APRÏL, 1946
149
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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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