside the old dying corporate Adamic body – because the old temple was still standing. See if 2 Cor 5 now makes sense ”For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven”.

That is very complex I know, I think I’ve got that sussed but please do correct me if you think I need to correct that very last part. I’ll put the chiastic structure of the way I see that here soon, I find it much easier to understand in that more visual way. And now to present some real food for thought, my next deep study is going to be regarding how Paul talks about us being ‘clothed’ in a body. Now here is where I believe buried treasure lies – back in Genesis, where else! Here we see Adam and Eve clothed in ‘skin’. Look at this….

”In Hebrew, the words for light and skin are homophones (sound alike) and are nearly identical in spelling, differing by only one silent letter. They are frequently used together in biblical wordplay, particularly regarding the story of Adam and Eve”. That was what AI told me when I asked it if there was a connection between the Hebrew words ‘light’ in Genesis 1 and ‘skin’. If anyone reading this has done this work already please get in touch and save me the all the painstaking study. Was Adam originally clothed in a body of Light? Like those at the transfiguration? Does Psalm 104 tell of Jesus’s coming to Earth – in this body of light?? Will we get a body of light? Is that the light of Genesis 1? Or John 1, ‘I am the light of the world’? Fascinating. Please see the page titled ‘Bible Poetry’ in this same Section 3 if you think that’s all a little far fetched and you think I’m gone with the fairies! Psalm 104 should certainly read different to you then….

Now for..

Specific Scriptures Put Through This Corporate View Lens

A book could be written now because this principle is the key to correctly understanding so much of Paul’s New Covenant interpretation/teaching but the great and confirming aspect about discovering the correct lens of interpretation is that once we get the basic principle, so many passages we’d struggled with before just light up instantly with no further need for a teacher, they will jump out the page at you and you’ll say ”ah, now I get that, why didn’t I see that before”!!. So, I’ll just look at the main resurrection passage plus a couple of others, and hopefully you can figure out yourself how all the rest of Paul’s resurrection doctrine and eschatology now makes total sense too.

1 Corinthians 15 KJV – with my additions being the underlined parts.

¹Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;

² By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.

³ For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

⁴ And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

⁵ And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:

⁶ After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

⁷ After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.

⁸ And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.

⁹ For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

¹¹ Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.

¹² Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?

The tense is present indicative ie onging ‘how say some of you that the dead are not being raised’. THAT IS HUGE because unlike the Sadducees, the Corinthians were not denying the resurrection doctrine, they were simply denying it was going on right now.

¹³ But if there be no resurrection of the dead, again, the tense is present indicative ie onging, ‘if the dead are not being raised’ then is Christ not risen:

¹⁴ And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.

¹⁵ Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. Ditto-the dead are not rising.

¹⁶ For if the dead rise not ditto,-the dead are not rising then is not Christ raised:

¹⁷ And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.

¹⁸ Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.

¹⁹ If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.

²⁰ But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. Notice, firstfruit ”of them that slept” ie the dead saints from v18. That’s crucially important because the first believers are also called a kind of firstfruit and therefore must be the firstfruit of another harvest – when the angels reap Judah at the end of the age.

²¹ For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. There is no verb ie came in the original Greek

²² For as in Adam all die (all are dying – present active indicative again ie ongoing), even so in Christ shall all be made alive. This is future passive indicative but again, as mentioned earlier in the page, this future aspect does not contradict the Preterist argument. Full explanation still coming…

²³ But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming. All the physically dead OT saints. Verses 23-28 make total sense with a Preterist view, the end of the Old Covenant and death ending when the Law ends. This is where you will need to understand Preterism and if you reject this, don’t forget you need to explain all those present tense verbs previously mentioned. Can you do that?

²⁴ Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.

²⁵ For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.

²⁶ The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

²⁷ For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him.

²⁸ And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.

²⁹ Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?

³⁰ And why stand we in jeopardy every hour?

³¹ I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.

³² If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.

³³ Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.

³⁴ Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame.

³⁵ Notes already done here from this opening quote at the start of this page. Detailed note at the very bottom of this page. But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?

³⁶ Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:

³⁷ And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:

³⁸ But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.

³⁹ What follows in v39 to v41 (and maybe futher?)is a reversal of creation order in Genesis 1. This is screaming chiasms and Covenant Creation (see section two on this site) although I don’t yet see it any clearer than that – very frustrating but I know now that making camp and digging in always finds treasure sooner or later so please keep returning here if you are as interested as I am. All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.

⁴⁰ There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.

⁴¹ There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.

⁴² Here think corporate body, Adam and Jesus. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:

⁴³ It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:

⁴⁴ It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

⁴⁵ And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

⁴⁶ Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. Think about that, if nowadays the dead are raised spiritually when we die and get their physical body at the end of time then that is wrong way round.

⁴⁷ The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.

⁴⁸ As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

⁴⁹ And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly future tense explanation still coming.

⁵⁰ Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.

⁵¹ Behold, I shew you a mystery a mystery is something once hidden but now revealed – in Christ; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

⁵² Think Feasts here – Trumpets, Day of Atonement and Booths, all pretty much continuous in the Jewish calendar, just as they were fulfilled around 70AD.In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

⁵³ For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

⁵⁴ So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

⁵⁵ O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Quoting Hosea which is clearly referring to Israel’s resurrection.

⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.

⁵⁷ But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

⁵⁸ Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

Back to this page’s opening verses about the seed and looking through the Preterist corporate body lens fully supports Paul’s seed analogy with the period 30-70AD being the time that the seed is simultaneously dying and being raised over that 40 year period. Paul says Jesus cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us, taking it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. This is when the body of Adam was sown. The husk (OT Israel) gradually dies, the germ (the Church, the Israel of God) begins to grow from the nutrients (the believers) from the sown seed, all simultaneously, unlike a dead individual body view of the seed. At the destruction of Jerusalem along with the Old Covenant, with the Temple now no longer standing the New Covenant with Israel (don’t forget that…) is fully consummated with the total death of the sown seed, the body of Adam, and the Resurrection of that body of Adam, the Israel of God, the dry bones of Ezekiel 37, the resurrected corporate body of Messiah here in the identity of the Son of Man, and fulfilment of Daniel 7and Daniel 12 – it is the Son of Man coming in the clouds that Jesus told Caiaphas he would see, not the Son of God (and if you’re still holding on to your futurist interpretation, is Caiaphas still alive and waiting….?). This explains the future aspect of some verbs in 1 Cor 15 and does not contradict the Preterist view. When Paul wrote in the Sixties, 70AD was still future from his perspective. And this understanding should gel all warring parties together because here, and this is the summary I mentioned earlier, we see both

• a corporate and an individual bodily resurrection.

• a physical and a spiritual resurrection.

• a past and a future (from Paul’s perspective) resurrection or being/been raised.

Does your view of Resurrection deal with all those scenarios plus satisfy all the correct Greek verb tenses (rather than the doctored ones in your translated English Bible)?

Everything becomes clear when we look through the right lens. There is just one exception to that for which I have no clear answer yet – I can’t tell you for sure what our future holds and I can’t tell you the detail of what happens at our physical death. But Preterism explains everything else perfectly clear to me now so I’m not discarding this and I do believe that the answer to this, my ‘final frontier’ problem lies in Genesis 1 alongside developing my current very immature but growing understanding of the use of chiastic structure – if we want to understand the end we must understand the beginning….because the end believe it or not is the end of (think Occam’s Razor, the simplest answer is most often the correct one and in this case it’s…) whatever the beginning was!

Briefly, Two More Passages

Romans 8: 9-11.

Here Paul says “you are not in the flesh”. Now, if the flesh was my physical body then obviously that doesn’t make sense because I am still very much here and alive. But if the flesh was the corporate body of Adam, and I now belong to the body of Christ, then I very much have died with Him ”in the flesh” and am alive “in the spirit”. The Second Man is a life giving spirit and brings spiritual life to our individual mortal bodies, right now, by virtue of being part of Christ’s resurrected body. We are being raised the same way we are being saved (with regard to the verb ‘being saved’, many Christians already acknowledge and are quite happy with the use of the same present tense ie ‘are being saved’ yet won’t apply that to the verb raise), by taking on attributes of Jesus ie we should know that His righteousness becomes ours by faith, well it’s similar with our resurrection (I’m speaking as one being alive in Paul’s day).

Many of us start our journey believing that we only find out when we die if we’re good enough for heaven or not. Thankfully, many escape that religious bondage and discover that we are being saved the moment we trust Jesus and make His righteousness our own, from the corporate understanding mentioned earlier. Well, it’s the same with ‘being raised’. Both being saved and being raised are present tense and ongoing.

So, Jesus was resurrected on the Third Day and the early believers were ‘being raised’ as we see in 1 Cor 15. Much of the New Testament is written to encourage believers to stand firm during trial and tribulation, and for those that did, they attained to the resurrection (Philippians 3:11) in AD70, the redemption of the corporate body, singular. And if you’ve ever struggled as to whether we are ‘once saved always saved’ that new understanding of that passage might help resolve a very contentious issue for you!

Colossians 2:11.

Here we read we “put off the body of flesh“ by our baptism ie not circumcision of one body part but the whole body. Again, this cannot be physical bodies because I’d still got my personal physical body after my baptism but when we think corporately I have put off the corporate body of Adam when I was baptised into His death, remember it’s not what I do but what our corporate head did when He put off the body of Adam. I’ve then ”put on” the Lord Jesus Christ as Paul says. And remembering what was mentioned earlier about bodies of light, consider in all of this Romans 13:12 ‘The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light” – night and day figurative of course for Old and New Covenant and the word armour is to be understood in it’s offensive meaning, armoury. All of this being further evidence pointing towards Genesis 1 simply being a basic summary of everything what’s about to be returned to and developed later. The first person to understand Genesis 1 though will be as popular as the first person to develop a Leylandii hedge plant that grows to 2m tall then stops growing!!

Finally.

Finally, linking this to the theme of the message of Section Two on this site. The battle of the flesh v the spirit is played out in Paul’s analogy of Hagar and Sarah and Ishmael and Isaac. Abraham when in the flesh, ie doing things his own way, conceives Ishmael but when he did things God’s way, in the spirit, conceived Isaac. Similarly we see this flesh v spirit issue still being played out in today’s world, and that’s largely what the whole of the second main section is here on this site. The vast bulk of today’s Church (along with the powers who rule our world too, those who have deceived the Church, …) want to build the Kingdom here on earth, but that is the flesh. The Israel of God though has other ideas, God’s ideas, although it is the Flesh first, and then the Spirit.

I can’t see the future but should you dear friends live to see a coming world kingdom, with ‘Jesus’ as head, you can rest in peace knowing both it, and he, are the counterfeit. No matter how much deception accompanies it, the flesh always comes first.

Notes

¹. Re the verb tense here being ‘as a subjunctive, it removes the “past time” aspect of the indicative and focuses on “aspect” (undefined, snapshot action) within a contingent or future-oriented context, often translated with “might” or “should” ‘ -AI definition of the second aorist active subjunctive. What would I do without digital technology…..

². ‘In Koine Greek, the present active indicative (PAI) describes an action occurring in present time, performed by the subject (active), and stated as a reality (indicative). It is typically translated into English using either the simple present (“you sow”) or the continuous/progressive present (“you are sowing”)’ – again AI definition of the relevant Greek verb tense in 1 Cor 15:36 and 37. Next, the present passive indicative is used for the verb to raise in v35, and elsewhere in this chapter, ie ‘are being raised’. Here https://studybible.info/IGNT/1%20corinthians%2015 is a really great tool I couldn’t be without for doing all this, a Greek Interlinear New Testament with Strong’s numbers. I’m fully aware of the shortcomings of translating this way, but it certainly is a good springboard to then make further enquiries.

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Note * For anyone who really has got their thinking cap on now, this could be seen as a serious challenge to the most solid bastion of The Reformation – imputed sin and justification by faith. Well, I just want to clarify that of course I believe in justification by faith, not least because Paul said so, but that covenant understanding does shed a very different light/angle on the issue regarding imputed sin and the two different Greek words used where our English bibles imply imputed sin. That is beyond this study though, or perhaps more of an outworking of it, and if you are interested in that (or concerned for my sanity!) please look to Bishop and theologian N T Wright and where he takes this. Whilst my understanding of this came as a natural consequence of unpacking scripture and I didn’t learn this from him, he’s such a gifted scholar and goes into this way way better than I ever could. And it’s nice for a change finding myself on the same side as such a gifted theologian like this. Not only is it reassuring but it saves me time composing these articles when on the odd occasion I can find a reputable guy I can delegate work to!