Ray Stone
Here’s a hypothetical logic exercise: How would you explain to a caterpillar the change that awaits him in his future? What words could you use to describe convincingly to a multi-legged worm crawling around munching on leaves, the glorious appearance of the body that he will wear as a beautiful butterfly flitting through the air drinking nectar from the flowers? How would you make him believe that he would soon spin a cocoon, imprison himself within it, cease to be a caterpillar (die to his old existence) and emerge from that “tomb” the most beautiful of all insects, equipped with gorgeous wings that would effortlessly carry him wherever he wanted to go? What eloquence would be required to enable him to see this description of his future as the truth it is? For we wouldn’t believe it ourselves if we didn’t observe it with our own eyes. You may as well believe that a slug could become a hummingbird! And yet that lowly caterpillar’s metamorphosis is objectively, undeniably true, proved time and time again by its natural occurrence. Skeptical about it? You can literally watch it happen; but just try to describe it satisfactorily to that caterpillar! You might say to him, “You have no idea what’s coming for you; I wish I could describe it so you’d understand and thrill at the prospect!” But there are no such words; it’s hopelessly beyond anything he has ever experienced or can imagine—he just has to wait and see.
Now realize the difficulty Deity faces in trying to describe to a Christian the glorious body that awaits him in the Resurrection. Is there a relationship, a connection, between the body we walk around in today and the immortal glorious body which we’ll inhabit in eternity? Of course; just as much as the relationship between the caterpillar’s body and the butterfly he becomes. The one becomes the other. It’s hard—really impossible—to comprehend just how, but we accept the truth that it does because we see it happen. Now read the description of that promised future resurrected body in Paul’s writing in 1 Cor. 15:35-49. It seems so vague, so lacking in detail—hard (really impossible) to comprehend just what he describes. But see, we’re the caterpillar, expecting language to convey the glory to come when there is no language that can do it. Remind yourself again: We are the caterpillar! We just accept the truth that it happens, not because we see it but because God—Who sees all—tells us so. So we must simply fulfill our days as mortal humans, live as Christ would have us live, in hope of the currently unfathomable future; spin our cocoon of death, in order to emerge from the tomb that new and glorious creature, equipped for an incomparable existence as a celestial butterfly in God’s Heaven. Meanwhile, let’s be content to “munch on the leaves” and await our turn to change (1 Cor. 15:51-52) into that which we cannot now imagine!
One more secular earthly thought: How does Organic Evolution explain the development of this process of metamorphosis? By what degrees did this gradually come about? What advantage of “fitness” caused this system to emerge through the countless accidents of natural unguided mutation? Science “falsely so called” (1 Tim. 6:20) has no explanation—you might notice this phenomenon is seldom if ever broached in evolutionary discussions, and now you know why!
