I Agree with Seventh-day Sabbatarians

I agree with seventh-day (Saturday) sabbatarians, at least on a number of basic points. This may come as a shocking statement to those who know I believe the weekly Sabbath day was a shadow pointing to Christ, that Jesus fulfilled the shadow, and that the substance or reality is now found only in Him. So obviously I have some marked disagreement with those who believe observance of the Old Covenant shadow is still a requirement for New Covenant Christians. Having said that, there are at least nine points I have identified where I think seventh-day sabbatarians and I can agree. Oh sure, we would still have significant disagreement on various details related to these points, but at a bare minimum I think we could agree in principle upon the most basic thoughts expressed below. See if you agree:

1. Obedience and holiness are not optional for the Christian, but are a normative expectation of the Christian life.
2. Grace is never a license to sin.
3. Teaching and following what God has commanded us is not legalism.
4. Sunday is not the Sabbath and there is no biblical command to transfer the 4th command of the Decalogue to any other day.
5. The Sabbath of the Decalogue is not merely a principle of keeping one day in seven, but rather specifies one very specific day, the seventh-day (Saturday).
6. Sabbath-keeping on the seventh-day was not optional for Israel, but was commanded them and was a sign of obedience and holiness.
7. If keeping the Sabbath day of the Decalogue is commanded to Christians, then neither the day or the practice is optional and should not be considered legalism, but a normative part of the Christian life and a sign of obedience and holiness.
8. At least some of the things commanded to Israel are not commanded to New Covenant Christians and should not be considered normative or signs of obedience (examples might include animal sacrifices, annual Sabbath festivals, and monthly new moon Sabbaths).
9. Christians should biblicaly answer the question of whether or not New Covenant believers are commanded to keep a Sabbath day, then live  according to God’s teaching to the Church on this matter.

Number nine really gets to the heart of the matter. If Christians are commanded to keep the seventh-day Sabbath, then we should certainly being doing so. Period. I agree with Sabbatarians on that.  All too often though, our conversations and debates don’t really focus on this most crucial question. Rather we tend to get caught up going back and forth about points that we all already agree on. So we spend a lot of time talking about obedience when we all already agree that obedience is not optional. Or we spend a lot of time looking at texts commanding Israel to keep the Sabbath when we already agree on that point and also would all admit that not everything commanded to Israel is commanded to Christians. Arguing about things we agree on is really a waste of time and energy. We don’t spend nearly enough time looking at the specific instructions (plural) given by God to the Church regarding holy days and the New Covenant. This issue came up in the early Church and the Holy Spirit addressed it in God’s Word. We don’t have to guess what we as New Covenant Christians are taught about this, we merely need to read and accept the instruction we’re given. To be truly productive, that’s where our discussions should be centered and not on those things we already agree with.


Look, if I am misunderstanding the instruction that God gave to the fledgling Church on this matter, then I want to know and I want to change my practice accordingly. I really mean it!  unfortunately, I’ve found most of my friends and family are more comfortable going back over (and over) the first eight points listed. I hope that someday we’ll be able to really biblically address the ninth point. We all agree that we need to know what the Bible has to say to New Covenant Christians on this matter, so why don’t we focus on the specific teaching given to the New Covenant Church on this matter? Until then, can we at least agree to agree on that with which we agree?

Sex and Violence: A Double Standard?

This last week I was listening to a commentator discuss a recent Supreme Court Ruling regarding the sale of video games containing violence to minors. In a nutshell, the Court ruled against the California law stating that video games are a form of free speech akin to movies or books and that there is a long tradition of violence being a part of our collective story telling. The decision intimated that if the question at hand had dealt with the sale of sexually oriented media to minors, then the approach might be different. The commentator took this as an opportunity to opine about what he considers to be a double standard for sex versus violence in our culture. A co-host chimed in to decry the sexual repression that he believes exists in America and to humorously suggest that we’re okay with killing people, but not with people having sex.

I found myself pondering their comments and tentatively disagreeing that there is necessarily a double standard. We live in a society that has many Judeo-Christian ideas underlying its culture and thought. While many, maybe even most within the culture have rejected these values, there is at least an echo of these principles still rebounding within the fabric of our country. I think we see these echoes of morality in how we respond to violence and sex in the media. From a biblical world view we could even go a step further and say that because each of us bears the imago dei, each of us has at least some residual innate sense of right and wrong, albeit suppressed and fallen. I think it’s possible that there is not so much a double standard in how we view sex and violence as there is a single standard that is highly dependent on context, even if subconsciously.

Let’s be up front about something, the Bible is full of sex and violence. If you don’t believe that, do what I’ve been doing and read through the Old Testament with your kids. There’s some hardcore stuff in there folks. About the time you get to Judges you find yourself tempted to begin editing the Good Book to more of a PG standard, or at least maybe PG-13. I’ve long said that if anyone ever made a faithful cinematic adaptation of Judges, or much of the rest of the Old Testament for that matter, that Christians would boycott it in droves. While I say this at least partially in jest, I sometimes wonder if I’m very far off. It’s quite clear that the Bible uses sex and violence in its story telling so we can’t very well make a blanket statement that all sex and violence in our story telling is wrong. It’s all about context and what is being conveyed  and taught by the story.

Let’s take violence. If a movie depicts war in such a way that we are able to more fully appreciate the devastation of armed conflict than the depiction of violence may serve a positive purpose. If we are convicted that war should only be employed as an absolute last resort and are inspired to work tirelessly to avoid war, then a good and correct principle has been taught. If a book depicts the ruination of the soul who commits violence, such as Crime and Punishment, then we have a cautionary morality tale. If media presents the use of force so that it is understood that sometimes it is the only remaining means by which evil in a fallen world may be restrained, then we are able to see an echo of the biblical principle set forth in Romans 13. So there are some legitimate uses for violence in our storytelling.

Here’s where I’m going to get really controversial and make a lot of people angry. I would argue that, when it comes to violence, our modern media doesn’t always get this wrong. Oh sure, there are tons of egregious examples of glorification of violence for violence sake and increasingly a blurred line between what is good and what is evil. Still, a surprising number of books, TV shows, movies, and even video games portray police officers and soldiers doing their duty in restraining evil, evil individuals reaping the just rewards of their violent acts, protagonists scarred by their exposure to violence, and good over coming evil. Perhaps the media gets this right a little more often than we give them credit for. After all, very few in the media would say they think that violence is a good thing, quite the contrary. Certainly there are many exceptions, but media types are more likely to portray violence in a negative light than to blatantly condone violence in any and all context. Even in the media, most content creators do attempt to draw some lines and hold on to a morale sense regarding violence. In fact, it’s quite popular in Hollywood to associate with various causes to stop war or eliminate various forms of violence, so it shouldn’t surprise us that quite a bit of the content produced reflects this aesthetic.

Now compare this to sex in the media. I am straining to think of any examples where the media gets this right, except perhaps for stories where cheating on one’s spouse has a negative impact as in Fatal Attraction. From a biblical viewpoint, all sexual relations outside of a covenant marriage between one man and one women are offensive to God. I think I can come very close to using an absolute word in saying that the mainstream media “never” communicates such a viewpoint. In fact, the media only rarely presents sex in a monogamous marital context at all. As Christians we can rightly reject nearly every message that the media sends on sex. Nearly every message is counter to a Christian world view and is offensive to God.

So are Christians exercising a double standard when they decry most sex in the media, but seem less concerned about at least some violent content? I would suggest that the answer is, “Not necessarily”. Rather I think that in many cases there is a somewhat more consistent standard at work which is evaluating content in context and making judgments about what is consistent with a biblical world view. Now I realize that I am being idealistic here and that many Christians are not as intentional in exercising discernment as they should be, myself included. However, I do believe the Holy Spirit is at work in every believer renewing their mind and causing them to be conformed to Christ. This process of sanctification will inevitably affect our media consumption and how we parse and contextualize the stories we are exposed to. If our culture still has a dim collective memory of biblical ideals and if each individual retains the imago dei, however tarnished, then it stands to reason that their perception of media content is somewhat affected at least subconsciously. So I submit to you that it’s not so much that Americans parse violence one way and sex another, but that the media is capable of sometimes portraying violence in a moral way, but is rarely if ever capable of doing the same for sex.

Just a few thoughts bouncing around my head today. I may be way off and may completely rethink this tomorrow, but would like to hear your thoughts.

The Resurrection and the Life: Why Easter is a Big Deal

If you're just interested in the biblical reasons why Easter is a big deal to Christians you can just read the first half of my article at the link below. If you want to know why it's not a big deal to Adventists, then check out the second half.

Why Easter is a Big Deal

Grace: You Don't Deserve It

God has never needed anything. He is complete in Himself and lacks nothing. He is one single being and yet He has never lacked relationship or needed love. His very being has always been defined by relationships of love. God did not need to create us and yet He did. God created us so that we might share in the love and relationships which exists within Him. The One Being, Yahweh, has always existed in an eternal dance of love between the Father, Son, and Spirit. Those who are in the Son have been adopted into that eternal dance. Both our creation and our redemption are acts of pure grace. That's grace, something given as a free gift where the giver has no obligation to do so and the recipient has no merit and deserves none of it. If both our creation and our redemption are entirely the work of God, based upon His sovereign choice, then why should we ever for moment fear for our salvation. We don't deserve it and never will. It is Him who freely gives it without cause. Through no merit of our own, we have been ushered into the dance.  

Balancing Yoga

I watched my eleven year old daughter as she followed the commands of the virtual yoga instructor in her WiiFit game.  First the Crane, then the Cobra, finishing with the Lotus as the Wii balance board measured her stillness. I found myself vaguely conflicted. My sister had recently sent me a video outlining the religious origins of Yoga and the dangers of Christians involving themselves in such practices. Several Hindu clerics interviewed in the video strongly stressed their opinion that yoga cannot be separated from Hindu spirituality and that people in the West who try to do so are deluding themselves.  Yet here was my daughter, a dedicated Christ-follower, happily stretching and exercising with her Wii completely oblivious to any Hindu connection. There is no doubt in my mind that worshipping Hindu “gods” or partaking in a religious ritual was the farthest thing from her mind. So was the video right? Was she really opening herself up to dangerous spiritual influences?   

In the past few years there has been a growing debate within the Church, to yoga or not to yoga.  A practice with roots in Eastern mysticism has found its way to the West, and in a big way. No longer is it an obscure discipline practiced by a few avant-garde types on the coasts, but by a wide stratum of socioeconomic groups in nearly every city, town, and suburb in America. In fact, in today’s culture it would be considered highly unusual to find a health club or fitness center that didn’t offer Yoga classes. So given the origins of yoga and its ubiquitous presence in our culture, how should Christians interested in maintaining a Christian world view respond?

I found myself thinking about this question recently after being commissioned to write an article on why certain cults-of-Christianity do not celebrate Easter. Invariably, members of these groups will cite pagan origins for the timing of the celebration, some of the traditional symbols, and even the name.  Most of these groups will say very similar things about Christmas. In doing research for the piece, I believe it is fair to say that there is a certain amount of truth to some of these claims.   However, to eschew Easter or Christmas because of ancient links to paganism would be missing the point. The Church developed and grew in the midst of a pagan Roman world, but rather than join in pagan worship, the Church was a counter-culture force that focused its celebration and worship on the incarnate Christ and His resurrection.  Regardless of some distant link to pagan celebrations or symbols, what was being celebrated by Christians was the birth and resurrection of Jesus so the symbols were given new meaning in that context. It doesn’t much matter where the dates came from or why Christmas trees and Easter eggs are used if the object of the days and the symbols are now focused on Jesus. Whatever pagans may have celebrated in winter and spring has been supplanted by new traditions, a new focus, and new meaning.  The links to paganism have been broken and the celebrations redeemed. Simply put, Christianity triumphed over paganism.   Few people today have any idea that these holidays ever had any link to paganism and many have even separated them from their Christian traditions and now celebrate them as secular holidays.

I see a parallel with yoga in Western culture.  Many Americans who participate in yoga as an exercise regime have no idea that there ever was any underlying spiritual connection. The overwhelming majority are probably much like my daughter and see yoga as a purely secular exercise. Most would be surprised, and perhaps even incredulous, if someone were to tell them yoga was at one time linked to religion. Simply put, these individuals are exercising not worshipping.  However, some may object to drawing such a comparison to how ancient pagan festivals were transformed into something positive. After all, those festivals are now completely dead traditions with no counterpart in today’s culture. The transformation of Easter and Christmas is a fait accompli, while in the case of yoga there are still currently millions of people in eastern religions practicing various forms of yoga as a spiritual discipline. Unlike the holidays of Easter and Christmas, yoga is far from being completely and permanently transformed worldwide. While somewhat rare in the west, it must be admitted that certain strains of yoga still have ties to Hinduism. So is it possible for a Christian to simply enjoy the physical benefits of yoga while rejecting any practices and beliefs associated with Hinduism?

In answering the question above, I found it helpful to turn to a similar dilemma facing the early Church in Corinth. The Corinthian believers were living in a culture saturated in polytheistic idolatry. It was common practice in the pagan temples to slaughter animals and offer the meat to the gods with a certain portion of the offered meat being sold in the marketplace. Evidently, some within the Church were concerned that purchasing and eating meat offered to idols was either spiritually dangerous or at least made them complicit in something associated with pagan practices. The apostle Paul addressed this concern in his first letter to the Corinthians.

Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that "no idol in the world really exists," and that "there is no God but one." Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. - 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 (NRSV)

Paul is essentially saying that the origin of the food doesn’t really matter because believers know that pagan gods are false gods and there is only one true God. Believers can divorce the food from its origin because their faith is in Jesus, not the so-called gods that the food was offered to. Paul goes on in chapter 10 to assure the Corinthian believers that they can eat anything in the market place with a good conscience.

  Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience, for "the earth and its fullness are the Lord's." If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, "This has been offered in sacrifice," then do not eat it, out of consideration for the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience— I mean the other's conscience, not your own. For why should my liberty be subject to the judgment of someone else's conscience?  If I partake with thankfulness, why should I be denounced because of that for which I give thanks? So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. - 1 Corinthians 10:25-31 (NRSV)

Paul’s basic message is that there is nothing wrong with the meat itself, only the significance that some might give to the meat.  A Christian who rejects paganism can enjoy the meat as food and glorify God. The principle would seem to be applicable to westernized yoga. Westernized yoga has been divorced from its Hindu origins and is marketed as a healthy fitness routine. Certainly it is true that much research backs up the health benefits of yoga. So, like meat offered to idols, there is nothing wrong with yoga in and of itself, only in the significance that some might give to the exercise. Many Christians participate regularly in yoga exercises and stretching as a way of maintaining their health while utterly rejecting Hinduism. They are enjoying the health benefits of yoga while glorifying the one true God.

To be sure, both chapters 8 and 10 contain a great deal of instruction from Paul about not using our freedom and knowledge about such things in a way which might cause others to stumble or to injure their own consciences. We must take these commands to be cognizant and respectful of our weaker brothers and sisters seriously.  Our personal health and fitness must be secondary to loving our fellow believers. However, Paul also appears to bristle at the idea of being denounced by those who might try to use the issue in a judgmental way. So how do we balance the voluntary restriction of our liberty for love’s sake while avoiding the trap of uniformed legalism? Perhaps the best approach is to go out of our way to inform, educate, and studiously avoid any unnecessary offense or misunderstanding. Perhaps we could do a better job of stating up front that while some yoga may have ties to Hinduism that is not something we embrace or participate in. We need to explore ways to explain, label, and define our exercise regime as just that, a program for gaining increased flexibility, reducing stress, and promoting health and fitness. Perhaps it’s time for westernized yoga to have its own name that clarifies the break with its past.   There are no doubt a myriad of ways that we can protect our brothers and sisters from error while benefitting from a wonderfully healthy practice. Given the totality of the Apostle Paul’s instructions, we should expend effort in doing so prior to completely eschewing a good thing.

This topic will no doubt remain controversial. Honest concerned Christians will take various views depending on their conscience. That’s okay. These things are worth having a dialogue about, just as they were in first century Corinth.  In my case, I’m no longer worried about my daughter doing yoga on the Wii. I am convinced she is exercising with thanks and giving glory to God in everything she does.

The Grand Design: No God Required

Recently, I read with great interest excerpts from Stephen Hawking's new book, The Grand Design. In his book Hawking posits that God is not necessary in order to account for the creation of the universe. Let me say right up front that my grasp of physics and mathematics is rudimentary at best. In addition, my intellect is quite obviously not even a pale shade of what Hawking possesses. Given my severe limitations, when compared to Hawking, it may seem an incredible act of hubris to question the conclusions of such a genius. However, in this book Hawking writes at a relatively accessible popular level and goes beyond the limits of physics and mathematics in order to draw metaphysical conclusions. So in this case, it seems that even a lay person might be able to point out a few leaps of faith in reaching his conclusions.

In ruling out God as the force behind the formation of the universe, Hawking appeals rather to gravitation as a sufficient force for creation. While his conclusion is tied to complex string theory, it seems to lead to other problems on a more basic level. Hawking is placing a good deal of faith in something that is, as of yet, not fully explained by anyone, including himself. It has been demonstrated that Newtonian physics alone cannot explain gravity. Most theories today use principles of general relativity to explain gravitation. In these models space-time is curved by matter which helps to explain the attraction between objects of mass. However, general relativity does not play nicely with the growing science of quantum mechanics where the force of gravity must be explained quite differently. In quantum mechanics, gravity is related to the attraction and exchange of virtual gravitons. At this point, no one can truly tie Newtonian physics, general relativity, and quantum theories of gravity together.

If I understand Hawking’s approach, he is proposing string theory as a possible future unifying solution, but it appears that string theory is really being used as a Trojan horse to sneak in the concept of nearly infinite parallel universes. This construct is necessary in order to explain the mind blowing degree of fine tuning observed in this particular universe. If there are nearly infinite universes, then surely one is highly fine tuned for life. Never mind that this owes more to sci-fi then it does to actual hard evidence.  These are all fascinating theories, but when it comes right down to it, we’re still no closer to really understanding why gravity actually exists as opposed to nothing existing at all. Basically we can describe the effects and facts of gravity, but cannot truly define a root cause for gravity that would bind all the various observations and theories together in a coherent way. In short, Hawking is appealing to an incredibly complex force he does not fully understand and cannot completely explain, and yet he has great faith that this force is sufficient to rule out God's involvement. To depend on this unexplained force as the sole "creator" and shaper of the universe seems like a leap of faith to me.

Hawking has an even larger problem than this. All of the most accepted cosmological models point back to a point when time-space (as well as matter, energy, and gravity) must have first come into being. Hawking says that God was not necessary to spark the existence of something from nothing, but does not adequately explain just what could other than simply resorting to his nearly infinite universes theory. Suggesting more than one universe, even universes nearing infinity, brings us no closer to an original cause. Whatever the cause, it would have to be independent of time-space, matter, energy, and gravity. Or to put it another way, the cause would have to pre-exist time-space, matter, energy, and gravity. The cause would also have to be greater than or equal to the effect, i.e. the cause would have to be greater than or equal to the observable time-space universe and all forces within it. We should also point out that we cannot logically have an infinite regression of causes, so at some point there must be an uncaused first cause which meets these criteria. Hawking doesn't explain what this might be. There is no point in appealing to gravity if you can't explain gravity, its cause, or why it exists as opposed to nothing existing. Hawking wants to tie the various theories of gravity together, which of necessity must involve matter, but we’re still left with the problem of matter coming from nothing. Whether we focus on gravity, matter, or both, we still have to deal with an uncaused first cause.

All this is to say, it takes faith to believe there is no God. Those of us involved in apologetic endeavors should be prepared to reason with those who have real questions about origins. We, unfortunately, have sometimes projected an almost anti-intellectual image of the Church, as if faith and reason are not compatible or reason somehow is antithetical to faith. There is no dichotomy here. Hawking mixes his faith in the ability of science to eventually explain everything into his reasoning and conclusions. We too take some things on faith, but that does not mean that Christianity is incompatible with reason. Rather, we believe that Christianity corresponds to reality. If that’s true, then Christianity is reasonable and can stand up to scrutiny. Belief is not dependent on blind leaps of faith, but on faith grounded in evidence. Each of us needs to grapple with the question of origins and decide whether gravity alone is a sufficient explanation for why there is something rather than nothing or if logically there must be an uncaused first caused. In his book Hawking hails the death philosophy. Let us hope that in saying philosophy is dead he is not also abandoning the underlying logic required to reach reasonable conclusions.

Objections to Jesus Being the First Fruits in a Literal Sense

I have received a couple of questions which have bearing on whether or not the resurrection of Jesus in a glorified resurrection body was a unique event or not. I would summarize the questions as:

1.       If Elijah had a glorified resurrection body when he appeared at the transfiguration of Jesus, then doesn’t it stand to reason that Moses also had a glorified resurrection body at the transfiguration?

2.       If the people mentioned in Matthew 27:52-53 were resurrected in glorified bodies, then how can you say that Jesus was the first to have a glorified resurrection body?

I want to deal with those questions here, but let me first say that I had two purposes in bringing up Moses in Part VI of State of the Dead Bible Study (the segment that occasioned the questions):

1.       Someone asked me about that particular story

2.       I want to make the point that some things that we who were raised SDA have always assumed to be true aren’t necessarily so, or at least can’t be found in the Bible. I am not trying to say that we can use Moses to prove or disprove “absent from the body, present with the Lord”. I’m only saying that there is no good biblical reason to insist that Moses has already been bodily resurrected. You can find that teaching in Ellen White’s writings, but not in the Bible.

Okay, so with that preamble, let me attempt to make two suppositions that I hope are points of agreement for all involved:

1.       The Bible tells us God is spirit. The Bible also tells us that angels are spirits. There are many places in the Bible where God reveals himself in visual ways. There are many places in the Bible where angels reveal themselves in visual ways and even appear to take on various forms. So it appears it is possible for spirits to be revealed in visual ways.

2.       There are several people in the OT and NT who are raised from the dead not long after death, but were not given glorified resurrection bodies. They presumably became sick or grew old and died at some point thereafter.

So hopefully we can all agree with the two suppositions above. Now I’ll state a few things that I’m sure we won’t all agree on, but I hope they are worth thinking about anyway.

1.       The Bible never says that Moses was resurrected. It just says he was dead and tells us that God buried him. To insist that Moses was resurrected with a glorified resurrection body is to read something into the Bible that isn’t there. More specifically it’s to read a teaching from Ellen White into the Bible where it does not exist.

2.       The Bible never says that Elijah was given a glorified resurrection body. It simply says that he “went up by a whirlwind to heaven”. Elijah was swept off the face of the earth into the very presence of God who is spirit. That does not require a physical body. Someday heaven will be very physical when we dwell in the earth made new in our glorified bodies. However, right now Heaven is the very presence of God and it need not be a “place” within the created physical universe as we know it. Most scholars believe Heaven, as it is today, is in the spiritual realm, not the physical realm.

3.       The fact that the disciples “saw” visual representations of Moses and Elijah in no way necessitates either one having a glorified resurrection body. God was doing something very special and intentional in the transfiguration. God allowed the disciples to see Jesus glorified, see visual manifestations of Moses and Elijah, and hear the Father’s voice for a specific reason. Moses represented the Law and Elijah represented the Prophets, but God said, “This is my beloved Son, listen to Him!” God gave an awe inspiring visual and auditory demonstration of a theme that rings throughout the New Testament. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets and supersedes both the Law and the Prophets.

4.       The Bible never says that the people in Mathew 27 were resurrected with glorified bodies. We just don’t know that. Many commentators believe that these were like many others who were raised from the dead during Jesus’ ministry. They were miraculously brought back to life, but not glorified (sometimes referred to as resuscitation as opposed to resurrection). They would later grow old or sick and die. The folks in Matthew 27 were apparently coming out of the Jerusalem cemetery and may have been people who had recently died (similar to Lazarus). Finally, the Greek (and the more literal English translations) seem to suggest that the tombs were opened by the earthquake at the time of Jesus’ death, but that the dead did not come out of those opened tombs and go into the city until after Jesus resurrection. So even if we were to assume they had been resurrected (as opposed to resuscitated) it still appears it was likely after Jesus’ resurrection. I personally think it more likely that these folks were more like Lazarus, but the bottom line is we just don’t know.

5.       I personally believe that the resurrection of Jesus in a glorified resurrection body is a singular unique event in history. I believe the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of Christian belief and without peer in human experience. It is the event we can point to as proof that Jesus is who He said He was and can do what He said. By this we know that He is God in the flesh. By this we know that we one day will rise from the dead in imperishable glorified bodies as well. The Bible seems to support the notion that there is a distinct order. Christ first, then those who believe in the Messiah, then comes the end.

    ²² For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. ²³ But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ's at His coming, ²⁴ then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. 1 Corinthians 15:22-24 (NASB)

So for those who believe that Christ’s resurrection is less than unique in human history and that others have gone before, I believe it is incumbent upon them to show clearly and distinctly where the Bible teaches this. By saying this, I do not mean taking the teachings of Ellen White and reading them back into passages where they do not exist. I mean clearly showing where the Bible says that any other human before Jesus was ever resurrected with a glorified resurrection body. I have never found such a teaching in the Bible without having to read something into it that isn’t there. If I’m missing it, please let me know.