April, 1941
T H E K I N O ’ S B U S I N E S S
126
Victory through the Victor By W. B. RILEY Minneapolis, Minnesota I T WOULD seem a providential thing that Christ was raised from the tomb at that season of the year minds of men a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence, and this takes the deepest root and is most discoverable in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls. It is an inherent hope!”
“We preach Jesus and His resur rection. Christianity lives, moves, and has its being in eternity. The God in whom we believe is from everlasting to everlasting. The Saviour in whom we trust has con quered death, bringing life and im mortality to light, showing us that corruption must put on incorrup tion, and the grave become the cra dle of endless life. Everything in the Christian confession is keyed to immortality and eternal blessed ness.” t. The Temporality o f Death But the text has also another sug gestion: “I am he that liveth, and was dead.” Death, then, is an episode, not an end. The Bible is perfectly clear upon that subject. When Jesus gives us the par able of Dives and Lazarus, He clearly affirms the fact that death does not end life. It simply effects a change in the manner and condition of life. Life, then, is as independent as it is ageless. It is not shut up to the narrow limits of threescore years and ten. It is •not confined forever to the homely scenes of the farm or the vision of the streets. The man who feels that death ends everything is necessarily dependent, and by the same necessity, a cringing, cowardly man. His happiness depends upon what treasures he can lay up here, upon what friends he can make here, upon what works he can accomplish here, upon what pleasures he can enjoy here. Whatever he undertakes is cursed with a fear that he may not live to finish it. That is just the reason that so many men are what we call time servers. They conduct their business in keeping with the spirit of the times. But the man who believes in the life Jesus Christ leads at the right hand of God—the life that is for evermore—is
when nature Itself expresses, in every springing blade and every unfolding bud and every bursting song, the resurrec tion thought. May the Spirit lead us all to the right understanding of these words of the risen Christ: “Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the. keys of hell and of death” {Rev. 1:17, 18). The Immortality o f Life Immortality has been one of the great themes of all the ages. There have been ho prophets, philosophers, or poets that have not discussed it. Christ, in our text, touches upon an inherent hope. One of our clearest thinkers has written: “The hope of the future life has i always nestled in the heart of the race, and found wings upon occa sion. When savages bury the weap ons and utensils with a . dead man in order that he may start with a full equipment, they believe that he is somewhere.” It is both significant and suggestive that this hope of the future life has been entertained alike by the ignorant and the enlightened, by the highly civi lized and the grossly heathenized. In all the great nations, and upon all the islands of the seas, wherever creeds have been formulated, and even where the cannibal never so much as dreamed he had a creed, this expectation of a fu ture existence has beep found playing a-certain part in restraining men from sin and inciting them to virtue; and yet, as one rises in the scale of civiliza tion, he does not lose this hope. Cicero wrote that to which we are even now compelled to assent: “There is, I know not how, in the
This thought was prominent also in Christ’s teaching. One needs only to run over a few of the most familiar passages of Scripture to realize the occasion for this claim. It was Jesus Christ who said: “What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mk^ 8:36). “If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell” (Matt. 5:30). “Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?” (Matt. 6:25). “I aim come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly”, (John 10:10). It was the same Lord who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Of Him, John wrote, “In him was life; and the life was the light o f men.” One of the proofs that John was not mistaken' in his vision when he spoke of it as the “ revelation of Jesus Christ” is in the fact that the One who appeared unto him “like unto the Son of man” and laid His hand upon him began im mediately to speak of this great theme of which He had so often spoken in the days of His earthly life. The resurrection of Christ best re veals His doctrine. While he was on earth He had said, “I am the resurrec tion, and the life.” When He cried from heaven, “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for ever more,” He was making good His mighty claims. Hie late Dr. Behrends said;
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