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Metamorphosis: A Parable Of Death & Resurrection

In her booklet Waterbugs & Dragonflies, written for children to explain what happens when we die, author Doris Stickney likened the transition from this earthly life to our life in heaven to the transformation of water bugs into dragonflies. When one of their number disappears and never returns, the rest are puzzled. But the dragonflies, once liberated from their watery world, cannot return to describe the wonders of winged flight and so the bugs have no idea what life as a beautiful dragonfly is like.

Video of the Life-cycle of a Butterfly

To watch a video of the life-cycle of the Monarch Butterfly, click on MONARCH BUTTERFLY LIFE CYCLE.

Paul's Description Of The Process Of Change From Mortality To Immortality

In 1 CORINTHIANS 15:35-56 Paul deals with the question:

"What happens to us when we die? How can we be resurrected like Jesus Christ?"

But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”  How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.......

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.Just as there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit...........  Just as we have borne the image of the earthly man (Adam), so we shall bear the image of the heavenly man (Jesus Christ).

I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—  in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the deadwill be raised imperishable, and we will be changed." [NIV]