Most genuine believers know by "the signs of the times" and an inward sense that we are in "the last days" and the end of the age is drawing near.

We can rejoice even in these troubled days because we, those of us who have trusted in Christ for our salvation, have a glorious eternal prospect.

For the present, as believers, while waiting to one day go to be with Him, "we have redemption, through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace" (Eph. 1:7). In infinite love God has made us to be "accepted in the Beloved (Christ)" (Eph. 1:6) and has pronounced us "complete in Him (Christ)" (Col. 2:10).

• Our present secure position is now a blessed and exalted one, for God has made us to "sit (resting) together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6) and has "blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ" (Eph. 1:3).

We also have Christ own very life within us (Col 1:27), to live His life through us as He guides us from within. We are not left to navigate the trials of this earthly life by ourselves.

• Then, referring to the Christian's death, Philippians 1:23 tells us that "to depart, and to be with Christ… is far better"; far better, not only than earth's sorrows and troubles, but far better even than earth's dearest treasures and joys.

But even this is not all, for the time will come when the members of the Church, when "the Body of Christ" is completed, the Lord Himself will come to receive all of the members of "His body," the living and dead, to Himself at what is called the "Rapture," or the "catching away" (You can read of this in 1Thessalonians 4:13-18).

Then also, referring to the resurrection of the deceased believer's body, Paul, in 1Cor 15, declares the following.

"it (our physical body) is to be raised in incorruptibility" (Ver. 42),

"it is raised in glory" (Ver. 43),

"it is raised in power" (Ver. 43),

"it is raised a spiritual body" (Ver. 44),

"as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly" (Ver. 49).

• And for to those believers who will be alive at His coming at the time of the "Rapture," Paul says: "We shall all be changed" (Ver. 51).

Thus we "... we are citizens of the state (commonwealth, homeland) which is in heaven, and from it also we earnestly and patiently await [the coming of] the Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah) [as] Savior, 21 Who will transform and fashion anew the body of our humiliation to conform to and be like the body of His (resurrected) glory and majesty, by exerting that power which enables Him even to subject everything to Himself." Philippians 3:20-21 (AMP)

Paul also wrote "FOR WE KNOW that if the tent (physical body) which is our earthly home is destroyed (dissolved), we have from God a building, a house not made with hands (a spirit-body, see v44 above), ETERNAL in the heavens." (2 Corinthians 5:1 (AMP)