The Resurrection by Emma T. Anderson

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 17, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 41.

The Resurrection

By Emma T. Anderson

Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead? Acts 26:8.

In all the ages, from the time death as the result of sin first came into the world, men have been seeking to fathom the mystery of what lies beyond the grave. The friend we loved, perhaps the parent who carried us in his arms in childhood and patiently taught our feet to walk the path of upright manhood, or mayhap the darling of our home circle, has been stricken down. We have followed the lifeless form to the tomb, and in the agony of despair our hearts cry out as did a sage of old, 'If a man die, shall he live again?' Job 14:14. He found answer as he looked toward God in his affliction, and in the sublime confidence of faith in his Creator replied to his own questioning soul, 'Thou shalt call, and I will answer Thee: Thou wilt have a desire to the work of Thine hands.' Verse 15.

In the processes of nature we see the divine power bringing life out of death. The leaves drop from the tree, its boughs are bare; but the Creator preserves the life within, and in their season the buds burst forth, and the tree is again robed in the beauty of new life. Seed is cast into the ground. The body of the kernel perishes; but by the power of a life given by the Creator of heaven and earth, the tiny germ within the kernel springs up a new creation.

Its life is maintained by the power of God, who in the beginning, when He created the heavens and the earth, commanded all life to bring forth after its kind.

'Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?' Why should we not expect that God, who brings anew the seed from the soil, will also watch over man, the crown of all His works, and that he too, tho he die, shall live again?