>
“[H]ave you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living. When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.” – Matthew 22:31b-33
The faithful knew this verse as God’s introduction of himself to Moses,1 but Jesus revealed a meaning they hadn’t realized.
Sadducee’s, a scholarly religious group in charge of the temple, did not believe in a literal life after death because they found no evidence of it in the books written by Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy. This caused real contention and confusion among the less studied who were considered common and unintellectual.
Jesus settled the issue and gave hope to all by pointing out, from their own section of the Bible, that when God said “I am“(not “I was”) Abraham’s, Isaac’s, and Jacob’s God he was saying they were still very much alive in a very real place, still worshiping God as their own.
The term, “gathered to his people”, was not a euphemism for some bone pit but a place of continued fellowship with God and loved ones who had passed on.
“We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” – 2nd Corinthians 5:8
– fritz
1 – Exodus 3:6
