1 Corinthians 15

1 Corinthians 15:1-34

THE PILLARS OF AN APOSTLE’S GOSPEL 1 Corinthians 15:1-34WITH every reading of the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians there come new lessons. Verily, there is a difference between getting your text from the Bible and having your text given by the Spirit; and, in undertaking a series of discourses on this colossal chapter, I can say with Jeremiah, “But His Word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay” (Jeremiah 20:9).Paul’s purpose in this chapter is made evident in the opening words,“Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; “By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:1-2). When at Athens, Paul preached “the resurrection”, he broke up the meeting. His auditors were incapable of understanding what he meant, and they remarked, “He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods”. And, although later the Greeks evidently apprehended the import of this truth, Paul had to warn the Corinthians against two teachers at Ephesus, Hymenaeus and Philetus, “Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already” (2 Timothy 2:18).The error into which they fell was identical with that modern notion of “elimination” which has supplanted the primitive doctrine of the resurrection, and which, as Dr. Gordon once tersely puts it, “Makes one’s death his only resurrection;” and assigns to the sexton’s bell-tolling the dead to the grave—the power which the Apostle associated with the angel’s trumpet—calling the dead from the grave.But, preliminary to the Apostle’s discussion of the subject of the resurrection, there was another essential upon which emphasis must be laid, and that essential will appear as we proceed with the study of these thirty-four verses.Permit me to remark in passing that if any call in question the inspiration of the Apostle, none will doubt his sincerity. The style of this chapter suggests the blood-earnestness of the Apostle who penned it. When Joseph Hume, the unbeliever, was twitted for going to hear Dr.

John Brown, the celebrated Scotch preacher, he replied, “I do not believe all he says; but he does. And once a week, at least, I like to hear a man who believes what he says. Why, whatever I think, that man preaches as though he felt the Lord Jesus Christ were just at his elbow.”And whatever may be your opinion or mine, this Apostle Paul writes as though the Holy Ghost dominated both mind and heart, and we do well to wait upon his words.In these thirty-four verses the good student discovers the four pillars of the Apostle’s Gospel: Christ’s Death is Sacrificial; Christ’s Resurrection is Historical; Christ’s Resurrection is Fundamental, and Christ’s Resurrection is Consequential.CHRIST’S DEATH IS Paul says, “I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3).Such was the faith preached from the first. “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; “By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:1-2). It was no new Gospel! It was the Gospel of Genesis, of Exodus, of Leviticus! This sacrificial Gospel was in Abel’s offering of blood; this sacrificial Gospel was in every lamb slain, every bullock laid on the altar, every turtle dove whose blood was shed. The symbols of the Old Testament lose their significance if for one moment the great sacrifice of Christ is forgotten.The words of Jesus are interpreted in the light of the same truth, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24).“I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep”. Who can interpret for us the words uttered on that memorable night when the Lord’s Supper was instituted, “This is My blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins”, if it be not so that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures”?The great Apostle has a right to say to the Galatians, “I certify you, brethren, that the Gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:11-12).

People have a custom these days of speaking of “Pauline doctrines”. There are no such creeds!

Paul originated nothing! In his extensive and numerous Epistles he proclaims no new truth; but, drawing, as he says, upon the sacred “Scriptures”, he amplifies the Old, and among them he regards this as one most clearly taught, that “Christ died for our sins”. I think I should agree with Pastor Stalker when he says that Paul’s “whole teaching revolves between the two poles, of righteousness through the death of Christ for us, and holiness through the life of Christ in us”. But such was the faith preached from the first!This is an article of utmost importance. Paul rightly declares that it is the truth by which they are saved, and wherein they stand, except they have believed in vain. It was this in mind that moved him to write to the Romans, “I am ready to preach the Gospel to you that are at Rome also.

For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth” (Romans 1:15-16). And, to the Corinthians, “We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:25; 1 Corinthians 1:24).

He made everything to rest upon the crucifixion of Jesus. We have heard the legend of a godly priest of the middle ages who preached the Gospel to a listless audience. A dark looking stranger came up to him after the service, so the legend goes, and said, “Come down to hell and make us one such offer.”Take away from this world the truth of Scripture that “Christ died for our sins”, and you leave it as hopeless as hell. “There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Susanna Wesley, the mother of the famous brothers, John and Charles, knew but little of the conscious forgiveness of sins until she heard her son Hall, in administering the communion, pronounce the words, “The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was shed for thee”, and instantly she said, “Aye, that Blood cleanseth me from all sin.”This is the great fact affirmed by Scripture. When the Apostle speaks of having delivered the truth that Christ died for our sins, and claims that he speaks “according to the Scriptures”, it is no vain boast. He had been reading the Psalmist and heard these words from the mouth of the Saviour, “Thou hast brought Me into the dust of death” (Psalms 22:15). Isaiah had been his meditation, and like Philip he knew of whom that Prophet spake when he said,“Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:4-6). That wonderful prophecy of Daniel had not been neglected, “After threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself” (Daniel 9:26). That Old Testament Apocalypse—Zechariah—had also engaged the Apostle’s thought; he had defined the meaning of his words, “Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, and against the man that is My Fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall he scattered: and I will turn Mine hand upon the little ones” (Zechariah 13:7). Hence, when he came to write his Epistle to the Hebrews, Paul said it was Jesus who, though made “a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man” (Hebrews 2:9).We find people who revolt from the sacrificial theory, and who call it “the bloody Gospel.” Such it is! But why human nature should be offended by such sacrifice, we cannot understand! To be sure, the aesthetic faculties are disturbed when, in New York, one stands before that image of a dying man. It is not pleasant to look on a contorted face, on features where agony is doing its work.

But when one reads the inscription below, “I regret that I have but one life to lay down for my country,” and the signature, “Nathan Hale”, every righteous sentiment asserts itself, and he praises God for such a man, for the principle of unselfishness, and the privilege of sacrificing for the larger good. And such is the first pillar in the Apostle’s Gospel!But we call your attention to the second pillar, namely,CHRIST’S IS The Scriptures have not only spoken to the first great truth that “Christ died for our sins”, but the Apostle asserts that they speak of another of equal importance, namely, that “He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures”. Was it true that “the Scriptures”, as Paul employs the term, refer to the Old Testament? What had they to say concerning this fact?Their sacred writers predicted the event. Inspiration has interpreted for us the meaning of the Psalmist’s words, “Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell; neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption” (Psalms 16:10). Paul, speaking by the Holy Ghost, said, “This refers to Christ”. Who questions now the meaning of Isaiah’s language, “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief; when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand” (Isaiah 53:10).

That is a significant phrase, “He shall prolong His days”. They were cut short; but they were prolonged also.

He was crucified; but He also rose again, and the pleasure of the Lord prospered in his hand. How wonderful the words of Hosea, “After two days will He revive us; in the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight” (Hosea 6:2).Nearly eight hundred years before the event, this minor Prophet dares to mention the very time he will spend in the grave, and here prophecy became “the mold of history.” Truly, as Arthur Pierson says, “There was a certain sublimity about that act of the German astronomers who at Aiken, S. C., in 1884, left the stone on which they rested their meridian circle, in observing the transit of Venus, to stand for those who in 2004 shall watch for another transit. Think of it—the faith of science in the inflexible order of nature! One hundred and twenty years, three times, at least, within that space a generation will have perished; thrones will have been emptied of occupant after occupant; empires will have passed away; yea, even human history may have come to its last great crisis and the millennial march may have begun; but punctual to the second, without delay or failure, Venus will make her transit across the sun’s disk.But more audacious still was the statement of Hosea 750 years before the event, that Christ should rise on the third day; and yet prompt to the last word of his prophecy it so transpired, and the angel who said to the women, “He is not here: for He is risen, as He said”, might have added, “And exactly as the Old Testament prophet predicted”, for the speech of the holy Prophets, and that of the Son of Man were alike fulfilled in His resurrection from the dead.But history has other witnesses and they assert as a fact what the Prophets affirmed as a future.Above five hundred friends saw Him alive.“He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: “After that, He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. “After that, He was seen of James; then of all the Apostles” (1 Corinthians 15:5-7). One sometimes wonders how many witnesses, whose words are in perfect agreement, must be presented to convince the skeptical; and one is more and more amazed to see how readily people will believe a lie, and with what difficulty you can bring them to assent to the truth. It is certainly a strange comment on human nature! Ten false spies, represented by a single spokesman, convinced all Israel at an hour when the riches of Canaan were within the nation’s reach. It does not take many witnesses to bring men to believe a lie. Joseph Smith claimed to have had revelations from Heaven, and Sidney Rigdon was the only man who had any knowledge of how he got them, and yet thousands of Mormons accept their testimony as true. A solitary deceiver can impress a multitude with his assertions; and the same crowd will look skeptical when five hundred men and women, reputable in character, truthful in statement, willing to die for their declaration, are agreed, to an individual, in having seen face to face the risen Son of God.

And they saw Him not once, but often; not far away, but at hand; not in one place, but in many; not under one set of circumstances, but at all hours of the day; abroad and in the house, walking and sitting; speaking and eating; the individual and the crowd! They were not expectant of His appearance, but incredulous; surprised every one of them at first sight of Him; and we may believe that, like Thomas, they stared and paused, before they fell at His feet and said, “My Lord and my God”.

He, Himself, was compelled to upbraid them by saying, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe”. Who questions Christ’s resurrection is more difficult to convince than he who doubts that McKinley fell at the assassin’s hand, because he was not there to see the bullet break its way through flesh and bone!But the historicity of Christ’s resurrection is not ended even here.To His most noted opponent He also appeared. “And last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time”. If one would know the further circumstance of His appearance, read the ninth chapter of Acts, and hear the Apostle tell how, when he was on the way to Damascus, breathing out threatenings and slaughter, he was arrested by a light beyond the brightness of the sun, and heard that voice from Heaven, and saw the vision which compelled him, on his face, to say, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” And from that hour until this, the enemies of Jesus have been compelled to bear testimony to His resurrection. Gilbert West, infidel as he was, found himself overwhelmed when he undertook to weigh the evidence concerning the resurrection, and was compelled to agree with Luke that Christ had shown Himself alive “after His passion by many infallible proofs” (Acts 1:3), and being converted, West left, as a heritage to the church, his valuable treatise, “Observations on the Resurrection of Christ”. Truly, “Their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges” (Deuteronomy 32:31).But to the third pillar of the Apostle’s Gospel:CHRIST’S IS There are at least four important respects in which the Apostle declares it to be so.Preaching is vain and false, if it be not so. “Now if Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? “But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. “Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ: whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not” (1 Corinthians 15:12-15). When at Pentecost Peter was before the people, he not only charged his auditors in these words, “Ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain”, but further affirmed, “whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that He should be holden of it”. David had prophesied that “neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption”; and Peter says, “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses” (Acts 2:23-24; Acts 2:27; Acts 2:32). It was a vain preaching and a false one as well, if the resurrection were not a fact. People sometimes say that it does not make any difference whether you believe in the resurrection of Jesus or not; that the great thing today is to imitate His example!On the contrary, if Christ were not the Son of God, the world never had a more wretched impostor. If He is in His grave today, He has deceived and destroyed more men and women and children than any other million mortals ever led astray; and the preachers of the Christian faith are declaring a false doctrine, continuing the deception and adding to the destruction.Again, Living believers are unpardoned if He be not risen. “If Christ be not risen, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins”. Can a dead man do aught for the absolution of the soul?

I have known people to come into the presence of deceased loved ones, whom they had wronged, and, falling over the cold form, beg them to come back to life and speak the one word “forgiven.” But I have seen their prayers mocked by the solemn silence. “The dead know not anything” (Ecclesiastes 9:5). Protestants preach that there is no power with a stained priest to absolve his fellow sinner from sin.

Jesus consented to the proposition of the Pharisees, “Who can forgive sins but God only”? And if He is in His grave He is not God; and never had any power to pardon iniquity. The most penitent that walk the earth, having put their trust in Him, are still under condemnation. The sentence of the Law stands, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4). Cannon Liddon says, “Paul’s bones rest somewhere in or near the great city where they slew him some thirty-five years after his Master’s death. But who can speak of Paul as dying for his fellows, or for ‘the ungodly’, as bearing ‘our sins in his own body’, or as being ‘set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood’?

Who would dare to say that Christians are reconciled to God by the death of Paul, or that they had received the atonement, or that Paul gave himself a ransom for all?” Why not? Simply because Paul was not the Son of God, and has not risen from the dead, nor yet ascended to the right hand of the Father, nor stands in the place of the great High Priest of our soul.And if Christ is not that Son and has not accomplished all these things, then He is impotent to pardon, and we are yet in our sins.And still further, Sleeping believers have perished if He is not risen. “They also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished”.It avails them nothing that they went down into the grave hugging a delusion.

Drowning men, we are told, are often happy in the last moments; they witness visions of marvelous beauty; they believe themselves to have been transported into some enchanted land. But what are these solacing illusions worth? A few minutes more and the black mud of the greater depths, or the whiter sands of shallows, will hold them and they will sleep, as dead as though they had seen no such visions. Who of us have not been moved as we sat by the bedside of the dying to hear them speak the Name of Jesus with ardor and love; to listen to their visions of things heavenly; their evident sight of saints gone before, and of angels coming as convoys; yea, even their pictures of the streets of the Eternal City, already looming before them, golden-paved, gloriously appointed, splendid in proportions, shining with a light never seen on land or sea; to listen as they talk of the glint of that river, worthy indeed the name, “The River of Life”, and the trees growing on either side, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations? It has drawn the sting of death for us; it has brought delight in the saddest of all possible hours; it has struck our sorrows through with song! And yet, beloved, what is it all worth if, a moment more, those we love have passed into the grave that still holds Jesus of Nazareth, to be fastened there by an eternal sleep?

It is no better than the visions of the drowning, for “they * * have perished”.And yet again, says Paul, The Apostles are most to be pitied if He is not risen. “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable”. If there is no hereafter why receive these stripes; “why stand we in jeopardy every hour”? “I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.

If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die” (1 Corinthians 15:31-32). The epicurean is far wiser; he is feasting his body, clothing himself in goodly clothing, enjoying the moment.“Live while we live, The epicureans say; And seek the pleasure Of the present day.” “Let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die”. Truly he is a wiser man, if Christ be not risen! To go through with these sufferings and afflictions, to discover at last that we have endured all for the Deceiver; that we have worshiped at the shrine of the dead; that we have preached a falsehood, and called it a living faith. “If in this life only we have hope in Christ”, says the Apostle, “we are of all men most miserable”. For it was of this the Apostle Paul speaks, “God has set us forth the Apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men”, and certainly, as he says, they would have been “fools for Christ’s sake”, had He not risen.The social butterfly you scorn is saner than the man who suffers for naught. If it be a truth that “Christ sitteth on the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1); that He is a Saviour of such as seek Him; that it is within His power to impart eternal life—then the Apostle is not to be pitied, for when the wicked have perished; when the social butterfly is sleeping forever in the dust, or waking only to be turned into the pit, he will be living on, his life forever increasing in happiness and power. Ward Beecher declares that he never saw a diamond so beautiful as the dew-drop on his lawn, and asks, “What is the difference between the dew-drop and the diamond?” and answers, “One goes in a moment; it flashes and dies; but the other endures, and its value increases.” Ah, beloved, when this same principle is applied to the souls of men, we are reminded that if Christ be risen preaching is not in vain, living believers are pardoned, sleeping believers will share the glory with them, and suffering apostles will see the travail of their souls and be satisfied. If an eternity of unthinkable holiness and happiness depend upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who will not consent to it as fundamental?But for our fourth pillar:HIS IS Christ’s Second Appearance depends upon His resurrection. “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. “But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His Coming” (1 Corinthians 15:20-23). You will remember that before His crucifixion Jesus comforted His disciples by saying, “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:2-3). But if He never went, He can never come! If He still sleeps in Joseph’s tomb, He cannot “descend from heaven with a shout”. Many of you remember that incident in Hawthorne’s “Sylph Etherege”. You remember how the beautiful girl was taught, by the illshapen Edward Hamilton, to look for the coming of Edgar Vaughan, whose face she had never seen, but whose picture she supposed she had received; and Hawthorne says, “The countenance was almost too perfect to represent a human creature that had been born of a fallen and world-worn race, and had lived to manhood amid ordinary troubles and enjoyments, and must become wrinkled with age and care.

It seemed too bright for a thing formed of dust, and doomed to crumble into dust again. Sylvia feared that such a being would be too refined and delicate to love a simple girl like her.” “And yet,” says Hawthorne, “the picture was but the masculine counterpart of Sylph Etherege’s sylph-like beauty.” And day after day the dark-browed Edward Hamilton fed her heart with new compliments to the beauty and character of her unknown, but certainly coming lover, until she longed with an unutterable longing for a vision of his face.

And when, with that fiendish delight which had made Hamilton the demon that he was, he struck the miniature from her hand and set his foot upon it and crushed the ivory to fragments, exclaiming, “There, my sweet Sylph; it was I that created your phantom-lover, and now I annihilate him. Your dream is rudely broken. Awake, Sylph Etherege, awake to truth. I am the only Edgar Vaughan!” The girl swooned, and though she revived to consciousness, her heart was smitten too deeply for recovery, and after a few days she was saying to her deceiver and her foster mother— who had so foolishly entered the deception—“Farewell, you cannot keep me here,” and the end was on.Do you mean to tell me that it is of no consequence whether Christ be risen? Shall all these million hearts who have fixed their hopes in Him; who under all possible circumstances have been buoyed up by the thought of this coming Lover; the goal of whose life has been to see His face and hear His voice and feel the circle of His arms, be deceived? If such were true, then believers might well droop and die.But blessed be God, He who went will come again.The Christian’s resurrection depends upon Christ’s Second Coming.

Everywhere His Return and the saint’s recovery from the grave is made concurrent. Paul writes to the Philippians,“Our conversation is in Heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: “Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself” (Philippians 3:20-21). If you ask when He is coming to do this, Paul answers in his Epistle to the Thessalonians, “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first”. Again, John in his First Epistle, refers to this same return, saying, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and 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”.When the Countess Hanover was about to die she gave orders that her grave should be covered with a granite slab, fastened by iron bands to every stone, and to have this inscription, “This burial place, purchased to all eternity, must never be opened”. Vain request! Had not a little seed fallen into the crevice of the stone and, striking root there, growing toward a tree, pushed the grave-stones apart so that it was laid open?“The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, And shall come forth” (John 5:28-29). Finally, The Kingdom rests with Christ’s return and the saint’s resurrection.“Then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. “For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. “For He hath put all things under His feet. But when He saith all things are put under Him, it is manifest that He is excepted, which did put all things under Him. “And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in air” (1 Corinthians 15:24-28). The Kingdom implies three things—a king, subjects, and a realm. When the Kingdom of Heaven is set up in the earth, who is to be king? The Lord “went into a far country to receive for Himself a Kingdom, and to return” (Luke 19:12).What is to be His realm? “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth” (Psalms 72:8).Who are to be His subjects? “The dead in Christ shall rise first”, and the living believers, who “in the twinkling of an eye” shall be changed, the mortal putting on immortality.The Church militant is now fighting the battle to make conquest of the world. The utmost that it can accomplish is a “called-out people”; nothing like a full conquest of the earth can ever occur until He come, whose right it is to reign, and with whose reign there is power to abolish “all rule and all authority”, and “put all enemies under His feet”. John Watson, in the “Mind of the Master”, writing concerning the Kingdom of God, says, “The Jews looked for it to come with sudden demonstration; they expected the arrival of a viceroy from God, endowed with supernatural power and authority. Till he came patriotism could do nothing; when he came patriotism would simply obey.

In a day the hopes of the saints would be realized and the promises of the prophets fulfilled. * * It was a splendid dream, the idea of a ready-made commonwealth which has touched in turn and glorified Savonarola, Sir Thomas More, the Scotch Covenanters, and England’s Puritans.”Yes, Watson, it is a splendid dream, and it is the very dream of Scripture, and the only mistakes the Jews made concerning the whole matter were these: They fixed this kingdom at the first coming of Christ, and the Scriptures fix it with the second. They saw the sovereignty; they overlooked the suffering; they prayed for the kingdom and anticipated it; they disregarded the necessity that righteousness should dwell in it.But, He who came to the Cross will also come to the crown; He who was made a sacrifice will also appear as Sovereign; He whom they called “Jesus” because He appeared the first time to take away our sins, shall come the second time “without sin unto salvation”, and the crown shall be upon Him. And all things shall be put in subjection to Him, and the Church shall share the throne and joy with Him.

1 Corinthians 15:22-24

THE THREE IN THEIR ORDER 1 Corinthians 15:22-24THE age in which we live is against doctrinal preaching. Somehow the public has concluded that it needs entertainment rather than instruction, overlooking the most evident truth, namely, that “as he thinketh in his heart, so is he”. Deeds are always and everywhere the result of doctrine. Let one deny the doctrine of the inspiration, and the precepts of Scripture will not command him; let him deny the doctrine of the atonement and he will compromise with sin; let him deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ and his life will be ordered by the lusts of the flesh and not by the Lord of Glory.In exact proportion as preachers stand for so-called liberal theology they defend a corresponding looseness in living. Pre-millennarians always favorably impressed me by the fact that so few of them defile their bodies by tobacco smoke, indulge in or defend the social glass, or half approve the trinity of customs commonly called “modern amusements”. They stand for a separation of the church and the world; and no man can read the New Testament without seeing that their doctrine is the basis of this behavior.For a long time few men, who wore the Name of Jesus Christ at all, found in their hearts to speak against the glorious doctrine of the resurrection.

But what men call “a trend of liberal thought” commonly takes its subjects past all limits. Dr.

Foster —the little Mary Baker Eddy of the Chicago University—once affirmed, “The importance attached to the bodily resurrection is out of all proportion to the evidence therefor. The narratives yield a fluctuating image which eludes all assured valuation.” He then inveighed against basing our “highest and holiest religious life” on so uncertain an occurrence. To all of that the Apostle Paul replies, “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God * *. 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” (1 Corinthians 15:14-15; 1 Corinthians 15:17-18).

As between Paul, the Apostle of the Lord, and this late apostle of “another gospel, which is not another”, I have no difficulty to make choice.I therefore call your attention to the great doctrine of the resurrections. Our text refers to three, and presents them in the order of their occurrence.THE FIRST “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits” (1 Corinthians 15:22-24). The first resurrection, then, was accomplished by Christ. The critics tell us that a man’s inner consciousness is to determine what is Scripture and what is not; what is truth and what is falsehood; what is history and what is fiction. Accepting, for the sake of the argument, that false premise, I affirm that my inner and instructed consciousness tells me that the Gospel record of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is Scripture and not speculation; is truth and not falsehood; is unvarnished history and not painted fiction. I say if Matthew, Mark, Luke and John conceived this story and related it in the language we now find in our New Testament, they proved themselves incomparable masters in the art of lying. When and where did four other men ever conceive so colossal a notion; when and where did four other false witnesses ever tell their stories in such plain, simple, straightforward style; when and where did four other deceivers ever succeed so perfectly in escaping disagreement; when and where did four other impostors ever stand ready to take the risk of life for the privilege of publishing a statement that could bring them no material return? Nay, beloved, as John on the Island of Patmos said of Christ, He is “the first begotten of the dead”.

In other words, the first resurrection to immortality was accomplished by this Man of Nazareth. Back of His resurrection day the Shunammite’s son had been raised to life, and Lazarus brought out of the grave, but theirs was a resuscitation; they lived to die again; but “Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him” (Romans 6:9).This resurrection was according to promise.

Hosea had written, “After two days will He revive us; in the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight” (Hosea 6:2). If one dispute that this is Messianic, and insist that it applies to the Jew only, he will hardly call into question what Jesus meant when He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”, for John tells us that “He spake of the temple of His body”. “When, therefore, He was risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this unto them” (John 2:19-22).It came to pass “that the Scriptures might be fulfilled”, for had not the Psalmist long before put these words into the mouth of the Coming One, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Psalms 16:10)? Paul, quoting this, said, “David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption: But He, whom God raised again, saw no corruption” (Acts 13:36-37).F. B. Meyer speaks of visiting Canterbury Cathedral. After he had wandered through the vast edifice, the verger asked him if he would like to visit the crypt.

He readily assented. But when he led him through an open door, then through the deep, dark recesses of the vaults and the cold, moldy atmosphere of corruption, and death smote him, he was sorry he had started.

But to turn back he was ashamed. The verger calling to him said, “Lay hold of this iron railing and follow that along and it will guide you safely.” So he descended into the darkness of the tombs. At the bottom he was surrounded on all sides by the vaults, but suddenly he came to where the light shown in, and approaching it he found that the crypt opened into the cloister garden of the old cathedral. There he found blooming flowers and singing birds and a fountain playing. Referring to it afterward, Meyer said, “Thus it was with Christ upon the Cross. After descending step by step in His humility, I can imagine that as He reached out His hand in that darkness, it rested upon the will of God; and as He descended into the grave His soul cried out, ‘Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell; neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption.

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in Thy Presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore? (Psalms 16:10-11). Thus through the darkness of the grave Christ came into the bright light of the resurrection morning.” God kept to Him His Word; He arose, even as the Scriptures had said.This resurrection clearly accounts for the church.

Dr. O. P. Gifford, with his accustomed logic of thought, simplicity of speech, and vigor of utterance, said, “You cannot organize a body of men about an empty tomb, with a corpse for a center. The early church had life; it was not keeping awake, but receiving life. The living Christ was seen, heard, handled by hundreds. Myths that grow in a night, like Jonah’s gourd, die in a day. Every effect demands a cause.

Study the sermons of the Apostles, the Epistles written by them to the Churches, and then try to believe that such ethics spring from a lie, that such rules of conduct root in a corpse. Total depravity is child’s play, as a doctrine, compared to such judgment of human nature. If men who could teach and act as the Apostles did, could do it consciously acting a lie, what do you expect of the ordinary man? Body-snatchers are not ethical teachers and martyrs. Out of this faith grew a claim on a day; one day in seven was set apart for worship. On the first day of the week men met for worship, for prayer, for study of truth. It is easy to build monuments, hard to seize a day to get men to surrender one-seventh of the time. This shows the power of the risen Christ over men.

An empty tomb, a full day, a living church. If the resurrection of Christ is not a fact, account for the tomb, the day, the organization.”“If Jesus Christ is a Man, And only a Man, I say That of all mankind I will cleave to Him, And to Him I will cleave alway.” Why? Who will cleave to deceiver and impostor? “If Jesus Christ be a God, And the only God, I swear, I will follow Him through heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air.” “Afterward, they that are Christ’s at His coming”. It would seem almost impossible to dispute the meaning of this phrase, “They that are Christ’s”. The second resurrection referred to in this text is elsewhere in Scripture called “the first resurrection”, in order to distinguish it from the resurrection of unbelievers at the end of the age; but we have chosen to speak of it as “the further resurrection”, to distinguish it from the resurrection of Christ three days after His death.This resurrection includes only the sleeping saints. “They that are Christ’s”. There is a very general impression abroad in the land, for which post-millennarianism is responsible, to the effect that the resurrection of the saint and sinner will be accomplished at one and the same time. The Scriptures do not so say. “They that are Christ’s at His Coming”.“The Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). “I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the Word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years” (Revelation 20:4). “The rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished” (Revelation 20:5). “This is the first resurrection. “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power” (Revelation 20:5-6). In confirmation of this great doctrine, Luke 20:35 lends itself. “They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead”. Of Peter and John it is reported in Acts 4:2, that they “taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead”. Mark, the phrase is not from death, but “from the dead”. If we call a man from sleep there would be no election in that fact; but if we have called him “from sleepers”, every hearer will understand that there remain others whose sleep continueth.Against this view of the saint’s resurrection not one passage of Scripture sets itself. I am not forgetting either that in John 5:28-29, Jesus utters these words,“Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, “And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28-29). The word “hour” there employed is defined in the twenty-fifth verse, “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live”. That “hour” has already lasted above 1900 years. Who can object, therefore, if we believe that “hour” as employed in the second instance, shall cover a period of a thousand years, which, after all, is, with God, a brief space of time. In Acts 24:15, it is said, “There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust”, but no indication that they shall occur at one and the same time. In Matthew 25:31-33, we read,“When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory: “And before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: “And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left” (Matthew 25:31-33). But mark you, these are not the dead at all. This is the judgment of the living Gentile nations—the children of the Millennial period. Daniel 12:1-2 speaks of the time when “At that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which stand eth for the children of Thy people: * *. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt”. But the original text brings out the contrast, certain ones “to everlasting life”, that is, “they that are Christ’s at His Coming”, and certain other ones “to shame and everlasting contempt”, that is, they that have rejected Him, at His judgment. The “certain other ones” are “the rest of the dead” that “lived not again until the thousand years were finished” (Revelation 20:5), then raised to “shame and everlasting contempt”.Did you ever think of the significance of the parable of the Wedding Garment?

The resurrection of the saints is of course essential to the great wedding ceremony that shall inaugurate the reign of Christ upon the earth. When the Kingly Bridegroom comes and looks upon the guests of that hour, He will require that each be clothed with the wedding garment.

And what is that wedding garment? The corruptible must be clothed upon with incorruption; and the mortal clothed upon with immortality. Wanting that glorious dress no soul may hope to stand at His banquet table; but being “unclothed” must be cast out into outer darkness.This resurrection of the saint comes to pass at the Saviour’s appearance. “Afterward they that are Christ’s at His Coming”. It is when “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God”, that “the dead in Christ shall rise”. It is when He comes down to lay “hold on the dragon, that old serpent”, and bind “him a thousand years” (Revelation 20:2), that the faithful souls live again and begin to “reign with Him”.“For our conversation is in Heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: “Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body” (Philippians 3:20). “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and 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 did Christ ever go into the presence of death without conquering there? When He met the bier on which they bore the widow’s son, behold, the boy lived again! When He entered the house where Jairus’ daughter lay dead, she was recovered at His word. When He approached the grave in which putrefaction smote the body of Lazarus, the heart started and life coursed again in his veins.When He left Joseph’s new tomb, and, passing out of the cemetery, went by the stones behind which saints slept, the bodies of such came forth out of the tombs, and “went into the holy city, and appeared unto many” (Matthew 27:53).Aye, beloved, how can I but anticipate the Return of the Lord with the utmost joy, when I remember that when His feet stand on Mount Olivet, the grave of every godly soul shall open, and the bodies of the saints shall ascend to meet the Lord in the air, the shout of triumph upon their lips, even as the lark at early morning goes singing his way toward the sun?“My flesh shall slumber in the ground, Till the last trumpet’s joyful sound, Then burst the chains with sweet surprise, And in my Saviour’s image rise.” It is the resurrection to joy, not to judgment. The context here tells no story of judgment; it refers entirely to the resurrection. For the saints there is no judgment except that of awards. Did not Jesus say, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My Word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation” (John 5:24.)?I fear that some saints anticipate the appearance of Jesus with dread, lest, when they stand before Him, He shall speak the sentence of death. But, when He comes again it is not as a Judge to determine destiny, but as a King to reign in righteousness; it is not as an executioner to cut off the wicked, but as a Redeemer to claim His purchased ones, and proffer salvation to all others. It is not as an angry God, breathing out slaughter against His enemies, but as a Bridegroom to take to His bosom the Church of His love.

The presence of the Holy One must, in the very nature of the case, excite fear in the hearts of the wicked; but it should stimulate the utmost joy in the breast of every believer. Ingraham, in “The Prince of the House of David”, has painted for us a scene in which the risen Lazarus becomes the center of unspeakable felicities. Who, then, will describe for us that blessed hour when Christ shall wed His Church, the occasion characterized by the presence of every dear one we “loved long since and lost awhile?”THE FINAL “Then cometh the end”. What is to characterize the end? Turn with me into the end of the Book and see the consummation of the ages.“And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. “And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. “And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:11-14). That is the end, and it is characterized by the last resurrection—the resurrection of the damned.That resurrection will come at the close of the Millennium. “The rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished”. The only persons involved in this are the wicked dead. The saints have no part in the great White Throne judgment. Those who rise there are wakened “unto shame and everlasting contempt”. Do you remember in Hawthorne’s “House of Seven Gables”, Judge Pyncheon sleeps in his chair and his heart ceases to beat? The blood is curdled in his veins.

But the people about the house know not that his spirit has passed on. And the author, after having described him sitting there beside the glass, which the night before he had emptied of its brandy, and the dishes from which he had taken his mutton chop, beefsteak, broiled fowl; and before the fire where he seemed to be toasting his slippers, if possible to get rid of the chilliness of the air of the old house, calls to the dead man, “Up, therefore, Judge Pyncheon: Up, you have lost a day, but to-morrow will be here anon.” Will you rise to-morrow and make the most of it?

To-morrow! To-morrow! To-morrow! We that are alive may rise betimes to-morrow; as for him that has died, to-morrow is his resurrection morn.Oh, what a morn for those who have rejected the Son of God, and those bodies that sleep the Millennium through, while their disembodied spirits endure the torment of memory! What a morrow!It will effect the final sentence of sinners. It is the sentence of “the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone” (Revelation 21:8).

It is the sentence of “the second death”.Charles Spurgeon may have been Puritanical in his opinions—and he was—but powerfully Scriptural just the same. And it fairly makes one shudder to follow him while he conceives the great assize of this hour. “What horrors”, he says, “shall seize hold upon the wicked at that moment.

Men and women shall start from their tombs, robed in their winding-sheets; the long-buried dead stand upon the hillocks that were heaped over their graves; the sea gives up her mariners; the earth is filled with sinners; there is scarce a spot without a foot to tread upon it! What a solemn awe will rest upon every heart at that moment when every eye shall look for His Coming, Who shall judge the world in righteousness! Sinner, I see you there! I hear you call, ‘Hide me, cover me, embrace me.’ But the righteous shall answer, ‘It is too late’. A sudden trembling shakes the ground, the heavens are on fire, the moon becomes a clot of blood, and the Judge there appears. Why that shriek? There is the Christ whom I rejected; there is Jesus who was preached so earnestly to me on earth; there is the Saviour my mother loved; there is the Son of God in whom my father trusted; there is the King Eternal.”“He comes, He comes to judge the world! Aloud the archangel cries; And thunders roll from pole to pole, And lightnings cleave the skies.” But I shall not dwell upon this further than to say that every man who has heard me this morning will determine whether joy or fear shall hold his heart in that day; whether he shall see in Him who is upon the throne a Friend, a Brother, a Saviour, or a frowning Judge, whose offense is great, whose judgment is just, and whose sentence is “the second death”.That resurrection will terminate the triumphs of sin. “Then cometh the end”, and that end involves the doom of the devil, and sin shall scar the world no more. For, immediately the Seer says, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth”. That is the new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. Beloved, I confess, awful as is the great battle of Armageddon, I am not indisposed to have it come. Terrible as is the day when Satan is loosed out of his prison to gather Gog and Magog together to the war, and compass “the camp of the saints about, and the beloved City”; I am not averse to letting it come, for that day fire and brimstone will come down from Heaven and devour them, and “the devil that deceived them” shall be “cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are” (Revelation 20:8-10). “Then shall the righteous shine forth” (Matthew 13:43).One of the men who fought on the field of Gettysburg, writing a letter home, told how it had happened that the terrific cannonading, which lasted for days, when some four hundred cannon were belching forth on Cemetery Ridge, was finally ended; and as the smoke began to clear away, he looked, and lo, the heavens were full of birds that had been driven out of the fruit and shade trees by the fearful uproar and flying missiles. But now that the battle was over they began settling back on gentle wing, into the branches that had been their homes; and shortly, to the delight of the conquering army, they opened their months and began to sing. Right where the battle had raged; right where conquest had been accomplished; right where men had been doomed, the sun shone again, the birds sang again, and nature commenced its recovery.Beloved, the field of battle, the field that was scarred by the shock of war; the field that once shook to the tread of the awful Enemy, and took on the stain from the feet of the hellish hosts; that same field shall flower and fruit again; that same field shall be clothed in beauty; that same field shall “rejoice, and blossom as the rose”, for the Lord shall rise “with healing in His wings”, and the righteous shall go forth to trample under the soles of their feet the ashes of the wicked, in that day, saith Jehovah of hosts.

1 Corinthians 15:29

ON BEING FOR THE DEAD 1 Corinthians 15:29THE fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians is the great chapter on necrology; and yet, if it stopped with that, it would not be worth the Apostle’s while. He passes easily from the subject of death to the truth of resurrection; for Paul was not an apostle of pessimism, but a preacher of glorious truths; he was not a man who gave his time and thought to irreparable evils, but, rather, to living purposes, Divine plans, and inspiring possibilities. He opens that chapter by declaring the Gospel preached to be the same he had received, and he makes that Gospel to rest upon the fact that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; And that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures”. He thereby introduced a subject which was in dispute, namely, that of the resurrection. For a long time the School of the Pharisees had declared the resurrection possible, nay, even certain, while the Sadducees denied that any such thing could be as a resurrection of the dead. The Apostle, who had been brought up in the School of the Pharisees, who had belonged to the conservative wing of Israel, now saw in the fulfilment of prophecy in Christ’s resurrection a positive proof of the truth of the Pharisaical position. He declares this to be true upon the basis of the Word of God; he affirms it to be a fact upon observation, for the reason that Christ “was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once” (1 Corinthians 15:5-6).Then he introduces the most effective argument, “And last of all He was seen of me also”. When a man speaks of the things that he has seen, if he be a man of integrity, of honor, of accustomed truthfulness, arguments with him are at an end.

And while Paul’s character was sufficient evidence of the fact, in his affirmation he proceeds further to show that if Christ be not raised, the whole work of the Church, the whole cause of Christianity, would collapse for want of a sane occasion. For if the dead rise not at all, why baptize any others to take the place of the departed?To us this seems to have been the Apostle’s thought, “What is the use of going on baptizing new converts to fill up the ranks that have been depleted by the decease of some, to increase the army marching on in the Name of Jesus Christ, if there is no resurrection from the dead? It is a vain endeavor; it is a call without occasion; it is creating a church to do battle for a false hope, and to fail eventually before that enemy—Death.”But if we agree with the Apostle that Christ is risen, “the first fruits”, and “they that are Christ’s” are destined to rise “at His Coming”, then the Church has occasion; then to make new converts to Jesus Christ is our great commission; then to baptize for the dead, for deserters, for the sake of increasing the company of the faithful—all of these are worth while.Three things are herein suggested.THE OF BAPTISM It is a profession of one’s faith. The saying, “Actions speak louder than words”, is old, and yet in all the manifold illustrations of that truth, few better ones can be produced than that discovered in every baptism of a believer. In that act he proclaims to every onlooker his faith in the record of his Master’s death, burial and resurrection. Who can believe as much, without accepting the New Testament as God’s revelation to men? To say to one of His ordained servants, “Baptize me!” is one with saying, “I accept the Gospel record of Christ as from Heaven, and I wish my heartfelt faith symbolized in that outward act.”But no more certainly does baptism manifest a faith in the risen Christ than it symbolizes our belief in the soul’s death to sin, and resurrection therefrom. The ceremony in which we are symbolically “buried with Him by baptism”, raises us up from the water grave “to walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection” (Romans 6:4-5).“Buried in baptism with our Lord, We rise with Him, to life restored; Not the bare life in Adam lost, But richer far, far more it cost.” These lines claim no other authority than that of Moravian utterance, and yet, how certainly they paraphrase Colossians 2:12, “Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God”. To introduce a form of baptism which furnishes no symbol of one’s faith in the risen Lord, nor of the soul’s redemption from the death of sin, is much like having the Lord’s Supper in such form as would disregard the fact that Christ’s body was broken and His precious blood spilled.How beautifully baptism symbolizes the entrance upon a new life, and an absolute repudiation of the old manner of living. Geikie, in his “Life and Words of Christ”, says of the Master’s baptism, “Can we question that such an act was a crisis in the life of our Lord? Holy and pure before sinking under the waters, He must yet have risen from them with the light of a higher glory in His countenance. His past life had closed; a new era had opened.”Is that not true, in a symbol at least, of every man who receives the sacred rite? When the fathers “were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Corinthians 10:2), were they not in the very act of leaving life in Egypt forever, and were not their faces set toward the promised Canaan?

So it should ever be!In baptism we symbolize our allegiance to Christ as servants of His will, and soldiers of His Cross. To receive this initiatory rite into His visible church, is to enlist once for all in the army of the Lord. The vows are then publicly taken; the armor is accepted; the flag under which we march chosen, and the leader and captain elected for time and eternity. No wonder Beddome, when contemplating this act, wrote the lines:“Witness ye men and angels, now Before the Lord we speak; To Him we make our solemn vow, A vow we dare not break. “That, long as life itself shall last, Ourselves to Christ we yield; Nor from His cause will we depart, Or ever quit the field.” THE OF THIS “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead”? (1 Corinthians 15:29). Three or four things had occurred to this Church at Corinth to deplete its ranks and necessitate baptisms!Some of its members had been slain by sin. It appears from the eleventh chapter of I Corinthians that some had turned the Lord’s Supper into a sort of bacchanalian feast, so that one had made it an occasion for gormandizing and another for getting drunk. They had carried this to such an extent that the Apostle reminded them that “he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep” (1 Corinthians 11:29-30).It was not the first time a Christian Church had lost members through their lusts.

One does not go far from the hour when the New Testament Church was originated—on the day of Pentecost—ere he falls on a record of sin-slain church members. Ananias and Sapphira, through covetousness, were not only cut off from the Church, but instantly removed from the living.

One might imagine that such conduct as characterized these two professed Christians would set the Church back, and almost insure against its reception of new members for baptism; but the truth is, that the life of the Church, and its growth are, alike, far more dependent upon keeping the institution in a state of purity than it is on retaining prominent folks. When Ananias and Sapphira were carried forth to their burial place, the result for the Church was expressed in these words, “Great fear came upon all the Church, and upon as many as heard these things. * * And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women” (Acts 5:11; Acts 5:14).We have yet to know the Church which has set itself to secure purity on the part of its members, and has gone about the same in the spirit of love to God and to men, that did not baptize far more than it found it necessary to bury. Proper discipline has commonly effected an increase in church membership and spiritual power. The apple orchard, from which a boy’s appetite was feasted, was a fruitful field indeed. But the father was a faithful pruner, and the latter fact doubtless accounted for the fruit.Again, this Church had parted with some of its pillars by the process of natural death. It had had its existence long enough to have lost some women of the Dorcas’ sort; and some men of Stephenic character.

If it is to continue and increase in power, these vacancies are to be filled also, by the newly baptized. And we may believe they had been, and were being filled.

Do you remember how, when Dorcas died, the widows of the neighborhood stood by weeping, and showing the coats and garments which Dorcas made while she was yet with them? That was a more eloquent tribute to her character than any preacher could ever pronounce. “Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works” (not the words of the preacher, but, “their works”) “do follow them” (Revelation 14:13).It is quite customary these days for us to erect some memorial over the resting place of the worldly honored; but the man or woman who builds his own statue and hers, by godly living, has left the most enduring memorial. Dorcas had done that! No wonder, therefore, after her death and resuscitation were accomplished, and both were known throughout all Joppa, that it is written, “And many believed in the Lord” (Acts 9:42). Many times, in the past, we have seen the very pillars of a church removed by death; we have witnessed, going into their graves, men and women whose deep spiritual life, whose Heaven-born wisdom, whose Christian counsel, had all contributed to make the Church what it was; and had, in a great measure, accounted for whatever power for good it had exercised. And people have come to talk about the loss; to speak of it as if irreparable; to raise the question of what we could do without these dear ones.

But you cannot count the loss irreparable, because every time a good woman goes, every time a noble man is removed, the very life led by the departed is a power in the hands of God for reaching the hearts of others who shall be baptized in their stead.In a former parish a deacon, honored for his integrity, loved for his sweetness of spirit, counseled with on account of his clearness of vision, was taken away as suddenly as ever the lightning’s flash startled the season of springtime; and members, meeting each other in the street, asked, “How can we do without him.” But on the Sunday following his burial several young men came forward to be baptized, and two of them offered themselves for the ministry.It is claimed that in the city of Prague there is preserved a missile containing the ancient liturgy of the Hussites, one of whose illuminations presents a remarkable picture. Wycliffe is at the top of the page kindling a spark; below him a little distance Huss is portrayed, blowing the spark into a flame; and below Huss stands Luther, brandishing a lighted torch.

That is after the Divine appointment. When Wycliffe fell men feared that the spark of light which he had started would be extinguished; but at the lips of Huss it was fanned to a mightier flame; and when Huss was gone, good men said, “The light will be buried with him”; but, lo, God raised up Luther to take that kindled torch and wave it before the eyes of a blinded world!Sometimes we think that our cooperation in the cause of Christ is limited entirely to the company of the faithful of one generation. On the contrary, your work and mine is as truly together with that which our great grand-children may attempt and do as it is one with that of the most faithful friends of today’s fellowship.Again, Martyrdom had made its appearance in the midst. Almost every little church had lost some member, either at the hands of the civil power, or through the prejudices of blind religious tradition. The question was, “Who should be baptized for these—the very noblest among them?” But even that question was not confounding. One day the new Church at Jerusalem needed to have some wise men administer its affairs.

And they chose seven of their company, the foremost of whom was Stephen. He was a man “full of faith and of the Holy Ghost”.

And in this faith and Spirit-given power, Stephen “did great wonders and miracles among the people” (Acts 6:8). That was all objectionable to the Elders and Scribes and Pharisees, and they came upon him and caught him and brought him to the council, and set up false witnesses and charged him with blasphemy. And, in spite of the glory of his face, “as it had been the face of an angel”, they cried out against him, stopping their ears, (how significant that suggestion,) “and ran upon him with one accord, And cast him out of the city, and stoned him”; and with a prayer upon his lips, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”, “he fell asleep” (Acts 6:15; Acts 7:57-60). “Devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him”, and down through the centuries there comes to my ear this same cry of these great and good men, “Oh, who shall ever take Stephen’s place?” But already there is standing in the midst of Stephen’s murderers the man who shall be his successor in office, and even his superior. It is Saul of Tarsus!Let no one be afraid when a man is martyred for the cause of Jesus Christ that the vacancy thereby made in the ranks of the King’s army will remain an open space. One of the greatest revivals that the New Testament Church ever saw followed instantly upon the slaughter of Stephen. It was then that the disciples of Jesus “went every where preaching the Word”.

Philip, the next man of importance, preached Christ and “the people, with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake” (Acts 8:6). “Unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed, And there was great joy” (Acts 8:7-8).Latimer seems to have understood that law of Christian conquest. When he and Ridley were condemned and were being led forth to the fagots, they went joyfully, Latimer saying to Ridley, “Be of good cheer, master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out!” And they did!

Because for these martyred dead millions were to be baptized.Dr. Gifford has truly said, “The early Church made more progress than we, because it was more prodigal of the lives of men.” They came to have a saying among them, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,” They saw with clear vision that every time a man was slain for the Truth’s sake, a hundred others, seeing the injustice, reacting against the crime, would come to Christ, and offer themselves to His Church to be baptized for the dead.Wordsworth brings out that same thought most beautifully, when he speaks of the frantic effort made by Rome to be rid of even the ashes of the Spirit-filled Wycliffe. He writes,“Once more the Church is seized with sudden fear, And at her call is Wycliffe disinhumed; Yea, his dry bones to ashes are consumed And flung into the brook that travels near; Forthwith, that ancient Voice, which streams can hear, Thus speaks (that Voice which walks upon the wind, Though seldom heard by busy human-kind), ‘As thou these ashes, little brook! wilt bear Into the Avon, Avon to the tide Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas, Into main Ocean they, this deed accurst An emblem yields to friends and enemies How the bold Teacher’s doctrine, sanctified By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed’.” This text also containsTHE SECRET OF It looks to closing up the riddled ranks of the Church of God with new converts. Paul appreciated that death could not be prevented. He saw just as clearly that the Church need not fail on that account, if only it would give itself to winning of converts.It is reported that Napoleon had a custom of showing to the enemy, always, a solid front. If the rifles had riddled his regiments, the command ran down the line, “Close up!” and the living touched shoulders again, and marched on—a solid phalanx to face the foe. Much of his invincible power was attributed to that custom of waging warfare. But it must occur to those who commend it that only a show and not the substance of strength remained.

For, when you are compelled to close up an army in order to keep its depletion from appearing, your very command is also a confession of weakness. If Napoleon could have filled it up instead, putting a new man into the place of every fallen hero; aye, and if Napoleon could have brought that man from the enemies’ ranks, he would never have seen a Waterloo, but, on the contrary, would have died with the scepter of the world in his hand.

That is the secret of the Christian Church’s strength! No matter how many she may lose from her membership, it is possible for her to win more away from the ranks of the Adversary himself.The invincibleness of this army is all more apparent when one remembers that the baptized are always exceeding the number of deserters and the dead. There are local bodies in which this is not true; there are even whole denominations that do not make this claim; but when one studies the whole army of God, he finds it to be a fact there. That seems to me to be prophesied in those instances of loss already noted in the New Testament Church. When Ananias and Sapphira were taken, “Believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women” (Acts 5:14). When they stoned Stephen to death, the whole city of Samaria turned Christward, and great companies of converts came out of her.

We have already seen the result of Dorcas’ death. And who can tell how many were baptized for the deceased Paul; how many God called into the Church to take the place of the loving John?

Such was not only a New Testament experience, but also a Divine appointment. The Church which is not illustrating the same custom is radically wrong. When a great denomination comes upon ill-fated years, in which their numbers are falling backward, it should be stirred from center to circumference, and its wisest and most godly men should be appointed a committee to probe for the evil cause. The life of the Church, and the hastened return of Christ Himself depends upon our going on conquering and to conquer, until the time of the Gentiles is completed, and the last man needful to the company of the elect has been taken captive, and assigned his place in the conquering ranks.Such a consummation necessitates the incorporation of the conquered. What does baptism mean? If rightly administered, it means that another man, another woman, another child, has quit the enemy’s ranks, has disclaimed his citizenship in the enemy’s country, has enrolled beneath the banner of the Lord, has taken the oath of allegiance to His name and cause, and has become as perfectly a part of the marching army as is its oldest member.

You may remember that political Rome once ruled the world, and the secret of her success was the adoption of this principle. When she conquered nations, instead of making them slaves she granted them the rights of Roman citizenship and thereby converted the enemy into a friend.

It is little wonder, therefore, that her flags came to fly over almost every known land. And if the private lives of her people had been as pure as the principle of her warfare was wise, she might have remained to this day the world’s noblest, if not her only, Republic.A celebrated painting named, “The Conquerors”, shows the world’s greatest warriors riding abreast —Rameses, Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon and others, over a road made of dead men, their horses prancing in a sea of blood. And that picture has been so true to the World’s Empires that not one of these great rulers of the past now remains, for “they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” (Matthew 26:52).If you pictured the Captain of all captains, the Leader of all leaders, the Conqueror of all conquerors—Jesus Christ—you might present Him in the humble aspect of a walking man, or one who, at the most, sat meekly upon the lowly ass making His way, not over the dead or dying, but between the rows of the sick, the afflicted, the suffering, the sorrowing. And as He went, leaving in His wake, not the tracks, stained by human blood, but healed men—men filled with hope, men inspired to the highest happiness, men made alive forever more, and who, constrained by the solitary emotion of love, would turn to follow where He led and call Him “Lord”.This Church has recently consigned to resting places some men and some women whose memories are fresh with us, whose lives were our admiration with reason, whose labors of love entered as integral parts into the very life of the institution itself, but who have been taken from the Church militant, and whose very going has left great gaps in our regiment of the Lord! With one question I conclude, Who will be “baptized for the dead?”(For the treatment of 1 Corinthians 15:35-57, see “The Evolution of the Kingdom”, pg. 123, by the Author.)

1 Corinthians 15:50-58

THE S VICTORY OVER DEATH AND THE GRAVE 1 Corinthians 15:50-58IN our previous study of this chapter, you will remember, the great Apostle called attention to the various forms of flesh found in the world, saying, “All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds” (1 Corinthians 15:39).It is an evidence of the superior wisdom, aye, even of the inspiration of the Apostle, that his statement concerning the different forms of flesh provides a foundation for further argument on the resurrection, for, if you will take a moment to consider, you will remember that while the beasts live, for the most part on the earth, and the fishes dwell in the waters, and man upon the surface of the globe, birds have their existence in the first heaven, or the atmosphere above us, and in each instance a body is provided fitted to the element in which that form of life exists. It follows, therefore, that the God who created the third and the seventh heaven would fit the bodies destined to dwell in them to their nature and character. Paul is here arguing that such indeed is to be the nature and experience of “the spiritual body”.The earnest of all this was seen in the resurrection body of Jesus which found no difficulty in entering a room with closed doors, and no conflict in overcoming gravitation, but ascended to heaven at will. And as His body was the “firstfruits” of the resurrection, our spiritual bodies shall be like it, capable of dwelling on the earth and yet ascending into the heavens at pleasure.Now in the concluding verses of this chapter this idea is wrought out, and we may give it fitting expression if we think together about: The Character of the Kingdom of God, The Changes to be Accomplished in our Bodies, and The Call to Courageous Conduct.THE OF THE KINGDOM “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption” (1 Corinthians 15:50). This passage, studied in the light of many others referring to the same thing, makes certain things fairly clear:First, The Kingdom is not identical with Christian civilization. The great characteristic of Christian civilization is “flesh and blood”. Every solitary subject of Christian civilization is “flesh and blood”; yet Paul declares that “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God”. The logical conclusion is that while we have a so-called Christian civilization, we have not as yet any “Kingdom of God”. One of the most common, and one of the least excusable mistakes in the present-day theology finds expression in this phrase, “the Kingdom of God.” Men talk constantly as if the Kingdom of God had come already. They dispute their own speech the moment they open their mouths to pray, as Christ taught them, “Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven”.It will be admitted upon intelligent reflection that Christ is not the sovereign of any city upon the face of the earth; that He is not the ruler of any village or hamlet. A study of the social and moral conditions of the cleanest rural district will confirm the claims of Scripture that up to the present moment Satan remains in power, “the god of this world”.Have you never thought of what Jesus said, in answer to Pilate’s question, “Art Thou the King of the Jews”? and how it comports with Paul’s claims?

Jesus said, “My Kingdom is not of this world: if My Kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is My Kingdom not from hence” (John 18:36).This Kingdom is not even made up of mortal men. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God”. What does the Apostle mean? What he says, and all Scripture confirms him. The superb characteristic of the Kingdom of God will be the immortality of its subjects. The Scriptures plainly affirm who and what they shall be. The resurrection saints, while sharing with Him the administration of the Kingdom, will be His subjects every one, for when “the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout”; in other words, when the King comes back again, “the dead in Christ shall rise first” (1 Thessalonians 4:16).

That is the hour in which “this corruptible must put on incorruption”, and the life of these risen saints will not be a mortal one, dependent upon the heart beat—“flesh and blood”; but like that in which their Lord lived again after His resurrection from the dead—a body of “flesh and bones”—animated by the eternal spirit.There is a remarkable passage in Luke 20:35-36, the meaning of which lends light to this subject. The Sadducees, who said there was no resurrection, had questioned Jesus concerning the woman who had had seven husbands. “Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them is she? for seven had her to wife”.

And Jesus answered,“The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: “But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: “Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; (the exact expression is, “They are angel-like”) and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection”. What is it to be angel-like? Is it to be bodiless? No! Every angel that has appeared on the earth has appeared in bodily form. They have sat at human tables, and taken human food; they have exercised gracious missions for men in human forms. The great difference has been that they were not mortal; that their natural home was in a higher sphere.Living believers shall be changed! “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” and “this mortal must put on immortality”.There is no indication that converts, made from the Jewish people and the nations, during the Millennium, under the personal reign of Christ, will be mortal men, and the very statement of Scripture, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31), refers to the children of the Kingdom in the Millennial age, when, as A.

J. Gordon put it, “Celestial flight shall alternate with terrestrial travel, and each alike shall be unwearying.”There never was a kingdom in the realm of which rebels might not be found, and the Kingdom of God will be no exception! But in that golden era when He shall reign over a “new earth”, the great Prophet Isaiah distinctly declares, “There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed” (Isaiah 65:20).“He must reign until He hath put all enemies under His feet”. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death”. Ah, beloved, when one remembers that the subjects of this Kingdom are to be immortal, we understand why Jesus could at once affirm concerning John the Baptist, “there is not a greater”, and yet declare, “He that is least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he” (Luke 7:28).This Kingdom is promised only at Christ’s second appearance. He has gone “to receive for Himself a Kingdom and to return”. When Paul was delivering his charge to Timothy to “Preach the Word; be instant in season, out of season”, he did it in the sight of God and Jesus Christ, whom he said, should “judge the quick and the dead at His Appearing and His Kingdom”.The order and the connection are alike expressed in the Apostle’s speech—the “Appearing” first; the “Kingdom” afterward, and the Kingdom”, the consequence of the “Appearing”, If there is an instance in Scripture where the establishment of the Kingdom of God is presented as preceding the Appearance of the King, we are not familiar with it.If the “Kingdom” is to come to this world and all the blessed results promised for the Millennial age are to follow its establishment, the King Himself must appear to set it up, and only when the scepter is in His hands will they “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks” (Isaiah 2:4); only when the scepter is in His hand will the “wolf also * * dwell with the lamb” (Isaiah 11:6), and wars “cease unto the end of the earth” (Psalms 46:9); when the scepter is in His hand “the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying” (Isaiah 65:19); and “they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them” (Isaiah 65:21); and the custom, now so prevalent, whereby one builds and another inhabits, shall cease. When John contemplated these blessed results of His Return it is little wonder that he cried, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus”.THE CHANGES TO BE “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. ‘“So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, 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? “The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the Law. “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:51-57). They involve the mightiest of mysteries. Paul does not attempt to fully explain the mystery of the resurrection. Why should he? Is God under any obligation to lay bare His last secret? The deep things belong to Him. I may not know all the processes by which a little seed sends life out of death and transforms earth, air and water into green blade and bewitching flowers.

The processes are God’s mystery; the product is my joy. I am glad that reason staggers before some sentences of revelation; I worship God the better because His thoughts are as high above man’s as the heavens are high above the earth. I am glad that Science falters, when, scalpel in hand, it seeks to lay bare the Divine secrets. To me God is the more glorious because some of His ways are “past finding out”; and if I may not know how these changes are wrought I may receive from the Apostle the statement of their features, and aspire by faith to the more blessed experience of either a resurrection from the dead, by which my corruptible body shall be made incorruptible, or a victory against the grave by which my mortality shall become immortal; and these are the things involved in these changes.They will convert the corruptible into the incorruptible.“For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, * * For this corruptible must put on incorruption, * * Death is swallowed up in victory”. Therein is the promise of redemption from the grave. It is the one note of joy for the bereaved. Nothing that has ever come into the world has so scarred its face, and so sorrowed human hearts as the spade of the cemetery sexton. I often drive through our beautiful Lakewood. In springtime, all nature breaks into beauty there. The blooming flowers are as fresh and fragrant as the season; the green sward is a landscape of God indeed; the monuments and obelisks are expressions of classic beauty, marking the resting places of our beloved dead.

But I say to you that I hate the cemetery, none the less! It has started too many tears, broken too many hearts, destroyed too many homes, dissipated too much of happiness, given rise to too great sorrow and grief; it has shown too little pity for bereaved mothers, too little concern for brokenhearted fathers, too slight a sorrow for suffering brothers and sisters; and the only way that I can be happy, and yet wander in the realm where the last Enemy has conquered, is to keep in mind the promise of resurrection, and anticipate the day when the promises of this text shall be perfected and the graves of the believers shall be broken up; the day when the beauty of the trees, the fragrance of the flowers, and the music of the birds shall be exceeded a hundredfold, yea, a thousand, by the hosts of God’s redeemed, standing in triumph over the last Enemy, having conquered corruption.And yet this is not all, for in that hour one other, and equally wondrous change shall be accomplished.Believing mortals shall be made to be immortals.

For is it not also written, “This mortal must put on immortality. So when * * this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall he brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:53-54.). Ah, a victory! I used to wonder at the meaning of Jesus’ words at Lazarus’ grave, “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).I could understand the first, “He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live”; I knew that the grave had to give up its dead; I understood perfectly that corruption was to give place to incorruption; but what did my Master mean by the phrase that “whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die”? I had known people who believed on Him while living and yet they had died. What mystery therefore was my Master speaking?

Oh, the advantage of comparing Scripture with Scripture! No mystery whatever!

When He said, “He that believeth in Me though he were dead, yet shall he live”, He uttered the sentence that compassed the whole condition of the deceased; but when He added, “Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die”, He referred not to the company of those who had gone to the grave, but to the company of those who, living when He shall appear, escape the grave and, changed from the mortal to the immortal, scorn then the claims of the last Enemy by saying, “O death, where is thy sting”? knowing full well that this devastating power cannot do its work against the sons of God who shall shine forth in the presence of Him who hath conquered Death once for all.What a glorious change to contemplate! What else does the man whose soul is saved need to complete the redemption except to have such a change come over his body—that temple of the Holy Ghost —as will make it an eternal habitation fit for the Spirit with which God has possessed it? The greatest trials of my life, the greatest annoyances of yours, the most frightful sins possible to any of us are in consequence of the flesh, the very laws of which war against the Spirit. That is what the Apostle means when in the seventh chapter of Romans he writes,“I am carnal, sold under sin: “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. “If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the Law that it is good. “Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me * *. “I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. “For I delight in the Law of God after the inward man: “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death”? (Romans 7:14-17; Romans 7:21-24). That is the cry of every one of us! We are tethered, as it were, to a tenement which takes on the form of our very personality; and yet has a hundred doors open to the incoming of the evil one.When He comes, under whose hands these mighty changes shall be wrought, the bodies which sleep in the graves shall no more surely put on incorruption than shall these mortal bodies put on immortality, changed from dishonor to glory, from weakness to power, from the natural body to the spiritual; and in that hour we shall shine forth as the children of the Kingdom. I like to think of the bodies that shall be—with all corruption gone—incorruptible! with all mortality gone—immortal! with all weakness gone—powerful! with all dishonor removed—made glorious! with all carnal appetite destroyed—spiritual! I shall not attempt to imagine the glory and beauty of such a body, but ask you to abide with me content in the significance of the Word of God concerning the coming Saviour, and the changed life, and to “look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself” (Philippians 3:20-21).The Apostle Paul makes all of this an argument to lead up to a great final sentence, which contains,A CALL TO SERVICE “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord”. It is an appeal to steadfastness in the faith. Paul is not content to ask them to be steadfast in the faith; he has done that before; he has found them carried away by every wind of doctrine, and now adds the meaningful word, and yet the qualifying one, “unmoveable”.Oh, that Paul might come back to preach to these perilous times, wherein even the pulpit is occupied by men who call into question the fundamental truths of the Scriptures. There were men all over England who called the sainted Spurgeon a grumbler, and finally denied him even the fellowship of his own denomination, and yet his words had occasion; and now in this country, on the part of some, yea, we fear, of many, is it true even as he affirmed, “My brethren, these are times of drifting; men have pulled up their anchors and are driving to and fro by the winds and tides of divers kinds. The atonement is scouted, the inspiration of Scripture is derided, the Holy Spirit is degraded into an influence, the punishment of sin is turned into fiction, and the resurrection into a myth; and yet these enemies of our faith expect us to call them brethren, and maintain a confederacy with them. But inspiration and speculation cannot long abide in peace. Compromise, there can be none!

We cannot hold the inspiration of the Word, and reject it; we cannot believe in the atonement and deny it; we cannot hold the doctrine of the fall and yet talk of the evolution of spiritual life from nature; we cannot recognize the punishment of the impenitent and yet indulge the ‘Larger hope.’ Decision is the virtue of the hour. Let those who will keep the narrow way, keep it, and suffer for their choice. ‘What concord hath Christ with Belial’?”It was a brave utterance, a clarion call, and though they condemned the man who uttered it, they have turned now to build to him a tomb as to the true prophet of God—and such he was.

Ah, that the appeal of the Apostle Paul might find place in the hearts of others, that at least those of us who are in the ministry might become “Stedfast”, in faith—“unmoveable”!And yet the Apostle was not a theorizer. He was the most practical of all men, and to his call for steadfastness in faith he adds yet another:In labors let us be more abundant! “Always abounding in the work of the Lord”. Beloved, if the foregoing Scriptures are true, the time of our service for Christ may be short indeed, and every true believer should be busy redeeming the time. Dr. Mason, the great Burman missionary, tells the story of a converted Burman—Shapon. He was asked if he were willing to resign his office as boatman, for which he was receiving fifteen rupees a month, and go as a preacher at only four rupees a month.

After the conversation and prayer, Dr. Mason said, “Well Shapon, what have you decided?

Will you go for four rupees a month?” “No, teacher”, replied the Burman, “I will not go for four rupees a month, but I will go for Christ.” Oh, that that spirit might possess us, and in proportion as it does we will abound in the work of the Lord.And yet the Apostle was too good a preacher to conclude his discourse without encouragement, and this fifteenth chapter is finished with a sentence spoken unto that end. It was a part of the call, and yet it was a promise.It was a call to courageous confidence! “Forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord”. Henry Van Dyke has penned no more needful discourse than his “Call to Courage.” But if we are ever to enjoy it, we must get into the Apostle’s philosophy and learn that courage is linked forever with the love of the Son of God and a knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures. In 1832 Adoniram Judson was confined in the prison at Rangoon. The indignities to which he was subjected, the tortures to which he was submitted daily, were such as to have utterly overwhelmed a spirit less brave, and finally they discouraged even him. One day he said to the officer in charge, “Cast me into the water and let me drown; I have sojourned in this land and done my best for Christ, but it has come to naught; let me drown!” But it was only the weakness of a second, for immediately he added, “No, no, I must cheerfully fill the place God has appointed me!” To that end let us remember our “labour is not in vain”!

1 Corinthians 15:51

WHAT IS THE STATE OF THE DEAD? Are They at Present in an Unconscious State? If Not, Where Are They? What Is to Be Their Eventual Destiny? 1 Corinthians 15:51. THE answer to this question is not a matter of speculation, but is with the Sacred Scriptures. Outside of what the Bible says upon the subject we know absolutely nothing. Speculations are easy, but profitless! The pulpit from which this tract emanates stands for the verbal inspiration of the Bible, for the very Deity of Jesus Christ, for the deepening of the spiritual life of the individual, for the dividing of Scripture in the light of dispensational truth, for the personal Return of the Lord Jesus to usher in a Millennium; in fact, for a full Gospel. But it also stands for a Gospel sanely and Scripturally interpreted, and insists that there be no compromise with those who attempt to contort the plain teaching of the Word of God.The immediate occasion of putting forth this pamphlet is the persistent false teaching on this subject, and the many letters asking light upon the same, and what the Bible really teaches about it.A careful study will definitely answer some questions: ARE THE DEAD IN AN STATE? This question the Bible clearly answers in the negative; and, by so doing, presents an adequate reply to three heretical claims. The first of these heresies is the mortality of an unregenerate soul. Mr. Russell was not alone in this error. Better writers than he have claimed that “there is nothing to imply that the life with which Adam was endowed would continue forever”, or, for that matter, that “the continued existence of the spirit of man” “is anything other than an assumption, having its origin in heathen philosophy.” In proof of this they quote Psalms 146:4—“His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish”, and Ecclesiastes 9:5-6—“The living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything”.Their contention is that when the Scripture says, “The wages of sin is death”, it involves the entire man—body, soul and spirit—and that death means “insensibility,” and that out of this “insensibility” the dead will never be quickened until the day of judgment, “when, if found with sin upon them, the sentence of the second death will be passed,” and then that insensibility will become at once complete and eternal.Their second declaration is that saved souls sleep until the Second Coming. Uriah Smith, a much more intelligent Bible student than Pastor Russell, affirms, “Even the most holy and righteous have no remembrance of God, and cannot while in that condition (namely of death) render Him any praise and thanksgiving.” He presents such proof texts as Psalms 6:5—“In death there is no remembrance of Thee: in the grave who shall give Thee thanks”? and (Psalms 115:17), “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence”. They further argue that this unconsciousness is proven by Job’s speech concerning man, “His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not” (Job 14:21).With all of this Pastor Russell agreed, and going one step further, he associates with the doctrine of soul-sleeping the second probation.

This is a favorite claim with all such seconds of his as the Hon. Mr. Rutherford. “All who in this life repent of sin, and as the term ‘repent’ implies, begin and continue the work of reformation to the best of their ability, will form character which will be of benefit to them in the age to come”, “so that when awakened in the resurrection day they will be to that extent advanced toward perfection, and their progress will be more rapid and easy; while with the others it will be more slow, tedious and difficult.” This they claim is implied in the words of our Lord, “The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:29-30). They deny that this “judgment” is a condemnation, but claim that it is an awakening to receive a course of discipline and correction as a necessary means for their perfecting; but if they are incapable of being perfected, then are they condemned to the second death, or eternal insensibility.THE HERESY Seven sentences are required to show the absolute unscripturalness of these claims.We present them in order and argue them by an appeal to the Word of God.It savors of such materialism as to leave unregenerate men on a level with the brute creation. Job dissents from this, asking the question, “If a man die, shall he live again”? and in the clearest possible way declares his faith in immortality by saying, “All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come”. What did he mean? That death effected dissolution, and brought him to unconsciousness, as the beasts? Certainly not! He tells us clearly!

The American Revision—admittedly a scholarly version of the Scriptures—reads, “All the days of my warfare would I wait, till my release should come. Thou wouldst call and I would answer.” It is a plain declaration of Job’s faith that death is a “release”, that lets him go directly into the presence of God, who calls him.

Have we forgotten how, when Jesus healed the man with the withered hand, and was rebuked for doing it on the Sabbath day, He answered, “What man shall there he among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep”? (Matthew 12:11-12). Believing in the immortality of a man and in the mortality of a sheep Jesus made this reply; and mark you, it was not when Jesus was in the act of saving this man’s soul, but when in the act only of recovering a part of his body, that He made it, suggesting not alone man’s mortality, but both immortality and resurrection.Solomon has been misrepresented by the partial quotation of men seeking to show that their fellows were destined to the fate of beasts by using Ecclesiastes 3:18-20, and shrewdly disregarding Ecclesiastes 3:21, “Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth”?The claim of soul-sleeping makes the work of Christ a creation not a redemption. If there is nothing in natural man that is immortal it can hardly be said that “in Christ” we have our “redemption through His Blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace”. It ought only to be said that we have our “immortality”, for redemption means “buying back something that was lost,” the recovery of a life, not the imparting of it. If there is no immortality, what was lost, and what is bought back by the atoning death of Christ?The doctrine of soul-sleeping renders salvation not a recovery from sin, but from unconsciousness and the grave.

We have searched in vain to find salvation so defined. “Thou shalt call His Name Jesus: for He shall save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Christ was God’s “Lamb” “which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).The doctrine of soul-sleeping forces into words meanings unknown to Scriptural use.

Take the word “death” for instance—and this is the great word involved in the discussion. Speaking of the Apostle’s use of the word “sleep” to imply “death”, in 1 Corinthians 15:51, Uriah Smith says, “When we are soundly asleep we are entirely unconscious.” That statement opposes all psychology known to men. Sleep is a state in which the body is inactive; but not so with the mind. Think of the mental activities in dreams, and remember the truth of the old psychological claim, “If one will but take a moment for reflection, upon waking, he can follow the thread of his thoughts right back into the mysterious slumber whence his body was aroused.” It is now known that certain lessons can be imparted to children by talking to them while the body is asleep. The utmost, therefore, that can be claimed for death is that it is a state of inactivity for the body. That inactivity is not unconsciousness.

That is why the Apostle could say, “She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth”, He did not mean that she was unconscious; but he did mean that she was inactive in the service of God. That is why animated souls can yet be spoken of as “dead in trespasses and in sins”.

That is why the father could say of his prodigal son, “My son was dead, and is alive again”. The Biblical use of “death” is not unconsciousness, but that of a soul held by the power of sin, as a body is held by the power of sleep.Contrary to all Scripture, false teachers define “death” as “extinction of being.” How can an extinct being know any resurrection? The word “perish” they put to equally unbiblical uses, and insist that the thing that “perishes” ceases to “exist” in any organized form. This is a false philosophy. The prodigal son said, “I perish with hunger”. He had not ceased to exist! It is the same word that is translated “lost” in Luke’s Gospel, where the silver had been displaced, and the sheep had gone astray. Had that silver ceased to exist?

Had that sheep ceased to exist?Again, the word “destroy” is made to mean annihilation. But is it not written of Christ’s purpose in dying that “through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil”? Is the devil annihilated? If so, only Christian Scientists have found it out!Soul-sleeper definitions of “restitution” and “resurrection” have just about as little kinship with the Scripture use of those words, as Mrs. Eddy’s vaporings have with the “Christianity” of Christ, or the “Science” of genuine scholarship.In their quotations the context is disregarded. It is difficult to conceive of a more unwarranted employment of Scripture than to maintain that the words of Job, “There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest”, has anything to do with the final state of the wicked.

What Job is discussing is his regret at having any existence at all; and his wish that he had died in infancy, and slept in the dust with “counsellors,” “perished princes,” and infants who had never come to conscious life. Of course the grave is an untroubled place.

A friend, passing a cemetery, said he never saw so many folks together, and so little “kicking” going on; and such in fact was Job’s notion. But worse still is the quotation from Job 17:13-16, for before uttering a word therein contained, regarding the dismal thoughts that possessed him, he affirmed that they were such as “change the night into day: and the light is short because of darkness” (Job 17:12). Those who employ it seriously, do the same. But the most censurable quotation exists in the uses to which Isaiah 26:19 has been subjected, “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead”. The whole context shows that this is not a reference to people that are in their graves at all.

It is Jehovah’s answer to the frivolous song of His people, and is a description of Israel in her transgression. And so on, with Scripture upon Scripture, the context is disregarded.It makes Jesus the creator of immortality instead of its Revealer.

One writer quotes the language of Jesus, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish” (John 10:27-28), and then adds, “I wish to speak reverently; but if I have eternal life-existence by creation, Christ might give me happiness, but not life.” A sentence like that utterly confounds the Biblical use of the word life, and identifies it with continued existence. The Bible does nothing of the sort. It teaches, “He that believeth the Son hath everlasting life”, and the life is the blessed life akin to that which is enjoyed by the Son Himself. But unfortunately for the argument of our opponent it does not say, “He that hath not the Son hath not existence.” It says, “He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him”. Can the wrath of God abide on a non-existent one? We know that the unregenerate man has existence; and a conscious existence at that.

Yet Jesus said, “He hath not life.” What did He mean? Evidently the Christ-life which He alone can impart!

It is nowhere said that Jesus Christ is the creator of immortality; but it is affirmed that He is the Revealer of it—He hath brought it “to light.”But once again, “Soul-sleepers seek to explain away every passage that clearly opposes their philosophy.”Here we come toTHE OF One writer in his ardent desire to dispose of inconvenient texts, in a single chapter of a volume makes the charge, five times over, that men have tampered with the true translation of the Scriptures for the purpose of keeping up their theory of eternal existence. But we have now a revised edition of the Scriptures—and then, also, we have the American Revision, which is so faithful a translation of the best manuscripts in existence that one of the greatest scholars in America, a conservative, has recently said, “Since this American Revision has been put into print, a study of Hebrew and Greek are not essential to the best understanding of the Word of God.” The work of these trained and scholarly men was not accepted by Mr. Russell. He was the only true (?) scholar of the century. It is known that Mr. Russell could read neither Greek nor Hebrew.

His translations are the joke of scholars. What do the Scriptures say concerning these subjects?The sleep of which they speak is that of bodies only.

Job brings this out when he says, “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me?” (Job 19:25-27). A literal translation of Psa 17:15 is this, “As for me, I shall behold Thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy form”. What form has God?“God is a Spirit”! Ecclesiastes 12:7 reads, “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it”. The New Testament affirms the same great truth, Matthew 22:32—“God is not the God of the dead, but of the living”. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:6-8).

What does Paul mean when he says (1 Thessalonians 4:13, f.), “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope: For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him”. If their spirits are not with Him how can He bring them down, at the very time when He proposes to call the bodies up?

Moses and Elias were with Christ at the transfiguration. Moses’ spirit was not in the “grave.”Paul writes to the Corinthians, “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” (1 Corinthians 15:42-43). Of what speaketh the Apostle this? Of the body; for “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body”. For what is it that the “whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, (namely the salvation of the soul) even we ourselves groan within ourselves”, except this “to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:22-23)?What is the argument of the Apostle Paul in Romans 8:10-11, “If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you”.

No wonder Paul said, concerning our bodies, “This corruptible must put on incorruption”—the prospect of those who sleep in the grave—“and this mortal must put on immortality”—the promise to those who shall live to see the Second Coming. No wonder he shouts, “When this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, 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 Corinthians 15:53-55)?In his Epistle to the Hebrews Paul uses the eleventh chapter to rehearse the glorious history of the believing saints, and then makes his appeal, “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:2). Who are the “witnesses?” Evidently not only the conscious spirits of the men mentioned, but of all saints in Heaven. The Scripture presents God’s family as “in earth and in Heaven” and so they are; the living here in body, the dead in Christ, there in spirit—“to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord”.

That is why Paul desired to die—“to depart, and to be with Christ”, which he declared “far better”. We do well then to stand over an open grave and say, “Earth to earth; dust to dust,” for it is the body alone that is to suffer this shame and humiliation of decomposition, and temporal cessation.The Bible presents abiding consciousness for the souls of both the saved and lost.

There are some subjects upon which discussion is not necessary; a quotation of Scripture without comment is more conclusive. We take it for granted that our readers are able to understand plain English and we resort to no spurious or special translations. Then on this subject of continued consciousness for both saved and lost, let the authorized Scriptures speak. Matthew presents the judgment of the children of the millennial period, and parts them to the right hand and to the left, on the basis of character as it has revealed itself in conduct toward God’s own; and Jesus says to those on the right hand, “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34). For those on the left hand His word is, “Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). Then, in definition of their state, He says of those on the left hand, “These shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal” (Matthew 25:46).

Now I will not take time to discuss the claim that “aion” means “an Age”, and in its superlative form, as here employed, is literally “ages of ages”, except to say that it is the same phrase which expresses the permanence of the Son, of whom it is written, “Christ abideth for ever”; and the permanence of the heavenly throne, concerning which it is written, “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever” (Hebrews 1:8).Much as I long to shorten the duration of suffering I have not yet seen my way clear to abbreviate the existence of Christ, and the bliss of God, and cause His throne to totter by the touch of time, by such a translation of this word as would suggest less than eternity. Was Christ speaking of an unconscious state when He said, “If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire”?Take the fate of Lazarus and Dives—Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom, capable of thinking and speaking, is certainly both conscious and blissful.

Dives, “in torment”, crying for a drop of water with which to cool his tongue, expresses himself as both conscious and miserable—“I am tormented in this flame”. The attempt to make this a parable, picturing the gulf between Jew and Gentile, and the reversal of estate unto which each was predestined, is an evident attempt to be rid of a Scripture—inconvenient to one’s pre-determined opinion. When we turn into the Book of Revelation the language is stronger still; of the wicked it is written, “The smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night” (Revelation 14:11). Of course one speaks of the Apocalypse as “a book of fanciful figures;” “phantasmagorial images,” “unnatural combinations of types and symbols,” and “of its fervid and extravagant language;” but when a man so treats this part of God’s Word, let him not turn back again to it to prove his millennium, his first and second resurrections, or any other point upon which he shall need a clear and ready text.The Scriptures promise everlasting bliss to believers, and eternal woe to the wicked. “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”. Is not that God’s call to that kingdom and its city described in the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Revelation, whose glories exhaust the possibilities of human speech, and whose joys are such that tears are unknown; when death becomes a stranger, mourning, crying and pain are no more?“And these shall go away into everlasting punishment”. Is not that the woe of which Jesus spake, “the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death”? Daniel describes the same condition of bliss for believers, and woe for the wicked when he says, “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt”.“Day of Judgment, day of wonders— Hark! the trumpet’s awful sound, Louder than a thousand thunders, Shakes the vast creation round; How the summons Will the sinner’s heart confound! “See the Judge, our nature wearing, Clothed in majesty Divine; You who long for His Appearing Then shall say, ‘This God is mine;’ Gracious Saviour, Own me in that day for Thine. “At His call the dead awaken. Rise to life from earth and sea; All the powers of nature, shaken By His looks, prepare to flee; Careless sinner, What will then become of thee? “But to those who have confessed, Loved, and served the Lord below, He will say, ‘Come near, ye blessed; You forever Shall My love and glory know.’” DESTINY IS KNOWN AT DEATH The Scriptures affirm that it is fixed by that event.“As the tree falleth so shall it lie”. The language of Lazarus to Dives was this, “Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence”. That is a sad prospect for the doomed, I grant you. No man living would be more ready than I to find some way of escape for them; but if they would not accept the gracious way provided in Christ, and God’s way fails by man’s refusal; and if, having rejected Moses and the prophets and Jesus, and would not hear one, though he “went unto them from the dead”, it is in vain for Pastor Russell to try to release them by speculative theories. Shall man do more than God?On the other side, we are unspeakably comforted in the conviction that every one who desires salvation shall have indescribable peace and joy. In a world where there are so many inequalities as in this, it is blessed to abide in the conviction that sweet submission to God’s will has its speedily coming reward, and the righteous may be remembered any moment. Recall Caroline Bowles Southey’s beautiful poem, entitled, “The Pauper’s Death-Bed”, and who would take this hope from the stricken saint approaching by suffering the time of his translation?“Tread softly; bow the head— In reverent silence bow! No passing bell doth toll; Yet an immortal soul Is passing now. “Stranger, however great, With lowly reverence bow! There’s one in that poor shed Greater than thou. “Beneath that beggar’s roof, Lo! Death doth keep his state! Enter! No crowds attend; Enter! No guards attend This palace gate. “That pavement, damp and cold, No smiling courtiers tread; One silent woman stands, Lifting with meager hands A dying head. “No mingling voices sound— No infant wail alone; A sob suppressed—again That short deep gasp—and then The parting groan. “Oh! change—oh! wondrous change! Burst are thy prison bars! This moment there, so low, So agonized—and now Beyond the stars! “Oh! change—stupendous change! There lies the soulless clod! The sun eternal breaks, The new immortal wakes— Wakes with his God.”

1 Corinthians 15:58

AN APOSTLE S AND APPEAL 1 Corinthians 15:58THIS passage concludes this great chapter. This is the chapter in which Paul names the pillars of his faith, the chapter in which he answers the materialist’s question concerning the resurrection of the dead, and the chapter in which he discusses the believer’s victory over death and the grave. If one study it carefully he will find the atonement in this chapter, the doctrine of substitution clearly stated, the Deity of Jesus Christ eloquently affirmed, as are also the temporal and eternal benefits resulting from His death for sin, and His resurrection from the grave. Far better could one afford to lose the 23rd Psalm, or even the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, or even the 15th of Luke, or the 14th of John, than to be deprived of the 15th of I Corinthians. There are people who fail to see any vital connection between the doctrine of the Atonement, confidence in the Deity of Jesus Christ, the subject of His Second Coming and the resurrection of the saints, and practical every-day Christian endeavor. But Paul felt that such a vital relation existed and voiced it in this conclusion, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as ye know your labor is not in vain in the Lord”.We have chosen his conclusion in order to present The Apostle’s Appeal, The Apostle’s Plan and The Apostle’s Promise.THE APOSTLE’S APPEAL It is first of all for fellowship in Christ. “Therefore, my beloved brethren”. Fraternity never found its true meaning until Christ came. He taught that all men were brothers, “God hath made of one blood, all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth”. By precept and practice He set to work forces calculated to destroy the middle wall of partition which separated Jew; from Gentile, Greek from Barbarian, learned from ignorant, and rich from poor. He taught them they were brothers in spite of these paper walls, by pronouncing Himself the “Elder Brother” of them all. Ever since His day the Christian Church has kept the thought of fraternity before the world; and when Paul says, “My beloved brethren”, he voices one of the best sentiments that ever blessed or inspired men.

Paul, the haughty Jew, proud of his superior birth, and his splendid breeding, could never have called Greek Christians, “My beloved brethren”, except by first becoming the follower of the Christ, and knowing the fellowship with the humblest believer in Him. Turgenieff, in one of his parables, tells of meeting a beggar who held out his greasy hands for alms.

Turgenieff searched all of his pockets, but he had no money, no food, nothing whatever to give the man. He said, “I am sorry brother, but I have nothing for thee.” The beggar’s face brightened and he answered, “That is enough; to be called ‘brother’ is better than any alms would have been.” Every man you meet is your brother, but the man who is in Jesus Christ is more; he is “your beloved brother”, We are members of the same family, children in the same household, juniors of the same senior—even Jesus of Nazareth. It is a sweet sentence, one the Church of God ought to keep in fresh employment as our members greet one another. “My beloved brethren”!His second appeal is for steadfastness in service. “Be ye stedfast”. John Bunyan, in his “Pilgrim’s Progress”, with which every Christian believer ought to make himself familiar, presents two pictures; the first is the photograph of Pliable, the man who gave ready attention to what Christian had to say, and quickly joined him in his journey. As they went their way and Christian instructed him, Pliable’s heart was ravished, and he said to Christian, “Come on, let us mend our pace.” The moment they struck the miry slough, in the midst of the plain, Pliable began to be offended, and when by a desperate struggle he got out of the mire, from that side of the slough which was next to his own house, he went back and Christian saw him no more. The centuries have known many such.

But among his companions of a later time, Christian fell in with Faithful, a character who was as steadfast as Pliable had been unsteady. He was the man who refused to be enticed by the “lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life”.

He was the man who passed by the sleeping lions, entertaining little fear of them. He was the man who answered all the arguments of Discontent, who, leaving behind all of his relatives, such as Pride, Arrogancy, Self-Conceit, Worldly Glory, kept on his way! Shame he also silenced, and with Talkative he took no part; and as you follow this character Faithful, you find him finishing well the journey which he had begun. When at last his enemies had borne their blasphemous testimonies against him, Mr. Blind-Man, Mr. No-Good, Mr. Love-Lust, Mr. Live-Loose, Mr.

Heady, Mr. High-Mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr. Hate-Light, Mr. Implacable; and he was taken out to be scourged, and finally put to a cruel death, he was steadfast to the end, and as Christian left the place where his companion had been slain, he went singing in memory of his steadfast brother,“Well, Faithful, thou hast faithfully profest Unto thy Lord, with whom thou shalt be blest. When faithless ones, with all their vain delight, Are crying out under their hellish plight, Sing, Faithful, sing, and let thy name survive For though they killed thee, thou art yet alive.” The Apostle’s appeal for immutability in belief!“Unmoveable”! This is the Apostle who wrote to the Ephesians reminding them of the powers appointed for their development in Christ, unto a manhood immoveable, that “we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine”.John the Baptist would doubtless be regarded a theological moss-back by the advanced thinkers of this day, since he was not shaken by every skeptical breath that blew. Jesus said to the multitudes concerning John, “What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind”? His interrogation was His answer. No wonder He called him the “Elias which was for to come”, for Elias himself was never more steadfast in the faith.

What Stonewall Jackson was to the armies of the South, the immoveable man, he who professes the Name of Jesus should be to the conquering church. The man whose faith is constantly shifting illustrates that he has been laying his foundations in the sand, and you can’t make a conquering church out of his sort.One of our aged ministers says, by way of counsel, “Have convictions”. Much was said in the early part of Spurgeon’s ministry about the secret of his power. President Garfield heard him and said, “There was no secret about it; he simply believed God’s Word with all of his heart, and preached it with all of his might!” “And when,” as this same writer continues, “a man comes to believe that as firmly as he does in his own existence, the objections and guesses of the infidel and destructive critic are no more to him than the hooting of owls in the darkness of the forest.” What fears they may excite are driven away while he sings,“My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus’ Blood and righteousness; I dare not trust the sweetest frame, But wholly lean on Jesus’ Name: On Christ, the Solid Rock, I stand, All other ground is sinking sand. “When darkness veils his lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace; In every high and stormy gale, My anchor holds within the veil: On Christ, the Solid Rock, I stand, All other ground is sinking sand. “His oath, His covenant and blood, Support me in the whelming flood: When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay: On Christ, the Solid Rock, I stand, All other ground is sinking sand.” THE APOSTLE’S PLAN “Always abounding in the work of the Lord”. This sentence involves the thought of a confederated service. The brethren are not to work only, but to work together. Cooperation is fundamental to the life of the church. Whatever may be true in other organizations, cooperation is the word in the work of the church. A writer on the subject of cooperation in the industrial world says of the men who propose it, “First and foremost they should stand together,” and he argues, where they have done this, the movement spread until, in England, many years since, there were a million and a half members of the cooperative societies. Their annual sales amounted to $350,000,000.

And his claim was that their profits far exceeded those of men who attempted to work apart.If one study the early Church you will find it a perfect example of cooperation. “All that believed were together, and had all things common”. In the division of offices the plan was more perfect cooperation.

Deacons were elected to serve tables that Apostles might be released “continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the Word”. After the Spirit of God had once fallen on the Church they spent no time discussing who should be “greatest in the kingdom”, for now they knew that “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant”. John the Baptist, about whom Jesus said: “Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet”, humbled himself to be least in the Kingdom of Heaven. In the stormy days of the Civil War, the noble Lincoln remarked, “I will hold McClellan’s horse, if he will only bring us success.” It is the spirit which should characterize us—the spirit of cooperation in the Church of God. According to the Scriptures we are not only workers with God, but “workers together with God”. The power of cooperation is poorly appreciated; if one can chase a thousand, two can put ten thousand to flight.But the Apostle also plans for a continuous service. “ALWAYS abounding in the work of the Lord”.

There is sore need of emphasis here. The world is full of people who begin well, but are short-winded.

By the time they are needed to lift a burden they are out of breath. They balk before you finish the hill. As a country lad I often noticed that balky horses were good looking ones. It is often so in the Church of God. But their favorable appearance, to the contrary notwithstanding, they were always poor stock on the market, and could only be handled to profit by tricky traders. Jesus Christ said, “No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God”.

As a pastor I always feel sorry when I see a man who began his Christian life with a fervent testimony, become silent; sorry when I learn that one who once contributed to the cause of Jesus, has either reduced the amount or dropped it altogether; sorry when I find that one who once rendered some personal service that was efficient, has ceased from his endeavors. It does not make so much difference whether one bring great ability or small to the service of God, as it does whether he prove himself persistent.

A great bar of steel, weighing 500 pounds, eight feet in length, was suspended by a chain. A small bottle cork hung at its side, held by a silk thread. The cork was swung gently against the steel bar, and the onlookers laughed at the suggestion that it could ever move it; it was kept up for ten minutes with no appreciable effect. Ten minutes more, and a slight vibration appeared in the great eight-foot bar. At the end of half an hour the stroke of the cork was compelling the great bar to vibrate with it, swinging back and forth like the pendulum of a clock. Few difficulties but can be removed by the persistent man; few obstacles but can be overcome by the Christian who continues his endeavor. “Ich Dien” is the motto under the triple plume of the Prince of Wales.

The origin of the motto goes back more than 500 years. When John of Luxemburg, King of Bohemia, was killed at the battle of Crecy, in 1346, Edward found the King dead on the field, with the Royal flag on his breast, under the crest of three ostrich feathers, the words “Ich Dien” —“I serve”.

Edward gave it to his son, and for nearly six centuries this sign has expressed the Royal heritage of voluntary service.The man who ceases from service this side of the grave can no longer claim to have the Spirit of the Christ, whose dying sentence, “It is finished”, suggests that His life and work ended at one and the same time.The Apostle’s plan is for an increasing service. “Always in the work of the Lord”. If there is one thing I grow more tired of than another, it is that theory that bids men do the little things and do them well and be content to let the big things alone. As I read the life of Jesus Christ He seems to have done very few little things. He left those to the souls of little men; surely there are enough of them. Who can withhold admiration from Carey, the cobbler, when he conceived a continent for Christ, or fail to appreciate Livingstone, when he dares to attempt the enlightenment of darkest Africa, or withhold his praise from General Booth, who believed it possible to save the submerged tenth?Carey’s statement, “Let us expect great things from God, and attempt great things for God”, was worthy the big brained, big hearted cobbler, and Christian. The Christians who do but little, who give little gifts, who preach little Gospel, and practise less, are clogging the chariot wheels of the King.This Church has an increasing number of men who tithe their income, and they do not tithe it after they have paid all their bills, but they tithe the gross income instead.

They do not count in the tithe what they are doing for the aged mother, for they regard that as a delight, the privilege of a child! You can never pay back that parent’s sacrifice.

They tithe it straight and honestly before God. It is a singular thing that any Twentieth Century Christian could do less. I confess to you that I would be afraid to keep that which so clearly belongs to the Christ, and ashamed, if to His righteous rental of one tenth, I did not add an offering of love. A certain St. Louis preacher has spoken some foolish things recently regarding the Sacred Scriptures, the Resurrection, etc., but when he charged the church with playing at religion, he came close to the truth. “The old ship Zion,” he said, “is to many only a ferry boat. Checks for pew rents, fees to Ecclesiastics and grudgingly given donations to philanthropies, are dropped into the slot to pay the passage over death’s river into a post mortem heaven.

Religion is only a funeral decency to hoards. Religion should be a personal relation to God, marked by love and obedience to Him seven days in the week, and every conscious moment!

To realize this means a zeal from which many shrink.”John Hay, America’s greatest diplomat, a matchless editor, and a ready historian, was also something of a poet. When the World’s Christian Endeavor met at Washington, they sang Hay’s hymn,“Lord, from far severed climes we come, To meet at last in Thee, our home, Thou who hast been our Guide and Guard, Be still our hope, our rich reward. “Defend us, Lord, from every ill, Strengthen our hearts to do Thy will, In all we plan and in all we do, Still keep us in Thy service true.” “Always abounding in the work of the Lord”. THE APOSTLE’S PROMISE “Forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord”. Labor for the Lord is not unnoticed. God is not asleep, or dead, or blind. No true service, however small, no true servant, however humble, escapes His attention. Only three of the twelve Apostles appear very prominently in the New Testament record—Peter, James, and John, but the rest are not forgotten. When you come to the last chapter but one of the Book of Revelation, the city had twelve foundations, and on them the twelve names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb. God had remembered, and immortalized them. People weary in their petitions and wonder whether God hears them! Concerning those very prayers, the poet has said,“Unanswered yet! The prayer your lips have pleaded In agony of heart these many years? Does faith begin to falter? Is hope departing? And think you all in vain those falling tears? Say not the Father hath not heard your prayer? You shall have your desire, sometime, somewhere. “Unanswered yet! Nay, do not say ungranted! Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done. The work began when first your prayer was uttered, And God will finish what He has begun. If you will keep the incense burning there, His glory you shall see, sometime, somewhere.” Labor for the Lord is not unfruitful, except it be done in the energy of the flesh, and apart from the Spirit. When Peter was penning his second Epistle he enjoined upon his readers all diligence, in their faith supplying virtue; and in virtue, knowledge; and in knowledge, self-control; and in self-control, patience; and in patience, Godliness; and in Godliness, brotherly kindness; and in brotherly kindness, love; for, said he, if these things are yours, and abound, they make you not to be idle nor unfruitful.It is an improvement upon the old version. Barrenness can be nothing else but unfruitfulness! Idleness is not a necessity! The true servant sees the result of his endeavors, in blooming gardens, and gathered grain, Did not Jesus say, “He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit”? Is it not also His Word, “Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be My disciples?”!Labor for the Lord is not unrequited. “His reward is with Him”.

One of the noblest queens of the past gave her diamonds for the poor, and when afterwards at the hospital thus founded she saw tears in the eyes of one of her grateful subjects, who was being benefitted by her sacrifice, she said, “In those tears I found my diamonds again.” Westinghouse, famed for his discoveries and corporate wealth, was talking one day about the air brake he had invented, which had just saved a train from destruction, and he said, “If some day men say of me that with that air brake I contributed to civilization, and added something to the safety of human life, it will be my sufficient reward.” When some of the followers of Mohammet, after the conquest of Mecca, complained that, though they had borne the burdens of battle, they were neglected in the season of victory, the great prophet answered, “Alas! suffer me to conciliate these recent enemies, these doubtful proselytes, by the gift of some perishable goods. To you I entrust myself, my life and fortunes; you are the companions of my exile, but you shall also be the companions of my kingdom and my paradise.”It is so of the coming empire of the Christ; “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him”, and “Ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord”.