God Promises Adam's Resurrection at the End of Days

Six days. That was how long the archangel Michael had said it would take. And on the sixth day, exactly as foretold, Adam died.

When Adam felt the hour of death closing in, he gathered all his sons around him one final time. "I am nine hundred and thirty years old," he said. "When I die, bury me toward the sunrise, in the field near our dwelling." He finished speaking. Then he gave up his spirit.

The sun went dark. The moon disappeared. The stars hid themselves for seven days. As if the cosmos itself were mourning the first man.

Seth threw himself over his father's body, embracing it from above. Eve knelt on the ground, her hands folded over her head. Every one of their children wept bitterly.

Then Michael appeared. He stood at the head of Adam's body and spoke to Seth: "Rise up from your father's body. Come and see the judgment the Lord God has pronounced over him. He is God's creature, and God has pitied him."

Every angel in heaven blew their trumpets and cried out: "Blessed are You, O Lord, for You have had pity on Your creation!"

Seth saw the hand of God stretch out and take hold of Adam. God handed him to Michael with these words: "Let him be in your keeping until the Day of Judgment. In the last days, I will turn his sorrow into joy. He will sit on the throne of the one who deceived him. That deceiver will be cast down and will watch Adam enthroned above him -- and his anguish will be without end."

Then God commanded Michael and Uriel: "Bring three linen cloths of fine byssus. Spread them over Adam. Bring other cloths for Abel, his son. Bury them together."

All the angelic powers marched before Adam's body. The sleep of the dead was consecrated for the first time in the history of the world. Michael and Uriel buried Adam and Abel in Paradise itself, before the eyes of Seth and his mother -- and no one else. Then Michael said: "As you have seen us do, so shall you bury your dead from this day forward."

Six days after Adam's death, Eve knew her own end was near. She assembled all her children -- Seth and his thirty brothers and thirty sisters -- and spoke to them.

"Hear me. I will tell you what the archangel Michael told your father and me when we transgressed God's command. Because of your parents' transgression, God will bring judgment on the human race. First by water. Then by fire. By these two, the Lord will judge all humanity."

Then Eve gave her children a command that would echo across all of history: "Make tablets of stone and tablets of clay. Write on them everything about my life and your father's life -- everything you have heard and seen from us. If God judges the world by water, the clay tablets will dissolve but the stone tablets will survive. If He judges by fire, the stone tablets will shatter but the clay tablets will be baked hard and preserved."

Two materials. Two disasters. Either way, the story would survive.

When Eve finished speaking, she stretched her hands toward heaven in prayer. She bent her knees to the earth. She worshipped the Lord and gave thanks. And in that posture -- kneeling, praying, grateful despite everything -- she gave up her spirit.

Her children buried her with loud lamentation. They mourned for four days. Then Michael appeared one last time and said to Seth: "Man of God, do not mourn your dead more than six days. For on the seventh day is the sign of resurrection and the rest of the age to come. On the seventh day, the Lord rested from all His works (Genesis 2:2). On that day, God rejoices -- and we angels rejoice with Him -- over every righteous soul that has passed from the earth."

Seth obeyed. He made the tablets -- stone and clay -- and inscribed upon them the entire story of Adam and Eve, from the glory of Paradise to the bitterness of exile, from the Adversary's deception to God's promise of resurrection. Two copies of the truth, built to outlast any catastrophe the world could throw at them.

The first family was buried. The story was preserved. And the promise of return -- to Paradise, to glory, to the presence of God -- burned like a flame that no flood or fire could extinguish.