INFALLIBLE EVIDENCE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · May 17, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 20.

INFALLIBLE EVIDENCE.

A PROOF of the resurrection of the dead is that God counts Abraham as among the living. Christ does not give this as proof of the immortality of the soul, but as positive proof of a resurrection. In answering the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection, Jesus said: "Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For He is not a God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto Him." Luke 20:37, 38. Abraham has the promise of being heir of the world (Rom. 14:3); but he died without receiving the promise, as shown in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews; and he will not receive it until his heirs (the children of faith) receive it with him. He can not be made perfect without "us" (verses 39, 40), and that will not be until the coming of the Lord and the resurrection of the righteous dead. See 1 Thess. 4:13-18. Abraham died, and "the dead know not anything;" but the lives of the righteous are "hid with Christ in God," and when He "who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory." "This mortal must put on immortality," says Paul (1 Cor. 15:53). Then he adds, "When this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory." So, in order that God may fulfil His promise to Abraham, He must raise Him from the dead. And it is because God has the resurrection in purpose, that He reckons Abraham as living. So Jesus gives the fact of God's having made a promise to a man who died without receiving the promise, as proof, not of inherent immortality, but of a resurrection from the dead.