The Reality of the Resurrection

I visited an art exhibit today and found this introduction to a particular room of art on placard on the wall with the title of AFTER LIFE: “What happens to us when we die?  This potentially worrying question has occupied minds for millennia.  According to Lucretius, a Roman poet and philosopher from the first century BC, death is not to be feared because, as the absence of life it is a state we will never consciously experience.  Death is … nothing to us … since the nature of the mind is mortal, he famously wrote in On the nature of things.”  That is the way that the world sees it—that death is a “potentially worrying question” that we should work to get over because when we die we will turn into nothing and therefore will not know that we are dead.  I then came back to my hotel and viewed this powerful story shared by Sister Aburto of the Relief Society General Presidency about her experience losing her brother in an earthquake when she was a child.  Her brother did not cease to exist, but she learned through the power of God’s Spirit that the because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ he will, in reality, live again.  She will see his face again, hear his voice, touch his hands, and though he has died he will indeed “consciously experience” life again in his physical body. 

               The gospel holds the answer to this most ubiquitous of human questions, a question that has been grappled with by the greatest minds throughout the centuries, a question posed by Job: “If a man die, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14)  Though the world has not found a scientific answer, the Lord has answered it again and again.  In fact, one of the most universal messages across all of the books of scriptures that we have is that we will indeed be resurrected.  In the Old Testament Job answered his own question: “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” (Job 19:25-26).  In the New Testament we have the glorious account of the Savior’s resurrection from all of the gospel writers.  The angel summarized the greatest of all miracles: “I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.  He is not here: for he is risen” (Matt. 28:5-6).  Paul declared that this resurrection would indeed come to all of us, “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.  For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:20-22).  He knew that the whole of the gospel depended upon the resurrection, “For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain” (1 Corinthians 15:16-17).  Our faith depends on the reality of the resurrection. 

               The scriptures of the Restoration similarly declare the truth of the Resurrection.  In the Doctrine and Covenants we learn that all will be resurrected, though the state of the wicked and righteous in that resurrection will be different: “Through the redemption which is made for you is brought to pass the resurrection from the dead….  And the saints that are upon the earth, who are alive, shall be quickened and be caught up to meet him. And they who have slept in their graves shall come forth, for their graves shall be opened” (D&C 88:14, 96-97).  In the Pearl of Great Price the Lord promised, “And righteousness will I send down out of heaven; and truth will I send forth out of the earth, to bear testimony of mine Only Begotten; his resurrection from the dead; yea, and also the resurrection of all men” (Moses 7:62).  This referred at least in part to the Book of Mormon which the Lord has sent forth, according to this version, to bear particular witness of the resurrection.  In the Book of Mormon we do have countless declarations of the reality of the resurrection, such as this one from Amulek: “All shall be raised from this temporal death.  The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time; and we shall be brought to stand before God…. Now, this restoration shall come to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, both the wicked and the righteous; and even there shall not so much as a hair of their heads be lost” (Alma 11:42-44).  The world will continue to wonder and worry and conjecture and put forth its philosophies, but the scriptures declare the powerful truth that even a child can understand: “The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body” (Alma 40:23).