Lullaby: A preview of the end of time.

Lullaby: A preview of the end of time.

By Emanuel Seropián

Wednesday, march 30th

2022

The visit was quite long. It's late and they have to go. Sebastián says goodbye to his cousin and his uncles, and together with his parents he gets into the car. He is exhausted. He played like never before. As soon as the car started to move, he put his head to the window and fell asleep. The trip was long, like an hour.

They got home and Sebastian's dad took him in his arms, went into the house, went upstairs, went into his son's bedroom and left him on his bed. He tucked him in, kissed him, and went to sleep.

The next day, hearing his father's voice calling, Sebastian got up. “How curious!” he thought. “The last thing I remember is that I was in the car, and now I'm here in my bed. But how many hours have passed?

When we sleep we are not aware of the time that passes. Many times it has happened to me to get up at dawn without being aware of what time it is, look at the clock and be glad that I can still sleep a few more hours. Sometimes the opposite happens. I oversleep and when I wake up, many more hours have passed than I had planned to sleep!

Death is the same as sleep. He who dies sleeps. And the sleeper (that is, the dead) is not aware that time continues to pass on earth.

But just as it happened to us as children, when the voice of our parents woke us up calling our name, so the voice of Christ will awaken the dead. “Wake up, Juliet! It's time to go to school” is the voice with which we wake up my daughter every morning. And we can suppose that with a similar voice Christ will awaken all the dead.

“Come on, wake up! It's time!"

How glorious it will be to hear that voice!

But what will the experience be like for the dead? Like the dream. He will hear the voice of Christ lifting him up and will wake up from the sleep of death. For the dead, it will be as if a second had passed between the last memory of him on earth and his awakening. Although here, in the world, thousands of years have passed.

Jesus will come down from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and when the dead hear that trumpet, they will rise again. But with what body? Didn't it rot and get eaten by worms? Of course. Then it is logical that you wonder how those dead who no longer have a body will be resurrected.

It will happen just as it happened with Christ. The body of Christ was left mutilated and completely useless after the crucifixion. However, he was resurrected with a body just as fit to interact with this world as it is to interact in heaven. That body allowed him to appear and disappear in an instant. It was a body that could be touched. John claims that he touched it. Thomas put his fingers in the holes of the hands. It seems that Christ wanted to keep some scars from his passage on this earth.

Christ was the first to rise and that assures us that we all will. And, by doing so, we will no longer be resurrected with our body, if there is any of it left, but with a new one.

When the body dies and is buried, it spoils; but what is resurrected will never be corrupted. The body that is resurrected will be glorious. When we die we sow a material body, but when it rises it will be spiritual. Just as there are physical bodies, there are spiritual bodies. So first we have a human body and then God gives us a spiritual body.

Let's keep going.

Dead believers will be resurrected when Christ calls them, and they will receive a new body. And we, who are alive, will be transformed, we will also receive a new body, and all together, we will leave. It will happen in the blink of an eye. In an atom of time.

Sebastian fell asleep in the car and woke up in his room. We will die where we have to die, and we will wake up, but… where?

At the party.

Like the thief who was next to Jesus on the cross. When he cried out for mercy, Jesus gave him his word that today he would be in paradise. For us, the thief has been dead and sleeping for two thousand years, but when the time comes for everyone to wake up, that thief will, but for him it will have been as if a few minutes had passed. Surprised, he will say: “Wow! But if I was just nailed with Christ on a cross!”. Just like Sebastián, who fell asleep in the car but got up in his room.

What is the party that awaits us? The Marriage of the Lamb. Who is getting married? Christ. With whom? With all of us. The moment when all the dead get up and rise to heaven, together with those of us who will be alive, is the moment when Christ, with his glorified body, will finally meet us, with our glorified bodies. Finally, all the obstacles and barriers of this physical world will fall and we will be able to be with him. Jesus had announced it to his disciples: I am going to prepare a place for you, so that where I am, there you may also be.

Ancient Jewish weddings used to last a week. This wedding will also last seven days. But while we will be with Christ those seven days, here on earth seven years will pass, and they will not be pleasant. They are the years known as “The Tribulation” or “Daniel's Seventieth Week”. At times, everything will seem calm, but towards the end, things will get complicated.

Just when the world is at its height of violence and Israel is about to be annihilated, in heaven the wedding will be coming to an end and Jesus will come back, once again, to earth, intervene in that war, save Israel and he will reign for a thousand years as what he is: the king of Israel. What about all of us? We will reign with him.

We will reign on this earth with him, for a thousand years. During that time, the devil will be chained helplessly and Christ will show the results in peace, harmony and beauty that come from the fact that he is reigning. After that time, two things will happen. The first: the devil will be released to be condemned to spend eternity in the lake of fire. The second: the dead who had not yet risen are going to resurrect, that is, the dead who rejected Jesus in life and did not believe in him. Those who have not been resurrected in the first resurrection will do so after the millennium. But his fate will not be as beautiful as the first resurrected. Those who never believed in Christ and rejected him will rise at the end of time to be judged and thrown into the lake of fire.

After that, with the devil, death and hell serving as fuel for the lake of fire, a new heaven and a new earth will come in which humanity will live with Christ eternally.

It will be something simply incredible. Are you going to miss it?

(For biblical references, read I Corinthians 15, I Thessalonians 4:16-17, Revelation 19).