Week 41 Luke 20
The Sadducees said to the Lord: let’s say a woman married a guy. The guy died so she married his brother. He died so she married a third brother…And on & on through seven marriages to seven brothers. Then she died. Question: in the afterlife which guy would be her husband? (So it was a seven-option multiple-choice question.)
Because it was likely a dumb hypothetical question the Lord didn’t answer it but he did say a couple of interesting things about death & the post-mortem world:
Marriage is restricted to people in the material world (in the post-mortem world no one gets married)
In the post-mortem world people don’t die
Since people are immune from death they are similar to angels
It’s a brand new kind of life in the post-mortem world.
This is a pretty interesting anecdote. Not because of the crazy question that the Sadducees had cooked up – they didn’t think about or care about or even believe in life-after-death. The interesting thing is that the Lord did say life continued beyond death in a more-than-material state where people a) would live forever and b) wouldn’t get married and c) would live a new kind of life.
It doesn’t say what other things people would or wouldn’t do after death.
Doesn’t say how people were not like angels.
Doesn’t say what was actually new & different about the next world.
But what the Lord did say is worth knowing about.
Note: the story is in Luke 20:27-40