Last night I was reading in Alma 40 in the Book of Mormon and I came across some good stuff. I had only planned a little bit of time to read because I had to finish a big homework assignment due in the morning. That chapter talks about where we go after we die and what happens to us. I have know all this stuff since I was young but I learned a lot while I was reading and in my subsequent study of it not a few moments ago.
As I was reading I noticed two definitions of the concept of resurrection. The first is in verse 2 when it talks about mortality putting on immortality and corruption putting on incorruption. The second is the definition as given in the bible dictionary found in verse 18 as the reuniting of the soul with the body.
I wanted to look up the official definition from the church in the bible dictionary last night as I was reading, but because of my time constraint I didn't. However, I just barely looked it up and found something interesting. It's new to me, but may not be to you gospely inclined people. In the bible dictionary it defines resurrection as "the uniting of a spirit body with a body of flesh and bones, never again to be divided." That's what we would expect to read. However, it also states that there have been instances where people have been brought back from the dead but they were only brought back into mortality. The resurrection means we are brought into the physical state of immortality or are beings without blood. THAT my friends is where my brain perked up and started to tick. Blood is the life line of a mortal being. I once asked my mission president if blood was sacred because the spilling of innocent blood is basically what the atonement is. Before it was making a blood sacrifice of the firstling of the flock and was the same with Jesus Christ he being the first born and completely innocent. I didn't get much of an answer from my president, but this idea of blood being a characteristic of mortality is quite fascinating. In giving up his blood (from every pore) Christ overcame physical death and in a very real sense gave us his mortality. So would you say that blood has an aspect of sacredness? I'm still interested to know.
I started to chat with my co-worker about it and she raised some questions about our bodies after the resurrection. Will we have organs? Will we eat? What about our hearts whose main function is to pump our blood throughout our bodies? Then a librarian (I work at a library) came in and we asked him what he thought about it all. Will there be another life source? An immortal life source that replaces our blood? As a joke I decided that the immortal life source is gold and glowing. He also noted that Joseph Smith describes the physical state of God and Jesus Christ as flesh and BONES. Usually we say flesh and BLOOD. Interesting is it not?
What do you think about it? Has this topic ever come up and if so, what did you learn?
