Resurrection of the dead

“ Neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life: In thy presence is fulness of joy; In thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore”; Is. 26:19—“Thy dead shalt live; my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the dead”; Ez. 37:1-14—the valley of dry bones—“I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, O my people”—a prophecy of restoration based upon the idea of immortality and resurrection ”

“ So that resurrection is the vital question--that which the sacrificial death leads to and makes possible. What then is implied by the slaying of victims to provide coats of skins for Adam and Eve? Is it not resurrection from the dead, a release from the sentence and its effects that sin had brought upon man? In the very beginning, therefore, when we have death as a fact, we have resurrection from the dead as a promise; and the vital element of the gospel as first preached is resurrection. ”

“ The symbol shockingly perverted from its original beautiful meaning by the mistaken belief that we sleep in our graves until a distant resurrection day is often applied to burial grounds. Let its appropriate significance be restored. Life is the field, death the reaper, another sphere of being the immediate garner. An enlightened Christian, instead of entitling a graveyard the garden of the dead, and looking for its long buried forms to spring from its cold embrace, will hear the angel saying again, "They are not here: they are risen." ”

“ But while the word of the Lord thus plainly and distinctly teaches that the dead are already raised with spiritual bodies, and are living in the spiritual world, it must be acknowledged that there are certain passages which, taken simply in their literal sense, would seem at the first glance to teach the doctrine of a literal resurrection of the dead body. ”

“ O hasten that great resurrection day, when thy command shall go forth, and none shall disobey; when the sea and earth shall yield up their hostages, and all that sleep in the grave shall awake, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; when the seed which thou sowedst corruptible, shall come forth incorruptible; and graves that received rottenness and dust, shall return thee glorious stars and suns! ”

“ I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction.” Hosea 13:14.
5. Through whom will come this redemption from the grave?
“For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection [pg 515] of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” 1 Cor. 15:21, 22.
6. What would have been the result to the dead had not Christ procured their release from the grave?
“For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. ”

“ Now the much-desired tabernacle of the soul is fallen, and sunk down into “the dust of the earth.” [33] For it is not that which is not dead, but that which is dead, that is laid down. But it is the flesh which dies; the soul is immortal. So, then, if the soul be immortal, and the body be the corpse, those who say that there is a resurrection, but not of the flesh, deny any resurrection ”

“ The decent burying of the dead is a piece of humanity, in remembrance of what the dead body has been—the tabernacle of a reasonable soul. Nay, it is a piece of divinity, in expectation of what the dead body shall be at the resurrection. ”

“ They glory in this method of disposing of their dead, and they think it far more natural and impressive than the common Hindu method of cremation. We must grant that all methods of disposing of the dead are painful. But faith in a resurrection of the body is surely most in consonance with our time-honored custom of laying our dead away in their kindred earth, "until the day dawns, and the shadows flee away." ”

“ The same power that raised the dead body of our Lord from the grave, quickens the soul p. 202of the believer from the death in trespasses and sins. His riven tomb is a fountain of living waters; whereof if a man drink, he shall never die. His raised and glorified body is the sun, whence streams eternal light upon our spirits; the light of life, that never can be quenched.
Nor here does the influence of his resurrection end. He who raised up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken our mortal bodies. His resurrection is the pledge and the pattern of ours. “Because he liveth we shall live also.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ If any object that in this picture of a resurrection we have no real persuasion of immortality, but simply the natural, though impossible, wish of a bereaved people that their dead should to-day rise from their graves to share to-day's return and glory—a revival as special and extraordinary as that appearing of the dead in the streets of Jerusalem when the Atonement was accomplished, but by no means that general resurrection at the last day which is an article of the Christian faith—if any one should bring this objection, then let him be referred to the previous promise of immortality in chap. ”

“ At death they send all who please them to endless bliss in heaven; but their enemies to eternal torments in hell. Thus, logically, resurrection, either to a blessed existence, or to punishment, is denied; for if rewards and punishment are awarded at death, and have been enjoyed and suffered incorporeally for thousands of years, resurrection, as scripturally taught, is a needless superfluity, a mere incumbrance upon faith, and uselessly perplexing to the minds of men. ”

“ But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension through the air, is a thing very different, as to the evidence it admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; ”

“ It is called the first resurrection in contradistinction from the second and last—the general resurrection—when all the dead will be literally raised up from their graves and assembled for the judgment, ver. ”

“ But the full plenitude of their joy and bliss is reserved for the time when the precious but redeemed dust, which for a season is left to moulder in the tomb, shall become instinct with life—“the corruptible put on incorruption, and the mortal immortality.” The spirits of the just enter at death on “the inheritance of the saints in light;” but at the Resurrection they shall rise as separate orbs from the darkness and night of the grave, each to “shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” ”

“ Resurrection, will be no privilege to them, but immortality itself their everlasting curse--Would they not bless the grave, that land! where all things are forgotten, and wish to lie eternally hid in its deepest gloom ”

“ It is wonderful to hear the sick, long before they die, give directions, or express desires, respecting their burial. So far from thinking of the grave as a melancholy place, no doubt the departed spirit will often think of it in the separate state with pleasure, as the place where it is hereafter to receive a form like Christ's; and the thought of resurrection adds greatly to the joys of heaven. ”

“ It has overcome death and hell, and laid aside its earthly tenement that that may return to its native element, awaiting the morn of the resurrection, when the spirit will receive it in an immortal state, and then have gained the victory over death, hell and the grave. ”

“ Into what Mysteries must we dive,
⁠In this Divine Refection?
We Live to Die, we Die to Live,
⁠In Blissful Resurrection.
Dear Lord, who would not Die with thee,
In Death the New-Births Gate to see ”

“ But I think the resurrection from the peaceful slumber of a three days' grave is not nearly so miraculous as the actual coming back to life from a living death of fourteen years duration;—'tis the twentieth century resurrection, not based on ignorant credulity, nor assisted by any Oriental jugglery. ”

“ The pious tones which once with a holy inspiration had gushed from the pure fount of his soul—tones to which he had himself listened in silent devotion but a few weeks before,—resounded now in mourning over his grave; and sad and sorrowful, though at the same time sweetly consolatory, still echo far and wide to the hearts of all:
“Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord, now and for ever. ”