Alma 40

Next topic: I know you’re worried about resurrection. Well, first, it won’t happen until after Christ comes. It’s really his purview. But I’ve prayed about it and think I have some insight.

Everyone gets to—or has to—rise from the dead. Exactly when only God knows. What I know is that everyone has to be regenerated in some profound way.

How long between when we die and when we rise, I have no idea. Trust me, I’ve asked. I don’t think He wants people to know. Which may be a smart idea.

Whether there are one, two, or three resurrection calls, I have no idea. Again, God only knows.

And anyway, God doesn’t have time like we do. So timing may be a moot question for him. When it happens, I’m sure we’ll all think it was the right time and God knew what he was doing.

Next, regarding the soul’s state between death and resurrection, an angel told me that all spirits go straight home to God when loosed from their bodies. Good people, bad people, the same. Maybe God can’t make up his mind about the initial criteria.

The good spirits, though, experience joy and stillness. We call that “Paradise.” The bad spirits, the really evil, despicable foul spirits, never even get to taste what joy and stillness might be like. Their new home we’ll call “Extreme Night.” Now, we’re talking here about devil-people, really, ones whose lives got so stained with grimy habits that the devil used them for his parking garage. Those lives get plowed into that Extreme Night, which consists not only of darkness like a cave with no exits, but lots of scary sound effects—howling, chomping sounds, etc.

These two places are where different spirit-types get to stay between death and resurrection. Please make an informed choice.

Some think this new life afterlife is the “first resurrection,” which I suppose it kind of is. There’s a rebirth and a judgment, yes. But I’m quite certain that the term “first resurrection,” once it becomes established in mainstream theology, will mean the official, full-scale resurrection of all those people who lived between Adam and Jesus’ own resurrection.

Now this gets a bit technical and I’m not fully equipped to weigh in on details like, is everyone resurrected at once?

I’ll just let my definition of first resurrection stand as it is. When will this resurrection happen? At the same time as Jesus resurrects.

I should add that these are all just my opinions (which I rarely admit, as you know).

The thing I feel sure of is about that space between death and resurrection.

Regarding the nature of full-scale resurrection:

Body and spirit lock back into place—the body, of course, not the flimsy, rotworthy one that’s been dead and buried, but a new, entirely reconstituted flesh and bone amalgam that replicates every aspect of the former body at its best age, strength, and appearance. Maybe even better, since some bodies were never doing so well, even at their best.

This is what the prophets talked about, however elliptically. These are the bodies that will shine, more highly polished than angels.

Although resurrected, the bodies of those devil-people will never really come to life in the way I’m talking about. They’re intrinsically dead, since life in the sense I mean only comes about through clean living. Garbage-lives get thrown on the compost heap of eternity. Dirty spirits will get scrubbed out of even the resurrected body. It’s a mess, even for me to conceptualize.