The Day Death
Died
When my wife and I were students in college we used to take long walks into the country. Nearby was an old graveyard where we used to go to read the epitaphs on the tombstones. Ever since then, I have liked to go to old cemeteries in various parts of the world. When we wander through a graveyard and look at the tombstones or go into a church and examine the old monuments, we see one heading on most of them: "Here lies." Then follows the name with the date of death and perhaps some praise of the good qualities of the deceased. But how different is the epitaph on the tomb of Jesus! It is neither written in gold nor cut in stone. It is spoken by the mouth of an angel and is the exact reverse of what is put on all other tombs: "He is not here: for he is risen, as he said" (Matthew 28:6).
The most important events in human history were the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul said: "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain . . . If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins" (1 Cor. 15:14, 17).
In reading about the early church, we find that the central theme of the early Christians' witness to the world was the fact that Jesus Christ, who was crucified, had been raised from the dead. We usually hear a sermon on the resurrection every Easter, and that is about all. However, in the preaching
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of the early Apostles, the cross and the resurrection were their constant themes. The cross and resurrection were linked together. Without the resurrection, the cross is meaningless. Apart from the resurrection, the cross was a tragedy and a defeat. If Christ's bones lie decayed in a grave, then there is no good news, the darkness of the world is indeed black, and life has no meaning. The New Testament becomes a myth. Christianity is a fable. And millions living and dead are victims of a gigantic hoax.
At the end of his great book, Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev describes a village graveyard in one of the remote corners of Russia. Among the many neglected graves was one untouched by man, untrampled by beast. Only the birds rested upon it and sang at daybreak. Often from the nearby village two feeble old people, husband and wife, moving with heavy steps and supporting one another, came to visit this grave. Kneeling down at the railing and gazing intently at the stone under which their son was lying, they yearned and wept. After a brief word they wiped the dust away from the stone, set straight a branch of a fir tree, and then began to pray. In this spot they seemed to be nearer their son and their memories of him. And then Turgenev asks: "Can it be that their prayers, their tears, are fruitless? Can it be that love, sacred, devoted love, is not all powerful? Oh no, however passionate, sinning and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep serenely at us with their innocent eyes. They tell us not of eternal peace alone, of that great peace of indifferent nature; they tell us, too, of eternal reconciliation and of life without end."
Thus Turgenev was offering hope of an eternal reconciliation. But upon what is that hope based? It is based upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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Shall Man Live Again?
The great question of the ages has been: "If a man die, shall he live again?" We know that the first part of that sentence is fulfilled every day. There is no "if" about it. "It is appointed unto men once to die" (Hebrews 9:27) The question is "Shall man live again?"
There are those who say that all there is to man is just bone, flesh, and blood. They say that when you are dead, when you die, nothing happens; you don't go anywhere. It is dust to dust and ashes to ashes.
Ask the scientist and he cannot give an answer. I have asked a number of scientists questions concerning life after death, and most of them say: "We just do not know." Science deals in formulas and test tubes. There is a spiritual world that science knows nothing about.
Because many do not believe in life after death, their writings are filled with tragedy and pessimism. The writings of William Faulkner, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene O'Neill, and many others are filled with pessimism darkness, and tragedy.
How different from Jesus Christ who said: "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die" (John 11:25-26). Again he said: "Because I live, ye shall live also" (John 14:19). And again: "Ye believe in God, believe also in me" (John 14:1). Our hope of immortality is based on Christ alone — not on many desires, longings, arguments, or any instincts of immortality. Yet the hope of immortality that is revealed in Christ agrees with all those great desires and instincts. "The heart,"
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Pascal said, "has its reasons which reason does not know."1 In the case of the resurrection of Christ, we have the witness not only of the heart but reason as well.
The Bible deals with the resurrection of Jesus as an event that could be examined by the physical senses. It involved the eyes, for the disciples saw the numerous appearances of Jesus under every conceivable condition. It was on one occasion to a single disciple, while at another time to more than five hundred. Some saw Jesus separately, some together. Some for a moment, and some for a long time. Some at a distance, and some close by. Some once, and some several times. The resurrection involved the ears, for the disciples heard Jesus in conversation. It involved the touch, for the disciples were told to handle Jesus and thus to verify His physical reality. They not only saw Him, but they touched and walked with Him, conversed with Him, ate with Him, and examined Him. This took the resurrection appearances of Jesus out of the realm of hallucination and put them into the realm of demonstrable physical facts.
There is a basis of historical fact for our belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ. It rests on more evidence than any event that took place in that time.
Historical Evidences of Christ's Resurrection
1. THE ACTUAL DEATH OF JESUS
There are those who say that Jesus did not actually die, but that He only fainted. A resurrection presupposes a death. In order to be raised from the dead, Jesus had to die. This is a self-evident fact deduced from the crucifixion. The soldiers were certain that Jesus was dead and that they did not need
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to induce death by shock by breaking His legs, as in the case of the two thieves. It was the enemies, not the friends of Jesus, who attested his death, and they made certain when they thrust a spear into His heart
2. THE PHYSICAL BURIAL OF JESUS
The body of Jesus was wrapped in fine linen with spices, according to the local custom. An actual tomb was involved, which required the placing of a body. Moreover, a stone was rolled against the face of the tomb, a seal was placed upon it, and a Roman guard set before it. This burial of the body of Jesus presupposes the impossibility of burying a spirit. Spirits are immaterial and cannot be buried. The body of Jesus was physical and material.
It was not only buried so that it occupied space in a tomb, but it was buried for three days. This could not have been true of a spirit, for spirits occupy neither time nor space.
3. THE EMPTY TOMB
When the disciples saw the tomb in which they had previously buried the body of Jesus, it was empty. The burial garments were in such shape and place to indicate their abandonment by the orderly departure of the body of Jesus. When Jesus later appeared to His disciples, it was in a body, for He said: "A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see I have" (Luke 24:39). His resurrection body occupied spatial conditions and performed the functions of movement, appearance, and the eating of food. He talked and heard. He occupied a room but did not need a door for access. It was the same body in its glorified spiritual form that Jesus took from the tomb, leaving it empty and without occupant.
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4. THE BODILY RESURRECTION
There were thirteen different appearances of Jesus under every conceivable condition and circumstance. Unlike hallucinations, which can continue to deceive, the appearances of Jesus ceased, for they ended with His ascension.
Any notion that seeks to disprove the bodily resurrection of Jesus is confronted with these appearances of Jesus in His own body. It was a body both similar and dissimilar to that which was nailed to the tree. It was so similar that Mary mistook Him for the caretaker of the garden. It was so similar that it could receive food, engage in conversation, and occupy a room.
The dissimilarity was in its properties. It combined both material and immaterial properties. It could pass through closed doors or vanish. When viewed scientifically, this would not seem to be incredible. "No material substance or door or anything else is solid. There are always spaces between the molecules so that for one such body to pass through another is no more difficult to imagine than for one regiment to march through another on parade; and if a regiment contained anything like as many men as there are molecules in a door, it would probably look just as solid. Moreover Christ's risen body, though possessing some material properties, is represented to have been spiritual as well; and the nearest approach to a spiritual substance of which we have any scientific knowledge is ether, and this also seems to combine material and immaterial properties, being in some respects more like a solid than a gas. Yet it can pass through all material substances, and this certainly prevents us from saying that it is incredible that Christ's spiritual body should pass through closed doors. Indeed for all we know, it may be one of the properties of spiritual things that they can pass through
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material substances (just as X-rays can) and be generally invisible, yet be able if they wish to assume some of the properties of matter, such as becoming visible or audible. In fact, unless they were able to do this, it is hard to see how they could manifest themselves at all. And a slight alteration in the waves of light coming from a body would make it visible to the human eye, and it is out of the question to say that God, the Omnipotent One, could not produce such a change in a spiritual body. While for such a body to become tangible or to take food is not really more wonderful than for it to become visible or audible, since when once we pass the boundary between the natural and the supernatural everything is mysterious."2
It was in the spirit of this evidence and truth that Paul said to King Agrippa: "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?" (Acts 26:8).
With a frequency that is amazing the Bible affirms the fact of the bodily resurrection of Christ. Perhaps the most direct of all its statements is Luke's account in the book of Acts, where he reports: "To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days" (Acts 1:3) What are we going to do with these "many infallible proofs"? Someone asked my colleague George Beverly Shea how much he knew about God. He said, "I don't know much, but what I do know has changed my life." We may not be able to take all of this evidence into a scientific laboratory and prove it; but if we accept any fact of history, we must accept the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
The resurrection of Christ was not simply a postscript to the earthly life of Jesus, but it is one of a series of redemptive events that are links in a chain from eternity to eternity. These include the incarnation, the crucifixion, the resurrection,
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the ascension, and the return. Any missing link would destroy the chain and thus make redemption impossible.
For personal Christianity, the resurrection is all-important. There is a vital interrelation to the very existence of Christianity itself as well as to the individual believer in the message of the Gospel. The Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, said: "Do you want to believe in the living Christ? We may believe in him only if we believe in his corporeal resurrection. This is the content of the New Testament. We are always free to reject it, but not to modify it, nor to pretend that the New Testament tells something else. We may accept or refuse the message, but we may not change it"3
The Resurrection Essential
1. Christianity as a system of truth collapses if the resurrection is rejected. That Jesus rose from the dead is one of the foundation stones of our faith. As Paul said: "If Christ be not risen, then our preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain" (1 Cor. 15:14).
2. The Gospel message — that is, the good news of salvation — is related to a belief in the resurrection. Along with the crucifixion, it was the central theme of the apostolic preachers at the beginning of the Christian era. They proclaimed the resurrection as central in the Gospel. This is what Paul said: "Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor. 15:1-4).
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Charles Reynolds Brown tells of a conversation between Auguste Comte, the French philosopher, and Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish essayist. Comte declared his intention of starting a new religion that would supplant entirely the religion of Christ. It was to have no mysteries, was to be as plain as the multiplication table, and its name was to be positivism. "Very good, Mr. Comte," Carlyle replied, "very good. All you will need to do will be to speak as never a man spake, and live as never a man lived, and be crucified, and rise again the third day, and get the world to believe that you are still alive. Then your religion will have a chance to get on."
3. A personal salvation experience is related to a belief in the resurrection. When Paul gave the formula of saving faith, it was centered in a belief in the resurrection: "If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation" (Romans 10: 9, 10). Whenever the argument arises that the resurrection of Jesus did not involve the reanimation of His body, those who hold this view argue that the resurrection is resurrection from death, never from the grave. They say that Jesus immediately rose out of death into spiritual life with God. This means a spirit but not physical resurrection. This is what many modern preachers proclaim on Easter morning when they talk about, but do not explain, the resurrection of Jesus. One minister told me recently that even when he said the Apostles' Creed he crossed his fingers. He said: "I cannot believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
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The New Testament Scriptures speak unanimously of eye-witnesses of the resurrected Christ. They say:
"We saw his glory"
"This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses"
"You seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified; he is risen"
"You will see him"
"He appeared"
"I have seen Jesus the Lord"
Within the short span of three days both events, the death and resurrection, took place bodily and not symbolically — tangibly, not spiritually — watched by men of flesh and blood, not fabricated by a hallucination. "Had the New Testament writers known of the devices of the Twentieth Century, they would perhaps have insisted upon the confirmation afforded by a camera, a recording machine, or a newspaper report."4
Jesus could have returned to heaven without a bodily resurrection. Before His incarnation, He had existed in heaven without a body and had been the source of all life. But such a return would have not been complete triumph over death. Satan would have won a partial victory.
When properly understood, death is not merely the cessation of existence. It affects the personality and its relation to the body. The body bears the sentence of death as well as the personality. The body has to be retrieved from its lost estate as well as the soul. Only by the resurrection of the body could the conquest of death be made complete. This not only involved the body of Jesus, but it will also involve the body of all those who believe. Thus we are saved ultimately from physical death, spiritual death, and eternal death. As the judgment of death was total, so salvation from its penalty is total, involving the physical, spiritual, and eternal.
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This is Paul's statement: "We shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible . . . Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" (1 Cor. 15:51, 52, 54, 55).
The resurrection was the confirmation of the nature and ministry of Jesus, who was "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4). The resurrection was also the pledge and promise of our own resurrection. "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him" (1 Thess. 4:14). "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept" (1 Cor. 15:20).
Furthermore, Jesus staked the validity of all His claims and the reality of all His works upon His resurrection. Everything hinged upon His rising from the dead. By this He would be judged true or false.
What Does the Resurrection Mean to Us?
1. It means the presence of the living Christ. Christ is the living companion of every person who puts his trust in Him. He said: "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world" (Matthew 28:20). He is the guarantee that life has a new meaning. After the crucifixion, the beleaguered disciples despaired and said: "We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel" (Luke 24:21). There was anguish, despair, and tragedy in their midst. Life had lost its meaning and purpose. but when the resurrection became apparent, life took on a new meaning. It had purpose and reason.
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David Livingstone once addressed a group of students at Glasgow University. When he rose to speak. Severe illnesses on nearly thirty occasions had left him gaunt and haggard. His left arm, crushed by a lion, hung limp at his side. After describing his trials and tribulations, he said: "Would you like me to tell you what supported me through all the years of exile among people whose language I could not understand and whose attitude toward me was always uncertain and often hostile: It was this: 'Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.' On these words I staked everything, and they never failed."
2. The prayers of the living Christ. the Scripture says: "It is Christ that died, yea rather, who is risen again. who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us" (Romans 8:34). In other words, there is a Man at the right hand of God the Father. He is living in a body that still has the nail prints in His hands. He is interceding for us with God the Father as our great High Priest.
3. The power of the living Christ. The resurrection made it possible for Christ to be identified with all Christians in all ages and to give them power to serve Him. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He who believes on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to my Father" (John 14:12). Paul even prayed: "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection" (Philippians 3:10). His resurrection presence gives us strength and power for each day's task.
4. The pattern of our new bodies. The resurrected body of Jesus Christ is the pattern of what our bodies will be when we too are raised from the dead. "But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body" (Philippians 3:20-21).
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5. The promise of a returning Redeemer. The entire plan for the future has its key in the resurrection. Unless Christ is raised from the dead, there can be no kingdom and no returning King. When the disciples stood at the place of the ascension, they were given angelic assurance that the Christ of the resurrection would be the Christ of returning glory. "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who is taken up from you into heaven, shall return in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). Thus the resurrection is an event that was both preparatory for and confirmative of a future event even of His second coming.5
Yes, our leader Jesus Christ is alive.
When I was in Russia, I heard a story about a Russian village. After the Bolshevik revolution, the local Communist leader had been sent to tell the people the virtues of Communism and to take their minds away from religion, which Karl Marx called "the opium of the people." After the Communist had harangued them for a long time, he said to the local Christian pastor rather contemptuously: "I will give you five minutes to reply." The pastor replied: "I do not need five minutes, only five seconds." He rose to the platform and gave the Easter greeting: "The Lord is risen!" As one man the villagers thundered back: "He is risen indeed!"
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1. Pascal, Pensées.
2. Fathers Doyle, Chetwood, and Herzog, The Truth of Christianity Series, 4 vols. (New York: Benziger Brothers, Inc.), p. 245.
3. Time, April 20, 1962, p. 59.
4. Marcus Barth and Verne H. Flesher, Acquittal by Resurrection (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), p. 13.
5. Ibid.
