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  EXPOSITORY THOUGHTS ON MARK - MARK 15:39-47
  by J.C. Ryle
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CONTENT
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The death of our Lord Jesus Christ is the most important fact in
Christianity. On it depend the hopes of all saved sinners both for time
and eternity. We need not therefore to be surprised to find the reality
of His death carefully placed beyond dispute. Three kinds of witnesses
to the fact are brought before us in the verses we have now read. The
Roman centurion, who stood near the cross,--the women, who followed our
Lord from Galilee to Jerusalem,--the disciples, who buried Him. All were
all witnesses that Jesus really died. Their united evidence is above
suspicion. They could not be deceived. What they saw was no swoon, or
trance, or temporary insensibility. They saw that same Jesus, who was
crucified, lay down His life, and become obedient even unto death. Let
this be established in our minds. Our Savior really and truly died.

Let us notice, for one thing in this passage, what honorable mention is
here made of women. We are specially told that, when our Lord gave up
the spirit, "there were women looking on afar off." The names of some of
them are recorded. We are also told that they were the same who had
followed our Lord in Galilee and ministered unto Him, and that there
were "many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem."

We would hardly have expected to have read such things. We might well
have supposed that, when all the disciples but one had forsaken our Lord
and fled, the weaker and more timid sex would not have dared to show
themselves His friends. It only shows us what grace can do. God
sometimes chooses the weak things of the world to confound the things
that are mighty. The last are sometimes first, and the first last. The
faith of women sometimes stands upright, when the faith of men fails and
gives way.

But it is interesting to remark throughout the New Testament how often
we find the grace of God glorified in women, and how much benefit God
has been pleased to confer through them on the Church, and on the world.
In the Old Testament, we see sin and death brought in by the woman\

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Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/jc-ryle/expository-thoughts-on-mark-mark-1539-47/
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