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Transcript 278A — Did Moses Physically Die? [Jude 9]
CALLER: Concerning Moses' death, did he die, or was he raptured?
HC: Our caller has raised a question concerning the problem of Moses. Did he really die, or was he raptured?
Well, let's go back to Deuteronomy. And there we read in very clear language that he died. Let me just turn to that a moment. Deuteronomy 34:7: "Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. And the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days. And the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended."
Or verse 5, which is even more plain: "So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And He buried him in the valley of the land of Moab opposite Beth-peor. No one knows the place of his burial to this day."
So the Bible is crystal clear that Moses died, and God buried him. But now we are amazed to find, in the Gospel of Matthew, that on the Mount of Transfiguration there are two men from Heaven who speak to Jesus about His coming death. One is Moses, and the other is Elijah.
Now of course we're not a bit surprised to see Elijah, because we read in the Bible that he ascended into Heaven in a whirlwind. And therefore he did not die. He went right into Heaven. And certainly he must have received his glorified body as he went into Heaven. Otherwise he could not appear in Heaven.
But Moses is there also. In the Book of Jude, however, we have a little more information about what might have happened to Moses, why he is in Heaven. We read in Jude, in verse 9, "But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him, but said, 'The Lord rebuke you.'"
Now here we have a strange statement about a dispute between Satan and the archangel Michael concerning the body of Moses. I think we can speculate and read between the lines. In view of the fact that Moses comes from Heaven on the Mount of Transfiguration exactly like Elijah, namely, in his glorified body, it would seem that the archangel Michael was sent to resurrect the body of Moses, so that Moses could also be in Heaven in his resurrected body, so that while he died in the land of Moab, and truly was buried, yet he did not remain there. God later on resurrected him so that he appears in Heaven with Elijah.
Now the interesting sidelight to this is that when Jesus was on earth, He had particularly three disciples who were very close to Him. And you know their names, of course, Peter and James and John. Truly there were twelve disciples, but these three were particularly close to Him. They are the three, for example, that went with Him when he was on the Mount of Transfiguration. They are the three who were with Him in the Garden off Gethsemane, at the time that Jesus was beginning to suffer for our sins.
And so the Bible also records, therefore, about three men who are in Heaven in their bodies. There is Enoch, that we read about in Genesis 5, who at the age of 365 "was not because God took him." And then there is Elijah, who ascended into Heaven in a whirlwind, in the presence of a chariot of fire. And then there is Moses, who also apparently was resurrected, because we see him on the Mount of Transfiguration. Again God has three men in Heaven, even as He was very close to three men on earth here.
Well, I don't know what the significance of that is, except that it's an interesting sidelight to this question of Moses' body.