Luke 24

Luke 24:38-42

THE OF JESUS CHRIST Luke 24:38-42. THE questioning of the resurrection of Jesus did not originate with any modern critic; nor did the answer to that doubt originate with any modern conservative. The disciples of Jesus were the first to doubt His triumph over the grave, and Jesus Himself delivered the original and sufficient answer to that skepticism. Infidelity, in its every phase, is ancient, and God’s answer to it is both ancient and adequate.The above text is a marvelous putting of both of these points. It anticipates the questionings of the twentieth century; it supplies a scientific answer to the same. These are days when certain teachers in scientific circles boast the fact that they depend not upon hearsay, but demand a demonstration; they proceed not upon the basis of credulity, but rather upon the plane of positive proofs, and they propose to bring the whole history of the Christ and the whole claim of the Bible to the same process, by which, as one suggests, they “analyze salt, examine a rock, or observe a star”. Who objects?

The resurrection of Jesus invites exactly such examination, and the record of it involves the most scientific process.THE PROOFS OF THE .Attorney Francis J. Lamb, of Madison, Wis., brought from the Oberlin press a book entitled “The Miracle and Science”, in which he subjected the New Testament evidences to the jural tests, questioning each statement exactly as would be done in a court of justice where human life was at stake, and judge and jury were alike determined to discover the absolute truth involved in the procedure.

After 284 pages of investigation, he affirms, “Tested by the standards and ordeals of jural science, by which questions of fact are ascertained and demonstrated in contested questions of right between man and man, in courts of justice, the resurrection of Jesus stands a demonstrated fact.”Subjected to all the tests known to the natural sciences, this record will stand with equal solidity. Its proofs appeal to every one of the physical senses.The empty tomb affirmed His physical resurrection. When, on the report of Mary Magdalene, Peter and John visited the tomb, John, outran Peter, and coming first to the sepulcher, stooped down, and “looking in, saw the linen clothes lying”. But the impetuous Peter who went into the sepulcher, “saw the linen clothes lying, and the napkin that was about His head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself”; but, as Luke’s Gospel adds in this connection, “the women which were early at the sepulcher found not His body”.Various, and even curious, have been the attempts to account for the empty tomb. Dr. Hooykaas suggests that “in the faith and preaching of the Apostles, the term ‘resurrection’ simply denoted the Saviour’s ascension from the underworld, into which the Jews believed the purest and most holy, without exception, must descend to the heavenly glory,” and that this was the reason why the Jews never said “Jesus rose from the dead, but from the place where the shades of the departed abide”.

Gunkel adopts this idea, and adds, “Faith in the death and resurrection of the gods was an important part of the mythology of the Orient.” But neither of them tell us whatever became of the body of Jesus, nor do they explain why it should be spoken of as resurrection at all, since the same Jews believed that every good man was immortal, and his spirit would go to glory. Gunkel admits that “the official faith of the Jews, at the time of Christ, knew nothing of the physical resurrection”.

Renan claims that Mary Magdalene, who had been once possessed with devils, was capable of vivid imagination, and in her affection and love for the Lord, believed He had risen from the tomb, and Renan exclaims, “O Divine power of love; sacred moments, in which the passion of one whose senses were deceived, gives to the world a God risen from the dead.”A very pretty speech, and its eloquence and enthusiasm have carried the thoughtless to a like conclusion. But a few questions fling the whole argument into confusion, and despoil the skeptical plea. Was Mary Magdalene also capable of hypnotizing the Roman soldiers, and, either rendering them helpless or else leading them captive at will? Did she compel them to release their solemn charge of guarding the tomb and risk the discipline of the most imperious government that ever appointed a watch? Did she so far hypnotize the Jews whose fury had affected the crucifixion of Jesus as to silence their testimony regarding what actually transpired? Did she accomplish the even more difficult task of hypnotizing the disciples to the extent of making them willing to live on a piece of imagination, and finally to die in its defense?Even if all these questions were answered in the affirmative, the solution is not yet.The sight of sane men attest the truth of His physical resurrection.

How many witnesses, of unimpeached character, exceptional intelligence, and splendid mental balance must be brought into court to make out a case? When Paul comes to give a reason for the faith that is in him, he never mentions the testimony of any one of the women.

Whether that was because, writing by inspiration, the Spirit anticipated the modern heresy that would seek to make the risen Christ a mere creation of a hysterical woman’s fancy and affection, we do not know. But Paul says, “He appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve; then He appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now; but some are fallen asleep; then He appeared to James; then to all the Apostles; and last of all, * * He appeared to me also” The lives of these men, as recorded in the New Testament, show them extremely sane, marvelously well-balanced, most strangely free from sensational speech or conduct. Happy the man on trial for his life who could have witnesses of such character and balance appear in his behalf.They put the risen Christ to the test of the touch —“Handle Me and see, a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have”. They put Him to the test of sight—“When He had thus spoken He showed them His hands and His feet”. They put Him to the test of taste, for they gave Him a piece of broiled fish and He ate it before them. They put Him to the test of the hearing, for it was when He called Mary’s name that she recognized Him.

They put Him to the test of former fellowship, for it was when He “broke bread” at Emmaus that the two knew Him. By what possible mental processes do men ask us to accept the theory of evolution on the word of a Darwin, the opinion of a Huxley, the suggestion of Spencer, apart from proofs, and yet reject the record of the resurrection in the face of every physical test to which the same could be subjected?To be sure, we are told that these men were hoping to see Jesus raised from the dead, and it is a common psychological experience to see the thing for which one is waiting and watching.

But the fact is, they were not hoping to see this. Hope had died out of their bosoms. The women did not seek the sepulcher in the early morning expecting to see a risen Jesus; they bore their spices “to embalm the dead”. Peter and John did not go there to keep an appointment made before His crucifixion; they went merely to investigate an unbelievable report that the tomb was empty. Cleophas voiced the despair that had settled upon them all, when, not knowing to whom he was speaking, he said to Jesus, “We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel”. Mark the tense!

It is a past hope to which he refers—“We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel.” It is a pluperfect affair; it lives no more! Thomas would not even believe it on the testimony of his well-known and dearly loved brethren, and demanded the scientific test of sight and touch, and was never convinced until both had been provided him.

Renan attempts to parallel the opinion of the disciples by saying, “At the moment in which Mahomet expired, Omar rushed from the tent, sword in hand, and declared that he would hew down any one who should dare to say that the prophet was no more.” But the parallelism fails to apply to the disciples. They never denied His death, and they never conceded His resurrection until the physical evidences convinced them. Even Mary Magdalene, dubbed “the imaginative one”, did not believe until she saw Him; and not even then until He spoke to her. And there is no hint that Peter ever recovered his faith until he found his living Lord. Paul was not only nonconvinced, but determined that it should not be so; hence the great value of his testimony. Is Voltaire right in saying, “When one has a great number of very sensible witnesses who agree in having seen all; who are sane bodily and mentally, and who are impartial and disinterested, and who solemnly certify to the fact, he then has proof”?

If so, then the resurrection of Jesus Christ is put forever past dispute.Gunkel tells us that they claimed an empty grave for Zeus in Crete. What if they did?

What came of it? Who became apostles of that faith? What proof of their position did they present? What movement dominating the centuries did they originate? Rudolph Schmid has a book entitled, “The Scientific Creed of a Theologian”—a volume that voices “New Theology” with such a vengeance as to leave little place in it for either science or Scripture; and yet, at the conclusion of the entire work, Schmid is compelled to admit the proofs of the physical resurrection, and declares that the faith of the present is returning “to the affirmation of the Easter message in the full sense in which it has been proclaimed and believed from the beginning”.“Christ, the Lord is risen to-day; Sons of men and angels say; Raise your joys and triumphs high; Sing, ye heavens, and earth, reply. “Love’s redeeming work is done, Fought the fight, the battle won; Lo! our Sun’s eclipse is o’er; Lo! he sets in blood no more.” THE PERSON OF THE . “Behold, My hands and My feet that it is I Myself” (Luke 24:39). His physical identity was preserved. The body that was missing at the tomb was found by Mary Magdalene and recognized; by the two on the way to Emmaus, and recognized; by James, who had known Him in the flesh, and recognized; by the Apostles, who had had years of fellowship with Him, Thomas being absent, and recognized; by the same Apostles, Thomas being present, and recognized; yea, even by above five hundred brethren at once and recognized. The body He has now is the body that was buried in Joseph’s tomb. To be sure it may be wrapped in the glory in which He lives at the right hand of God, and yet the tabernacle is the same, only the shekinah has covered it.A writer to the “Baptist Standard”, of March 26, 1910 says, “After His resurrection He ate physical food, or seemed to do so; and possessed flesh and bones, but we are not to suppose that with these He passed into Heaven.” Why not? It was promised that His body should not see corruption, and glorification is not displacement. The disciples saw Him ascend into Heaven. Certainly the faith of Charles Wesley was in the Christ who took a body from the tomb to Heaven; and he set that faith to music:“Arise, my soul, arise; Shake off thy guilty fears; The bleeding sacrifice In my behalf appears; Before the throne my Surety stands, My name is written on His hands. “Five bleeding wounds He bears, Received on Calvary; They pour effectual prayers, They strongly plead for me; Forgive him, O forgive, they cry, Nor let that ransomed sinner die!” Fanny Crosby, who lived close to Christ, and after many years of communion, entertained the hope of seeing the very Saviour that walked the Judean hills and ascended from the mount, for she wrote:“When my life-work is ended, And I cross the swelling tide, When the bright and glorious morning I shall see, I shall know my Redeemer When I reach the other side, And His smile will be the first to welcome me. “I shall know Him, I shall know Him, And redeem’d by His side, I shall stand. I shall know Him, I shall know Him By the print of the nails in His hand.” He came from the grave unchanged in intellect. Before He went into it, it was His custom to appeal to the Sacred Scriptures. “It is written”, was His support and defense. As He walked with the two on the way to Emmaus, He renewed this custom, quoting from the Old Testament prophecies to show that Christ had to suffer and to enter into His glory, and “beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself”. The break, therefore, in His thinking, caused by this burial, seemed to have been no greater than such as characterizes us when we sleep and wake again. Waking out of death, His mind ran on with the same problems that concerned Him before His crucifixion, for the simple reason that He is the same Christ. Years ago, the Easter number of “The Ladies Home Journal” had in it a remarkable article written by that most remarkable girl, Helen Keller, who though blind, deaf and dumb, has secured an education that has released her wonderful intellect. She told the story of her long sickness that resulted in a paralysis to so many of her powers. It came upon her when she was a little child of nineteen months, and we see her meaning when she says, “During the first nineteen months of my life I had caught glimpses of broad green fields, a luminous sky, trees and flowers, which the darkness that followed could not wholly blot out. If we have once seen, the day is ours, and what the day has shown.” Ah, truly, the grave in no wise obscured the vision of Jesus Christ. He walked in “the day” before He went to the grave; when He came from it “the day” was continued for Him.Before He went to the grave He outlined His post-burial plans; when He came out of it He took up the thread of life at the very point where the crucifixion had broken it.He was the same in spirit as before His decease! His devotion to God abated in nothing; His love to men suffered no decline; His commission to the world, and His plans for the Church changed not a whit. The great commission which He had spoken before His death, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:19-20). He has not forgotten! On the contrary, He promises the power for its fulfillment. “Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth”. The continuity of the Christ-life, which made the grave seem but a shadow through which He walked, gives a sweet meaning to the Christian’s conception of the present Christ—He is “the same yesterday and to day and for ever”.THE OF THE .As Christ escaped corruption, Christians shall conquer against it. The body they put into the grave was capable of decay, but God saw to it that His glorious One “should not see corruption.” His resurrection brought Him up to “life for evermore”. Lazarus might die, having been once raised from the dead! Not so with the Christ!

He had conquered death! They can bring up the ashes of Wycliff and fling them to the brook, and the brook carry them to the Avon, and the Avon to the seas, but the Son could not be touched by death again, nor by corruption. Herein is the pledge of our victory: We may be sown in corruption, but we have the promise that we shall be raised in incorruption. Through Christ the Conqueror we shall have our victory over the grave and death. Paul fairly gloats over the prospect, saying,“So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption. “It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power; “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). And he tells the very process by which it shall come to pass,“For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:53).Blessed prospect it is! John had it in view when he wrote,“Beloved, it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).When I recall the true words of Campbell Morgan, “Upon the fact of the historical resurrection stands or falls the whole fabric of Christianity. Unless Jesus of Nazareth actually came back from the grave, then indeed have ‘we followed cunningly devised fables’, and have been hopelessly deceived,” I thank God for the certainties that support this event of the centuries.Dr. John McDowell Leavitt says, “Once I stood on the Jura to see Mont Blanc. Forty miles away the monarch seemed rising from Lake Geneva. His sublime summit glittered in the sun.

Each peak about him I have forgotten. But he, the mountain-king, will live in my memory forever.

Only as they added to his glory, did I feel interest in lake, or hill, or vale, or cloud, or snow, or sunshine. Earth and sky were servants of his majesty. As Mont Blanc amid mountains, the resurrection of Christ amid proofs! Subserving it—type and prophecy and probability—all other inferior arguments. In it they find their place and power. Resurrection proved is Christianity proved. Resurrection believed is Christianity believed.”Yes, that is the remorseless logic of it all! Paul, the logician of the centuries, has pushed it to its legitimate limits, “If Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is vain also.

Ye are yet in your sins. Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. * * But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that are asleep. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection from the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:14; 1 Corinthians 15:17-18; 1 Corinthians 15:20-22, A. S. V.). Glorious prospect!“He lives! the great Redeemer lives! What joy the blest assurance gives! And now, before His Father, God, He pleads the merits of His Blood. “Away, ye dark, despairing thoughts; Above our fears, above our faults, His powerful intercessions rise; And guilt recedes, and terror dies. “Great Advocate, almighty Friend, On Thee our humble hopes depend! Our cause can never, never fail, For Thou dost plead, and must prevail.” But the Apostle makes one remark more; with that, I conclude. “But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; then they that are Christ’s, at His Coming”. The fruition of His resurrection will be found when He descends “from Heaven with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first”. It was to that blessed thought that John referred when he wrote, “Beloved, it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is”.It is a glorious hope to entertain; it is a blessed Gospel to preach. It means more than a mere resurrection; it means a resurrection to behold the King in His glory; to see Him with the scepter in hand— Satan overthrown—and to enter with Him upon the government of the world in righteousness. The saintly Gordon said, “The resurrection of our Lord, then, is not merely a pledge of our own; it is our own, if we are His, for the Lord who loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together, and hath made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus”. George Herbert made a proper appeal to that man with the sad heart, who would know the resurrection, when he said:“Arise sad heart; if thou dost not withstand Christ’s resurrection, thine may be; Do not by hanging down break from the hand, Which, as it riseth, raiseth thee.” And yet, let us conclude with this statement, that the so-called scientific world, which gropes its way in skepticism, will never be converted by the historical evidences of a risen Christ! The resurrection-life, lived by the present-day Christians, is the additional proof God needs to convince the world of “sin and of righteousness and of judgment to come”. It will believe in a Saviour at the right hand of God, only as it sees Him formed in our hearts “the hope of glory”, and revealed in our lives as “the power of righteousness”.THE questioning of the resurrection of Jesus did not originate with any modern critic; nor did the answer to that doubt originate with any modern conservative. The disciples of Jesus were the first to doubt His triumph over the grave, and Jesus Himself delivered the original and sufficient answer to that skepticism. Infidelity, in its every phase, is ancient, and God’s answer to it is both ancient and adequate.The above text is a marvelous putting of both of these points. It anticipates the questionings of the twentieth century; it supplies a scientific answer to the same.

These are days when certain teachers in scientific circles boast the fact that they depend not upon hearsay, but demand a demonstration; they proceed not upon the basis of credulity, but rather upon the plane of positive proofs, and they propose to bring the whole history of the Christ and the whole claim of the Bible to the same process, by which, as one suggests, they “analyze salt, examine a rock, or observe a star”. Who objects?

The resurrection of Jesus invites exactly such examination, and the record of it involves the most scientific process.THE PROOFS OF THE .Attorney Francis J. Lamb, of Madison, Wis., brought from the Oberlin press a book entitled “The Miracle and Science”, in which he subjected the New Testament evidences to the jural tests, questioning each statement exactly as would be done in a court of justice where human life was at stake, and judge and jury were alike determined to discover the absolute truth involved in the procedure. After 284 pages of investigation, he affirms, “Tested by the standards and ordeals of jural science, by which questions of fact are ascertained and demonstrated in contested questions of right between man and man, in courts of justice, the resurrection of Jesus stands a demonstrated fact.”Subjected to all the tests known to the natural sciences, this record will stand with equal solidity. Its proofs appeal to every one of the physical senses.The empty tomb affirmed His physical resurrection. When, on the report of Mary Magdalene, Peter and John visited the tomb, John, outran Peter, and coming first to the sepulcher, stooped down, and “looking in, saw the linen clothes lying”. But the impetuous Peter who went into the sepulcher, “saw the linen clothes lying, and the napkin that was about His head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself”; but, as Luke’s Gospel adds in this connection, “the women which were early at the sepulcher found not His body”.Various, and even curious, have been the attempts to account for the empty tomb.

Dr. Hooykaas suggests that “in the faith and preaching of the Apostles, the term ‘resurrection’ simply denoted the Saviour’s ascension from the underworld, into which the Jews believed the purest and most holy, without exception, must descend to the heavenly glory,” and that this was the reason why the Jews never said “Jesus rose from the dead, but from the place where the shades of the departed abide”.

Gunkel adopts this idea, and adds, “Faith in the death and resurrection of the gods was an important part of the mythology of the Orient.” But neither of them tell us whatever became of the body of Jesus, nor do they explain why it should be spoken of as resurrection at all, since the same Jews believed that every good man was immortal, and his spirit would go to glory. Gunkel admits that “the official faith of the Jews, at the time of Christ, knew nothing of the physical resurrection”. Renan claims that Mary Magdalene, who had been once possessed with devils, was capable of vivid imagination, and in her affection and love for the Lord, believed He had risen from the tomb, and Renan exclaims, “O Divine power of love; sacred moments, in which the passion of one whose senses were deceived, gives to the world a God risen from the dead.”A very pretty speech, and its eloquence and enthusiasm have carried the thoughtless to a like conclusion. But a few questions fling the whole argument into confusion, and despoil the skeptical plea. Was Mary Magdalene also capable of hypnotizing the Roman soldiers, and, either rendering them helpless or else leading them captive at will? Did she compel them to release their solemn charge of guarding the tomb and risk the discipline of the most imperious government that ever appointed a watch?

Did she so far hypnotize the Jews whose fury had affected the crucifixion of Jesus as to silence their testimony regarding what actually transpired? Did she accomplish the even more difficult task of hypnotizing the disciples to the extent of making them willing to live on a piece of imagination, and finally to die in its defense?Even if all these questions were answered in the affirmative, the solution is not yet.The sight of sane men attest the truth of His physical resurrection.

How many witnesses, of unimpeached character, exceptional intelligence, and splendid mental balance must be brought into court to make out a case? When Paul comes to give a reason for the faith that is in him, he never mentions the testimony of any one of the women. Whether that was because, writing by inspiration, the Spirit anticipated the modern heresy that would seek to make the risen Christ a mere creation of a hysterical woman’s fancy and affection, we do not know. But Paul says, “He appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve; then He appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now; but some are fallen asleep; then He appeared to James; then to all the Apostles; and last of all, * * He appeared to me also” The lives of these men, as recorded in the New Testament, show them extremely sane, marvelously well-balanced, most strangely free from sensational speech or conduct. Happy the man on trial for his life who could have witnesses of such character and balance appear in his behalf.They put the risen Christ to the test of the touch —“Handle Me and see, a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have”. They put Him to the test of sight—“When He had thus spoken He showed them His hands and His feet”.

They put Him to the test of taste, for they gave Him a piece of broiled fish and He ate it before them. They put Him to the test of the hearing, for it was when He called Mary’s name that she recognized Him.

They put Him to the test of former fellowship, for it was when He “broke bread” at Emmaus that the two knew Him. By what possible mental processes do men ask us to accept the theory of evolution on the word of a Darwin, the opinion of a Huxley, the suggestion of Spencer, apart from proofs, and yet reject the record of the resurrection in the face of every physical test to which the same could be subjected?To be sure, we are told that these men were hoping to see Jesus raised from the dead, and it is a common psychological experience to see the thing for which one is waiting and watching. But the fact is, they were not hoping to see this. Hope had died out of their bosoms. The women did not seek the sepulcher in the early morning expecting to see a risen Jesus; they bore their spices “to embalm the dead”. Peter and John did not go there to keep an appointment made before His crucifixion; they went merely to investigate an unbelievable report that the tomb was empty.

Cleophas voiced the despair that had settled upon them all, when, not knowing to whom he was speaking, he said to Jesus, “We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel”. Mark the tense!

It is a past hope to which he refers—“We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel.” It is a pluperfect affair; it lives no more! Thomas would not even believe it on the testimony of his well-known and dearly loved brethren, and demanded the scientific test of sight and touch, and was never convinced until both had been provided him. Renan attempts to parallel the opinion of the disciples by saying, “At the moment in which Mahomet expired, Omar rushed from the tent, sword in hand, and declared that he would hew down any one who should dare to say that the prophet was no more.” But the parallelism fails to apply to the disciples. They never denied His death, and they never conceded His resurrection until the physical evidences convinced them. Even Mary Magdalene, dubbed “the imaginative one”, did not believe until she saw Him; and not even then until He spoke to her. And there is no hint that Peter ever recovered his faith until he found his living Lord.

Paul was not only nonconvinced, but determined that it should not be so; hence the great value of his testimony. Is Voltaire right in saying, “When one has a great number of very sensible witnesses who agree in having seen all; who are sane bodily and mentally, and who are impartial and disinterested, and who solemnly certify to the fact, he then has proof”?

If so, then the resurrection of Jesus Christ is put forever past dispute.Gunkel tells us that they claimed an empty grave for Zeus in Crete. What if they did? What came of it? Who became apostles of that faith? What proof of their position did they present? What movement dominating the centuries did they originate? Rudolph Schmid has a book entitled, “The Scientific Creed of a Theologian”—a volume that voices “New Theology” with such a vengeance as to leave little place in it for either science or Scripture; and yet, at the conclusion of the entire work, Schmid is compelled to admit the proofs of the physical resurrection, and declares that the faith of the present is returning “to the affirmation of the Easter message in the full sense in which it has been proclaimed and believed from the beginning”.“Christ, the Lord is risen to-day; Sons of men and angels say; Raise your joys and triumphs high; Sing, ye heavens, and earth, reply. “Love’s redeeming work is done, Fought the fight, the battle won; Lo! our Sun’s eclipse is o’er; Lo! he sets in blood no more.” THE PERSON OF THE . “Behold, My hands and My feet that it is I Myself” (Luke 24:39). His physical identity was preserved. The body that was missing at the tomb was found by Mary Magdalene and recognized; by the two on the way to Emmaus, and recognized; by James, who had known Him in the flesh, and recognized; by the Apostles, who had had years of fellowship with Him, Thomas being absent, and recognized; by the same Apostles, Thomas being present, and recognized; yea, even by above five hundred brethren at once and recognized. The body He has now is the body that was buried in Joseph’s tomb. To be sure it may be wrapped in the glory in which He lives at the right hand of God, and yet the tabernacle is the same, only the shekinah has covered it.A writer to the “Baptist Standard”, of March 26, 1910 says, “After His resurrection He ate physical food, or seemed to do so; and possessed flesh and bones, but we are not to suppose that with these He passed into Heaven.” Why not? It was promised that His body should not see corruption, and glorification is not displacement. The disciples saw Him ascend into Heaven. Certainly the faith of Charles Wesley was in the Christ who took a body from the tomb to Heaven; and he set that faith to music:“Arise, my soul, arise; Shake off thy guilty fears; The bleeding sacrifice In my behalf appears; Before the throne my Surety stands, My name is written on His hands. “Five bleeding wounds He bears, Received on Calvary; They pour effectual prayers, They strongly plead for me; Forgive him, O forgive, they cry, Nor let that ransomed sinner die!” Fanny Crosby, who lived close to Christ, and after many years of communion, entertained the hope of seeing the very Saviour that walked the Judean hills and ascended from the mount, for she wrote:“When my life-work is ended, And I cross the swelling tide, When the bright and glorious morning I shall see, I shall know my Redeemer When I reach the other side, And His smile will be the first to welcome me. “I shall know Him, I shall know Him, And redeem’d by His side, I shall stand. I shall know Him, I shall know Him By the print of the nails in His hand.” He came from the grave unchanged in intellect. Before He went into it, it was His custom to appeal to the Sacred Scriptures. “It is written”, was His support and defense. As He walked with the two on the way to Emmaus, He renewed this custom, quoting from the Old Testament prophecies to show that Christ had to suffer and to enter into His glory, and “beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself”. The break, therefore, in His thinking, caused by this burial, seemed to have been no greater than such as characterizes us when we sleep and wake again. Waking out of death, His mind ran on with the same problems that concerned Him before His crucifixion, for the simple reason that He is the same Christ. Years ago, the Easter number of “The Ladies Home Journal” had in it a remarkable article written by that most remarkable girl, Helen Keller, who though blind, deaf and dumb, has secured an education that has released her wonderful intellect. She told the story of her long sickness that resulted in a paralysis to so many of her powers. It came upon her when she was a little child of nineteen months, and we see her meaning when she says, “During the first nineteen months of my life I had caught glimpses of broad green fields, a luminous sky, trees and flowers, which the darkness that followed could not wholly blot out. If we have once seen, the day is ours, and what the day has shown.” Ah, truly, the grave in no wise obscured the vision of Jesus Christ. He walked in “the day” before He went to the grave; when He came from it “the day” was continued for Him.Before He went to the grave He outlined His post-burial plans; when He came out of it He took up the thread of life at the very point where the crucifixion had broken it.He was the same in spirit as before His decease! His devotion to God abated in nothing; His love to men suffered no decline; His commission to the world, and His plans for the Church changed not a whit. The great commission which He had spoken before His death, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:19-20). He has not forgotten! On the contrary, He promises the power for its fulfillment. “Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth”. The continuity of the Christ-life, which made the grave seem but a shadow through which He walked, gives a sweet meaning to the Christian’s conception of the present Christ—He is “the same yesterday and to day and for ever”.THE OF THE .As Christ escaped corruption, Christians shall conquer against it. The body they put into the grave was capable of decay, but God saw to it that His glorious One “should not see corruption.” His resurrection brought Him up to “life for evermore”. Lazarus might die, having been once raised from the dead! Not so with the Christ!

Each peak about him I have forgotten. But he, the mountainking, will live in my memory forever.

Ye are yet in your sins. Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. * * But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that are asleep. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection from the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:14; 1 Corinthians 15:17-18; 1 Corinthians 15:20-22, A. S. V.). Glorious prospect!“He lives! the great Redeemer lives! What joy the blest assurance gives! And now, before His Father, God, He pleads the merits of His Blood. “Away, ye dark, despairing thoughts; Above our fears, above our faults, His powerful intercessions rise; And guilt recedes, and terror dies. “Great Advocate, almighty Friend, On Thee our humble hopes depend! Our cause can never, never fail, For Thou dost plead, and must prevail.” But the Apostle makes one remark more; with that, I conclude. “But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; then they that are Christ’s, at His Coming”. The fruition of His resurrection will be found when He descends “from Heaven with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first”. It was to that blessed thought that John referred when he wrote, “Beloved, it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is”.It is a glorious hope to entertain; it is a blessed Gospel to preach. It means more than a mere resurrection; it means a resurrection to behold the King in His glory; to see Him with the scepter in hand— Satan overthrown—and to enter with Him upon the government of the world in righteousness. The saintly Gordon said, “The resurrection of our Lord, then, is not merely a pledge of our own; it is our own, if we are His, for the Lord who loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together, and hath made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus”. George Herbert made a proper appeal to that man with the sad heart, who would know the resurrection, when he said:“Arise sad heart; if thou dost not withstand Christ’s resurrection, thine may be; Do not by hanging down break from the hand, Which, as it riseth, raiseth thee.” And yet, let us conclude with this statement, that the so-called scientific world, which gropes its way in skepticism, will never be converted by the historical evidences of a risen Christ! The resurrection-life, lived by the present-day Christians, is the additional proof God needs to convince the world of “sin and of righteousness and of judgment to come”. It will believe in a Saviour at the right hand of God, only as it sees Him formed in our hearts “the hope of glory”, and revealed in our lives as “the power of righteousness”.