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March, 1944
THROUGH. DEATH TO GLORY [Continued from Page 85] and hopelessly beating our wounded fists and raising our hopeless cries against the bolted door of the living tomb. Intuitively, vie feel that the word “resurrection,” which occurs in thp Bible forty-one times, is not only one of the great words, but also one of the strongest. It is a word of victory; it is a word which swallows up weak ness, failure, suffering, loss, and death. It stands for a power that transcends the power of all known laws of na ture. It centers our thought in God who alone has power to raise the dead. It inspires hope and banishes fear. ■ Enemies Encountered When Christ came to earth, He did not come, primarily, to make u's mor ally good, but to deal_ with our basic heeds. Sin and death are man’s great est enemies. Broadly speaking, all our problems grow out of a relation to these two foes. Death is capital punishment for sin. It is also sin’s wages. “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). As suredly death is not desirable. If death were a thing to be wanted, would not the good people who are named in the Scriptures have longed for it? But what are the facts? Patriarchs, proph ets, and all o t h e r classes of men have borne witness to the undesirable ness of death. Jacob spoke mournfully of his go ing down into the grave: “And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go. dowy into the grave unto my son mourning” (Gen. 37:35). Moses would fain haye tarried long er among tne living: “I pray, thee, let me go over, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, tl>at goodly mountain, and Lebanon” (Deut. 3:25). Job used powerful language respect ing death: “Before I go whence I shall riot return, even to the land of dark ness and the shadow of death; A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as dark- riess” (Job 10:21, 22). Hezekiah wept, and pleaded for his life: “Then Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed unto the Lord, And said, Remember now, O Lord, I beseech t he e , h o w I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Heze kiah wept sore” (Isa. 38:2, 3). Indeed, Bildad uttered the general sentiment of the people of old when he termed death “the king of terrors” (Job 18:14). There is not a single eulogy of death to be iound in the holy Scriptures.
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•Yes, indeed, death has reigned over even the godly from Adam to Moses, from Moses to Christ, and from Christ to this present day. However, the mes sage of Christianity is still true that Christ has abolished death. Perhaps we can' explain this fact best by telling a story from the history of the West Indies. On August 1, 183?, the English Par liament decreed to abolish slavery in the West Indies, but the decree did not go into force until one year from that date.1During that year, the slave was still under the whip of his rnaster, and all went on as in the old slavery days, except that in the heart of every slave, there was* the forward look of expec tation and hope. At last the day drew near on which the Emancipation Act was to go into effect. It. was July 31, 1838. Twenty thousand Slaves met together in their little churches. As the evening ap proached, they put on white robes, and at eleven o’clock they went upon their knees and waited for one hour, with faces upturned. When the clock struck
Death was hated by good men as well as by those who were bad. Even our Lord Himself did not long to die. In fact, with “strong cryings and tears” He prayed that He might be saved out of death: “Who in the days Of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared” (Heb. 5:7). Thus our Lord Jesus Christ, the pa triarchs, the prophets, and all other men utter but one voice about death. They tell us death is an enemy, and that they abhor it! Bacon, in his essay on “Death” wrote: “Men fear death as children fear the dark.” / Liberty Provided What a glorious message, then, is the message of Christianity! Our Sav iour, Jesus C h r i s t , has “ abolished death, and hath brought life and im mortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10). But we can hear some one ask: “How can this be true? Do not Chris tians die, even as others do?”
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