I have heard it said that at the Rapture there will be no graves bursting open. Please explain these verses:

Matthew 27:52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,

Matthew 27:53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

This is an account of a bodily resurrection. Those people were restored to physical life...in the same way that Lazarus was. Obviously Lazarus died at some point later on. We don't have a 2000 year old man walking around somewhere do we?

At the Rapture of the church we get a new body. Every indication is that it is already there, waiting for us, as in 2 Corinthians 5:1.

There is no scriptural evidence that at the Rapture graves will burst open and decayed corpses will be revived. Paul said that we are "confident and willing" to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. That happens immediately at death or at the Rapture.


Explain the marriage supper of the body of Christ.

Marriage supper? You mean the one in the book of Revelation? That's Israel in Revelation, that is not the church, the body of Christ.

All of the bride, bridegroom, and marriage passages in the bible refer to Israel and not to the church, the body of Christ. As saved individuals we are already joined to Christ. We are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. The body of Christ is positively masculine. It is one new man.

Being already joined to Christ, forever and for all eternity, there is no reason for the body of Christ to ever need to be married to him or joined to him ever again.

In Jeremiah 31:32 we find that God was "an husband" to Israel. In the book of Hosea, Hosea is a type of God the father. His wife, Gomer, is a type of Israel. She is unfaithful. God puts her away.

We find that there was a divorce. See Isaiah 50:1 and Jeremiah 3:8 and 20. Then there will be a future remarriage as in Hosea 2:14-20. Notice that the "children of the bridechamber" are the children of Israel in Luke 6:34. The Lord was with Israel in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. He was not with the Gentiles, nor the church, the body of Christ.

We meet the Lord at the Rapture, not the wedding.



Have not all believers from Pentecost on received the same Spirit?

You are correct in saying that there is only one Spirit of God and that is the Holy Spirit. It is incorrect, however, to assume that the baptism of Acts chapter two is the same baptism as that of 1 Corinthians 12:13.

The baptism in Acts chapter two was a "power" baptism. It was for the power they would need for their ministry. The risen Lord had told them that they would receive power "after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be WITNESSES unto me." The word "witness" carries the idea of being a martyr. And that is exactly what they became, beginning with Stephen in Acts chapter seven and then James in Acts chapter twelve.

Notice also that the baptism in Acts is different, and the BAPTIZOR is also different. In Acts chapter two, the Lord Jesus Christ himself is the baptizor. He baptized 12 Jewish men WITH the Holy Ghost. Notice the verse:

Acts 1:5 For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.

The one who did the baptizing was the Lord himself. Peter said, in Acts 2:33 that Jesus Christ, having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, has SHED FORTH this which ye now see and hear. Christ was the one who did the baptizing and they were baptized WITH the Holy Ghost.

That is not the case in 1 Corinthians 12:13 where believers are baptized INTO the body of Christ.

1 Corinthians 12:13 For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.

Notice that we are baptized BY THE SPIRIT, not WITH but BY. So it is the Spirit who does the baptizing in our case. The baptism is different than that of Acts chapter two and the one doing the baptizing is also different.


The Lord Jesus said I will build my "church" not my "churches".   He did not start one church and then another did he?

Yes indeed he did. In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John the ministry of Jesus Christ was to Israel and to Israel alone. In Matthw 10:5 he told the twelve "go not into the way of the Gentiles." In Matthew 15:24 he told a Gentile woman, "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Paul, in Romans 15:8 says that "Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision." His ministry was to Israel and he was "confirming the promises made unto the fathers," as in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob being the fathers of the nation of Israel. So the ministry of Christ was to Israel and to Israel alone.

The message of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John was "the gospel of the Kingdom" and that was also Peter's message in the book of Acts. But when the Lord raised up Paul and sent him forth, Paul had a different message. His message was about a joint body of believers called the church, the body of Christ. The church the body of Christ CANNOT be the same as the "holy nation and royal priesthood" Peter speaks of in 1 Peter 2:9

How can you possibly be a member of a holy nation while at the same time be a member of a joint body in which there is no nationality? There is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, bond nor free. We are all one in Christ Jesus.

Yes, there IS more than one church in the bible. The church, the body of Christ, began with Paul. It is the THIRD church of the bible. There is the Jewish Kingdom church of Matthew 16 to which believers were added in the book of Acts. The other one being the "church in the wilderness" of which Moses was the head.


A dispensation of the gospel may have been committed to Paul, but wasn't it revealed to all the apostles, as in Ephesians 3:5?

Ephesians 3:5 states that it is NOW REVEALED unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. The question is...which apostles? There were 12 apostles in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and there were 12 apostles in the book of Acts, Matthias replacing Judas in Acts chapter one.

However Paul is not a part of that group. Also, there are a number of other men who are called apostles who were not a part of the 12 but rather were associated with Paul. In Acts 14:4 and 14 Barnabas is an apostle. In 1 Corinthians 4:6 and 9, Apollos is an apostle, and in 1 Thessalonians 1:1 and 2:6 Silvanus and Timotheus are apostles. All of these men are associated with Paul who is THE apostle of the Gentiles. After the Lord ascended into heaven he gave gifts. He gave to the church, the body of Christ, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. (Ephesians 4:11-12)

So the question is, which apostles are in view and exactly when is it that it is NOW revealed? That was not during the time period of the book of Acts. The book of Ephesians was written to people Paul did not know, as in Ephesians 1:15, but yet at the time of Acts 19 he had established a church at Ephesus. He spent a total of three years in Asia at that time. The Ephesian epistle was probably the second to last epistle Paul wrote, the final one being 2 Timothy. See Tychicus in Ephesians 6:21-22 compared to 2 Timothy 4:12.

But Peter was also aware because he said:

Acts:15:11: But we [i.e. Peter and the apostles] believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we [i.e. Jews ] shall be saved, even as they [i.e. Gentiles].

Notice that Peter says that we (his group of believers, the Jewish Kingdom church) SHALL BE SAVED. That is in contrast to Ephesians 2:8 where Paul that by grace ARE YE SAVED. Shall be and are saved are not the same. If you compare 1 Peter 1:5, 9 and 13 you can clearly see that Peter is enduring to the end for grace at the end. That is in one accord with the Jewish tribulation message of Matthew 24:13, that "he that shall endure to the end SHALL BE saved." Those in the church, the body of Christ are already saved, and sealed unto the day of redemption.

Scripture tells me that the church began at Pentecost and that the Gentiles were added to it, i.e. made fellowheirs and partakers of the promise.

Nothing new began on a Jewish holy day called Pentecost in Acts chapter two. On that day there were three thousand people ADDED to an already existing church. The church was a Jewish church, the church of Matthew 16. It has a name. In Acts 8:1 it is identified as the "church which was at Jerusalem."

Ephesians 3:6 should not be confused with the Jewish church Peter preached to in the book of Acts. That was a Jewish Kingdom church, looking for their Messiah to return and restore the Kingdom again to Israel, as in Acts 1:6.

The Gentiles of Ephesians 3:6 becane fellowheirs and of the SAME BODY...in other words the same body of Christ that began with Paul and had previously included the Romans, the Corinthians, the Galatians and the Thessalonians. The Ephesian Gentiles to whom Paul wrote the Ephesian letter were ALIENS from Israel. The others just mentioned were not. The Ephesians were not IN the promises, the others were. Hence you have the mystery Paul discusses, particularly in Ephesians chapter three which was HID IN GOD, not in scripture.

If everybody who was saved by the gospel that Paul preached is a member of the ONE body and whoever preached this salvation message got it from Paul, then where does that leave everyone saved before Paul? Are they not in the same body?

There was nobody SAVED before Paul. People before Paul were baptized for the REMISSION of sins, looking forward to a future day of atonement for the nation of Israel at the second coming of Christ. At that time their sins would be "blotted out" as in Acts 3:19-21. Peter's message in the book of Acts and in 1 and 2 Peter is consistently the tribulation message of Matthew 24. The bible, for instance, doesn't say in Acts chapter two that 3000 people got saved and "joined the church." They were ADDED to an already existing church, a Jewish church. They would not be saved until the end, until the second coming of Christ. They would have all died in faith, looking for the resurrection of Revelation 20:4

What about Galatians 6:16?

Galatians 6:16 And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

One sure way for you to know that the Israel of God is not the same as the church the body of Christ is by the doctrine. The doctrine of Hebrews through Revelation, written to the "Israel of God", is different than the doctrine Paul calls "this rule" in the verse.

This rule would be Paul's rule and would be the doctrine he has laid out in Galatians. It is decidedly different than the doctrine of Israel found in Hebrews through Revelatlion.

The verse shows that there are two groups, two different bodies of believers, in existence during the time that Israel, as a nation, was still intact. Galatians was written during that period. The Israel of God is one group, following the "rule" of the 12 Apostles and the second group is the church, the body of Christ, following the doctrine committed to Paul.

The salvatlion of Israel is at the second coming of Christ, as in Peter's mesage in Acts 3:19-21 and 1 Peter 1:13. But the salvation of the church, the body of Christ is a present posession. We look back to the cross and trust in the finished work of Christ in dying for our sins, all of them, and being raised again for our justification. (1 Corinthians 15:1-4 and Romans 4:25, along with Ephesians 1:7)

Is Israel being regathered today? What does the bible say?

Hosea 1:9 Then said God, Call his name Loammi: for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God.

Luke 21:6 As for these things which ye behold, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

Luke 21:24 And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

In A.D. 70 Titus and the Roman Army came to Jerusalem and perhaps as many as a million or more people "fell by the edge of the sword." The Jewish temple was totally demolished, stone by stone, the city was burned to the ground and then PLOWED UNDER. Many of the Jews were taken captive and Israel was cast away and scattered among the nations.

There is no such thing as the "Israel of God" visible today. The present day "state of Israel" which you see on television nightly news is the result of politically motivated people, who after many years of effort succeeded in gaining enough worldwide political influence so that the United Nations, by a POLITICAL ACTION.....not an ACT OF GOD....created the present day "state of Israel' in 1948.

The present day "state of Israel" is NOT the Israel of the bible. It is a politically and socially motivated "state" made up of non-believers for the most part, although there are some religious Jews in the "holy land." 

When GOD restores Israel, you won't have to consult the newspaper or television. But, the good news is.....the body of Christ won't be here. The RAPTURE comes first.

The ABSOLUTE guidline for the fulfillment of the prophecy pertaining to Israel is Daniel chapter 11...which involves TWO MIDDLE EAST KINGS....not the United Nations, the United States, Great Britain, the European Common Market or ANY European mystical leader...as all the books and prophecy preachers proclaim. NOTHING which happened in A.D. 70 or which has happened SINCE meets the requirements of the prophecy of Daniel chapter eleven.

Explain rightly dividing the word of truth

To rightly divide the word of truth is NOT to divide the bible, chop the bible, or pick and choose doctrine based on "word studies." When Paul uses the phrase in 2 Timothy 2:15 it has a very specific meaning, which he defines in Ephesians 1:13 as "the word of truth, the GOSPEL OF YOUR SALVATION."

2 Timothy 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Ephesians 1:13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,

There are OTHER gospels in the bible which are NOT the gospel of YOUR salvation. Only Paul has the gospel of your salvation, and Paul says to rightly divide it. By that it means to separate out from other gospels and other doctrine you find elsewhere in the bible, other than the books written by Paul, Romans through Philemon.

The gospel of your salvation is that preached by Paul, that Christ died for our sins, he was buried, and three days and three nights later he rose from the dead. In Romans 4:25 Paul says he was "delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification." In other words your salvation is complete simply by trusting Jesus Christ as your Saviour.

Does graffed in to the olive tree make us spiritual Jews?

Some think that. But the truth we find in Romans 11 neither makes a member of the body of Christ a "spiritual Jew" nor "spiritual Israel." It is clear that the book of Romans was written to Gentiles, as in Romans 1:13 and 11:13. But those Gentiles were already in that "graffed in" position as Paul wrote the letter.

They are Gentiles who "call themselves Jews" as in Romans 2:17. There is a difference in being a Jew and calling yourself a Jew. A person who called himself a Jew would be one who had converted to the Jews religion. In other words he would be a proselyte. They were the ones who were in that "graffed in" position. They were already there as Paul sat down and began to write the letter.

In the bible, the fig tree, the olive tree and the vine always represent Israel. They never represent the church, the body of Christ. The olive tree in Romans 11 represents Israel and those Gentiles were in it. Nobody has ever been "graffed in" to the body of Christ and nobody can ever be broken off. People are BAPTIZED, by the Spirit, into the body of Christ, as in 1 Corinthians 12:13, not graffed.

The people Paul wrote that to had a faith, in something. But it was not Paul's gospel and hence they were not established. Paul said in Romans 1:

Romans 1:11 For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established;

And then he said in Romans 16:

Romans 16:25 Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began,

The "spiritual gift" Paul imparted to them was MY gospel, Paul's gospel, called the gospel of Christ in Romans 1:16, and it is the power of God unto salvation to every one who believes it. Paul wanted those people to believe his gospel, not the previous gospel of the Kingdom preached by the 12 Apostles. The doctrine in the book of Romans established those who would believe it.

So instead of being "graffed in" to an olive tree, we are baptized into the body of Christ and identifed with him in his death, burial and resurrection. We are complete in Him.

The olive tree of Romans 11 does not exist today and nobody is in it. If you are saved you are a member of the church, which is the body of Christ and sealed there unto the day of redemption.