Many traditional hymns and contemporary Christian songs have taught us that the afterlife is a place where we will live as disembodied souls, often as a private experience between us and God. However, the Bible and the early Christian church had as its hope not disembodied souls but a resurrected body, just like Jesus had after being raised from the dead. Instead of hoping to escape from persecution to the immaterial realm, the church trusted that they would inherit the eternal bodies promised i