1 Corinthians 15:51–52

The resurrection of just and unjust was a well-known Old Testament truth... People knew about the raising of the dead saints, and even about the raising of the wicked dead. But the change of the living saints was a truth God had never revealed. Up to this point He had not made it known. It was a New Testament truth, and this is exactly what a "mystery" means. It was one of those truths God kept secret in the Old Testament and has now revealed. It is not so much a thing that is hard to understand once stated, as a thing that was never made known before.

Flesh and blood, not merely sin, cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Corruption (for such we are) cannot inherit that which is incorruptible... Death is conquered. Death does not have to come to everyone, and still less does everyone have to pass through decay. But flesh and blood cannot possibly inherit the kingdom of glory... and we shall be changed (a change equivalent to resurrection)... We see that this relates to the body; it is in his body that man is mortal, even when he has eternal life.

Scripture connects the thought of "sleep" with the body... Death has now lost its terrors for the Christian, so that Scripture can call it "sleep."

The Old Testament saints, like Job, did know of the resurrection of the dead. But they knew nothing of this great secret: that God will change the natural bodies of the living saints into spiritual bodies, without those saints going through death. What a proof of the mighty power of the death of Christ! It has so fully met the penalty of death for the believer that he can be changed into the image of the heavenly without going through death.

We shall not all "sleep" (i.e. die) but we shall all be changed, whether alive or dead at the moment when the Lord comes for His saints... We shall "all be changed," you notice, "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye" — not in many, or at least several, different moments. That is what would happen if the church entered its glory by a partial rapture, or by a series of partial raptures.

If we only had this Scripture we should not know into what likeness we are changed, nor what would happen to us when we are changed. This then is the first step in the great event that leads to our being with Christ.

Grant that "we" is a representative word. It does not mean only the people he wrote to, but everyone standing in the same privileges. Still, will anyone say that the apostle or the Corinthian saints knew the moment would be put off until they had fallen asleep? Was it not meant, beyond all doubt, to keep them in simple, constant expectancy of the Lord?

The Greek word for moment is the word from which we get the English word atom. The first letter, a, means "not", and temnō means "cut", so it's a division of time that cannot be further divided. It is a tiny piece of time, and that is how long this change will take. It might be helpful to put it alongside verses 35 to 38 where we get the sowing of the body. What is sown is bare grain, but what comes up is different. That is a process, and it takes quite a while between sowing and harvesting. Here we get the other side of the picture: the whole process fits into the shortest time possible.

The saints will be glorified sooner than the mind can count or the eye can see. The work is immense in itself, and it reaches every spot on the globe. It happens when the final call goes out to the heavenly host to leave the place where it has camped... Notice: the verse does not say that we shall rise then, nor that they alone are in view — "we" too shall be changed.

The "last trump" is but a military allusion, neither more nor less. There were three trumpets for breaking up the camp among the Romans. At the first, they folded the baggage; at the second, they fell into rank; at the third, they started all together.

The last trump was that which in its military sense stood for departure. It was the signal to march, and that is the thought here. God is taking us into another place, and at the last trump, which sounds for this, we shall be changed into a condition corresponding with that which is implied in it.

The trumpets in Revelation are a symbolic series that belongs to that book alone. They are judgments — the last three are even called "woes" — and the last of all brings in the closing scene of God's judgment... In 1 Corinthians 15 the reference is only to the saints raised or changed. The picture comes from army life: the final signal when the legion marches out of its old camp. It would be a mistake to mix either of these up with the blowing of the great trumpet in Isaiah 27, which gathers the chosen people of Israel into the land that is their inheritance. Each one must be read in its own context.

Notice that we shall "all be changed," "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye" — not in many different moments, or even in several. That is what it would be if the church were to enter its glory by a partial rapture, or by a series of partial raptures.

Scripture is careful to show that resurrection is a real thing. It stresses that what is sown is what is raised, though it is raised in new conditions... Decay is the end of man in his natural state, and that is the condition of the body when it goes into the grave. How different the Christian's body will be when it is raised, for then it will be incorruptible. People who are alive now have bodies that can decay. But when the dead are raised and the living are changed, their bodies will no longer be able to decay. They are of another order.

The Christian is to be standing ready for the final trumpet call. He has already heard the call of the gospel. If he has truly answered it, he has separated himself from the world, packed his baggage, and is looking for the Saviour.