THANK God we can preach like the Master Preacher, "as one having authority."
"Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness" (1 Thess. 5:5).
These are days when the fog of doubt and dubious attitudes settles in and clouds the basic issues of the gospel. What a privilege is ours to confidently and assuredly proclaim the truth of the reality of such basic doctrines as the resurrection of our Lord. The skeptics and the suspicious with their explanatory theories are to be pitied.
L. P. Jacks, Unitarian preacher and editor of the Hubbert Journal, said that all of his theological training and study did not help him until he was over fifty, when he discovered the meaning of the resurrection to the New Testament. Here are his words:
When I resolved to read, without spectacles of one tint or another and not in fragments, the whole New Testament seemed to me covered, explained and held together by the saying, "If Christ be not risen from the dead, then is our preaching in vain." Christ, the vanquisher of death, the donor of immortality in virtue of His resurrection. . . . Eliminate the resurrection from the dead and you deprive the gospels, one and all, of their motive and unifying purpose. They would then cease to be gospels and become collections of more or less edifying matter for which it would be hard to find a specific name. Lofty ethics? Deeds of beneficence? Noble words and gestures? Yes, of course. But the ethics, deeds, words and gestures of an Immortal. What else would you expect from one who rose from the dead? All is in keeping.1
How unfortunate that this realization didn't come to Preacher Jacks when he could proclaim this truth with complete youthful vigor. Unwillingness to believe in the supernatural produces lame-duck preachers. To doubt this cardinal truth of the resurrection is to pull the teeth of the gospel.
The skeptic argues that it is a very suspicious thing that all the early written evidence is by people who believed in the resurrection. Actually it would have been much more remarkable had it been any other way. Who in those early years took time to unite a detailed account except the believers? Why would a non-Christian take notice of such a small band of followers of one called Jesus? 2
It is important to note that the resurrection was not expected. All the evidence that is available points to the fact that neither the Scriptures nor the words of Jesus had led the disciples to the belief that Jesus would rise again. Now Jesus did allude to the fact at different times, but never did it strike home to the disciples. The disciples were not anticipating the resurrection of Christ. A tremendous change took place in the mind and the outlook of these men over the crucifixion weekend.
The day of the cross left them in despair. He in whom they had set their hopes, He who was to be their King and break their Roman bondage the Messiah was dead. The glorious adventure in which they had engaged with Him had come to a bitter and shameful end, and so they sulked be hind barred doors "in fear of the Jews," petrified by the thought that they might have to share the same fate as their Leader.3
They feared the enmity of the priests and the wrath of the people. . . . Often they repeated the words, "We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel." . . . And the hearts of the disciples were so full of grief that they did not believe the angels' message or the words of Christ Himself.4
Because of their dejected spirit and unbelief, it is possible to dismiss right at the start any view that the idea for their future belief in the resurrection resulted from their own experience.
If there was no resurrection, what happened to change the disciples from remnants of a cause that was broken and crushed into power-filled men who could bid a nation to repent and be baptized in the name of Christ and could proclaim even the crucifixion itself to be a gospel?
It is a new thing in ghost stories which turns abject terror into flaming courage and cowards into heroes and martyrs. It drove ordinary, shrinking men, like ourselves, to go shouting a message to audiences as derisive as some men are today, a message punished with stripes and crosses and red-jowled beasts, yet persisting, indomitable, on and on, down the echoing centuries, until a pagan world was conquered by a handful of Jewish fishermen and a great Church raised its pinnacles to heaven to enshrine that message flung to the wind on Easter Sunday.6
Without the resurrection the historian has the problem of Jesus, no less than the problem of the church, to explain.
There is the evidence that the disciples became subject to the impact of Jesus shaping their intellects and hearts. This is proof from religious experience, and it is surrounded by difficulties and limitations that belong to such proof. But evidence it is. We think of the catastrophic revolution of Paul's life. An entire change of his relationship to God, to Christ, and to the world is seen (Gal. 1:12; Phil. 3:12). After Christ revealed Himself, there never was any doubt in the experiences of Christ's disciples, even the skeptic among them, Thomas himself, embraced the living Lord.
By gaining such a powerful Christian experience, the typical historic Christians conclude that their lives are the witness that their Lord is alive now. A similar experience is a good reason for a similar belief. It is because of this that we are not surprised to find that from Pentecost on, Christ's great disciples never believed in anything other than a Christ alive today. They were convinced of this by the power of their Christian experience.6
Oh, that every discouraged soul might be lifted up so that his eyes might behold the risen Lord, that they might hear His voice, "Go quickly, and tell His disciples that He is risen." Bid them not to look with speculation at the tomb of Joseph. Christ is not there. Look not to the empty sepulcher. Sorrow not as those who have no hope. Jesus lives, and because He lives, we too shall live.
The resurrection aims to show man his need and to teach his will. It desires not to satisfy mental curiosity or even to answer speculative problems but to answer an urgent life situation. It will solve man's most difficult questions, but it will do so by bringing him to God's offer and demand and by arousing in him a faith in which he alone can understand the meaning of his existence.7
May our own experience be as Dr. R. W. Dale's, of Birmingham, England, a glowing speaker, who was in deep concentration upon a resurrection message when the Holy Spirit impressed the truth anew upon him:
"Christ is alive" I said to myself, "alive!" and then I paused again. "Alive!" Can that be really true? Living as really as I myself am? I got up and walked about repeating: "Christ is living! Christ is living!" At first it seemed strange and hardly true, but at last it came upon me as a burst of sudden glory; yes, Christ is living. It was to me a new discovery. I thought that all along I had believed it; but not until that moment did I feel sure of it. I then said; "My people shall know it; I shall preach about it again and again until they believe it as I do now." 8
REFERENCES
1. S. M. Zwemer, The Glory of the Empty Tomb (Fleming H. Revell Co.. London and Edinburgh. 1947), pp. 52, 53.
2. James Martin, Did Jesus Rise From the Dead? (Association Press, New York, 1956), p. 30.
3. Ibid., p. 67.
4. Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (1898), p. 794.
5. lan Macpherson, The Burden of the Lord (New York, Abingdon Press, 1955), p. 26.
6. George A. Gordon, The Great Assurance (The Pilgrim. Press, 1910), pp. 12, 13.
7. White, op. cit., p. 794.
8. A. W. W. Dale, Life of R. W. Dale (New York, 1889), pp. 642, 643.
