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T h e K i n g ’ s B u s i n e s s
April 1928
test of any jury or court on earth. If you could receive any testimony as conclusive, you must receive this. And when you have accepted it, you have got a basis for hope in the future. “ Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.” You buried your dead last year. You buried them in hope, because Christ arose. You have buried some of your dead aspira tions during the past year. It seems they have been bur ied. But there is a resurrection for them through Jesus Christ our Lord, if you will- trust in Him.
Someone led me into the city. I stayed there for two or three days, until the bright, spiritual light came. And then my eyes opened. I went into Arabia for a three years’ course o f study. And I have been serving this Lord and Master from that day to this.” A witness for Christ. Not only o f the resurrection, but of this great experimental fact— that He is risen. An everlasting present, that has in it all the past and all the future. The testimony in favor of the fact that Jesus Christ is risen is' so overwhelming that it would stand the
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Russellism and the Resurrection Body B y R ev . W . E. C lark Springfield, Mo.
S CARD setting forth the creed of Russellism, makes the following statement concerning the resur rection of Jesus Christ : “ We deny that He was raised in the flesh, ^ and challenge any statement to that effect as being unscriptural.” O f what use is even a perfect superstructure if it has an insecure foundation or no foundation at all? The Apostle Paul says in 1 Cor. 15:17, 18, “ I f Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also that, are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.” It goes without say ing that the resurrection which is so important is the resurrection understood and preached by the apostles. These people claim to believe in His resurrection, but say that it was only His spirit that was raised. W e read in Luke 24:36-46, that when Jesus appeared to the eleven, “ they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they beheld a spirit.” Now, if He was, indeed, a spirit only, they supposed just the right thing, and there is absolutely no meaning to the words which fol low. But He wanted to convince them that they were mis taken in their supposition and so He said to them, “ See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold me having.” The explanation offered by these people is that Jesus assumed a body for the time being, a make-believe body, to help the disciples believe that He was in existence in spirit. Here is another statement of Jesus, which the writer gave to one of the advocates o f this heresy, and to which no answer could be given:— John 2:18-22. “ The Jews ............. said unto Him, What sign showest thou unto us seeing thou doest these things? .Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews therefore said unto Him, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou, raise it up in three days? But he spake o f the temple of His body. When therefore He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He spake this; and they .sbelieved the Scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.” Now, I challenge anybody to show what it was which made them “ believe the word which Jesus had said,” if it was not that H e was raised in just the way that He here said H e would be raised. How could they have be lieved His word if the facts had not been according to His
word? And it was not until after His resurrection tha.t they remembered that He had said it; and, moreover, it was Himself who recalled it to their minds (see Luke 24. 44). Where was the sense in reminding them of what He had said to them, if His resurrection were not strictly according to His prediction? A ccording to the S criptures But it says that the disciples not only believed the word which Jesus had spoken about His resurrection, they also believed the Scriptures. And it is obvious that they could not have believed both unless the two had been in accord. And of course it was the Old Testament Scrip ture, for there was no other. Let us then look at some of the Scripture which the disciples came to believe about this matter after He was risen from the dead. Look at the first sermon preached after the coming of the Holy Spirit, Acts 2:14-36, especially verses 23-32. A fter referring to, His crucifixion and death, in verse 23, Peter declares the resurrection of Jesus in verse 24: “ Whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not possible that He should be holden of it.” (These people claim that the death of the body is the only, death there is. How, then, could there be any release from that death except the body was released?) Then Peter proceeds to show (verses 25-32) that it had been foretold by David that the Messiah should be raised from the dead, and he quotes from the 16th Psalm, “ Moreover, also, my FLESH shall rest in hope: because Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, NE ITHER wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to SEE CORRUPT ION .” Then Peter explains that these words could not have referred to David, because he was both dead and buried and his sepul cher was with them at that very time. Then he adds, “ Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him,that of the fruit o f his loins, ACCORD ING TO TH E FLESH , He would raise up Christ to sit on His throne; he seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ) that His soul was not left in Hades, neither did H IS FLESH see corruption.” But these people pretend to acknowledge that His flesh did not see corruption. They say it was removed from the sepulcher in some way, they know not h ow ; possibly that it passed off into gases. Well, is not that just what hap pens to a body when it corrupts ? Does not part of it pass into gases and the rest go to dust.?
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