The Resurrection and Immortality.
It is a queer kind of logic which sets out to prove the necessity and facts of the resurrection of Christ, and then comforts the soul by declaring that death is immortality; yet that is about what the Christian Advocate of New York did in its Easter number. It starts out by saying that “of all celebrated days ‘Easter’ is the most deceptive and meaningless ‘if Christ be not risen from the dead,’” and further, that “if He rose not, what can Easter celebrate but a memory?” and that “immortality is an inspiration, a dream, an ‘if’ rather than ‘Yea and Amen’ if Christ rose not from the dead.” Then, after proving from the Scriptures that He did rise, it comforts its readers, “the bereaved, the sick, and the aged, and the strong men” who know that they must die, and tells them to “put away doubts and fears, count death, not a going to ‘sleep,’ but the becoming immortal.” Now, if death is a “becoming immortal,” of what force or necessity is the resurrection? Jesus Christ died and was laid in the tomb. Not His death do the Scriptures call His resurrection, but His rising again from the tomb days after He died; and the hope which the Bible sets before the children of God is not that they shall not sleep in death, but that Christ shall awaken them from their sleep in death when He comes. See 1 Thess. 4:13-17. By the assumption of inherent immortality man sets aside the glorious truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and makes it of no effect.