02.22. The Dead Body
Chapter 22 THE DEAD BODY. In the book of Second Kings we read that Elisha was summoned by a heartbroken mother to restore her dead son to life. The woman’s agony was so great that for a time she could not declare her trouble, but groveled on the ground at the prophet’s feet. When her affliction was at last made known, and petition understood, Elisha went straightway to the house of death, entered the room where the corpse lay upon the bed and began the supernatural battle with that long invincible foe of man, that last to be destroyed enemy of the human race -- Death It was not a very inviting and promising labor before him. He had come from the despair of the mother, was now in the silence of the death chamber, and looked upon the ghastly pallor, the rigid muscles, and felt the marble coldness of the corpse before him. The first thought suggested by this scene is that in like manner the children of God are confronted with dead bodies. As it was in Egypt on a memorable sorrowful night, there is a corpse in every house, while the land is filled with this dreadful kind of death. The pulseless forms are to be seen along the entire journey of the longest life Sometimes the lifeless body is to be found in an unconverted member of the family. For when it comes to spiritual intelligence and soul responsiveness to the truths of salvation, we have indeed a dead man or woman to deal with. In religious coldness and lifelessness there is a marvellous and horrible similarity between an unsaved person and a body shrouded for the grave And when we approach such individuals to speak with them about their souls and the things of God, it is wonderfully like talking to, looking at and touching a corpse in a coffin. Corpses receive a great many attentions, have many things said to them, but they seem to see not and hear not, and certainly do not answer.
Again the dead body is found in a sinful, worldly community, where God is completely ignored, and the devil reigns.
Still again the dead body is felt in a spiritually lifeless congregation before whom the preacher or evangelist stands, to whom he speaks, and with whom he labors for days and seeks to bring back to the cold, clammy, silent, deaf, heavy, irresponsive thing, the departed Spirit of God. A second thought suggested by this piece of the prophet’s history is that the only hope under God for the dead boy in the house of the Shunamite woman was in a certain living man who had just entered the building, and whose name was Elisha. Not any man could raise this lad from the dead, for Gehazi, the servant of the prophet, had come, laid his staff upon the child’s face, and there was no response or movement of any kind.
If the sinner or the dead congregation is to be aroused, it will be under the blessing of God through a human instrumentality; but both the Bible and History agree in teaching that not any man can or will be that instrument. Gehazis with their rods abound. There is much coming and going, bowing and rising, chanting and talking--but the dead all about us fail to rise.
How the whole sickening scene makes us cry out for the Elishas of God, men whom God honors and uses, and who through the divine blessing have made many a home and church to rejoice by calling back their dead to life and usefulness.
It is a stirring thought indeed, that the salvation and recovery of one person depends upon the presence and faithfulness of another. They may be far apart, but it becomes the will of God through his providence to bring the two together. So Ananias finds Saul in prison, and Philip is swept by the Spirit into the desert to lead the troubled Eunuch into light and salvation. The old fairy story of the Prince waking up the Princess who had slept one hundred years shines with a new meaning under this Bible lesson. And truly the one who arouses us from moral slumber and death is bound always to be a Prince and is so to us. The heart of the writer goes out with a great admiration, tenderness and affection for the preacher who led him into full salvation. His every thought and word concerning this man is full of loyalty and kindness. He often wonders how a person who has been converted, sanctified, blessed and led forth into a deeper, sweeter spiritual life, could ever raise his hand, direct his pen, or move his tongue against the being God used so to help him. It is as unnatural as though the youth Elisha raised from death should, in after days, meet the prophet on the road, and strike him to the ground. A third thought brought us by the study of this passage is the method the prophet adopted to restore the dead child. The first thing he did, according to the Bible account, was to kneel down and pray to God.
It does not say how long he supplicated, but one can well imagine with the gravity, the very desperateness of the case before him, how low he got down before God, how he humbled himself, how he sighed and wept and agonized and hung on to the Lord without any regard to flying time.
We have not the slightest idea that he arose from the floor until he felt the unmistakable assurance in his soul that his request was granted. That as he had prevailed with God, he would conquer with man. Knowing Elisha’s character as we do through the Scripture, we have not the remotest belief that he would have ceased his prayer and entered upon his work, without the melting, blissful, blessed divine whisper that he was going to win in the battle with death before him.
We are equally confident that the reason why the "Dead" sleep on all around us, in spite of ringing church bells, volumes of song, and vociferous preaching, is that the prevailing prayer has not been offered which must precede a life and congregation resurrection. The disciples prayed through, and on the tenth day received Pentecost and gathered from the Jerusalem moral graveyard three thousand living souls. If we do the same, we will be certain to behold very wonderful things in the way of men getting out of the sepulchres of sin, casting off their grave clothes at the door of the tomb, and going forth to do mighty deeds in the life and liberty of the children of God.
Another thing Elisha did was to stretch himself upon the dead body, and as the Bible says, "Put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands." This is what we are to do in a sense with the spiritually lifeless who have come into our lives with their chilling and saddening power. In a figurative way we must come down where they are, eye to eye, and hand to hand. We must realize their inanimate condition and come after them, and stretch ourselves upon them in mighty resolution and endeavor to bring them out of sin and darkness into salvation and light.
Paul said he made himself all things to all men that he might win the more. He did not sin, but came in another sense down where the lost man was, in order to restore him. He, so to speak, stretched himself upon the corpse. It takes not only grace to do this, but much grace. The hope of the spiritually dead is in the spiritually living. The former are helpless, and so the latter must come to the former. Death must be met with life, coldness, with warmth, irresponsiveness with activity, and the dumb, blind, motionless, icy sinner be ministered to, fluttered over, and warmed by a loving, patient, glowing Christian heart and life.
We hear much talk these days about dead churches, and backslidden members, and lost sinners. The question is what have we done to get them alive? Have we pulled away from everybody less spiritual than ourselves, given up as hopeless the backslider, and held ourselves utterly aloof from the transgressor? Then are we running from the corpse! We have left the dead man in the house of death! The Saviour did not do this; but came to a charnel house of a world, and brought life and immortality to light. He lived and died in the deadest ecclesiasticism that ever appeared on this planet; but he raised from spiritual tombs all around men and women to take up his work after he had gone, and, as a consequence, multitudes of redeemed beings are in Heaven, and multitudes more are mentioning these very beings He ransomed, in prayer, hymn and sermon every day of this world’s history.
Elisha did not leave the corpse, but penetrated the house of death, prayed by the side of dissolution, stretched himself upon what was lifeless clay and on the way to corruption, and behold! the flesh warmed, the breath came back, the dead lived, and a house of mourning was turned into a habitation of praise and thanksgiving.
We know of parents who never gave up their children, and have seen them all saved at last.
We know of a wife who prayed for her husband with an unshaken faith for sixteen years and saw him at last soundly converted to God. We also heard of a young girl who, from the age of twelve until she was twenty, never ceased her gentle, loving and wise efforts to bring her cold, worldly and wicked father to salvation. Others failed and despaired. But she stood by the corpse; warmed the dead thing with her beautiful Christian life and love, and saw the man not only converted, but wholly sanctified, and today a faithful, devout, consistent member of the church.
Very many are the preachers and evangelists in the land today who are called to stand in the presence of a profound, spiritual death in the form of the congregation before them. Every feature and characteristic of dissolution seems to be there. The very graveyard is suggested by the memorial windows an all sides. The tomb is there, and the corpse is in or by the tomb. There is the glazed eye, the irresponsive face, the rigid appearance, and the heavy ear--for the dead hear not. For days the funeral services seem to proceed. Some are for running and leaving the body to be buried by any who will, or to rot above the ground. But the men we speak of stay in the chamber of death, and wrestle with strong crying and tears over the insensible, pulseless form before them. They feel all the weariness, loneliness and heartsickness attendant upon the situation, but they know in whom they have believed, and that the Saviour is the Resurrection and the Life. And so they wrestle and labor on. To all such is granted the blessed, thrilling, supernatural sight of the dead arising from coffin, bier and cemetery, with shining faces, and shoutings and leapings of joy, to die no more forever. In a Southern town we once labored with a lifeless church for a whole week, and seemingly to no purpose. On the eighth day, while preaching, the fire suddenly fell from heaven, and twenty-five souls were regenerated and sanctified, and fifteen were saved that night. Here was forty in one day. The exact number was repeated the next day, and thirty-five were given to us from the grave on the day following. This made one hundred and fifteen in three days. Thus ended the appearance of an ecclesiastical cemetery, and upon the ruins of the monuments a thriving, bustling community of redeemed souls built habitations of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. In a large Western city, we had reached the end of the tenth day, and the chamber of death was still filled with cold, rigid forms, and we were almost ready to despair, when on the eleventh day, while preaching on Sunday afternoon on the Baptism with the Holy Ghost, suddenly the resurrecting power came down, the glory fell upon the long silent audience, a celestial pandemonium broke loose and very many hardly knew whether they were in the body or out of the body--God knoweth. From this individual cemetery we obtained three hundred risen bodies for the Lord; one hundred converted and two hundred reclaimed and sanctified.
God help us to be like Elisha, and not give up dead bodies too soon.
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