02.04. The Hope of the Saints

THE HOPE OF THE SAINTS. When the risen Lord finally bade adieu to his disciples on the eastern, slope of the Mount of Olives and disappeared behind the curtain of the clouds, he left behind him a great and inspiring hope. That hope not only changed the lives of the disciples who had followed him on the earth, but has changed the current of human history. It was that which made the saints of the apostolic age disdain threats, trials, hardships, poverty, prisons, scourgings, sword and fagot, and move steadily onward in the work of imparting to the world their own blessed hope. It was the assurance of a glorious immortality bestowed by Christ, and in fellowship with Christ, that led those who turned away from Judaism or Paganism to the gospel to seek to purify themselves even as he is pure. When the philosophical historian seeks to account for the wonderful change that gradually shows itself in the moral condition of the world, he cannot fail to recognize the new hope as one of the most powerful factors. Pliny, in the closing years of the first century, takes note of the fact that this hope had disarmed the persecuting power of imperial Rome of all its terrors. What cared the saint for the flames of martyrdom when he felt a firm assurance that they were only another chariot of fire which would carry him, like the Tishbite, up to heaven and to God?

What was the nature of this hope which has been such an inspiration to mankind? When the Lord was about to go away from the earth he assured his disciples that he was going in order to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house, and that he would return to take them to himself that they might dwell there with him. There seems good reason for believing, notwithstanding the positive statements of the Savior, that the time of his second personal coming was known only to the Father, that the early church was in expectation of his speedy appearance once more upon the earth. Yet they soon realized the fulfillment of the promise in their own experiences. He came to Stephen when he was suffering a martyr’s death, and the dying saint was permitted to look up and see the heavens opened and the Lord standing ready to receive him. So he came to James, the brother of John, when he was killed by the sword of Herod. So he came to apostles, saints and martyrs, and they obeyed the summons in the joyful expectation that what men call death is a deliverance, a great gain, a release from bondage, the passage to eternal honors. The first fact that I wish to lay emphasis upon is, that they regarded death as an immediate deliverance. There was no thought of a sleep of ages upon ages before the eternal awakening. There is no hint of a long period of unconsciousness which lasts until the final trumpet of the archangel. There was no cloud across the heaven of their hope which suggested years or centuries of purgatorial suffering. On the other hand, the saints closed their eyes on the scenes of earth with the belief that they would at once open them in the brightness of that country which needs no sun. To the penitent sufferer by his side the dying Savior said, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." As the martyred Stephen was suffering his death wounds, he saw the heavens already opened to receive him. The apostle Paul declares that if the earthly body is dissolved, there is ready another body, "a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens," and declares that "we groan" while clothed in the flesh for the heavenly clothing which our spirits shall wear when the earthly garments of the flesh shall be laid aside. In the same connection (2 Corinthians 5:1-21) he says that to dwell in the body is to be absent from the Lord, and he declares that he would "rather be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." And again, in writing to the Philippians, he declares that for him to die would be gain; yet for him to continue to live in the flesh is of advantage to the churches; hence he "is in a strait between two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is better." In the Pauline theology death is simply the departure of the spirit from the body. In the case of the Christian, the earthly tabernacle is dissolved, he departs from it; he then receives a new body fitted to his new sphere of existence; a spiritual body, a "building of God;" to depart from the body is to "be with Christ," or to listen to his call and go to dwell with him, and such a departure is "gain," "better" than to remain "in the flesh." This theology harmonizes fully with the facts stated in three of the gospels and alluded to by both Peter and John, that two of the Old Testament saints came back from their immortal homes to stand with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration and to converse with him over his approaching suffering. It is in full harmony with the picture drawn of the future life by the Savior himself, in which he portrays all of the earthly actors in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus as existing consciously in the future world, and Abraham and Lazarus as enjoying the bliss of Paradise. The New Testament hope of immortality, inspired by the gospel of Jesus Christ, is a hope of an immediate passage through the darkness of death to the light of eternal day; of a deliverance from the pangs of the dying body to eternal bliss; of ending the journey of life by passing through the gates of that eternal city which has been sought by the saintly pilgrims of all the ages.

"But some will say, How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?" Surely not, as Mohammedans believe, with the bones, flesh and blood of the earthly body, even to the point that where limbs are amputated here, they are lost to the body forever. Certainly not, as Talmage has so vividly described, with the old body formed again by its scattered members being drawn together, from wherever they have been dissolved, back again, into the original earthly form. Rather, in the vigorous language of the great apostle: "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die. . . Thou sowest not that body which shall be. . . God giveth it a body as hath pleased him." Observe closely the apostle’s statements. The seed is planted and dissolved but lives again, not as a seed but as a stalk, or plant. It lives again in an entirely new form. To every kind of life is given the kind of body needed; to the bird a body suited to the air; to the fish a body suited to the water; to the beasts bodies suited to their sphere; to the stars a glory that is their own; to everything, everywhere, a glory and a form suited to its state.

"So also in the resurrection of the dead." On earth there was a body adapted to earthly condition. At death that earthly body was "sown" or planted in the earth. "It is sown in corruption," or subject, to corruption. "It is raised in incorruption. . . It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body." Our earthly bodies, like that of the earthly Adam, are of earth; the new body, "the house not made with hands," is in the image of the heavenly man, the glorified body of Jesus Christ, for "as we have borne the image of the earthly, so shall we also bear the image of the heavenly." Then, to silence forever those who expect a sensual heaven in which they shall abide in the flesh eternally, he exclaims, "Now, this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." This, in its connection, can only have one meaning. Flesh and blood bodies, bodies made of corruptible earthly materials, are not compatible with a home in the world of redeemed and glorified spirits. The soul’s tenement, if it have one, must be adapted to the new conditions of being. Are we then denied a body in the future state? By no means. I may not be able to understand the nature of that body, because I have never seen such an existence, but I can accept the statements of the word of God and believe that it is exactly fitted to the happy sphere of glorified existence. It "is a building of God," it is made "as it hath pleased him," it is "a spiritual body," it is "incorruptible," it is "immortal," it is after the image of the heavenly man, and "our vile bodies are changed into the likeness of his glorified body." In order to comprehend what this means do not look at the Lord when he was here in the form of a servant, but look at him as seen in glory on the Mount of Transfiguration, and as revealed to John on Patmos, shining with eternal splendors. What material of the old tabernacle may be used by the Lord in building the new form is unknown, but it is known that he does not use its flesh and blood. Hence, because these immortal bodies are freed from their earthly dross and from all the ills to which the present dwelling places of our souls are incident, there can never be in our eternal home "any more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."