man government, was exercised to prevent His body coming out of the grave. But they were not able to do so. After three days He appeared in His body to His disciples. What hap pened? They did not recognize Him immediately. Indeed, they thought He was an apparition, a spirit. But He began at once to convince them of His identity—to prove He was the same person whom they had seen die on the cross. How does He convince them? By proving to them His body was the same body. He says to them: ‘Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have’ (Luke 24:39). To Thomas He said: ‘Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing’ (John 20:27). He based His appeal for recognition on the fact that He was there in the same body. And when Thomas saw the body, the wounds, the scars, he cried, ‘My Lord and my God.’ The Lord went even further. He took a piece of fish and some honey and ate it before their eyes. Why? Be cause He needed food? No; but to convince them beyond the shadow of doubt that He was the same Lord, appearing to them in the identical body which they had seen mangled on the cross. Now since Christ has risen from the dead and ‘become the first fruits of them that slept,’ there is not the slightest doubt but that the believer’s body will be raised and vivified with new and eternal life.” Scroggie states: “Will there be any diiference between the present body and the resurrection body? Most def initely there will be. Identity does not require that the body be raised from the grave exactly as it was laid in it. If it did, that would not be a very pleasant anticipation for many. A person wants this present body, but he does not necessarily want it as it is. For example, one
far easier and much more logical for God to create an entirely new body from fresh dust of the earth, or of some other appropriate m a te ria l found elsewhere in His universe, than to search out the scattered dust of dead bodies and refashion them, and give them again to the myriad hosts of disembodied spirits who once pos sessed them. Now that view may sound plausible to some, but it will not require much thought to discov er how unsound it is. If this concep tion were true, one could hardly speak of a resurrection; for if that which has become dust does not rise, something new must take its place, and that is not resurrection. In that event there would be no conceivable reason why the Scripture should speak of the body coming forth from the grave. For it is not the soul and spirit that are interred, but the body, and only the body. Unless the body is raised there would be no resurrection, and the Scripture would create a grave misapprehension con cerning the whole matter. And sure ly no one is willing to go that far. But the Scripture leaves no room for doubt on this matter. It teaches di rectly and positively, not by infer ence only, that the spirit will neces sarily receive its own body again. Strauss wrote: “The believer is taught that Christ is the first fruits of them that sleep. That is to say, His resurrection is a sample and an assurance of the resurrection of the body. What kind of body did He have after His resurrection? Was it the same as the one which was put into Joseph’s new tomb, and that tomb sealed by the authority of the Roman government? What were the Roman government and the Jews—particu larly the Jews—so concerned about? Was it not His body? The one thing above all others which they would keep undisturbed was the burial place of the Lord. Every bit of pow er which could be exerted by the Jews, with the assistance of the Ro- 28
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