Living

Mark 12:27 (NIV)

He is not the God of the dead but of the living.

The greatest mystery of Christianity is that there is no death. What we call death is just a termination of this decaying natural body. The eternal soul in that body, which embodies our personality, thoughts, desires, experience, consciousness, and essence, will very much be alive when this shell perishes.

When Moses and Elijah appeared before Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:3), they were very much alive. These were men who died over two thousand years before Christ!

There is no such thing as soul sleep. God is alive, as will all the souls He's ever created. Where precisely those souls will live eternally depends on their choices. Those that are foolish enough to believe the bewildering Nazarene will be transfigured, others damned.

God is not a God of the dead but of the living. Evangelical preaching must highlight this living and eternal soul long after this body decays.