The answer is yes. The
Bible says in II Corinthians 5:8, "to be absent from the body" is "to be present
with the Lord."
There are only two places a Christian can ever be: in the body or
with the Lord.
In Philippians 1:23 Paul said, "I am in a strait betwixt two,
having desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better." Depart and
be with Christ. Man is not a body; man is a soul. He has a body. The Bible says
that God created man in His own image, and that God breathed into his nostrils
and he became a living soul (Genesis 2:7), My body is not me. It is mine. My
body is my possession. If I bump my head and say, "I bumped my head." It
is my head, my hands, my feet, my ears, etc. But it is also my watch and my
coat. My coat is my possession and my body is my possession. The body is simply
the house in which I live. I am a soul and spirit on the inside. In 1st
Thessalonians 5:23 Paul said, "I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be
preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." When a man dies,
his soul and spirit leave his body and go immediately to be with Christ.
In London, England, a tombstone has an unusual epitaph. A man named
Solomon Peas gave instruction before he died to put these words on his
tombstone:
Beneath these clouds and beneath these
trees,
Lies the body of Solomon Peas;
This is not Peas; it is only his pod;
Peas has shelled out and gone Home to God.
When I read that, I
wished my name were Solomon Peas; I would like to have that on my tombstone.
When the Christian dies, he goes immediately to be with Christ:
absent from the body; present with the Lord.
End of Chapter Three
BACK TO INDEX
