In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the fact of the resurrection and how nature reveals this truth. He shares his personal experience of seeing the resurrected Lord in people's lives, particularly in his mother's faith. The speaker also recounts his own struggles as a child and how he found hope and victory through the promises of God. He concludes by affirming his belief in the resurrected Christ, stating that he knows Jesus lives because He lives in his heart and has witnessed the fulfillment of God's promises in his life.

I've been able to look over the list this past week of all the people on the tape club, and it certainly... to see the different individuals that stuck with us by the years and, you know, just prayed for us and stayed involved in the ministry. And it was a joy to see a number of preachers and a number of preachers' wives. There was one particular preacher's wife, and I'm not going to mention her name, that's obviously been on this tape ministry for about eight years. I don't know that she's listening to these tapes all the time, but next time I see her, I'm going to ask her. But nevertheless, it's such a joy to have so many friends that are involved in the tape ministry. And as you know, this involvement really is a blessing to me, and I thank you for it. This particular tape is just a fairing-like type message in relationship to the resurrection. On Easter Sunday morning, I found myself starting a revival meeting on Easter Sunday morning, and to be honest with you, I did not know what to do for a number of years. I have not started a meeting on Easter Sunday morning, or finished many meetings on Easter Sunday morning. And so it was quite a challenge to deal with the Easter crowd, but at least the Lord did give me a good attitude about the Easter crowd that just shows up on one Sunday morning in the year. But nevertheless, this message is just something simple, awful, and out of my heart, it was a good service. No one got saved. That was really a damaging thing. I just really wish that someone had gotten saved in that meeting. But nevertheless, I trust that the message will be good for you. And I trust, too, that you will pray for the many things the Lord has put on our heart, and that we'll have the wisdom of God and the courage and the strength to carry these things out. By the time you get the next tape, Martha and I will be in Africa, Lord willing. And so I trust that you'll be praying for us about that trip. We're going down there just to specially minister to the ministers and their wives, and so you really want to pray for us about that matter. I trust that the tape will be a blessing to you this month, and I thank you and praise God for the fact that you take your Christian life seriously and that you're involved in things that last forever. May the Lord bless you is our prayer. Some years ago, I had an experience. Well, it happened several times. I was in a lab with several people that had had a kidney transplant, and I was fascinated by the environment in that lab. Most of those people were not Christians. They did not know the Lord, but they had an appreciation and an understanding of life that most people I fellowship with do not have. And even though they did not recognize the living Lord as I knew Him, as far as I could tell, as far as I could see, they had an understanding of life, and they had a gratitude that almost made it an atmosphere of worship, and yet they really had no one that they could really turn to in worship. It was really fascinating. Bless me. And you know, today, we're here because of a living Lord, and we have a living Christ to look to, and it's such a blessing to be here with you on this occasion. Now, I would like to share with you today just a short passage of Scripture because of the many things I want to say. Probably I could just read one verse and we'd be in trouble because I'd like to say more than I can say out of that one verse. But just a passage out of John 20, if you don't mind. And I want to begin at the 11th verse. John 20, the 11th verse. I just want to read a few verses. But Mary stood without at the sepulcher weeping, and as she wept, she stooped down and looked into the sepulcher, and they said unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She said unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. And when she had thus said, she turned herself back and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus said unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, said unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus said unto her, Mary, she turned herself and said unto him, Ribboni I, which is to say, Master. And Jesus said unto her, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father, but go to my brethren and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and to your God. Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord and that he had spoken these things unto her. This is a reading of a passage that really gives us an account of Mary Magdalene as she really encountered the resurrected Christ. If you start at the beginning of that chapter, you'll find that Mary Magdalene had gone to the tomb where Jesus had been buried, and she found that the stone had been rolled away. She had got word to the disciples. Two of the disciples, especially Peter, mentioned here, had actually run to the sepulcher. And when they got there, Peter, when he got there, he went in and found that what Jesus had been wrapped in, napkins and so on, had been laid aside. But Jesus wasn't there. And after some time of investigation, Peter and the disciples, two of them now with him, went back to where they were staying. But Mary Magdalene, she decided to stay there. I really don't know what caused her to stay there, except just in her heart she wanted to stay there. And while she was standing there, Jesus walked up and he spoke to her. And she thought that he was the gardener. That interests me. She had been around him for three years. She had been around him all that time, and yet when he spoke to her and she turned and saw him, she thought he was the gardener. That's interesting. That's very interesting. There's a lot of theological implications here. You see, Jesus, she saw him as the Son of Man for those three years. She saw him as the Son of Man. And now she is seeing him as the Son of God. And she does not recognize him as the Son of God. Now you might say, well, Brother Manly, I thought he was the Son of God all the time. He was. But he revealed himself to people as the Son of Man. And my dear friend, she did know him as the Son of Man, but now she's seeing him as the Son of God, the resurrected Christ, who has not yet ascended to his Father, so he wouldn't let her touch him. But when he said, Mary, obviously her eyes were open, spiritually, and she saw him as her Master. And when she recognized him as her Master, she obviously worshipped him, because it said in one translation, Do not cling to me, for I have not ascended to my Father yet. And then, of course, he told her to go tell the disciples, and obviously he ascended. Now, this passage tells us of the resurrection of Christ. This resurrection was literally prophesied by God himself. In the book of Genesis, the third chapter, the fifteenth verse, when God the Father himself said that the seed of woman would bruise the head of the serpent. I realize that this passage is clothed in a great deal of mystery, but nevertheless it's true. He said, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed, and it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. This passage is a passage where God is addressing the devil and announcing that the seed of woman's heel, which is none other than Jesus Christ, the Son of Righteousness, would come into the world and defeat the devil, win victory over death, hell, and the grave, and the serpent's head would be bruised. My dear friend, this is talking about not only the birth of Jesus, it is talking about the life of Jesus, and it's talking about that momentous moment when Jesus Christ would come out of the grave, carrying victory, and bruising the head of the serpent, defeating him once and for all, and the victory having been completely won. Lay it out before us. And so the Lord Jesus here fulfills this prophecy as we read when he came out of that grave that day. Now, there was a battle all the way to this wonderful moment that we celebrate today. There was a battle all the way, because when God announced that Jesus Christ, the Son of Righteousness, the Son of God, the Son of Man, would come, there was enough information in this passage that Jesus Christ would not only be the Son of God, but he would be the Son of Man, which meant that through a person he would be born. Now, if the devil could just destroy that person, the lineage of that person, my dear friends, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, could never accomplish this victory. So Satan set out to destroy the lineage of the Lord, and my friends, he immediately went to work. When Adam and Eve were blessed with children, he began to work on Cain, and he moved in the heart of Cain to the point that Cain destroyed Abel, because there was some obvious evidence that he was right with God. And so we have the first killing in the Bible, and all of it is over this fact, this issue, of destroying the means by which Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, would come into the world, live, die, and be resurrected, whereby you and I would have an adequate Savior. Oh, my, Satan fought him. But praise God, the Lord's, the Father's plans were not all caught up in Cain or Abel. It was in the third son, and through him came the lineage. So it would go all the way through the Bible like this, all the way through the Bible like this, just step after step, step after step, and it's so fascinating to look at. Yet while Satan was running around looking in the nurseries, in the palaces, he forgot to watch the cattle stalls, and Jesus came. Jesus was born. And, my dear friends, he was slipped out of his country down into Egypt for a spell, and then he came back in as a carpenter's son. And there, when the proper time came, he was walking down a dusty road headed for the River Jordan. John the Baptist was out in the middle of that river baptizing people under repentance. And all at once, I do not know whether the heart of this great man of God, John the Baptist, or his eyes, physical eyes, caught the presence of Jesus. I do not know. If I had my preference, I would say he spirit-leaped within his heart as Jesus got close. I would just say that. But his eyes may have seen him first. But he cried out, Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world. And he came, and there John the Baptist baptized him, and the battle went to the wilderness where Satan tempted Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, in every way that you and I are tempted. And as my dear friends, the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, won that victory and walked out of those woods, out of the wilderness, with victory in his life. And there he continued to live the life till one day, Satan got a religious crowd that was obviously working in accordance to the counsel of God's will to put Jesus Christ to the cross. And there, as Jesus Christ cried out, It is finished! The world turned dark. As one theologian said, The black demons of hell covered the earth shouting, Victory! We won the victory! He's dead! He's dead! He's dead! He's dead! And my dear friends, as they shouted the victory, the world being black, I want you to know he was put in that tomb. My dear friends, on the third day, Mary went to that tomb, Mary Magdalene, and the stone had been rolled away. But somehow, someway, in all the teachings of Jesus, none of his disciples really got the message and understood the message of the resurrection. My dear friends, on that third morning, up from that grave, he arose with a mighty victory over his foes. My dear friends, this morning, we're sitting here celebrating that occasion that Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, arose. He came out of that tomb. My friends, you may not realize it, and you may realize it, but if you wanted to approach, if you wanted to approach the resurrection on the basis of scientific data, accepting the Word of God as a source, there's more data, there is more data that solidifies the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, as having been resurrected than any other data on any kind of idea that he did not come from that grave. It is amazing. But I want you to know today, he came out of that grave. And this is why I believe in the resurrection. First of all, is because the Word of God says so. Now listen, we saw there in a trite way, it says, the Word says it, that settles it, and I believe it. I've got news for you. The Word settles it. The Word says it, and that settles it, whether you believe it or not. It's settled. The Bible says he arose. One day in my own personal life, I came to the place, I decided, by the grace of God, I wasn't even a Christian, that I would take God and his Word, that this book was the truth. And do you know, from that time on, I've never had any trouble with this book. It's the living Word of God. Billy Graham, in his testimony of his life, says there came a time when I decided, sign sends over here, saying it's not real. But I made the decision to take God and his Word, and his Word was true. He said, I feel like that was one of the major crises of my life. For the continuation of this message, please turn the tape to side two. My dear friends, I believe in the resurrection this morning because this book said he arose. I not only believe in the resurrection because this book says that he arose, but I believe that nature about us reveals that he arose. I really do. I love things of beauty. And I think Easter is the most beautiful time in the entire world. Amen. There are two little girls sitting back there. One of them's lost her hat. But I was noticing how beautiful they were a few moments ago in those hats. And I mean all of the beauty of how people dress fascinates me and blesses me. I don't know, it may not you. But I walk outside and I see all these flowers blooming. And the glory of his majesty in all the beauty and how he has clothed the earth. And it fascinates me. It blesses me. But it also says something else, my dear friends, that somewhere, somehow, there's life in this whole issue. And a life that no one can snuff out. Winter time cannot snuff it out. Tauberic cannot snuff it out. My friends, no one can snuff it out. And I think nature reveals the fact of the resurrection. Romans, the first chapter, says, listen, if you, if you will just let God speak to you through the things that are revealed in nature, God will in some way, somehow, lead you to the living eternal Lord. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that wonderful, my dear friends? Nature will reveal that fact to you that Jesus is alive. I'm excited because I believe in the resurrection because I've seen that resurrected Lord in people's lives. That's right. As a child, I was brought to church and I heard them talk about Jesus. And my concept of Jesus as a child was a picture on the wall of somebody that lived a long, long time ago. And I had just imaginary ideas about Jesus. But I would see people, and I would see my mother, especially, hit crises in life and go to the mountaintops of Christian experience in life. And I saw something that was in her life. And I'd ask her, what makes you different than some other people? And she'd simply say, I know Jesus. I know Jesus. And so in looking at her and seeing her life and other people's lives, that they would call Christians. I knew, my friend, that there had to be a life that would make those people's life different. I know the resurrection is real this morning because I have seen that resurrection in the lives of people. Jesus said, I am the resurrection in life. And the moment a person gets saved by the grace of God washed in the blood of the Lamb, that resurrected Christ starts living in that life. And that life is different. That life is changed. That life moves out in a different direction. And that's wonderful. I believe in the resurrection this morning because I've had that resurrected Christ to deal in my own life and bring me to the end of myself and to him, Seth, to where I know him this morning. I was fascinated recently when I met a friend. And you know, these grandparents, how silly all of us act. And this grandmother had a beautiful story. Her granddaughter had been to visit her Christmas and her granddaughter was a little over four years old but she was in some kind of little special class. You know, how you get excited and you get them in school as quick as you can because you know you've got a genius on your hands. And so these parents had got this little, beautiful little girl in this class and she wasn't very old, about a little over four. And the teacher said something and made this little girl think that she had some question about a living God. And this little girl stood up and said, Teacher, teacher, teacher, it's all right to talk about God because my grandmother knows him. Isn't that beautiful? Oh, that's so beautiful. And my dear friends, this morning, one day, as a boy, so confused, so confused that as a child I could not learn to read and write because I reversed words like see, like when I'd look at saw, I couldn't see that. I'd see was and stuff like that. And I was so confused as a little boy in the third grade when my teacher said you're too dumb to learn. And it turned out that she was dumb enough that she didn't know I had dyslexia. But anyway, but anyhow, I was so confused and at fourteen my parents allowed me to travel and by sixteen I'd been around the world twice and been all over the world, thirty-nine different foreign countries. And I was searching and looking and I said, God, if you're really real, I've heard you talk about, I've seen a difference in people's lives that said they knew you. And the Bible says you're real. But God, make yourself real to me if you're really the resurrected Christ. And one day, that living Lord showed me that I was a sinner without Him. And the misery and the confusion and the sickness and the devilishness in my life was caused because I was a sinner. And that Jesus Christ, the resurrected Son of God, was the answer to my... I didn't need the money. I didn't need all that stuff. I did not know that Jesus was the answer. But I saw Him. When I saw myself lost without Him, I saw that He was the answer. And that living Christ, not understanding a lot about how to do this, I just, I came to Him with all of my messed up life as a sinner. You know what He did? He became more real than what you can see, smell, taste, feel, and hear. He forgave me. He cleansed me. And that living Christ, resurrected Christ, inhabited my life and changed my life that day. Yes, sir. Someone asked me how do I know the resurrected Christ lives? He lives. I know He lives. I know He lives because He lives in my heart. Oh, my. He lives in my heart. Yes, sir. And I've watched Him keep His promises all through these years. Yes, sir. I've watched Him keep His promises from this word. Amen. Oh, my. In all kinds of issues of life, I've had Him to lead me to this book and give me promises that I could stand on. And not only did He give me promises to stand on, but He enabled me to stand on those promises and walk from stormy seas and walk out on the other side with victory, the same victory He had. He won and provided for us when He came out of that grave. Thank God that we can come this morning and celebrate such an occasion, but also participate in such an occasion. Because right here this morning as many of you listening to me talk, many of you are bored or sick. You're heartbroken. You know that you're not right with God. There's misery in your life. You know that you're a sinner. You may not understand why all of this confusion, this muddle in my life. But my dear friend, let me tell you, this Jesus that I'm talking about this morning can solve your problem. He really can. He can forgive you. He can cleanse you. He can inhabit you. And He can stay with you to lead, guide, and direct you, sustain you in this life to where you walk through it, out on the other side having victory. He can do that right for you, just today. He can do that right now.