"I AMTHE RLSURRLCTION, AND THE LIFE: HE THAT BELIEVETH IN ME. THOUGH HE WERE DEAD.YET SHALL HE LIVE: ANDWHOSOEV R LIVETH AND BEUEVETH IN ME SHALL NEVER DIE- BELIEVEST THOUTHIS?" JNO-
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APRIL, 1946
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• What’s the answer? • Is there any real evidence that the Bible is inspired? • How can I be sure that my choice of a vocation will be the right one? • How may I obtain God’s guidance on specific problems? • What are the duties of a Christian young person in our modern society? • How can I know what amusements I should choose?
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Cover ‘ ‘The King’s Business has been an inspira tion to me, and has given me a greater love for Christian work. Some of the articles I read over more than once. The cover is beautifully pictured and colored, and adds richness to the.magazine. “ I have learned much from 'Dr. Talbot’s Question Box’." Omaha, Neb, Mrs. Emma Holliday Young People's Topics *T was deeply interested in the T. P. topics for February, particularly in ‘What do Jews Believe?’ and in ‘What Do Roman Catholics Believe?’ I always enjoy *Dr. Tal bot’s Question Box’, and the Devotional Readings.” Paterson, N. J. F. Dadley Junior King's Business “ It will be fine if you can continue to have the Junior King's Business on just one sheet of the magazine. It Is splendid to be able to cut out this page, and pass it on to a Junior; this does not hurt the magazine, and it, too, can be passed on.” Des Moines, la. Miss Kittle Bolton “ I was particularly interested In the Christmas story in the Junior King's Busi ness section. These are always good, and I like to keep them.” Wilmington* Del. Herbert B. Wood Bible Book of the Month “ My thanks for Dr. Hubbard’s Bible les son in your King's Business. I find it so helpful in studying the Word, and hope it will continue throughout every book in both the Old and New Testaments.” Po/tland, Ore. Mrs. H. V. Anderson “ I received the King's Business this morn ing, and must tell you that I greatly appre ciate the new department by Dr. Hubbard in the study of the books of the Bible. It will give us who are at home a great time of study all the year round, and will be a help in learning more of God’s Word.” Los Angeles, Calif. Mrs. J. Kuhl Compliments “ Just a note to let you know that T enjoy your magazine more than any Christian magazine I have ever read.” Los Angeles, Calif. Don Lockyer "The January and February numbers of the King's Business came, and I have read and enjoyed every word. They are very helpful.” Riverside, Calif. Marlon F. Gerow “ I like the King’s Business more than ever. Keep up the good work.” South Gate, Calif. Wilhelm Dege Articles “ I especially like Vance Havner’s ser mons.” El Cerrito, Calif. Mrs. W. Hull “ I don’t want to fail to get each month's King’s Business. Most excellent articles by Hubbard, Hambrook, and Witmer. Con gratulations!” Grand Rapids, Mich. Miss M. L. Morse King's Business—Biota “ Every issue of the magazine gets more interesting and instructive. May our Sav iour’s name be exalted and all your read ers be established in the faith.” Fancy Prsrtrie, III. Mrs. J. P. King
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ACROSS THE DESK of the Associate Editor Two members of God’s nobility vis ited in Southern California this month, both of them nearing the fourscore- year mark. Both began their minis try early, and now look back on nearly sixty years of fruit-filled service. They are William L. Fettingill and Peter W. Philpott. A radio agent, in speaking of relig ious broadcasters who purchase time on the air, describes them as “soft touches” in the industry. Surely the lack of unity in religious programs is nothing short of utter stupidity.
T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S Published Monthly by ând Representing The Bible Institute of Los Angeles, Incorporated
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No. 4
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Copyright, 19^6, The King’s Business No part of this magazine may he reproduced without permission. CONTENTS: Resurrection Assurances, Louis T . Talbot.: ............................................................. 147 Swallowed U p in Victory, V . Raymond Edman .................................................... 149 Poem, “ Ivory Palaces,” Martha Snell Nicholson ..................... .............................. 150 Editorially Speaking.......................................................................................................... 151 The Resurrection, Wallace Emerson... .............................................................’_____ 152 The Resurrection and History, William ]. Grant ................................................... 155 The Bible Book of the Month, John A. Hubbard ............... C ............................... 157 The New Dawn in the Land of the Rising Sun, Timothy Pietsch ...................... 158 A Crown of Thorns, Herbert Lockyer ...................................................................... 160 The Bible in the News................................................................................................... 161 Devotional Readings, lone Lowman...., ..................................................................... 162 Helpful Hints for Soul Winners, I. P. Bruechert ................................................... 165 The New Revised Standard Version of the New Testament.......................... 166 Junior King’s Business, Martha S. H ooker ............................................................. 167 Greek W ord Treasures, Bernard Romm ................................... I .............................. 169 Earth’s Treasure Heaps, Paul R. Bauman ................................................................ 170 Dr. Talbot’s Question Box........... ................................................................................ J 72 The Bible Institute on the Air.'................................................... ........................ ... 174 Biola Family Circle.............................................................. ¡75 Young People’s Topics, Walter L. W ilson ........................... .......................’........ 178 Sunday School Lessons............................................... .......______........... __ jg 2 Object Lessons for May, Elmer L. W ilder. .....................................§ .................. 190 SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION— “ The King’s Business” Is published monthly: 0ne yr»‘ ♦¿•00, two yrs.; 75 cents, six months; 20 cents, single copy. Clubs °*- three _or more at special rates. Write for details. Canadian and foreign subscriptions 2o cents extra. It requires one month for a change of address to become effective. Please send both old and new addresses. REMITTANCES—Payable in advance, should be made by bank draft, express, or post office money order payable to “ The King’s Business." Date of expiration will snow plainly on outside wrapper or cover of magazine. ADVERTISING—For information, address the Advertising Manager, 668 Hope ®treet,^Los Angeles 13, ^Calif^^or our^ eastern representatives, Religious 558 South Press Association, 51 No. 52nd St., Philadelphia 39, Pa. MANUSCRIPTS “ The King’s Business” cannot accept responsibility for loss or damage to manuscripts sent in for consideration. Entered as second-class matter November 7r"1938, at the Post Office at Los Angeles, California, under the Act of March 3, 1879. Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in the Act of February 28, 1925, embodied in IS^lfJs^k sec^0n 538, P. L. and R., authorized October 1, 1918, and November ADDRESS: The King’s Business, 558 So. Hope St., Los Angeles 18, Calif.
APRIL, 1946
U t
President of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles B EFORE a shopwindow in Cairo, Egypt, a small boy stood gazing at a picture of the crucifixion of Christ. A stranger approached and stood beside him. “What do you think the picture means?’’ the man asked him. The boy, a Christian, told him how Jesus came into the world at Bethlehem, and how after teaching who God was, became our Sin-Bearer and died on the Cross. The stranger asked a few questions and then went on his way. When he had walked a distance, he heard the lad calling him. On turning around, he saw that the boy was running toward him as fast as he could. When the boy caught up with the stranger, he panted, “Oh, Mister, I forgot to tell you that He rose again from the dead!” The little fellow had the conviction that he had left out of his story the crowning event. And he was right. If the seal that had been placed on the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea had remained unbroken, we would have had no Gospel, and death would have been to us an endless separation from God. “But now is Christ risen from the dead.” Christ is the “first-fruits of them that slept,” and of them that are asleep; and, because He lives, we, too, shall live. It is not my plan to deal with proofs of Christ’s res urrection. There is no other event more thoroughly au thenticated than the resurrection of Christ. The Word speaks of those “ to whom . . . he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertain ing to the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). It is always stimulating to faith to dwell on those “infallible proofs,” but for our present study, we present four great facts that are assured to believers by the resurrection of Christ.
David, by the pen of inspiration, wrote in the six teenth Psalm that the flesh of Christ would not see corruption; and Peter appealed to this ancient prophecy of the Holy Scripture to support his argument concern ing the resurrection of Christ (Acts 2:27; 13:35). Thus it is clear that the Old Testament Scriptures testify to Christ: to His character, His ministry, His death, and His resurrection. Now, with Christ risen from the dead, these Scrip tures stand as certified truth. But if Christ is not risen from the dead, then they are not true. Hear the triumphant words of Scripture: “But now is Christ risen from the dead” (1 Cor. 15:20). This fact sets the seal of God upon the truth of all of the Scrip tures, including promises fulfilled and those that are yet to be realized. Somebody has counted the promises made by God to man, as recorded in the Word of God, and has found them' to number more than ten thousand. There are covenants and promises well nigh unlimited in their scope; there are promises of the forgiveness of sins; there are promises of the creation of a new heart and of help in time of trouble; there are promises for this life and for the life to come; there are promises of
The Divine Origin and Authority of the Scriptures The greatest question of the hour with many is this: “ Is the Bible the Word of God?” The resurrection of Christ furnishes that knowledge and establishes that fact. Hundreds of years before Christ came into the world, the Holy Spirit drew portraits of the Person and ministry of the Son of God. One of the disciples of John the Baptist said of Christ: “We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write.” This we know: all the writers of the New Testament demonstrated that Jesus was He of whom all the prophets gave testimony. They also quoted a great many Old Testament passages to prove that fact. The Lord Jesus Himself, after His resurrection, ih speaking of His passion, said unto them: “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were writ ten in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their under standing, that they might understand the scriptures, And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it be hoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day” (Luke 24:44-46).
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Heaven and Immortality and of the recognition in Heaven of loved ones who have gone on before; there are prom ises of glad reunions in the city of God, and of many mansions which the Lord our God has gone to prepare for those who trust in Him: all guaranteed by the resur rection of Christ from the dead. The Eternal Deity of Jesus Christ In plain statements, Jesus proclaimed His oneness with God the Father. For example, He declared: “This is life eternal; that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent” (John 17:3). If you want to see the deep suggestiveness of that state ment, put another name in place of the name of Jesus. Let it read like this: “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Simon Peter, whom thou hast sent.” One recoils at the thought of associating any human name in this way. But there is no revulsion of the soul from the assertion made by Jesus. He not merely associated Himself with the Father; He also plainly affirmed that He was and is God. He said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). Yes, and further, Jesus Christ accepted the homage of the soul, homage that alone belongs to God. When men bowed down to worship Paul, the apostle said: “Why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you” (Acts 14:14, 15). However, Thom as cried, “My Lord and my God,” and Jesus accepted the worship, telling Thomas that he was “blessed” for thus worshiping. Remember, too, that Jesus placed Himself in the center of the Trinity when He commanded His disciples to go and baptize believers, in the “name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Jesus also declared Himself as being absolutely es sential to the salvation of the soul, when He said, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life” (John 3:36). Suppose I believe on the Father, but not the Son of God. Then, “He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). Jesus Christ changed the very structure of sin itself. Did you ever notice that while the Old Testament says that sin is this, and sin is that, and declares, “ the soul that sinneth, it shall die,” Jesus Christ said, “tie that believeth . . . shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16)? Thus the sin—unbelief in Christ as Saviour—that had not expressed existence until Christ came, became the one great damning sin after His coming. Remember how Christ said to believers: “I will send him [the Holy Spirit] unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin . . . because they believe not on me” (John 16:7-9). When one places these passages of Scripture, and many others, side by side, one is faced with but one conclusion: Jesus Christ was either the world’s greatest religious impostor, or He was the eternal Son of the eternal God. How are we to know which of these alternatives is true? The resurrection of Christ is the assured answer. Paul proclaimed in Romans 1:4 that Jesus Christ was “ declared to be the Son of God with power . . . by the resurrection from the ■dead.” When the scribes and Pharisees charged our Lord with speaking blasphemy, because He had claimed one ness .with the Father, His answer was: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John-2:19),
These words He spoke of His body (John 2:21). His resurrection, then, was the test of the truth of His claims to deity, and on the third day after His death, He demonstrated that He was the eternal Son of the eternal God. Once again, when the Jews said, “Master, we would see a sign from thee,” the Lord replied, “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:38-40). Thus our Lord staked His deity and sonship on His resurrection. This is the reason Christianity Has the power of God. Mohammed is dead; Buddha is dead; Confucius is dead; other religious leaders are dead. Jesus Christ alone is eternally alive, and being alive, He has assured forever that all the claims He made for Himself were the truth of God, and that He Himself is God. The Sufficiency of His Sacrifice The price of man’s redemption was the blood of Christ. But how do we know the sacrifice was sufficient to expiate sin? The answer is the empty tomb. However sincere the Lord Jesus Christ may have been, however holy in His conduct, however willing He was to lay down His life for us, if, after all, death had held Him under its power, then it is manifest that His death could not expiate our sin. If He could not recover His own soul and body from death and the grave, then He could not recover ours. The spectacle of a dead Christ has in it nothing of hope for sinners. If Christ had not risen, His life and death would have been, for those who knew Him, no more than a precious and a tragic memory—a memory that would not have warranted any sin-burdened soul in saying, “His death atoned for my sins; His blood redeemed me.” There is a beautiful passage in the Gospel of John, in which our Lord tells us: “I am the good shepherd, . . . and I lay down my life for the sheep . . . No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:14, 15,18). The Greek word translated “ lay down” may properly be rendered “ to pay down.” The death of Christ was not the involuntary sacrifice of His life, as a good shepherd might give his life in fighting wild beasts in the defense of his flock. No! No! It was the voluntary giving up of His life, by laying it down as a price paid for our redemption. This is exactly what He did. A certain Oriental custom well illustrates what the Lord Jesus Christ did in His work of redemption—of “ buying back” those who were enslaved to sin. In the market place in Bible lands it is customary for the purchaser and seller to bargain back and forth to de termine the price of an object offered for sale. The buyer lays his coins before the owner, and only when the seller picks up the money—literally, lifts the price, signifying his full satisfaction with the price paid—is the transaction recognized as complete. He was “ de livered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). Jesus paid down His life, and God, by raising Him from the dead, pledged that the price had been accepted. Is it not plain that, without the resurrection of Christ from the dead, we are yet in our sins? Is it not equally plain, that if God raised Him from the dead, then God has accepted His great sacrifice, as being sufficient to justify the ungodly? (Continued on Page 15i)
APRÏL, 1946
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V. Raymond Edman, Ph. D.
President of Wheaton College, Wheaton, HL
D EATH is an enemy, dark, deep, determined, and despicable. To be sure, to the child of “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” (Psa. 116:15). While it is true that to be “absent from the body” is to be “present with the Lord,” nevertheless to those who remain behind with empty and aching hearts, death is an enemy. With im perious disdain for our feelings or fears, with no respect for age or sta tion in life, death forces his way into our homes. Few households have es caped his terrors, and those have been spared but temporarily. rpHE DISCIPLES of our Lord knew -*- the defeat of death. They had re joiced exceedingly in their Lord and Master. They had heard His call be side the sea, in the little villages of Galilee, at the counting table, in the open fields by day, and in the upper room by night. They had gladly, un reservedly, left their all to follow Him, for was not He the Messiah for whom their fathers had long waited? Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom of God among men, and they were to be fore most in that Kingdom. The tragic events of Gethsemane, the palace of Caiaphas, the judgment seat of Pilate, the Via Dolorosa, Golgotha and the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, had been a tremendous shock to them. Their faith was left reeling; they were writhing with pain of heart; their hopes were crushed. “We trusted” said they, “that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel” (Luke 24:21). But He was dead. This was complete failure. TVTARY of Magdala, perhaps more than others, }iad occasion to re gard His death as an utter defeat. She had come to know Him in days of the utmost human need, when, possessed of evil spirits, she had been held in a bondage more cruel than that of any merciless taskmaster. There was no depth to the depravity of the demons, who tortured her distraught soul and tormented body beyond description. There was no deliverance by human means, no physician with the Balm of Gilead, no human understanding of
her plight, no rest within or without, until one blessed day the powers of darkness within her heard the rebuke o the Light of the World. At one single and simple command of His lips, they had taken a precipitous flight, leaving her weak, fainting, but in her right mind. Who can measure the profundity of Mary’s appreciation for the deliverance brought to her by Jesus of Nazareth? TWTARY followed Jesus in His teach- ing and healing itinerary, to min ister unto His needs and, of course, to others, and without doubt everywhere to give testimony to His saving and keeping power. Only the soul that has been delivered from the brutal bondage of Beelzebub can begin to sense the gratitude of Mary’s spirit and the attachment of her heart to the Lord Jesus Christ. But now He was dead, and, with the other Mary, she sat over against His sepulcher, to weep out her heart until weariness exhausted her body. Death! Defeat! Darkness!
D Y HIS tomb Mary watched until the setting of the sun, until the silver trumpets in the temple area announced the beginning of a new day in the gathering darkness. Then it is quite likely that she wended her weary way to some home in Bethany, which lay outside the city walls, for the gates of the City of David closed at sunset. Un doubtedly, she and others went over the details of the disaster t h a t had developed so suddenly: the murderous anger of the priesthood, the treachery of Judas, the kiss under olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane, the false witness before the Sanhedrin, the cal low cruelty of the indifferent Pilate, the unspeakably brutal scourging by the pitiless Roman soldiery, the buffetings with hands, the spitting into that holy face, the Cross under which the Son of God had fallen, the nails in His hands and feet, the mercy and grace of His first words to His murderers, the aw ful cry of utter desolation in the dark ness, the committal of His spirit to God thé Father.
God, death has lost its terrors, for
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F r THEIR minds, they reviewed the removal of the remains from the Cross, the washing away of the blood, the hasty preparation of the body be cause of the brevity of the hour, the wrapping of that form in linen with what spices could be quickly procured, the last touch of tenderness, the last kiss upon the forehead, bathed with their tears. Mary followed again the slow, heart-crushing retirai from the tomb, the rolling of the stone into its place, the sad watch beside the sepul cher until nightfall. Her Lord was dead. She knew the deepest, most crushing defeat T HE MORNING after the Sabbath had come, Mary had anticipated its dawn by hasting to the Garden to per form some act of appreciation and af fection for her deceased Lord. He was not there! The stone was rolled away, the sepulcher silent and empty. No one could tell her where they had taken Him. In anguish of spirit, she wandered alone in the Garden. The bright rays of the morning sun of the first day of the week brought no light to her darkened spirit. Her Lord was dead, and His body was gone. T HEN SHE was conscious that some one approached. He was no sol dier, for he carried neither implement of warfare nor insignia of authority. Who could he be but the keeper of the Garden, and who else would know better than he whither the body of her Lord had been transferred? “Tell me where thou hast laid him,” she cried, in tears, “and I will take him away” (John 20:15). F OR TEARS and tragedy there was a single word: “Mary.” Startled from her sorrow, terrified from her tears, Mary was stabbed awake in her spirit by a familiar intonation of her name. It could not be; it could not be; but it was, it was He! The Lord Jesus Himself, in person, in flesh, in reality: not a shadow, not a dream, not a vision. Himself! Her Lord and Master! The same eyes, the same voice, the same figure; the same ef fect upon her overflowing heart—yet all was different. Instinctively, intui tively, joyously, she stretched forth her hands to touch Him, to cast her self at His feet, to hold Him that He might never leave again. It was He! He was not dead, but alive! In the twinkling of an eye, death had disap peared, because it had been swallowed up in life. It was He! Alive! In Person! rpHUS WILL it be with all of God’s -*- people in that day when the trump of God shall sound, when the dead in Christ are raised first, and we who are alive and remain are caught up to gether with them to meet the Lord in the air. (1 Thess. 4:16-13), What a
DEMON-ENERG IZED CULTS
AVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVtVAVAVAVAVra
IVORY PALACES For three and thirty years they stood. Empty and eloquent Of Him who laid His glory down And went, obedient, To die for sins of you and me. He must have turned His eyes At times in homesick longing toward His mansions in the skies. 1 think the doors were never sealed, But partly left ajar, And something of Him lin* gered there Though He had gone so far. Perhaps the angels peered within Each waiting, empty room, And whispered of strange things, the Cross, Gethsemane, the tomb. And sometimes God Himself went there To think about that One Who never had been far from Him, His well beloved Son. Now in His palaces the light Sh in e s out from eve ry room. And angels never cease their song, ‘‘The Son of God is home!”
TT WAS at the beginning of the pres- ent dispensation that the greatest teacher in the Christian Church, after its Founder, warned that in the latter times there would be departure from the faith occasioned by seducing spir its and doctrines of demons. Through out the history of the rise of religions from the first of time, such has been manifest; but in a peculiar way it has characterized the Christian era. One of the greatest of such move ments has been Mohammedanism. Concerning the founder, it has been stated by his biographers that he was subject to cataleptic seizures, in which “he fell to the ground like one intox icated or overcome by sleep,” and at times, under the control of some power which possessed him, he “roared like a bull.” Mrs. Eddy, the originator of so- called Christian Science, was subject to attacks, which “resembled convul sions; she fell headlong to the floor, writhing and screaming; at other times she became rigid like a cata leptic.” Said one psychical research er: “There seems no sufficient reason to doubt her explicit statement that she was inspired; it is only the source of the inspiration that we presume to question.” Mrs. White, the prophetess of Sev enth Day Adventism, claimed re peatedly to have been caught up into Heaven, where she saw visions which add to and contradict the Scriptures. Joseph Smith suffered when a lad from epileptoid seizures; later he be came a crystal-gazer, and by means of a “peep-stone” claimed to have dis covered the golden plates from which Mormonism was evolved. Spiritism still requires of its medi ums that they come under the power of the “control” which furnishes their inspiration and revelations. All of the foregoing, which are a few of the more prominent of the cults which (with the exception of Moham medanism) are doing business in this land, sprang from minds that were overpowered and instructed by some force outside of themselves. All de pend for their individuality of doc trine on something which is contrary to the teaching of the Word of God. How careful, in these days of per version of truth, should every child of God be lest he yield himself to some influence professing to be of God, but which he has failed to test according to the divine command (1 John 4:1, 2). From an editorial in the Alliance Weekly by Rev. John A. MacMillan. Used by permission.
rush of hallelujahs, what unspeakable joy at the unveiling of His face, what glad reunion with those whom we for a while laid away in some quiet, ob scure “God’s acre,” whom we commit ted with aching hearts, awaiting the resurrection morn when the shadows shall flee away. Like Mary of Mag- dala, we have sat over against their sepulcher, with saddened spirit and overflowing eyes. But here they are, alive, eager, strong, together with us seeing the face of Him who was crowned with thorns and who is now King of kings and Lord o f lords. “Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:54),
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the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ the absolute pre-eminent place among all the religions of the world. No other world leader has ever risen from the dead and none ever will! The reason behind Christ’s resurrection is His supreme deity. He rose because of Who He is—in deed and in truth, the Son of God. A recent study of resurrection facts yielded great personal profit and an abundance of teaching material to the writer. We very earnestly recommend the same searching of the Scriptures to our readers, especially to those who have a preaching and teaching min istry. -i r ★ Abolish Easter? ATO, we’re serious. Think now, would it not be more to the glory of God, and to the unadulterated honor of Christ, if this modem celebration of Easter were abolished? Not that we object to the honoring of the risen Christ. In fact, our earnest, and all- consuming desire is that He should re ceive more and more honor. But does. Easter do this? This Easter, open your eyes and look around you. What do you see? Is there any sincere worship of a resur rected Son of God, or humble pledge to allow the risen Christ to rule? No, verily, that is not what we see. Rather, there are pride and extreme selfish ness. There is gratification of sensual desires. There are rabbits, decorated eggs, new hats. May God forgive us! We are making a mockery of this day. You know, of course, that the New Testament does not command that any one Easter day be celebrated. In too many churches, because it is so widely emphasized on Easter, the marvelous and all-transcendent truth of the res urrection is omitted the rest of the year. Some of God’s servants have come to believe that the modern ob servance of Easter is a trick of Satan himself. What then is God’s plan? Would He have Easter abolished? Yes, I sin cerely believe it should be. At the same time God would call to our at tention the fact that He has ordained fifty-two Easters for each year. Yes, for that is the purpose of the Lord’s Day (Sunday): to commemorate the resurrection. He purposes that His children should every seven days gath er around the risen Christ, where our hearts may truly exu> Jn the pres ent and eternal implicatio/y of the res urrection.
Unanswerable Proof T^VERY Bible student knows that the -^preaching and the teaching of the early Church leaders, as set forth in the first chapters of the Book of Acts, placed the preponderance of their em phasis on the doctrine of the Resur rection. Many have felt that this was the divinely ordained antidote for the skepticism and unbelief of all ages. A demonstration of the practical value and power of this doctrine was seen in a recent Incident. We were on a visit to a large Midwestern city where there is being erected what is supposed to be an architectural mas terpiece in the form of a temple to a new religion—the Baha’i world faith. It seemed to our classically unedu cated eyes a structural monstrosity. It is quite a showplace with all the trimmings; guides are provided for the edification of visitors. Each guide is also a purveyor of “new truth” to those who are shown through the buildings. We were conducted Into the large and, as yet, unfinished high-domed central room and there given a small dose of Baha’i doctrine. This dealt with a series of personages from Per sia, purportedly new vehicles of God’s revelation. We were told that, al though Jesus Christ was a means of revelation, He had been superseded by this new faith, which was God’s plan. The order, to their way of think ing,. was: Judaism, Christianity, Mo hammedanism, Hinduism, and the final revelation, Baha’ism. We inquired whether the guide rec ognized that Christ was different from the other persons he had referred to because He rose from the dead. “What,” I asked, “ does Baha’ism do with the truth of the resurrection?” He replied quickly, “Of course they recognize this, but as a spiritual resurrection.” We persisted, that this was not a spiritual resurrection, but a physical one, for did not Christ show His hands and His side, and did He not invite the disciples to handle Him and see? Did He not eat a piece of fish and a honeycomb before them? And did not more than five hundred testify to the truth of these things? Here the guide, usually so voluble and ready with answers for everything, fell silent. When he spoke again, he admitted that they did not accept this revelation, did not believe the story, in short, that the truth of the resur rection was to them a lie. Of course it is. You must reject the revelation unless you want to give
“ Another” T ITERALLY tons of comfort and en- couragement are bound up in the meaning of that one word. Look, it is the night before the day of that cruel- est deed: the crucifixion. The Lord and thé disciples are in the upper room, and as the latter realize finally that their precious Lord is really to leave them, they are unutterably sad. And the loving Christ, burdened though He is, is solicitous for the sorrowing hearts of the eleven. What can be said to alleviate their sorrow, and assuage their grief? Words come from His lips, words of life, words of comfort. He tells them of future mansions in the skies, and of greater works which they shall do. Then He promises them “another” Comforter. What a wealth of mean ing is manifested in the choice of just that adjective! The coming Comfort er is to be “another”—One just like the Lord has been to them. Our Lord could use the common Greek word for “another,” but the one He utters is the one which links forever the iden tity of the Holy Spirit with Himself. This One, promised and soon to ap pear, is to take up this matter of com forting just where the Lord is about to lay it down. It is a most marvelous thought. He, the Spirit of God, is meant to be to all of God’s children just what the Lord Jesus was to His disciples. Do we need wisdom? The Holy Spirit has all wisdom. Do we need strength and power? He, being God, is omni potent. Will He understand our prob lems? He is “another” Comforter, just like the Lord Jesus. And He dwells not in some far off heaven, but He is as close to me, and to every other Christian, as is the beat of my own heart. It wouldn’t be hard, you say, to live the- Christian life if the Lord Jesus were really here in person. If we, like His disciples, could reach out and touch Him! If we could actually sit at His feet and talk over our prob lems! Isn’t that what the disciples did? Ah, my friend, remember that there is sent to us “another” Com forter—one like our Lord, who is di vinely intended to be all to us that the Lord Jesus Christ was to His disciples and who will bring to our remembrance all that He taught when He was here on earth. And we may day by day, by actual experience, learn the blessed truth of our Lord’s "another” Comforter.
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S OME facts are so significant that without them a whole series of events seem pointless. Such a fact is the resurrection of our Lord, Th« Resurrection of Our Lord— Is It a Fact? Many today hail the resurrection of Christ as a fact, but when inquiries are made as to what it is that is risen from the dead, we find, strangely enough, it is not the bodily resurrection of Christ to which they ,refer, but the resurrection of the soul or the spirit. They think that Christian doctrine is satisfied, and that mankind has a proper and an authoritative hope for a general resurrec tion of the just, if we admit the spiritual resurrection of Christ. They do not feel that they have surrendered their first line of trenches, and indeed the key redoubt of Christian doctrine, when they surrender the bodily resur rection of Christ. They do not realize perhaps that a spiritual resurrection may, or may not be, a fact. Cer tainly it is not a fact upon which can be built any solid body of thinking. It may be a hope, a conjecture, a desire of the heart, but certainly not a fact, in that it is a demonstrable actuality.
soldiers on this duty r e l a t e an impossible tale on the theft of the body they were assigned to guard. And, wonder of wonders, the same tale of the disappear ance of His body was related by the timid, fugitive, and despondent disciples of Jesus, most of whom did not even have the courage to appear at the crucifixion. That a stone of this size could be removed without waking the guards is something of a problem in evidence. However, there are two greater problems. First, if the body were stolen, why was it not brought back by com mand of the authorities who wanted it in the first place? The majesty of Rome had been flouted in the breaking of the seal and the soldiers of the empire made a laugh ingstock by humble disciples who, up to that time, had not been accused of grave robbing proclivities. The second problem is the greater one: Why should the disciples take the dead body of their Lord from the friendly tomb of Joseph of Arimathea? What possible motive could there be for the removal of the body from this place of dignity? If the body were taken from this place, then why, in the later history of the Church, say
during the apostolic age, was not some peculiarly holy spot, the full significance of which was known only to the elite, identified as the actual burying place of our Lord? That there is no such spot is significant. The Church had no interest whatever in any burying place of the Lord Jesus until after its combination with the State in the time of Constantine, when Elena, Constantine’s mother, attempted to discover the spot where Jesus was buried. The Church began then to make of th I have gone past graveyards all of my life; I have seen individuals die; but never yet have I seen a spirit rise from the dead. While it may be characteristic of a spirit, certainly I Would not undertake to base any widespread conclusions on any such thin material as a spiritual resurrection of anyone at any time or at any place. Of Paul’s statements with regard to Christ’s being seen alive, and the many “ infallible proofs,” the above-mentioned school of thought would have us believe that what is meant is that the spirit of Jesus is more visible to mortals than the spirit of any other individual. While I do not deny that this could be so, I insist that if the Christian Church takes this attitude, it retreats from an impregnable position to a Bataan peninsula that is extremely in defensible. Certainly nothing like this was spoken of by Paul, or anyone else, as an infallible proof, to say nothing of many infallible proofs. The Facts of the Death of Jesus If we examine the facts of Jesus’ death and burial, we find a clear and circumstantial account. He is pro nounced dead by men who might be thought to be ex pert in such matters. To make His death doubly sure, a spear is thrust into His side, producing blood and serum— something of a proof in itself that death has already taken place. Jesus is taken by His friends to a rich man’s sepulcher, one far better than anyone might suppose available to a poor man. A huge stone is placed in front of the sepulcher. On the following morning, a Roman seal is placed upon it, and a guard stationed there. The A PR IL , 1946 153 The events supposed to be explained by the theory need only to be studied carefully for one to utterly refute -fhe theory. There is a third theory of the resurrection which has been given fairly recent currency, namely, the “hallucina tion theory.” Emil Ludwig, in his Son of Man at the close of the chapter on the crucifixion, alludes to this theory When he states: “The women who know Jesus, in their waking dreams, think that once more they see Him walking among them.” This makes the resurrection of Jesus a matter of mass hallucination, a state brought about by over-wrought nerves and fervent hopes. If it was an hallucination, then, of course, the body of Jesus was still reposing in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. When the early Church claimed that Jesus had risen, the only answer that was necessary was for these persons to produce His body or bones. This matter of hallucination is worthy of notice from a purely psychological standpoint. Apparently it af fected people who had no expectation of seeing Jesus again. The apostles frankly confessed, to their own shame, that this was so in their case. They had paid scant attention to Hi's words, or had so little comprehen sion of what He was talking about that they thought His death was the finale. The Gospel writers have not only stated this, but every implication of their writings seems to be consistent with it. So then when we are told that "above five hundred brethren” saw Him alive after His resurrection, we are dealing with a spontaneous hallucinatory experience, quite unusual in that it was not induced by the leaders of the group, or by any ex pectation they had. Not only that, but the hallucination lasted for forty days, and subsequent to it, never once did any of the apostles suspect that they had been vic timized by their own imaginations, or* by mass hysteria. The Body of Jesus Must Be Disposed Of The most meaningful fact in the series of facts mentioned by the Gospel writers, and by the alleged explanations, is this: If Jesus did not rise in the body, then the body was somewhere available to the malice of His enemies. It must be understood by the simplest, that the men who wanted Him to die in the first place had infinitely more reason for wanting Him to stay dead. It is one thing to kill a man who might be a prophet; it is exceedingly embarrassing to have the dead man come to life, and dispel forever all suspicion as to his sanctity or his relationship to God. Pilate was not a theologian; he had condemned Jesus only in order to placate the Sadducean leadership. Blasphemy against Jehovah had no juridical signi ficance in Roman law; Pilate yielded only because of political pressure. Having committed Jesus to death, he could not afford to be careless, lest he stand convicted of a greater political blunder than his first, namely, the killing of an inspired leader and prophet in Israel with all the possibility of a religious uprising under the leadership of the Man he had killed. The Sadducees and Caiaphas had many good reasons for wanting Jesus to stay dead. The first was based upon their theory about fhe life beyond. Dead-men did not live again; there was no hereafter according to the Sadducean teaching. The second was personal, They , had been in cluded in Jesus’ fierce and accurate denunciation of the whole leadership of the Jewish people. Jesus had also quite completely made a fool of all those who had at tempted to trip Him by the clever devices that would have worked on an ordinary man. There was the humilia tion of a personal defeat that made Caiaphas desirous of keeping dead the Man whom he had killed. The third was financial. Jesus had twice cleansed the temple of its obnoxious merchandising, and each time He had un doubtedly cut into the revenue of the high priest and- his kinsmen. Finally, if the resurrection of Jesus were true, they stood convicted, not only of the murder of a prophet, but of the Son of God, since the resurrection authenticated what Jesus proclaimed Himself to be. No theft of a body, no hallucination on the part of Jesus’ disciples, no wandering of a sick and dying Jesus into any Judean household could have over-ridden the vengeance and malice of the high priest. If the body was available anywhere, he would have seen to it that it was restored to its original resting place, and again put under guard. Those who deny the bodily résurrection of Jesus must clearly account for the failure of the enemies of Jesus to produce that body when the early Church be gan to preach His bodily resurrection. Indeed they must explain why it was that Julian, who had all the docu ments at hand, in offering, 800 years later, to produce the proof that Jesus was Caesar’s subject, never once denied the resurrection of Jesus. Nor so far as I can find out, did Celsus, that most bitter and ingenious enemy of the Christian Church. The reason the high priest told the soldiers to spread the story that the body of Jesus had been stolen was clever enough to care for the situation at the moment. Could they have foreseen, however, that the Christian Church in time to come would take this one doctrine as its central theme while its enemies stood impotent to produce the body of Jesus and the people who stole that body, they would have thought many a time that they were not as intelligent as they had considered them selves. The Meaning of the Resurrection There are certain factors of Christian doctrine which by their very nature cannot be proven as facts in them selves, but must be accepted on the authority of other facts. The birth of Christ by its very nature cannot be proved. No man can prove his own paternity; it depends entirely upon the honesty of his mother, and perhaps circumstances that might prevent a paternity other than the one claimed. The significant fact of the resurrection is this: first, that it is a fact. We accept it on authority of the inspired Word of God. It has better attestation than any other MARVEL OF MARVELS 4 * Marvel of marvels, if I myself shall behold X With mine own eyes my King in His city of gold; Where the least of lambs is spotless white in the fold, Where the least and last of saints in spotless white is stoled, X Where the dimmest head beyond a moon is T aureoled. X 4 * O saints, my beloved, now mouldering to mould *4 in the mould, 4 * Shall I see you lift your heads, see your cere- 4 * ments unroll’d, See with these very eyes? who now in darkness and cold Tremble for the midnight cry, the rapture, the tale untold— 4 * The Bridegroom cometh, eometh, His Bride to T enfold! Christina Georgina Rossetti. X 4« ef* 4* 4* X
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