Will God Raise the Cremated?
I have had people ask me about cremation and the resurrection, and I understand why this question comes up. If a person is cremated, can God still raise that person from the dead? What happens to the resurrection if the body has been burned? Does God need the physical body to still be there in order to raise it? There are a lot of ideas about this, but what I want to know is what does God's Word actually say? Not what somebody thinks, not what somebody was taught growing up, and not what tradition says. What did God say? Let’s begin where the Bible begins, with what God said about the physical body after death. In Genesis 3:19 , God said to Adam, “By the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, because from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you will return.” The Hebrew word translated “dust” is עָפָר , pronounced “ afar .” It means dust, earth, or soil. The word for the ground or earth from which Adam was formed is אֲדָמָה , “ ...