The prophet also speaks of the end of death itself (25:8). The sword of the Lord will destroy the gates of hell; The faithful will find not only the immortality of the spirit, but also new life in all its fullness:

THY DEAD SHALL LIVE; dead bodies will rise! Arise and rejoice, you who are prostrate in the dust; For Thy dew is the dew of plants; and the earth will vomit up the dead. (Isaiah 26:19)

Kn. Genesis considered death not as a norm, but as a result of man's falling away from God. Expelled from Eden into the wilderness, he was deprived of the fruit of the Tree of Life (his direct relationship with the Creator) and was doomed to "return to the dust" from which he was created by God (Gen 3:19). This drama was foreshadowed by the fate of the people of God. When he broke the covenant, he was banished into the wilderness captivity (Hosea 2:14). But after repentance, God resurrected him, as is revealed in Ezekiel's vision of dry bones (Ezekiel 37). The new Revelation already speaks of the resurrection of the whole personality of man.

Greco-Indian religious philosophy considered the body as a prison of the spirit. In the divinely revealed teaching, the duality of human nature is part of the original plan of the Creator. In the very act of creation, man is placed on the verge of two worlds – the visible and the invisible. Through Adam, nature, matter, is united with spirit, which marks the pledge of the transfiguration of all creation (the'osis). The coming Kingdom of God is not a world of spirit alone, but a new Eden, a new heaven and a new earth, which are given to the resurrected and renewed humanity (Is 11:6-9; Revelation 21:1).

It has often been asserted that the earliest Old Testament testimony to the general resurrection of the dead is found in the writings of the second century (2 Maccabees, Daniel). In fact, this Revelation was given two centuries earlier, in the Apocalypse of Isaiah.

The belief in the resurrection of the dead did not receive Church-wide recognition immediately: between the 90s and 60s of the second century B.C. And even later, in the Gospel era, the Sadducees regarded it as an inadmissible innovation.

Review Questions

1. What word does the term "apocalyptic" come from?

2. What topics is the apocalyptic devoted to?

3. What are the three main features of it?

4. Which works of the Holy Old Testament literature belong to the apocalyptic genre?

5. In what era did Joel preach?

6. What was the occasion for the prophet's first speech?

7. According to Joel, what are the two aspects of prophecy about the Day of the Lord?