therefore, perhaps you have known people who died and did NOT “stay dead”, right?

Ultimately we believe that everyone will one day rise from the dead at the last and final resurrection.

Jesus covered this very well. When the Sadducees came to Jesus, they wanted to trip him up with scripture and show that there is no resurrection because they didn’t believe in the final and ultimate resurrection. (which is why they are sad, you see? )

So they gave Jesus a problem. It was Jewish law that if a man died before he and his wife had a child, that the other brother would marry her and have a child. So the Sadducees concocted this hypothetical story of seven brothers. One of the brothers marries a woman but dies before having children. So the second brother marries her, but he too dies before having children. And the third. All the way up until the seventh. And then finally the woman dies.

So the Sadducees pose this question to Jesus: “At the resurrection, whose wife is she?”

You can just imagine them cocking their heads back triumphantly ready to shout out, “Gotcha!” And Jesus falling back saying, “Why, I had never thought of that before. How could I have missed it! You are right and I am wrong.”

Or at least that’s the exchange they were expecting. Instead, Jesus came out of left field and told them all their assumptions were wrong. Everything they had grown up to believe was a mistake. Their whole theology was in error. They thought that if they had no answer, there was no answer. They had seen 1,000 white swans so they couldn’t believe there was a single black swan. Jesus said there was no marriage in heaven. Problem solved.

But more relevant to our point here, Jesus went further in his proof for the resurrection. He said something very interesting, he reminded them of what Moses called God at the burning bush. Moses called the Lord “the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”.

What was the relationship between Moses and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Abraham/Isaac/Jacob preceded Moses by hundreds and hundreds of years. They were long gone by the time Moses came on the scene. But Moses didn’t say that God WAS the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He IS the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

The Sadducees weren’t dumb men, they spent most of their lives studying scripture. And Jesus came along and dismantled all of it by using verb tense of all things! Something they had never before noticed in all their years of studying.

This to me illustrates two incredible things: one, that the resurrection is true. And two, that even the most educated people of Jesus’ time fell victim to thinking there’s no such thing as a Black Swan.

You can read the whole encounter in Luke 20. And I have to give credit where credit is due, I just heard an excellent sermon by Andy Stanley on this topic last week. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like it’s available directly on the website, but you can subscribe to their Andy Stanley Podcast, the specific sermon is “Defining Moments, Part 6: Games People Play.” Or here’s the direct link to the mp3. (this specific topic is mentioned about 15:35 in, but the whole sermon is well worth a listen)

A theological question: Jesus died so that those who believe in Him may have eternal life; therefore, perhaps you have known people who died and did NOT “stay dead”, right?

Finally, on another note, I don’t see a way to comment on your pictures. Am I missing something? If not, would it be hard to do add that function? I would really love to be able to comment on individual pictures of yours. (They’re great, by the way; just some are thought provoking and it would be fun to comment. For instance, the “pretty songbird” in one of your pics appears to be a meadowlark, the state bird of the state of your birth. Now isn’t that interesting?)

Love ya!