Resurrection of Jesus

“ The time is ripe to witness the figurative resurrection of the human Jesus from his burial tomb amidst the theological traditions and the religious dogmas of nineteen centuries. Jesus of Nazareth must not be longer sacrificed to even the splendid concept of the glorified Christ. What a transcendent service if, through this revelation, the Son of Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the church that bears his name, and to all other religions! ”

“ The immense stress laid, in the New Testament, on the resurrection of Jesus is by no means explained by supposing that after his death he came to life again, and so proved that there is a life after death. What he showed his disciples was, that death was not going down, but going up; not descent into the grave, or Hades, but ascent to a higher world. ”

“ If we surrender faith in Christ, as the only thing that can justify us, the death and resurrection of Jesus are without meaning; that Christ is the Savior of the world would be a myth. ”

“ The advocates of this theory contend that the fact of the Resurrection of Jesus should be proved mainly by the method of spiritual consciousness and experience, and only incidentally by the historical testimony of the sacred writers. They boldly maintain that the Resurrection was a spiritual fact born of a spiritual truth; and that within the soul of each true believer is the image of the risen Jesus, reflected from Heaven in as perfect form as that seen by Paul while journeying to Damascus. ”

“ This rising tide of reflection has compelled resort to higher ground, to the inward evidences in the nature of mind that are more secure from the doubt to which all that is merely external and historical is exposed. A clear distinction has been discerned between the real resurrection of Jesus—his rising from the mortal state into the immortal, and his phenomenal resurrection—the manifestations of his change that are related as having been objectively witnessed. ”

“ The right hand betokens the eternal life, and the left this present life. Rightly sat the angel on the right hand, for he manifested that Jesus had surmounted the corruptions of this present life, and was then dwelling immortal in eternity. The messenger was clad in a shining garment, because he announced the happiness of this festival-tide, and our glories. But we ask, ours or the angels? We say verily, both ours and theirs. The resurrection of Jesus is our festival-tide, for by his resurrection he led us to the immortality for which we were created. ”

“ Thus the living become saviors to the dead under Jesus Christ the Captain of their Salvation.
The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth was "the first-fruit of them that slept." All persons who have breathed the breath of life will also be raised from the dead, receiving their bodies again as He did. But everyone in his own order. Those who have put on Christ by obeying His Gospel will be Christ's at His coming, and will be quickened by His glory, the celestial, typified by the sun. ”

“ An historical conviction of the resurrection of Jesus is not the end of faith, but only the beginning; if faith stops there, it will probably never stand the fires of criticism. We are told that Jesus rose from the dead ”

“ The power which went into action in the raising again of Jesus will never, through the darkest of dark ages, fail nor be discouraged: one day it will resurrect the world. "This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes."
But there is a further fact which makes the high calling of the preacher of the Resurrection immeasurably thrilling and momentous, and it is this. Christ, being raised from the dead, is an abiding presence for ever; and you, the preachers of the Resurrection, are not only the heralds of a historic event, but also the mediators of a living presence. ”

“ Verse 14 -- Jesus died and rose again, and became "the resurrection and the life". God "raised Jesus of Nazareth from the grave", and in this you have assurance that, since those for whom you sorrow sleep in Jesus, God will bring them forth also. Verse 15 --- Do not suppose that those who are alive remain unto the coming of the Lord shall prevent them that are not alive when the Lord comes, that are dead--asleep in the dust of the earth. They shall not remain dead like those who died without hope. ”

“ Some maintain that it is not vital to belief in the resurrection of Christ that we insist on a literal resurrection of the body of Jesus; all that we need to insist on is that Christ was ever afterwards known to be the victor over death, and that He had the power of an endless life. ”

“ XII. Having seen the resurrection of Christ, we adore the holy Lord Jesus, who alone is without sin. Thy cross, O Christ, we worship, and sing and glorify thy holy resurrection; for thou art our God, we know none other beside thee, we call upon thy name. ”

“ The arguments by which you appear to be driving miracles into non-existence—expelling them first from profane history, then from the Old Testament, then step by step from every part of the New—cannot make a stand at your convenience, so as to except the Resurrection. Yet even St. Paul makes the Resurrection of Jesus the basis of his own belief and Gospel. ”

“ When, therefore, such a believer comes out of the ground by a resurrection from among the dead, the spirit of God, worked by the Lord Jesus, first opens the grave, and forms him in the image, and after the likeness of Christ and then gives him life. ”

“ The fact that Jesus' death was accompanied with the darkening of the Sun, and that the date of his resurrection is also associated with the position of the Sun at the time of the vernal equinox, is a further intimation that we have in the story of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, an ancient and nearly universal Sun-myth, instead of verifiable historical events. ”

“ And so Jesus is the Resurrection, the Life from the Dead, because having conquered Death Himself, He can promise the same victory to all who trust in Him. He has the keys of Death. Our dead are in His keeping, and He will raise them up at the last day. ”

“ Everywhere, even among the most uncivilized nations, we find the hope that the sleep of the grave will not last forever, but that the day of awakening will dawn.
But we, as Christians, have no mere vague presentiments concerning this resurrection and recognition, but the most complete assurance. For Jesus Christ, who is Himself the Eternal Truth, says, in clear and solemn accents: "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in Me, although he be dead, shall live." ”

“ Permit me to remark here, that all that ingenuity has ever invented about how the body of Jesus was disposed of, can have no weight at all against the doctrine of the resurrection which the apostles propagated. The body's being absent from the sepulchre never convinced one reasonable being in the world, of the fact of the resurrection. ”

“ Sixth.—In our conception of Jesus as our Saviour, we should not separate his death from his resurrection and ascension. If he died for our sins, he rose again for our justification. He is now exalted as a Prince and a Saviour at the right hand of the Father, to give repentance and the remission of sins. United to him by faith, and changed into his image, our resurrection is assured by his, and because he lives we shall live also. As oft as we “eat this bread and drink this cup,” we do show forth his death till he come. ”

“ Redemption waited the evidence of resurrection. Nothing was to be accounted as sealed and finally certified, till Jesus should deliver himself from the power of death. All of the gospel, all the hopes it brings to us, all the promises with which it comforts us, were taken for their final verdict, as true or false, sufficient or worthless, to the door of that jealously-guarded and stone-sealed sepulchre, waiting the settlement of the question, will he rise? ”

“ Not only in His life, but in the spirit ministry and in His resurrection, Jesus taught truths of vital importance to man in his search after God and eternal life. Resurrection is an actual uprising of a tangible physical body. In the resurrection we shall be as Jesus was. And the privileges of the divine plan of salvation are extended to the dead as well as to the living. ”

“ If we are, at the last day, to rise bodily, in our flesh and blood, to eternal life, we must have had a previous spiritual resurrection here on earth. Paul's words in Romans 8, 11 are: "But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you." ”