1My friends, I want you to remember the good news that I taught you. You were happy to believe that message, and you still strongly believe it.
2And if you keep on believing that good news God will save you. If you don’t keep on believing, I reckon you didn’t believe properly in the first place.
3You know, God told me that message, and then I taught it to you. This is the important part of that message. Everybody did bad things. We are all bad, but Jesus Christ died instead of us. A long time ago, God got his men to write about this and now we can read it in God’s book.
4Then people buried Jesus, then 3 days later, God made him alive again. We can read about this in God’s book, too.
5After that, Jesus showed himself to Peter. Then later he showed himself to his 12 close followers.
6After that, he showed himself to more than 500 of his followers at the same time. Most of those 500 people are still alive, but some of them have died.
7Then he showed himself to James, and later he showed himself to all of his close followers.
8All these people saw Jesus. But I was different from the other close followers of Jesus. He didn’t show himself to me till some time later.
9But before I ever saw Jesus, he sent out his other special workers. They were the first ones to go out and tell his message, and they are all more important than me. You see, I used to make a lot of trouble for God’s own people, so I’m not really good enough for anyone to call me one of the special workers of Jesus.
10But God was very good to me. He changed me and made me what I am now. And so more people heard the good news about Jesus. You see, I’ve worked harder than any of his other special workers. But it wasn’t really me that did that work. No. It was God that gave me the power to do his work, so he is the one that did it.
11So it doesn’t really matter who told you God’s message. Maybe it was me, or maybe it was one of his other special workers. We all tell people the same good news about Jesus Christ, and that is the good news that you believed. That is the important thing.
12This is our message. Jesus Christ died, and then God made him alive again. But some of you reckon that God never makes dead people alive again. But you are wrong.
13You see, if you reckon that God never makes dead people alive again, you are also saying that God didn’t make Jesus Christ alive again.
14And if you reckon that God didn’t make Jesus Christ alive again, you are saying that our message is useless, and that you believed something that was wrong.
15If that’s what you reckon, you are saying that we lied to you about God when we told you that he made Jesus Christ alive again. But you are not right.
16You see, if you reckon that God never makes dead people alive again, you are saying that he didn’t make Jesus Christ alive again.
17And if God didn’t make Jesus Christ alive again, like you reckon, then you believed in Jesus for nothing, and it means that you are still guilty of the bad things you did.
18And if you reckon that God never makes dead people alive again, you are saying that the Christians that died are now lost and gone for ever.
19You reckon that we can only be sure that Jesus Christ will look after us here in this life. But we Christians get trouble in this life and other people in the world are happier than us. So if God will not make us alive again after we die, they can feel sorry for us. But that is not true.
20Listen, this is the true story. Jesus Christ died, and God made him alive again. Jesus was the first person to die and then come back to life again, and to live for ever.
21You see, it’s like this. The first man was Adam, and he did something bad, and from that we all do bad things, so God said that everyone has to die. But then another man did something good. That man was Jesus Christ. So now God will make people alive again.
22We all come from Adam, so we are all in his family. We all do wrong, so we all have to die. But everyone that believes in Jesus Christ is in his family now, so after they die, God will make them alive again.
23But we each have to wait for our turn. The first one was Jesus Christ. He died and then God made him alive again. He is the first one to live again. After he comes back, all his people will live again too.
24Then Jesus will finish up all the bad spirits. Some of them are bosses, and some of them have power. He will take away their power, and he will finish them all up. Then the end will come, and Jesus will give everything to God, the Father, and God will be the biggest boss for everybody.
25You see, Jesus Christ will come back, and he will keep on being the big boss, and he will fight against his enemies until he wins, then God will make all those enemies do what Jesus says.
26In the end he will stop us from dying. He will keep everything alive and nobody will die any more.
27You know, in God’s book we read, “God will win and make everything do what he says.” Of course, God is the one that will make everything do what Jesus says, so Jesus will not be the boss of God himself, but he will be the boss of everything else.
28When God makes everything do what Jesus Christ says, then Jesus, God’s son, will let God be his boss. After that God will be the only big boss, and he will control everything everywhere.
29You know, sometimes a Christian dies before anyone baptised him, so you mob try to help him and you baptise another Christian instead of him. But think about it, if dead people will never live again, that is a useless thing for you to do.
30And think about me and the others that work with me. We tell everyone God’s message, and some people get angry with us and they want to kill us.
31Every day I worry that somebody might kill me. My friends, I’m very happy that you are trusting our leader Jesus Christ, so I’m telling you this.
32At that city called Ephesus I got trouble for telling people about Jesus. Some men there tried to kill me, and I had to fight back. I was like a man fighting wild animals. But, if God will not make me alive again after I die, it means I got all that trouble for nothing. You mob reckon that dead people will never live again. If that is true we can be like the people that say this, We are going to die tomorrow, so today we will have fun. We will eat and drink as much as we like, and we will not worry about tomorrow. That is what they say, but it is not true.
33Listen, don’t let anyone trick you with that kind of talk. Remember that wise people say this, “Don’t have friends that do bad things, or they will get you to do bad things too.”
34So start thinking properly and do what is right. Stop doing wrong things. I think that some of you don’t really know God. I’m saying this to make you feel ashamed.
35Somebody might hear me say that dead people will come alive again, and they might ask me, “How can that happen? What kind of bodies will they have?”
36That’s a stupid question. You know, all kinds of things die and then they get new bodies. Think about seeds and plants. If you plant a seed in the ground, that seed dies. But that is not the end. A new plant grows up. That seed comes alive again, and grows up into a new plant.
37The thing you put into the ground was just a seed (maybe a wheat seed, or whatever). You don’t put the body of the plant in the ground, but just the seed.
38Then God makes it grow up and become a new plant, with its own kind of body. God gives every kind of seed its own kind of body.
39Every kind of thing that is alive has a different kind of body from every other kind of thing. People have one kind of body. Animals have a different kind of body. Birds have another kind of body, and fish have another kind of body.
40And other things have different kinds of bodies too. There are bodies in the sky and there are bodies here on the earth. They are all beautiful in their own way. The bodies in the sky are beautiful in a different way from the bodies on the earth.
41The sun is bright and beautiful. And the moon is beautiful too, in a different way from the sun. The stars are bright and beautiful too, but they are different again, and some stars are brighter than other stars.
42Well, it will be like that for us when God makes us alive again. The bodies we have now will die, but after that God will make them alive again, and they will never die.
43The bodies we have now are weak and not very good. But after God makes us alive again, our new bodies will be beautiful and strong.
44The bodies we have when we die are normal human bodies. But after God makes us alive again, we will have spiritual bodies. You see, there are normal human bodies, and there are spiritual bodies too.
45This is what we read in God’s book, The first man, Adam, became a living person. But we can think of Jesus, that he is the last Adam. You see, he is the spirit that makes people alive.
46It is like this. Right now each of us has a normal human body. That’s the way it is at first. But later we will each get a spiritual body.
47And think about Adam. He was the first man, that came from the ground. But Jesus, the 2nd man, came from heaven.
48We are like the first man, Adam, that came from the ground. We belong to the ground. But people that belong to heaven are different. They are like Jesus, the man that came from heaven.
49You see, our normal human bodies are like Adam, the first man. God made him out of the ground. But our spiritual bodies will be different. They will be like Jesus, the man that came from heaven.
50My friends, this is what I’m telling you. We can’t go to God and live for ever in his family in our normal bodies, made of meat, blood, bones, skin and all that. Our normal human bodies have to die. They can’t go on for ever.
51Listen, I’m telling you something new. God didn’t tell other people this message before, but it is important. He will change all of us. Some of us will still be alive at that time, but maybe some of us will be dead. It doesn’t matter, God will change all of us.
52It will happen like this. We will hear the sound of somebody blowing the last trumpet, then straight away God will change us. It will be quick, as quick as you can blink your eyes. You see, as soon as that trumpet makes its sound, God will make his dead people alive again. At that time he will give us new bodies that will never die. God will change all of us, those of us that are alive and those of us that are dead at that time.
53You see, our dying bodies will get new life. God will change our normal bodies into bodies that can never die.
54You know, whenever we do bad things we break God’s law, and God’s law says we have to die for doing those bad things. There is a power that gets us to go wrong and die like that. It is like a cheeky scorpion that stings us and kills us. But when God changes our bodies into bodies that will never die, at the same time God will beat that power that makes us go wrong. Then these words will be true, they are in God’s book, “God has beaten that power that makes everything die. It’s gone. It can’t sting us any more, and people will not die any more.”
57You see, our leader Jesus Christ has won the fight. So, with Jesus we win too. And we say, “Thank you God.”
58So always remember that, my dear friends, and stay strong for God. Don’t let anything take you away from him. Keep on working hard for our leader, Jesus. Remember, he will help you, so that everything you do with him will be good. It will not be useless.
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