0251. If the Jonah Sign Perishes, Then Those Asleep in Christ Are Perished
If the Jonah Sign Perishes, Then Those Asleep in Christ Are Perished
"If Christ hath not been raised * * then they also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished" (1Co_15:18).
How startling are these words! They seem to pull from beneath us, the very foundation of all our hopes. We see in them the crash of every part of the superstructure of our faith. We are left of all men the most to be pitied.
Come, ye scoffers of the Jonah story; come ye modernists, who proclaim Christ as no more than man; come ye skeptics, who reject the resurrection of our Lord: Come, behold the havoc that ye have wrought!
"Ye have taken away my Lord," and with your taking, ye have taken away every vestige of my salvation.
Ye men who deny the very heart of the Gospel; go, and stand above the city of the dead; spread abroad your hands and speak forth your blighting denials: go and proclaim, "Ye sleeping saints have perished;" go, rob the dead in Christ, the dead who died in the assurances of their faith, go rob them of every vestige of their hope.
Ye men, ye ungodly men, ye self-corrupted men, ye men of hard speeches, ye men who speak against Him; go stand in the assembly of the saints, in the midst of those who trust His name; go, tell them that Jonah was a myth, that Jesus did not die, that He did not rise again; go tell them that their faith is vain, that they are of all men most to be pitied; go, rob the living saints of their hope, their all and all.
If Christ be not raised then how shall the dead come forth? Our life is secured alone by His life, our resurrection is established alone in His resurrection.
Hark, Christ speaks: "Because I live ye shall live also." No wonder then when Saul of Tarsus saw the Crucified and heard His voice and knew that He Who was dead now lived, no wonder he hurried in his allegiance to the Living One. And what cared Paul for the pains he bore in after years? What cared he for the journeyings, the hunger, and the nakedness; what cared he for the stonings and the beatings and the deaths oft?–he served a risen Christ.
Paul knew Whom he believed. He endured as seeing Him. His heart was enraptured with the assurance of coming things. He gathered all his earthly glory and gain and ruthlessly threw them behind his back, he tossed them into the garbage can, he counted them all but refuse.
What cared he for things of earth, he had seen Him, and His resurrection and His blest return, and from henceforth he lived with the prize of his upward calling before his face.
He who takes from us the Jonah sign takes every vestige of hope as well, and leaves us standing at the tomb of saints flooded in hopeless tears and crying, with no answer but the echo of a wailing cry.
Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR