Evangelical Christianity was born as a death-conquering religion. It has survived the centuries because its Founder survived death. In the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life, His followers in all ages since behold the unmistakable sign of their Lord's divinity and the unalterable pledge that man's ultimate resurrection from the dead is assured. No other religion in all the annals of human history has ever been built upon the dramatic historic foundation that its founder had triumphed over the tomb. Of Christ it may well be said:
There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou—Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.
—EMILY BRONTE
The Dynamic of Christianity
A Mohammedan, says Charles Forbes Taylor, once said to a Christian: "When we go to our Mecca we find the remains of our prophet, but when you go to Jerusalem, what do you find of your Christ? Nothing but an empty tomb."
Herein lies the difference between Christianity and all the other religions of earth. All their founders are dead, but Christ is alive! Nimrod is dead! Buddha is dead! Confucius is dead! Mohammed is dead! Of all the religions of the earth, only the Founder of Christianity could say: "Because I live, ye shall live also."
This thrilling story of the emptied tomb, substantiated by unimpeachable testimony, is the dynamic of Christianity. Because of the living Christ, the Christian could answer the Mohammedan: "And that is the difference between your religion and mine. You know that your prophet is dead, you have his bones; but we know that Christ is alive, and the grave could not hold Him!"
Christ's Resurrection a Transforming Power
The cross at first seemed a tragedy, but the emptied tomb proclaimed its triumph. It is like the sunrise piercing through the morning mists. How graphic is the account —angels at a tomb, an empty sepulcher, Mary Magdalene in the garden, wonderment and doubt changed to triumph and adoration! In the disciples a spirit of devotion is reborn stronger than ever before. They are transformed by the miracle of renewed life.
God in the person of the resurrected Christ had made a new impact upon mankind, and the disciples suddenly realized that the Word that "was made flesh and dwelt among us" was indeed the living Word. Suddenly the power of that living Word has burst upon them. Helpless, emptyhearted, broken on the day of the crucifixion, they were made into new men by the Lord's resurrection. Motivated by His love, animated by the living Word, they moved with confidence toward the promised re-created world. Evil was no longer triumphant. Jesus was alive and He would live in them. They could adventure with Him and for Him. A new life, and a constancy that had never been theirs before, centered in the reality of the living Christ on whom they could rely.
The modern world, as never before, needs to feel anew the impact of that resurrection morning. Preachers in all communions would be reborn and reanimated were Christ's resurrection suddenly to mean to them what it meant to His early disciples. If modern Christendom could re-experience the vitalizing power of the resurrection of the Lord, it would not be long until the resurrection morning would dawn for all.
Only the actuality of the resurrection can rationally explain the fact of Christianity. Men were willing to die for their belief that Jesus had risen from the dead. All the early churches were founded upon this belief. The sacred writings of the Gospels and the Epistles triumphantly proclaim it.
Dwight L. Moody tells the story of a man who was once conversing with a Brahman priest and asked, "Could you say, 'I am the resurrection and the life'?"; to which the priest replied, "Yes, I could say that." Then the question came, "But could you make anyone believe it?"
The greatest of all miracles, the resurrection, was universally believed throughout the entire confines of the early apostolic church. A powerful ministry arose from the fact that the immediate followers of Christ who had seen their Lord publicly executed and publicly buried, had walked and talked with Him after His resurrection.
The resurrection proved Jesus Christ to be what He claimed to be (Rom. 1:4). Both the truth of Christianity and the guarantee of future immortality rest upon the historical reality of Christ's personal triumph over death. Jesus' resurrection is the demonstrated miracle of eternal life that God has provided redeemed man in Christ. It is not only historic fact, it is eternal reality.
Following World War II an item in Time magazine reported that botanists in Britain were searching bomb cavities for rare flowers, and that "already ninety-five types of flowers and shrubs unknown for decades before the blitz have been found in holes where nitrates from burning bombs had enriched the soil." Forth from the soil of suffering has come the triumph of beauty, of character, and of life, and out from burning disaster comes the rebirth of God's new creations. This triumph of God over sin and suffering and death is all wrapped up in the glory of Christ's resurrection.
Faith in the Resurrection
Poor doubting Thomas could think only about his own sight as the criterion of judgment when he exclaimed, "Except I shall see . . . I will not believe" (John 20:25). Such is the concept of modern doubters, who feel that heaven must accommodate itself to their little tests, and God graciously says, "Reach hither thy finger, and . . . be not faithless, but believing" (John 20:27). Man's finger a test of the resurrected Christ? Ah, no, there are tests far greater than the finger of man. Faith is better than sight. It reaches not merely to feel a wound in the side of the Lord but embraces the New Testament standard of power—the mighty dynamic of Christ's resurrection power. Jesus is life! He is eternal life. And He is our life. When He shall appear we shall appear with Him in glory. On the threshold of eternity man cannot any longer afford to live on the basis of what his eyes can see and what his finger can feel. He needs the Spirit of God to illuminate the eyes of his inner vision where the soul by faith sees the vistas of eternity.
The miracle of the resurrection of Christ is God's irresistible answer and history's unimpeachable rejoinder to those who would deny the possibility of a future resurrection of the dead. "And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power" (1 Cor. 6:14).
Future Resurrection Not Incredible
They who would deny the future resurrection of man on the grounds that reason cannot prove it, must be reminded that neither can reason refute it. It is neither dependent upon human reason nor upon human power. The skeptic fails to take into consideration the fact that resurrection and immortality have already been demonstrated within the confines of human history in the historical reality of the resurrection of Christ.
As Lee observes: "The resurrection of the dead . . . can be regarded only as one of God's most stupendous miracles, and viewed in this light, as a work of Omnipotence alone, human reason cannot be allowed to pronounce it impossible, or to modify it, by affirming that God cannot effect it in this way or in that."
Who can say that an all-wise, omnipotent God, the Creator of man, cannot preserve through man's unconscious period of death whatever is necessary to ensure the continuity of the soul's personal identity when the individual life is renewed in the resurrection?
The body is constantly changing its atoms. The identical particles that first compose the body never stay long before they are replaced by others and by still others, ad infinitum. These atoms are replacing each other at an amazing rate, but through it all the body maintains its delicate balance of identity of personality and of human functions. Known only to God is that secret of bodily identity and the preservation of the identical spirit and personality of man in the resurrected life.
Problem of Preserving Identity in the Resurrection
The resurrection of the identical personality, mind, and character does not require the restoration of the identical atoms of which the body was composed at the time of death, for as George McCready Price has so aptly observed, "So long as the same number of atoms of each sort were put together in the same relationship as prevailed during life, the man would be truly resurrected, and would resume the current of his thoughts where they ceased at death." Personality and character are obviously accurately registered with God—obviously some form of psychic blueprint, or otherwise—and may readily be reproduced or reactivated in the resurrection by restoring the same arrangement of the same kinds of atoms that formerly existed.
Acts and thoughts are registered in organic brain and nerve tissues that may be spoken of as "the anatomic and physiologic counterparts" of character and personality. Certainly the Creator is able to read these tissues as "character fingerprints," and by revitalizing an identical arrangement of them He can restore to life the same moral being who formerly existed.
To assume that by cremation and the subsequent scattering of the dust of the deceased one escapes the resurrection, is to manifest complete ignorance of the scientific processes of the Creator, which no mere creature can obviously fully discover or comprehend. Only the creative power and wisdom of God can assure bodily resurrection. But to the believer in a Creator there is certainly nothing preposterous in the belief that God, the Master Scientist, the Author and Originator of life, is certainly capable of renewing it again. How can man say that God cannot do what He says He will do?
The reanimation or resurrection of the body is not based on the necessity for the resurrection of the identical particles of the body, which may indeed have entered into new combinations (see I Cor. 15:37, 38).
Identity Is Not Disturbed by Unconsciousness in Death
Moreover, as Uriah Smith observes in Here and Hereafter, "continued consciousness is not necessary to preserve identity of being." The time you spend in "unconscious sleep" does not change your identity. You are the same person on awaking as you are when you fall asleep, although you may feel much more refreshed and alive; so it is in death and in the resurrection; you have the same identity when you awake on the resurrection morning that you have when you fall asleep in death.
The diamond that shines in the Saviour's crown shall beam in unquenched beauty, at last, on the forehead of every human soul, risen through grace to the immortality of heaven.—Luther.
The risen man himself will know that he is indeed the same man. This fact of preserved identity in the resurrection was the theme of Job's immortal utterance:
For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me (Job 19:25-27).
Commenting on the resurrection of the body, William G. T. Shedd says: "It is no more strange that the human body should exist a second time, than that it has existed the first time." In enlarging upon this observation, Dr. Shedd continues: "That a full-formed human body should be produced from a microscopic cell, is as difficult to believe, upon the face of it, as that a spiritual resurrection-body should be produced out of the natural earthly body. The marvels of embryology are, a priori, as incredible as those of the resurrection." Shedd feels that the difference between the body that is laid in the grave and the body that is raised from the tomb could scarcely be considered a greater miracle than the difference between the embryonic ovum and the fully formed adult man.
The apostle Paul expresses the viewpoint of the one who believes in God: "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?" (Acts 26:8). As Shedd observes, "The omnipotence that originated the body can of course re-originate it." Is it not absurd for a human being to question God's ability to raise the dead? Infinite power should not be limited by finite judgment.
The only self we know in this life is a self-constituted of body, soul, and spirit, and the only self that the Bible describes as resurrected is a self-consisting of body, soul, and spirit. Paul's declaration of hope is not one of deliverance from the body, but rather of the redemption of the body. (Rom. 8:23; Phil. 3:21.)
The Bible nowhere speaks of a bodiless future for the human race. A. H. Strong in his Systematic Theology quotes from Dorner's Eschatology as follows: "'The New Testament is not contented with a bodiless immortality. It is opposed to a naked spiritualism, and accords completely with a deeper philosophy, which discerns
in the body, not merely the sheath or garment of the soul, but a side of the person belonging to his full idea, his mirror and organ, of the greatest importance for his activity and history.' "6
Immortality Ahead!
Death does not have the last word. God does! And His word is a word of life. Death met more than its match in the Son of God, who triumphed over it with resurrection power. The greatest story of the first century of the Christian Era was the story of the emptied grave. Earth's greatest story of the future will be the story of the emptied graves. All the graves of all the earth will someday be emptied graves, for Jesus said:
Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation (John 5:28, 29).
Christ's promise that all will come forth from their graves is a pledge based on reality—the reality of His own resurrected life and power. The keys to immortal life are in Christ's hands.
A literal resurrection is a literal triumph over a literal death. It savors of reality. It is scriptural, it is proved by the demonstration of Christ's own resurrection, and it is desirable, for it provides the immortality of the whole man—body, soul, and spirit—in a very real world.
Resurrection and immortality through Christ is a doctrine consistent with revelation, with reason, with the historical reality of Christ's own resurrection, and with the available factual scientific data on the nature of man. It is Biblical, logical, Christ centered, and worthwhile. George Santayana in Reason in Religion offers the following worthy comment: "If hereafter I am to be the same man improved I must find myself in the same world corrected." ' This is indeed the picture of the hereafter portrayed by the Bible writers. The same world will be purified, renovated, made new, re-created and corrected, and the same man will be improved, resurrected, immortalized.
When Jesus comes again the grave will be robbed of its victory. In this faith we rest, for the quest of ultimate satisfying immortality will be completely realized when the redeemed of the ages awake in Christ's likeness. The sweet psalmist of old has so beautifully summed up the realization of this God-given eternal life that answers every craving of the human soul: "I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness" (Ps. 17:15).
The resurrection is the only gateway to a future life.
God alone can give you immortality!
REFERENCES
1 Lee's Theology, book 2. chap. 9. p. 294, col. 1.
2 George McCready Price, If You Were the Creator (Mountain View, California: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1942), p. 99.
3 Uriah Smith, Here and Hereafter (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1897). p. 224.
4 William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, vol. 2, p. 649.
5 Ibid.. p. 650.
6 Augustus Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology (New York: A. C. Armstrong & Son, revised and enlarged 4th ed.), P. 577.
7 George Santayana, Reason in Religion, pp. 243, 244.
