Resurrection, Not Natural Immortality
According to the Scriptures, all future life for those who have died, or who shall yet die, is dependent upon the resurrection. Job was a perfect and an upright man, "one that feared God and eschewed evil," yet he was a stranger to the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul and of going to Heaven at death. When apparently on the brink of the grave, he asked, "If a man die, shall he live again?" and immediately answered his own question thus: "All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come. Thou shalt call and I will answer thee; thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands." Job 14:14, 15. Where he expected to wait till his change, the change to immortality, should come, is told in chapter 17:13: "If I wait, the grave is mine house." And that his hope was a hope of the resurrection is shown in chapter 19:25, 26: "For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." In exact harmony with Job's testimony are the words of the apostle Paul: "If the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised; and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." "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 to-morrow we die." 1 Cor. 15:16-18, 32.