Frequent Questions

If the faithful men before Jesus’ time are not resurrected as perfect men, in what way is their resurrection “better”?

The questioner refers to Hebrews 11:35: “Women received their dead by resurrection; but other men were tortured because they would not accept release by some ransom, in order that they might attain a better resurrection.” We let the new book “This Means Everlasting Life” answer by our quoting from it, page 295: “By the faith of God’s prophets of old a number of persons were resurrected from the dead, but because they were inheritors of death from Adam and the Kingdom was not yet established, they returned to death. All those faithful ones of old, down to John the Baptist, died in faithfulness to Jehovah God, and for this they will have a resurrection better than what those had who were resurrected to a life still under the regime of sin and death. It will be a ‘better resurrection’ because it will be performed by Jehovah’s greatest prophet, the King Jesus Christ, and it will be performed under God’s kingdom in his hands. It will be without the unavoidable need to die again, because it will be under the rulership of the Son of God, whose ransom secures their release forever from death. The opportunity to gain life on earth eternally will then be set before them; and with Satan and his demons abyssed and his wicked world gone there will be no forces to hinder their efforts to gain the latest knowledge on God’s kingdom and to walk the paths of enlightened righteousness toward everlasting life in this Paradise. And since they exercised faith as far as they had knowledge and they died in their unbreakable integrity toward God, they have inclined toward righteousness, and this will be to their advantage at the resurrection under His kingdom by Christ.”