Why Do They Have To Wait?

Q

I have often wondered about this: Believers who have died during the Church Age will be resurrected and receive new bodies (incorruptible and immortal) at the same time, as when we are raptured (1 Cor. 15:51-53). Why only then, for those believers, who are already in heaven? I always believed that after we die, we are immediately with Christ in heaven. To be in heaven, I presume we need to be perfect, without “spot or blemish” etc. In other words, with new perfect bodies. Why is it then, that those believers who died in Christ, before the rapture, only get their new incorruptible bodies, when we get ours, when raptured, meeting them with Christ in the air?

A

The flaw in your thinking is the belief that Christians who die immediately receive new bodies upon entering Heaven. But Paul said that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. Then he said he would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord (2 Cor. 5: 6,8). The only mention of a new body for Church Age believers is in connection with the rapture. What that means is that dead believers are currently in spirit form in Heaven, and won’t return to bodily form until the rapture when we the living get ours (1 Cor. 15:51-53).