Marcii, 1942
THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NES S Implications of the Resurrection B REAT TRUTHS that a^e stum- blingblbcks to the natural man are nevertheless the v e r y foundations upon which the confidence By H. A. IRONSIDE* Chicago, Illinois
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found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if 'so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is-vatn; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only vve have hope in Christ, we, are of all men most miserable’*“ (1 Cor. 15:12-19). I In these ,verses the Holy Spirit de velops for us and vigorously defends
this great fundamental truth of Chris tian testimony. Some }n Corinth were denying the physical resurrection of mankind generally. To them it seemed impossible that the dead should be brought again to life, but Paul shows ; that to deny the resurrection of man kind necessarily involves the denial o f Christ’s resurrection. If He has indeed been raised, and apart from ■, this, fact there .would be no gospel to preach, why then should any ques-1 tion the power of God to bring back from, the dead the millions who have died through, all the millenniums o f earthly history? Surely He who could create a uni verse out of nought and who brought our physical bodies into existence go marvelously in the first place could resuscitate them even after they had dissolved away into their chemical elements! The miracle of each re turning spring bears witness to this. .. As one looks out upon the apparently lifeless trees of winter, he might well question the possibility that verdant groves would again dot the landscape, but in some strange, mysterious way the trees are enabled to draw from the earth the life-giving sap with all its chemical elements w*ich causes leaveg, flowers, and fruit soon to ap pear. Surely if one had never seen this miracle performed, he would come to the conclusion the first time that Win ter spread its blanket over the. earth, ’that all things green and loveiy had disappeared forever. But in a very., ¡short time he would find that his rea soning was based upon false premises. Bodily Resurrection t Our faith today is based on facts as real as the observed processes of nature. There are those who teach to day that our Lord Jesus never came out of the grave in His material body. They admit His continued existence in spirit, but deny His physical resurrec tion. But there can be no question as to the testimony of holy Scripture, There We learn that our blessed Lord arose from the dead;in the Very body in which He had suffered and died for our sins, though changed in a most wohderful way. Nevertheless, it. was a real; .material, human body, and • we know that it bore in the palms of the hands the print of the nails. There was still the mark where the Roman spear had pierced His side, [ Continued on Page 117]
of the spiritual man is b u i 11, for “faith gives the assurance of that for which we hope, and convinces us of the reality of the unseen.” Of course, this is only true when our hopes are b a s e d upon the testimony o f ' the Word of God. .i That Word ' i s , forever settled in heaven, and, like God who gave it, the Word is unshakable. Men may cavil or quibble regarding its teach ings, but “what if some did not be lieve? shall their unbelief make the faith of ;God without effect?” It is written in, the prophets, “He . . , will not call back his words” (Isa. 31:2). The reverent Christian will therefore accept without question what has been revealed in Scripture, even though it may be beyond his powers of com prehension. ] When Festus, the Roman governor of Caesarea, was explaining his per plexity concerning Paul’s case to King 1Agrippa, he expressed his wonder that the accusers'of the apostle had noth ing definite to bring against him, “but had certain questions against him of their own superstition and of one Jesus, which was dead,, whom Paul affirmed to be alive” (Acts 25:19). This to Festus was such a manifest absurdity that he thought it hardly worth considering. He evidently knew that Jesus had died. It was a matter commonly reported, and he accepted that as truth, but-that any sane man could- believe that J e s u s was alive again seemed to the cynical Roman utterly absurd and ridiculous. And yet the entire superstructure of Chris tianity rests on this great fact. Christ’s Resurrection— And Ours .1 purpose, noting several implica tions drawn from the truth of Christ’s resurrection, as set forth, not in the four Gospel accounts, but' elsewhere in the.Word of God. In the well-known resurrection chapter (1 Cor. 15) we are told: “Now if Christ be. preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrec tion of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is. Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith .is also vain. Yea, and we are
' l^ustor. Moody M emorial Church and a 'speaker at the Torrey Memorial Bible Con ference o f the Bible Institute o f Los Angeles .
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