2LCF Chapter 31 - Of the State of Man After Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead

Cameron Porter

The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 31, addresses individual eschatology under two heads: the state of man at death and the resurrection of the dead at the last day. The chapter grounds its teaching in the biblical constitution of man as body and soul, affirming that at death the body returns to dust while the immortal soul immediately returns to God — the souls of the righteous received into paradise with Christ, made perfect in holiness, and the souls of the wicked cast into hell awaiting the judgment of the great day. Against soul sleep, purgatory, limbo, and Socinian denials of bodily resurrection, the confession insists that all the dead will be raised with the self-same bodies, the just by the Spirit unto honor conformed to Christ's glorious body, and the unjust by the power of Christ unto dishonor.