Living forever is an experience we human beings can barely contemplate.
In all the history of mankind—among all the millions who have died, generation after generation, only one person has gone through the valley of death and risen to die no more.
Death has been so prevalent, so extensive, many look upon it as the permanent destiny of all mankind.
What a pitiful failure such a world would be without God, no hope, faith or future.
We know from God’s word how death came and how it will be eventually destroyed.
“By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; so death passed upon all in men.”
“as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”
When we celebrate the resurrection of Christ the message is not the fact that Christ died and rose again, but because he lives we shall live also. “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.”
The fact that Christ rose again would be of little value to us if it did not show how we can also live forever.
His resurrection guarantees to us the opportunity of living again ;” because I live ye shall live also.”
He is indeed a saviour, who shall change our body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.
They that attain unto that world shall be equal to the angels, neither can they die any more.
We commemorate the resurrection of Christ, because of what it means to us, because it shows the
hand of God and proves to all men there is another life, living forever in a better world.
Three vital facts concern the resurrection of Christ. Three eternal truths that show it was a miracle by the hand of God.
He rose as he said he would on the third day. “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” “Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: whom God hath raised up.”
After his resurrection he was seen of many witnesses, on one occasion by more than five hundred brethren.
By his resurrection he became the first-fruits of them that sleep.
“For as in Adam, all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive, but every man in his own order, Christ the first-fruits, afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.” I Cor. 15:22-23.
His resurrection was a victory o flight over darkness, a victory of right over wrong, a victory of life over death.
In spite of the power and might of Rome the treachery of Judas, the malice and bribery of Caiaphas, inspite of the eight Roman soldiers who sealed the tomb, God raised him up and left an empty tomb as a witness that an angel had rolled away the stone.
When our Lord rose again, he gave to us a lively hope, a rock on which to stand. Our hope of living again depends on a physical resurrection of the body. “For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised : and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.”
When the hand of death strikes down each one in turn, we who remain ask “if a man die shall he live again ?” Our sorrow and loss has been answered by God and consequently we “sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.”
Martha expressed the true Christian hope when her brother (lied. “I know he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
If we are wise we shall put our hope in the resurrection and declare to all even as Paul did. “men and brethren, . . . of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.” We can thank God even as Paul did when he said, “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One