Shall We Meet Our Loved Ones Again?
by Pastor Dwight L. Moody (1837 - 1899)
This is one of the grandest chapters in the writings of Paul. It is especially grand to those who have lost friends. No sooner do loved ones pass away than the question arises, Shall we meet them again?
Paul answers this question and gives a consolation we can find so clearly stated nowhere else.
What a consolation to know, as we lay our friends away, that we shall meet them again in a little while!
As I go into a cemetery, I like to think of the time when the dead shall rise from their graves. We read part of this chapter in what we call the "burial service."I think it is an unfortunate expression. Paul never talked of "burial." He said the body was sown in corruption, sown in weakness, sown in dishonour, sown a natural body.
If I bury a bushel of wheat, I never expect to see it again, but if I sow it, I expect results. Thank God, our friends are not buried; they are only sown! I like the Saxon name for the cemetery -- GOD'S ACRE.
The Gospel preached by the apostles rested upon four pillars: the atoning death of Christ, His burial and resurrection, His ascension, His coming again. These four doctrines were preached by all the apostles, and by them the Gospel must stand or fall.
In the opening verses of I Corinthians 15, we get a clear statement from Paul that the doctrine of the resurrection is a part of the Gospel. He defines the Gospel as meaning that Christ died for our sins, but not that only -- He was buried and rose again the third day. Then he summons witnesses to prove the resurrection:
"He was seen of Cephas [Simon Peter] 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. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time."
Now that is pretty clear testimony, strong enough to satisfy a candid inquirer. But the Greeks had no belief in the possibility of the resurrection, and these converts at Corinth had been reared in that unbelief. So Paul puts the question:
"Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?"
It was one of the false doctrines that had crept into the church at Corinth, because no orthodox Jew would ever think of questioning it.
To deny the resurrection is to say that we will never see more of the loved ones whose bodies have been committed to the clay. If Christ has not risen, this life is the only one, and we are as the brutes.
How cruel it is to have anyone love you if this be true! How horrible that they should let the tendrils of your heart twine around them, if, when they are torn away in death, it is to be the end. I would rather hate than love if I thought there will be no resurrection, because then I would feel no pangs at losing the hated thing.
Oh, the cruelty of unbelief! It takes away our brightest hopes.
"If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable."
IMMORTALITY
Mankind has natural "yearnings after the infinite." Among the most primitive peoples philosophers have detected what has been well called "an appetite for the infinite," which belies the teaching that death ends all.
It is one of the points of difference between man and beast. Birds of the air and beasts of the field are much the same today as they were in Eden. They eat, sleep and pass their lives from sun to sun in unvarying monotony. Their desires and needs are the same.
But man is always changing. His desires are always enlarging. His mind is always planning ahead. No sooner does he reach one goal than he presses towards the next. Not even death itself can arrest him. A well-known infidel once said, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is not death, but the belief of man in his own immortality."
This presentiment of a future life has been beautifully illustrated by the feeling which grows within the bird when winter approaches, impelling it to travel towards the south -- "an impulse mysterious and undefined, but irresistible and unerring"; or to "the longing of southern plants, taken to a northern climate and planted in a northern soil. They grow there, but they are always failing of their flowers. The poor, exiled shrub dreams of a splendid blossom which it has never seen, but which it is dimly conscious that it ought somehow to produce. It feels the flower which it has not strength to make in the half-chilled but still genuine juices of its southern nature. That is the way in which the thought of a future life haunts us all."
Philosophers have many facts to prove this universal reaching forward to the life beyond the grave. It is supposed that many funeral rites and ceremonies, for instance, are due to it. If the body is once more to be occupied by its spirit, it at once suggests itself that it must be protected from harm. Accordingly we find that graves are concealed lest enemies should dig up the remains and dishonour them.
Livingstone tells how a Bechuana chief was buried in his own cattle pen, then the cattle were driven about for some hours until all trace of the grave was obliterated.
But the body must be protected not alone from ill-usage, but also, as far as possible, from decay; and the process of embalming is an endeavour in this direction.
Sometimes, indeed, resurrection would be undesirable, and so we find that dead bodies are thrown into the water to drown the spirit.
Modern Egyptians turn the body round and round, it is said, to make the spirit giddy and therefore unable to retrace its steps.
Certain aboriginal Australians take off the nails of the hands lest the reanimated corpse should scratch its way out of its narrow cell.
When the conception of a second life as a continuation of the present life is held, we find the custom of burying inanimate things, such as weapons and instruments. The dead man will require everything beyond -- as he did this side -- death.
Not alone inanimate things, but animals are killed in order that their ghosts may accompany the ghost of the dead man. The Bedouins slaughter his camels over the grave of their dead comrade: indispensable in this world, it will be the same in the next.
From this, one step leads to the immolation of human beings. Wives follow their husbands; slaves are slain that they may continue to serve their masters. In the words of a poet:
They that in barbarian burials killed the slave and slew the wife Felt within themselves the sacred passion of the second life.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
We only catch glimpses of the doctrine of the resurrection now and then in the Old Testament, but the saints of those days evidently believed in it.
Nearly two thousand years before Christ, Abraham rehearsed His sacrifice when on Mt. Moriah he obeyed God's call to offer up Isaac. Referring to this, Paul writes: "Accounting that God was able to raise [Isaac] up, even from the dead: from whence also he received him in a figure."
Five hundred years later we find God saying unto His servant Moses, "I kill, and I make alive."
Isaiah wrote, "He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces." Again, "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they rise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead."
Ezekiel's vivid description of the resurrection of dry bones, setting forth in prophecy the restoration of Israel, is another evidence.
When David lost his child, he said he could not call the little one back to him, but that he would go and be with the child. At other times he wrote, "As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." And, "God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me."
The Patriarch Job comforted himself with the same glorious hope in the hour of his deep sorrow. He who had asked, "What is my strength that I should hope? and what is mine end that I should prolong my life?" said, "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:"
Job must have firmly believed that his body was to be raised to life again, hereafter, but not on earth, for he said again,
"There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stalk thereof die in the ground; Yet through the scent of water. it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep."
In Hosea the Lord declares: "I will ransom them from the power of the grave; l will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction."
In the last chapter of Daniel we have another glimpse of the same truth:
"They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." And his book closes with these words:
"Go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days."
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