And in another place he expressly states
that we shall not all die, but that some shall be transmuted into the
Resurrection body without passing through physical death. And if we turn to
the Old Testament we find two instances in which this is said to have
actually occurred, those of Enoch and Elijah. And we may note in passing
that the Bible draws our attention to certain facts about these two
personages which are important as striking at the root of the notion that
austerities of some sort are necessary for the great attainment. Of Enoch
we are expressly told that he was the father of a large family, and of
Elijah that he was a man of like nature with ourselves--thus showing us
what is wanted is not a shutting of ourselves off from ordinary human life
but such a clear realization of the Universal Principle, of which our
personal life is the more or less conscious manifestation, that our
commonest actions will be hallowed by the Divine Presence; and so the grand
denouement will be only the natural result of our daily habit of walking
with God. From the stand-point of the Bible, therefore, the attainment of
physical regeneration without passing through death is not an
impossibility, nor is it necessarily relegated to some far off future.
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