THE RESURRECTION by C. W. Stone

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 26, 1879

THE RESURRECTION.

By C. W. Stone

BY C. W. STONE.

The hope of the true people of God in all Bible times was in the resurrection of the dead; but a different religion has crept in and usurped the place of truth, until to-day men have lost sight of the resurrection of the dead, and have placed their hope in death itself; and they sing,— “Death is the gate to endless joy,” while they preach that all the good go to Heaven, and all the wicked go into the place of endless torment, at death. People should not close their eyes to the fact that only about three hundred years have passed since our forefathers were all Roman Catholics, and Protestantism was yet unheard of; and it is not surprising that Protestantism should have brought with it from the parent church doctrines taught by the papacy, and resting solely on the dictum of the Catholic church, some of which even in the lapse of three hundred years have not been purified or displaced by the progressive light of truth. Among such false theories is that of the immortality of the soul, that which teaches that men go to Heaven or into hell fire at death, and that dismal doctrine of endless misery.

If it be true that the righteous go to their reward at death, it is logical and sensible to conclude that there is no resurrection. What the sense of a resurrection, what the use of it can be, if the real man has been in Heaven for years, enjoying the bliss of the redeemed, is something that the wise men have not yet been able to show. They say that the body is but a clog, which is cast off at death, leaving the soul unfettered to fly to the realms of unbounded joy. In the name of all reason, why should that body, that clog, ever be raised out of the dust, and the soul be brought back from Heaven and thrust into it? If the soul can exist in the fullest exercise of all its powers without the body, what is the use of the resurrection? If that theory be true, then the resurrection is not a Bible doctrine. The two are not in harmony; and God is not the author of discord. Many men are seeing this; and while some of them are examining the whole question by the Bible, others, taking it for granted that they have an immortal soul in them, say little about the resurrection, or repudiate it entirely .

They take it for granted that they shall go to their reward at death. Mother says so, grandmother said so, and the minister says so; therefore it is so.

We will take neither view for granted, but will go to the Bible to see what it says of the resurrection. We go back to the time of Moses, and we find that the Lord taught him that there should be a resurrection. The Saviour says so in his answer to the Sadducees. Luke 20:37. They came to Jesus with a question, hoping to ensnare him thereby, and thus more firmly to establish their theory. Knowing that these men were ever ready to appeal to Moses, in whose writings they pretended, at least, to have implicit confidence, the Saviour met them with proof from Moses himself. In his reply he said, “Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush” (Luke 20:37); and his answer was so conclusive a proof that Moses taught the resurrection, that it put the Sadducees to silence. Matt. 22:34.

The hope of Job, that man who “was perfect and upright,” was in the resurrection of the dead. He had no idea of going to Heaven at death, but expected to sleep unconsciously in the dust, until Christ comes to raise the dead. He says, in chapter 14, “Man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?” “Gone to Heaven,” says our friend of the other school. Well, that is his answer; but please allow Job to tell us how that is. He proceeds thus: “As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and dryeth 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.” Job represents the dead as having gone down into decay, to remain there for a time in the sleep of death. He is very explicit. In the next verse he tells where he expected to go at death, “Oh, that thou wouldst hide me in the grave,”—he had no thought of going directly to Heaven,—“that thou wouldst keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldst appoint me a set time, and remember me!” Job desired that God should remember him, for if he were forgotten he would never live again. The Lord would not be likely to forget Job if he were taken right into the presence of God at death.

At this point Job asks the direct question, “If a man die, shall he live again?” That is what we want to know, so let us hear Job’s answer: “All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.” He had desired the Lord to appoint him a set time, and now he says that all that time he will wait. Where will you wait, Job? In Heaven? in some theologian’s “half-way house,” or “ante-chamber to Heaven”? in the grave? O tell me where, Job, for death is a cruel foe. No one loves his approach, and we would fain know where he will leave us. Where will you rest, Job? Here comes his answer, calm, firm, and sad: “If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness. I have said to corruption, Thou art my father; to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister.” Job 17:13, 14. In verse 16 he speaks of resting in the dust. The waiting place of Job is in the dust, in the grave. Now we see the infinite importance of the resurrection. Shall the dead live again? We return to chapter 14, and read Job’s answer: “All the days of my appointed time will I wait [in the grave], till my change come. Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee.”

Job looked forward through the grave to the time when he should hear the voice of God, and answer him; and his faith was in perfect accord with the testimony of Jesus in John 5:28, 29: “For the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth.” Yes, the voice of the Son of God shall pierce the gates of the tomb, the dead shall hear, “and they that hear shall live.” John 5:25. Job will answer that call, and then he will wait no longer in the grave, but come forth alive and immortal.

He gives this remarkable testimony in chap. 19:23–27: “Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!” It must be that Job has something very important to say. What is it? “For 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.” This tells the whole story. Job was to die, go into the grave, wait there, be consumed by worms, hear the voice of the Redeemer at the resurrection day, answer the call, and come forth clad in flesh to see God.

How any one can read these plain, simple statements of this inspired writer, and then believe that the real man goes off to Heaven at death, a formless, fleshless, intangible, immaterial being, to float around “without body or parts,” as the creeds describe a spirit, is more than I can tell, unless he first confess that he don’t believe Job knew anything about it. But the moment he does that, he may just as well say the same of all the other Bible writers, and of Christ himself, for they all agree with Job. They all point forward to the resurrection as the time of reward, the time when God’s people will be taken home.

Just as conclusively as Job teaches that the righteous reach their reward by a resurrection from the dead, he teaches that the wicked are brought from the grave by a resurrection, to be punished. Speaking of the wicked in chapter 21, he says, “For ye say, Where is the house of the prince! and where are the dwelling-places of the wicked?” Verse 28. That is a direct question. Where are the wicked? Where do they dwell? “Have ye not asked them that go by the way? and do ye not know their tokens, that the wicked is reserved to the day of destruction? They shall be brought forth to the day of wrath.” The first part of this answer is very significant, and the latter part very pointed. “Have ye not asked them that go by the way?” that is, Have you not asked them that pass by the sepulchres, them that go by the graveyards? “Do ye not know their tokens?” that is, Do you not see the tombstones? Do you not know that they are the tokens of the dead? that they stand there as silent witnesses, by their presence saying, “Here they lie”! And then he says, having shown where the wicked rest, “They shall be brought forth to the day of wrath.” That is a plain declaration that there shall be a resurrection of the wicked, and that they await the resurrection day for their punishment. He repeats the fact that they all go into the grave and molder back to dust, in verses 32, 33, which read thus: “Yet shall he be brought to the grave, and shall remain in the tomb. The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him, and every man shall draw after him, as there are innumerable before him.” All men, good or bad, go into the grave and remain there till brought forth by a resurrection. Thus we find that Job makes the resurrection, not death, “the gate to endless joy,” to one class, and the morning of the day of wrath to the other. Pray tell me how the doctrine that sends men to Heaven or to hell at death can be true, while the inspired writer teaches that they must wait in the grave till the resurrection.

Job’s view is reasonable. But the moment one wanders away from the truth, he finds himself surrounded by difficulties, and things unreasonable come up and ask to be accredited. As the patient who is daily growing worse under his treatment swallows the nauseating dose the doctor mixes because he is assured that it will do him good,—a dose which he could not swallow were he well, and which if swallowed would make him sick,—so the individual who is off the track of truth learns to swallow the greatest absurdities, many times because the minister says “it will do him good,” and sometimes because he acquires a taste for them.

Had men never heard any but the Bible doctrine of the state of the dead and the resurrection, it would require a great stretch of the imagination to believe, when we see a man lie down upon his bed and die, that the real man does not still lie there in sight, only dead, but is gone off somewhere in the form—no, it has no form—gone off as an immaterial spirit, formless, armless, headless, without feet, without brains, unsubstantial, immaterial, consisting of nothing. And yet this nondescript immateriality, we are asked to believe, is our real mother, father, child, friend, the veritable one we loved, and with whom we talked, gone to his reward. The morbid thoughts of a dreamer could hardly be more imaginary. Awake! “Gird up the loins of your mind,” and no longer dream that you believe such mythological absurdities, and go with me a little further while we search for what the Lord has revealed through the prophets.

The inspired men of the Bible did not think of their dead friends as having gone off in such a manner, nor as having gone to Heaven in any form; but they saw them put into the grave, thought of them as in the grave, and looked forward to the resurrection as the time when they would be delivered from the grave, made to live again, and then taken in one grand company to their reward.

We have seen that such are the teachings of Job, such were his expectations with regard to himself. We next inquire of David’s belief. Did he believe in the resurrection? Let the reader remember that our proposition is this: The hope of the inspired writers of the Bible was in the resurrection. If this is established, then the doctrine that men go to Heaven at death is a mistake.

David expected that when he should die he would go down into the grave. He was once very sick, and came near dying; but the Lord spared his life in answer to prayer. Speaking of this, David says, “O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave; thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.” Ps. 30:3. If the Lord had not interposed, David knew that he would have gone down into the grave, into the pit, even David himself, for he says it of himself, even of his soul. In verse 9 he says, “What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee?” No, the dust cannot praise God; and David expected to go down into the pit and return to dust when he should die. He had no idea that the Lord was mistaken when he said, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Gen. 3:19. David certainly believed he should go down into the dust. Said he, “What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? Shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave?” Ps. 89:48. No, man cannot ward off death; and as surely as death comes, just so surely his soul will go down into the grave. All cold, and silent, and thoughtless must he wait there. He says, “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence.” Ps. 115:17. And speaking of man he says, “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth”—he, the real man, returneth to his earth, just as the Lord told Adam he should return to dust; “in that very day his thoughts perish.” Ps. 146:4. He does no more thinking after death. We can understand this when we know that a man returns to dust at that time; but how he could go right to Heaven, and still do no thinking, is a mystery.

Now that we have seen what David expected in relation to himself, let us see what really did happen to him. The record is brief and pointed. “So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David.” 1 Kings 2:10. That is just what David expected. But he did not believe he should always stay there. He believed in the resurrection; and looking forward to that event he saw that ray of light which cheers even the dark, damp realm of the dead; and

in the calm enjoyment of this blessed hope he said, “I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness.” Ps. 17:15. When will the dead awake? At the resurrection. “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.” Isa. 26:19. When shall the saints of God whom David addresses be fashioned in the likeness of the Lord? When the Lord comes to raise the dead. Says Paul, “From whence [Heaven] 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.” At the coming of Christ, the righteous dead will awake and arise, and with the righteous living, who shall be changed to immortality at that moment, they shall bear the likeness of the glorious Redeemer. That is the event to which David looked forward when he said, “I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness.”

We have seen that David was buried in the grave. Is he in the grave now? Yes; and Peter, while speaking under the influence of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, said so. David “is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day.” Acts 2:29. And then he added, as though he would leave no possible chance for doubt upon the subject, “For David is not ascended into the heavens.” Verse 34. No, he is in his sepulchre, waiting for the resurrection; and that is just where he expected to be. He has not gone to Heaven yet. How, then, can men in the nineteenth century expect to go to Heaven before the resurrection?

(To be continued.)