Resurrection of the Dead
By A. Smith
"If a man die, shall he live again?" Job 14:14. There is nothing in the forces or processes of nature that indicates an affirmative reply. Death is unnatural—an innovation upon the domain of existence. It was made possible by the introduction of sin into our world, for which there was no proper reason or excuse. Although the planting of seeds is used as an illustration, it is inadequate as to results, from the fact that life is transmitted to the new growth before death to the seed ensues. So with the metamorphosis of the crawling worm into a most lovely butterfly, and of a water-beetle into a dragon-fly. The seed and the stock, the worm, the chrysalis and the insect, are only different forms of perpetuated life. Not so the resurrection of the dead. There is nothing that connects the dead body with the glorified, immortal one except the immutable promise of God, setting aside the courses of natural phenomena. See Eze. 37:11-14. This is the promise and hope of Israel in all time. See Acts 26:6-8; Titus 2:11-14. Paul was bound with chains, because he preached the consummation of this hope through Christ, whom the Jews regarded as an impostor. See Acts 4:2. But why could not God have provided for the metamorphosis of the human body into a different, more beautiful, and glorious form of being, as in the worm and the butterfly?—Simply because in the creation of man, God exhausted His ideal of the form and perfection of a sentient being by making him like Himself. To improve upon this ideal would be to improve upon Deity, and to do less for man would be a concession to the triumphs of sin. See Ps. 139:14; Job 14:10-15. Because of the union of divinity with humanity, God indeed, in the resurrection, will place man upon a higher plane of opportunity, development, and glory than he otherwise ever could have attained, without doing violence to the original perfection and purpose of his being. But God has mysteriously made the resurrected body as dependent for its existence upon the original dead body as is the butterfly upon its ancestral worm, or the lovely pond-lily upon the repulsive mud in which its root is buried. "This mortal must put on immortality." "God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed his own body." 1 Cor. 15:53, 38. A. SMITH.