A Mathematical Challenge
by Winkie Pratney
A Mathematical Challenge
by Winkie Pratney
THE LITTLE PALACE BEAUTIFUL
by F.W. Boreham
There are only four children in the wide, wide world, and each of us is the parent of at least one of them. I will tell how I made the discovery. I was going along the road that Bunyan's pilgrim traveled, and was nearing the Delectable Mountains. As Christian and Hopeful drew near those glorious hills, with their gardens and their orchards, their fountains and their vineyards, they were in such terror, because of their recent adventure with Giant Despair, that they looked aside neither to the right hand nor to the left. That is how they missed the Little Palace Beautiful. It stands among the trees of the valley just off the main road. It is a palace in miniature. Such a dainty little dwelling ! Such lovely flowers in the garden ! Such a ceaseless chorus of song from all the forest around! It is like a nest beautifully built among the trees. And about the garden and the home itself I saw the angels moving. They kept guard over it night and day. There are only four charming little rooms, and in those pretty rooms I found the children sleeping. And what I saw I here set down.
In a sunless room that faces the south, a room whose name is Fancy, I found the little child that never was. And the Little Child that Never Was is an exquisitely beautiful child. He is the little child of all lonely men and lonely women, the child of their dreams and their fancies, the child that will never be born. He is the son of the solitary. Let me cite two instances as typical of many. The one shall be the case of a man and the other of a woman. Professor Herkless, in his Life of Francis d'Assist, tells us how Francis was torn between the monastic life on the one hand and the domestic life on the other. He longed to be a monk and to dedicate himself to poverty and pilgrimage. And yet he loved a sweet and noble and gracious woman. He wrestled with his alternatives, and at length, through an agony of tears, he chose the cloak and the cowl. But still the lovely face haunted him by cloister and by shrine. And one radiant moonlit night, when the earth was wrapped in snow, the brethren of the monastery saw him rise at dead of night. He went out into the grounds and, in the silvery moonlight, fashioned out of the snow with deft artistic fingers the images of a lovely woman and a group of fair little children. He arranged them in a circle, and sat with them, and, giving rein to his fancy, tasted for one delicious hour the ecstasies of hearth and home, the joys of life and love. Then, solemnly rising, he kissed them all a tearful and final farewell, renounced such raptures for ever, and re-entered the monastery. That night the deep impressive eyes of Francis looked full into the face of the Little Child that Never Was.
For womanhood let Ada Cambridge speak. In The Hand in the Dark and Other Verses she has a touching little poem that she calls ' The Virgin Martyr.' It might just as well have been called ' The Little-Child that Never Was.'
Every wild she-bird has nest and mate in the warm April weather.
But a captive woman, made for love, no mate, no nest, has she.
In the spring of young desire, young men and maids are wed together.
And the happy mothers flaunt their bliss for all the world to see.
Nature's sacramental feast for them—an empty board for me.
I, a young maid once, an old maid now, deposed, despised,
forgotten— I, like them, have thrilled with passion and have dreamed
of nuptial rest,
Of the trembling life within me of my children unbegotten. Of a breathing new-born body to my yearning bosom
prest,
Of the rapture of a little soft mouth drinking at my breast.
Time, that heals so many sorrows, keeps mine ever-freshly
aching.
Though my face is growing furrowed and my brown hair turning white.
Still I mourn my irremediable loss, asleep or waking; Still I hear my son's voice calling ' Mother' in the dead of
night
And am haunted by my girl's eyes that will never see the light.
O my children that I might have had I My children lost for
ever I O the goodly years that might have been, now desolate and
bare 1 O God, what have I lacked, what have I done, that I should
never Take my birthright like the others, take the crown that
women wear, And possess the common heritage to which all flesh is heir ?
I said that the Little Child that Never Was is a very beautiful child. He is absolutely without faults or flaws or disfigurements of any kind. He is all, all, all that his father, his mother, would have him to be. And he has a great work to do in the world—that Little Child that Never Was. He will either sweeten the life of his poor lonely father or mother or else make it as bitter as wormwood. He will wonderfully soften or cruelly harden them. The Little Child that Never Was calls his solitary father and lonely mother to the service of the world's childhood. It is a great thing for the world that there are men and women with no children of their own. For there are little children without fathers and without mothers, and there are little children with fathers and mothers who would be better off if they had none. And the lonely men and women are called by the Little Child that Never Was to devote their lives to the service of the lonely little children. And in ministering to the world's childhood they will lose their loneliness and their longing, for the Little Child that Never Was will become incarnate in the little children around them, and they will hear his laughter and wipe away his tears after all.
In the room that faces the west and is flooded with the sunset glory, a room called Memory, I found the little child that was. And if Ada Cambridge has described the Little Child that Never Was, Josephine Dodge Daskam has done as much for the Little Child that Was. It occurs in her poem on ' Motherhood.'
The night throbs on; Oh, let me pray, dear Lord I
Crush ofi his name a moment from my mouth.
To Thee my eyes would turn, but they go back,-
Back to my arm beside me where he lay—
So little. Lord, so little and so warm 1
I cannot think that Thou hadst need of him !
He was so little, Lord, he cannot sing,
He cannot praise Thee; all his life had learned
Was to hold fast my kisses in the night.
Forgive me. Lord, but I am sick with grief,
And tired of tears and cold to comforting.
Thou art wise, I know, and tender, aye, and good,
Thou hast my child, and he is safe in Thee,
And I believe—»
Ah, God, my child shall go Orphaned among the angels ! All alone, So little and alone 1 He knows not Thee, He only knows his mother—give him back I
And the Little Child that Was is also an exquisitely beautiful child, a child that is always a child, a child that never grows up. I remember hearing a Sunday-school superintendent in England tell a story of a shepherd who could not get his flock to cross a narrow bridge that spanned a silver stream. At last he took a lamb in his arms and crossed. The mother instantly dashed across after him, and the whole flock scampered at her heels I often think of the gentle story when I ponder on the Little Child that Was. And the Little Child that Was also has a great work to do in the world. The classical example is the story of Mrs. Josephine Butler. We all remember with a shudder the story of that holiday—the father and mother in Europe, the little girlie left at home. And at last the night came when father and mother were expected. And in the night there was the sound of wheels and the commotion in the great hall below. The excited little daughter sprang from her bed, rushed out into the corridor, jumped up on to the banister rail to peer over and see ' dadda' and ' mamma' again. And then—the lost balance! the awful fall ! ' Never,' says Mrs. Butler, ' never can I lose that memory, the fall, the sudden cry, and then the silence. It was pitiful to see her, helpless in her father's arms, her little drooping head resting on his shoulder, and her beautiful golden hair all stained with blood, falling over his arm. Would to God that I had died that death for her ! If only we had been permitted one look, one moment of recognition ! Here, then, is a picture from life of the Little Child that Was \ And we all know what resulted. Mrs. Josephine Butler could find no comfort until she rose from her grief and devoted herself to all the wayward and motherless daughters of the great world outside, and everybody who knows the story of that greatly heroic life for the world's womanhood thanks God for that Little Child that Was. The Little Child that Was calls, not for sorrow, but for service.
In a room called Experience, a room that faces the north and gets all the sun, I found the little child that Is. What a wonder he is, to be sure ! I am not surprised that people have asked, ' What are little boys made of ? ' Nor am I surprised at the divergence which has characterized the replies. But boys and girls are made neither of sugar and spice nor of snips and snails. The Little Child that Is is made up of Curiosity, Ambition, and Imagination. And these are all fine things. Curiosity, rightly developed, has led all our explorers across uncharted seas and untrodden continents, and has lured our scientists and inventors to their triumphs and their fame. But it needs educating. It is no good telling a child that he must not go to the cupboard. You only inflame his desire to go. You must satisfy him in some way, either that there is nothing in *he cupboard that he needs, or that there is good reason why he should be forbidden from approaching it. The universe is full of wonderful and tantalizing cupboards. And half the damage done to fair young lives is caused through our insane way of telling them on no account to look into a certain cupboard. ' Don't look at the cupboard ! ' ' Don't think of the cupboard 1' ' Don't read of the cupboard ! ' we cry, until we have so aroused their innate curiosity that the forbidden cupboard becomes the one topic of their thought and speculation. The high art of training young people, all of whom are in the continental and most romantic stage of discovery, lies in the adoption of some sane and reasonable and satisfying attitude towards the world's wonderful cupboards. The same is true of Ambition and Imagination. The Little Child that Is dearly loves to excel. He wants to win. And the wise parent will not seek to crush his pride of achievement, but to educate it. We must point him out the heights that are best worth climbing, the goals that are best worth reaching, the prizes that are best worth winning. And the culture of the Imagination, too, is surely well worth while. The Little Child that Is has an amazing creative faculty. He peoples every crack and crevice in the solar system with fairies and elves, hobgoblins and ghouls. It is the sense of the Infinite stirring within him. If only we could preserve it to him ! What a world this would be if we had a touch of imagination left in it ! Our churches are languishing for it. One flash of real imagination would save us from that detachment from reality which is the secret of half our failure. The imaginative faculties of the Little Child that Is would enable us preachers to project ourselves into the real lives of our people and to say the things that would really help them And the world needs it, too. ' I understand now,' says Mr. H. G. Wells,' why modern electioneering is more than half of it denunciation. There is nothing constructive. That calls for the creative imagination, and few are able to respond to that call.'
Here, then, is your Little Child that Is ! He is made up of these three priceless ingredients— Curiosity, Ambition, and Imagination. Crush his curiosity, and you will find him sinister, self-satisfied, knowing all he cares to know. Crush his ambition, and you will find him, hands in pockets, at the street corner. Crush his imagination, and you rob him of his power to lead this old world into new joys and new experiences. The father and mother to whom the Little Child that Is has come have already tasted of the bliss of heaven ; but a fearful responsibility attends their rapture.
'' And in a room whose window faces the east, the sunrise, a room called Hope, I found the little child that Is to be. A wonderful, wonderful child is he—the Little Child that Is to Be. I often feel that I should like to take every young fellow in my congregation into this room that faces the sunrise and show him this sweet and slumbering angel-face. And as he looks down upon the head on the pillow I would say, ' Take care, when you are making love to the girl of your fancy, that you are securing for the Little Child that Is to Be a mother capable of maintaining the great and holy traditions of motherhood. Take care that you are winning to yourself a woman whom you can set with pride and confidence before the eye of the Little Child that Is to Be as the embodiment of all that is pure and noble and unselfish and true ! And I often feel that I should like to take every girl in my congregation into this little room with the eastern window. And, as she gazed tenderly down into the sleeping face of the Little Child that Is to Be, I would say to her, ' Take care, when you ally yourself with the lover of your fancy, that you are securing for the Little Child that Is to Be a father to whom you may always point with proud motherly affection ! Take care that you are setting before the eyes of the Little Child that Is to Be, when he wakes up, a father whose character he may copy and in whose safe footprints he may plant his own I Take care I Take care ! ' And I would have both young men and maidens, as they stand beside this sleeping angel, to remember that whenever they yield to temptation they are striking a more terrible blow at the Little Child that Is to Be than they will ever be able to strike him with clenched fist. And whenever they resist and overcome temptation they are securing for the Little Child that Is to Be a finer heritage than any they will ever leave him in their wills. ' Take care, take /;are,' I would say to every man and maiden, ' take the greatest, tenderest care of the Little Child that Is to Bel'
The Necessity Of Jesus Resurrection- A Study Worth Your Time!
By Author Cuastance
Why should the preaching of the Gospel seem so foolish? In writing to the Corinthians Paul said that preaching Christ crucified was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks (1 Corinthians 1:23). I suppose that it was a stumbling block to the Jews because the idea of their Messiah ending up as a criminal before men and accursed in the sight of God (Galatians 3:13) was completely foreign to everything that they had anticipated. Even the disciples found this difficult to contemplate in anticipation and to adjust to in retrospect -- until the reality of the Resurrection changed the whole picture for them. Yet why should it seem so foolish to the Greeks?
The fact is that many religions of the Old World expected a sacrifice to be made on behalf of their devotees -- and often a human sacrifice -- so that the Crucifixion per se was not such a surprising thing. Yet Paul's words are certainly true, that the Greeks somehow or other viewed what Paul preached with amusement and unbelief. But I wonder whether it was the Crucifixion in itself that they found foolish. In speaking before Agrippa (Acts 26:6-8) it seems rather clear that the "incredible thing" was not so much the Crucifixion, but rather the Resurrection.
The concept of sacrifice is, after all, common to human idealism in a large part of the world and always has been, quite independently of the Christian message. When the Lord said, "Greater love hath no man than this that a man should lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:3), He was appealing to an idealism which was very widely shared by most free men. I think it is safe to say that although various cultures have lacked appreciation of virtues like honesty, love, unselfishness with respect to possessions, and so forth, so that there are very few universally accepted values, all cultures without have admired courage, and especially the supreme example of courage which we witness when one individual lays down his life for another. A few have thought such self-sacrifice is silly. (1) To my knowledge all cultures recognize it as bravery.
So I think in the final analysis that even today -- perhaps one ought to say more especially today -- the really surprising and challenging element in the Gospel message is not so much the sacrifice that was involved, but the Resurrection.
I should not want to be misunderstood here, because without this sacrifice there could be no salvation for man. Nevertheless, without the Resurrection the sacrifice would have been ineffective. This is true from the historical point of view, from the theological point of view, and from the experiential point of view. It is true historically, because, but for the fact of the Resurrection, the Church, as the continuing body of believers who proclaim the truth in each generation, would never have come into being. It is true theologically, because the Resurrection was the proof, the validation of the efficacy, of the acceptability to God of the sacrifice which the Lord Jesus had made of Himself: it was needed to complete it. And it is true experientially in that the whole foundation of the new life of the child of God personally is the indwelling presence, the reincarnation, of the resurrected Lord in the heart and life of the believer.
When one reflects upon the matter, one wonders whether evangelism isn't in some ways "selling itself short." The fact is that the New Testament probably tells us more about the Resurrection than it does about the Crucifixion. The Resurrection is declared to be the whole basis of our salvation, both now and in the future, i.e., in three important ways. Jesus said, "Because I live, ye shall live also" (John 14:19). Of course, He meant at the same time, Because I die, ye shall live. Nevertheless, experientially, the new life results from His resurrection. Paul said (in Acts 13:37-39) that our forgiveness is predicated upon the fact that He whom God raised again "saw no corruption." And when writing to the Romans, Paul proscribes what might seem like insufficient grounds for being saved (in the absence of reference to the Lord's death), namely, that confession with the mouth that Jesus is Lord and faith in the heart that God raised Him from the dead (Romans 10:9), guarantees salvation. In the light of these things one wonders perhaps whether we are neglecting to proclaim a very important, indeed fundamental, part of the Gospel. Is it possible that by over-emphasis on the Crucifixion and neglect of the Resurrection we are actually distorting the truth?
THE HISTORICAL ASPECT OF THE RESURRECTION
The details of the Resurrection as found in the Gospels are presented in such a way that throughout the centuries believers and unbelievers alike have recognized their cogency; and skeptics have generally found that the only way to undermine this testimony to His bodily resurrection is not to deny that Jesus was seen alive after the Crucifixion, but that He never actually died on the cross in the first place. This ancient argument has been so often discredited by critical analysis of the resurrection scenes presented in the Gospels that one might suppose no one would think of reviving the argument any more. Nevertheless, it was reported by Associated Press in 1970 that a German scholar, Kurt Berna, (2) after careful re-examination of the famous shroud which is believed to have been wrapped about the Lord's body in the grave, satisfied himself that blood stains on it prove that Christ was still alive when He was taken down from the cross. He apparently presented his evidence to certain Vatican authorities who are persuaded that the shroud is a genuine "relic" of the occasion, but Vatican authorities have rejected Berna's arguments.The incident suggests that tremendous importance is still attached to the Resurrection. And for those who may not be aware of the background of this particular aspect of the controversy, it may be said very briefly that the theory is that Jesus passed into a deep coma on the Cross and that the authorities were deceived into believing He was actually dead. The spear wound is treated as superficial. It is then argued that in the coolness of the tomb Jesus recovered consciousness and that the disciples subsequently nursed Him back to a measure of health so that He survived the ordeal for some 40 days or so. Presumably at the end of this time He really did die and the whole episode was reconstituted into a victorious resurrection and a glorious ascension at the end, the body being disposed of secretly to prevent any discovery of the fraud.
The difficulties which face anyone who seriously holds such a view are overwhelming, and the more so as they are the more carefully examined. It is difficult indeed to suppose, for example, that One who had suffered the appalling strains and stresses of the previous hours, both physical and emotional, could be nailed to the Cross, receive a severe wound in the chest, be laid in a cold tomb; and there revive and find energy enough with such wounds in hands, feet, and chest to brace Himself from inside the tomb against a stone which almost certainly could only be rolled back from the outside and which was far too heavy for the women themselves to move -- and roll it right back out of the way so far clear of the opening that later on, while John stood looking in, Peter could run right on past into the tomb (John 20:4-6); and could do this, apparently, without the soldiers on guard being awakened. Moreover, Pilate had given explicit instructions that the tomb was to be sealed against being broken open (Matt. 27:62-66), a measure which would almost certainly make it impossible to open it from the inside no matter how much strength the supposed dead man might have.
Only a few hours later this figure, so mutilated according to Scripture as to be scarcely recognizable as human (Isaiah 52:14), presented Himself before Mary, who was overwhelmed with the joy of recognition when He made Himself known to her. Shortly afterward He walked for miles without manifest tiredness or evidence of mental anguish with two disciples whose attention would surely at least have been attracted to Him by the marks of utter exhaustion and physical hurt but who apparently treated Him as simply a fellow traveller, inviting Him in at the end of the journey and only recognizing Him when He performed a simple familiar act, the breaking of bread (Luke 24:30f). There is no evidence of any desperate need for rest, food, or drink. There is every evidence that when their clouded vision suddenly cleared they recognized Him because He had reappeared to them in the same vital form they had known of Him before the events of those last terrible days.
There is nothing in the resurrection scenes to give the slightest hint that He was the one who needed ministering to, which must certainly have been the case were He a mutilated invalid verging on the border of total collapse. As a matter of fact, one has precisely the opposite impression. He was ministering rather to them, assuring them of His well-being and encouraging them in every way in the belief that what He had just passed through was not a near disaster, but a mighty triumph. That they were convinced of this is the only way of explaining how a loosely knit group of men with little or no courage and at the moment of crisis with even less cohesion as a group were suddenly turned into a band of courageous men, who were fearless of death, imprisonment, ridicule, or the threatenings of the authorities, and ended by turning the Roman world upside down. Such a transformation requires a sufficient cause and, historically, those who, like Sir Robert Anderson, have set themselves with an open mind to examine the evidence thoroughly, have either been as thoroughly convinced of the truth of the bodily resurrection of the Lord or, like Renan, have confessed that the invention of such a story would be a greater miracle than the mere recording of it, if it were sober fact, even though personally unable to believe it.
Years ago, C. A. Row wrote this: (3)
Now it is evident that His public execution must have utterly extinguished the disciples' hopes that He could ever fulfil the expectations which they had formed of Him. Such being the case, the community which He attempted to found must have gone to pieces, unless a new leader could be discovered who was capable of occupying His place. But as its continued existence proves that it did not perish, it is certain that it must have made a fresh start of some kind -- something must have happened which was not only capable of holding it together but which imparted to it a new vitality. . . .
Whether this belief was founded on fact, or was the result of a delusion, it is evident that it could not have occupied many years in growing, for while this [sorting out] was taking place, the original community founded by Jesus would have perished from want of a bond of cohesion adequate to maintain it in existence.
A Messiah who crept out of His grave, took refuge in retirement, and afterwards died from exhaustion, was not One who could satisfy the requirements of a community which had been crushed by His crucifixion. His followers had fully expected that He was going speedily to reign.. . . .
Yet it is the most certain of historical facts that the Christian community commenced a new life immediately after its basic conviction that Jesus wasthe Messiah of popular Jewish expectation had been totally destroyed by His crucifixion. Nothing but a resurrection could have served the purpose.
Some years ago, A. T. Schofield (5) in England pointed out how, as far as we can learn from early Christian history, the resurrection of the Lord was not only established against the initial skepticism of the disciples themselves, but in the teeth of the most determined opposition on the part of the Jewish authorities. He points out, in fact, that so far as it is recorded it was never publicly denied by these Jewish authorities. The very worst they could do was to explain it away by saying that the body of Jesus had been stolen by the disciples. The truth had to be concealed by every possible means.The picture which one has in Acts of the effects of the Resurrection upon the disciples themselves leaves no doubt as to the transformation which had taken place in their own attitude toward the Jewish authorities. For example, in Acts 4, Peter's preaching before the Sanhedrin was so utterly different from his trembling denial of any knowledge of the Lord before a young girl, who may very well have been only a curious bystander and not actually accusing him of anything (Luke 22:56,57). It is necessary to seek an adequate cause for such a transformation, and it will not be found in any panic inspired or despairing deception regarding the reality of the Lord's resurrection. In Acts 4:13 we are told, "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled. . . . " Later on, the same religious authorities, exasperated by what must have seemed to other people as reckless folly in the behaviour of the disciples, rebuked them saying (Acts 5:28), "Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? And, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine."
What we read in the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection is so simple, so artless, and so unlikely, as to be impossible of invention. Consider just a few of the scenes which Luke portrays, for example. In Luke 24 we have that wonderful story of the two, perhaps Cleopas and his wife Mary (not the sister of Jesus' mother, John 19:25), who made a memorable journey to Emmaus. As they walked on their way and talked in a subdued voice of all their shattered hopes because of the Crucifixion, Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. But they didn't recognize Him; He somehow clouded their vision; He asked them why they were so sad and why they were talking so earnestly with one another. Cleopas asked the Lord if He was a stranger in Jerusalem that He should be so unaware of what everyone was talking about, and he recounted to Jesus the events of the past few days. Then he explained the most surprising element of all, namely, that certain women of their company had visited the tomb and there been told by angels that Jesus was still alive.
The Lord proceeded to explain to them that nothing had happened which was not implied by all that the prophets had said: that the great problem which the Jews had had in the past in reconciling the fact that the Messiah was to be both King and Suffering Servant found its resolution in the fact that the Suffering Servant was to be raised again from the dead in order to assume His position as anointed King.
We are not told in any great detail what He said to them as they walked along, only that beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. What extraordinary restraint there is on the part of the disciples that they did not leave a record of what He said! As Wright put it: (6)
With what singular indifference to apparent effect did these men throw away the brush the moment His form was sufficiently outlined for those in distant ages to see! The utmost effect seems to have been produced with the smallest amount of material.
How extraordinary is the effect achieved. In the passage we are reading in Luke, we are told that by the time He had finished His expounding, they were nearing home. And the text continues: He made as though he would have gone further. But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is towards evening and the day is far spent.
And he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him!
And he vanished out of their sight.
In spite of the fact that their testimony fully corroborated what others had been telling the disciples (verse 34), and the fact that the Lord had appeared to Simon, they were all very frightened indeed (verse 7) when, after Cleopas and his wife had just told of their experience, the Lord Himself suddenly stood in their midst. Knowing that many of them would suppose He had not really risen from the dead, but was only a ghost of His former self, He quietly invited them to examine Him, to see the wounds in His hands and feet, to handle Him and discover for themselves that He had a real corporeal existence (verse 39). Apparently they were so amazed and overcome half with joy, yet mingled with doubt, that He sought to give to them the final proof of the reality of His presence by eating food. He said, "Have ye here any meat?" And when they gave Him a piece of broiled fish and a honeycomb, He took it and ate it then and there before their very eyes.
Thus in this one chapter, in some 30 short verses, we are given a series of kaleidoscopic cameos of the drama of those hours which surely could not be improved upon. And together these provide absolute proof that it was the Lord Himself, identified by the wounds on His body, by His overall presence, by His voice when calling Mary Magdalene by name, and by His behaviour at the table. What possible additional means would contribute to such a demonstration? And at the same time, unequivocal evidence is provided that He possessed a real body and yet a new kind of body, a body perfectly capable of transcending time, space, and matter. These accounts have none of the qualities of visions or hallucinations, as Rendle Short pointed out: (7)
Even such intangible phenomena as visions have laws well known to students of modern psychological medicine, and unless the appearances after the resurrection correspond to these laws, the "explanation" of them (as visionary) is a meaningless term.
Visions are intensely individualistic; they are only seen at all by a special minority of mankind with a special nervous temperament. . . . Every person's visions are peculiar to himself or herself alone, being evolved out of the conceptions of their self-conscious minds.
A vision may be thought to speak, but rarely if ever is a conversation carried on. It is intangible and does not alter material things. They are likely to recur at very irregular intervals, for years, in a susceptible individual.
There is another kind of realism, or perhaps one ought to say veracity, in these records. J. O. F. Murray pointed out: (8)
There is a delicate accuracy in their psychology. Read, for instance, St. John's account of the appearance to Mary Magdalene. . . . Let a scholar like Westcott, in his Revelation of the Risen Lord, make the narratives live before you not by reading anything into them, but simply by helping you to realize what a scholarly grasp of language shows to be already there. Then, again, mark the conflict of emotion in the hearts of one group of disciples after another as they find themselves in the presence of One who has come back to them from the dead. Is this subtle interplay of doubt and joy and awe-ful reverence consummate art, or is it a simple transcript of actual experience?
The fact is that we do not have the slightest change in the personal identity of this same Lord who has already walked through the Gospels during His earthly ministry. What changes there are in His power to materialize at will do not in any way mask His identity as the same real living Person that we have known before. The identity is total, resurrection has only increased His potential in certain directions. As we have noted in another Doorway Paper, (9) the ghosts created by literary artists of later generations were very insubstantial and unimpressive creatures. They are failures, really -- ghosts of ghosts only, as William Alexander put it. Equally amazing in these accounts is the restraint of these writers, as Alexander himself pointed out: (10) If the story had been of human invention, all we know of literature tells us how it would have been. At the time of His birth there would have been silence, and a sky as hushed as a frozen sea. At the Ascension the air would have quivered with the melody, and the mountain have been shaken by the storm, the triumph.
But because the narrative is true, the liturgical instincts of the evangelists are kept in check. The Church is supplied with no song for the Ascension-tide to form a counterpart to the Gloria in Excelsis of His birth.
We have already drawn attention to the artlessness of these accounts. In spite of all the opposition, there is no evidence that any of the writers were attempting consciously to counteract the arguments of those who refused to believe them. They did acknowledge that the Jews tried to circulate a story to the effect that the Lord's body had been stolen. But in any of the narratives of events there is no "Therefore," followed by a summary of the argument. Yet if we were to ask, What would be the best way of refuting the accusation of forgery or fraud? we might set forth such requirements as follows:
1. The Lord's death must be public.
2. It must be witnessed by people who were used to seeing that kind of death.
3. It must be certified by experts that death had really occurred.
4. Some specific steps must be taken by someone in authority to make death doubly sure.
5. The responsibility for securing the body must be left, ultimately, with enemies, not with friends.
6. The tomb should be sealed after burial and guards placed near it who were in no way involved.
7. If resurrection has occurred in spite of all these precautions, it must be testified by many witnesses, and they must be witnesses who honestly did not believe such a thing would occur.
8. These witnesses must give clear evidence by their actions that they had no such expectations.
9. Some of the witnesses to His resurrection must be intimate friends who could neither have mistaken somebody else for Him and would only have been convinced of His identity by rather subtle and characteristic personal forms of behaviour.
10. The proofs which He Himself would supply must be such as to completely convince the most skeptical amongst His followers.
All these requirements were met by what appear to be almost incidental observations made by the writers. There is nowhere the slightest indication that they had formulated such a list of requirements and were deliberately setting out to satisfy them.
In considering these requirements briefly, nothing need be said of (1), except that even Roman records support the reality of the event. (11) In connection with (2), it need only be said that crucifixion was well known to the Romans; and even Pilate was quite familiar with the fact that it was a slow death, hence his surprise that Jesus was so soon dead (Mark 15:44). The fulfillment of (3) and (4) is certified by the action of the centurion (John 19:34) and the eyewitness account of what happened (John 19:35). In connection with (5) and (6), we note only that the Jewish people themselves received permission to have the grave secured and guards placed nearby. In regard to (7) we are told there were many witnesses to His resurrection and the great majority of them were surprised. It seems that not a single soul among the disciples really anticipated it; not even Mary Magdalene, who thought somebody had taken the Lord away (John 20:2), nor Cleopas and his wife who "had hoped . . .but . . ." (Luke 24:21). With respect to (8), we note that the leader of the small band of disciples said, "I'm going fishing," clearly declaring his intention to try to forget all his disappointments. And his decision was shared by those who said, "We go, too" (John 21: 3). In connection with (9), we find that Mary Magdalene was the first to be absolutely persuaded, and she of all those who were not actually relatives was perhaps the one who was most completely devoted in her own soul to the Lord's Person as witnessed by her willingness to anoint His feet with oil at such a cost to herself (Luke 7:37). She undoubtedly recognized Him first by the way in which he pronounced her name.
How subtle this is, but how completely convincing. Cleopas and his wife had their eyes opened by His simple act of breaking bread. So run all the accounts -- without artifice. Here, then, is no studied attempt to win by force of argument. And finally, as though in the providence of God, the intimate circle of disciples included among its number one who was inherently skeptical about anything of which he did not have adequate firsthand experience. And so the Lord was provided with an occasion for satisfying this requirement also, that a man virtually unconvinced should be converted to an unhesitating faith, not only in the identity of the resurrected One as the same Lord whom he had known before, but as to the claims that the Lord had made for Himself as God (John 20:27).What more could be asked of a written record? By what other standard could one assess whether these events are romance or history?
THE THEOLOGICAL ASPECT OF THE RESURRECTION
Theologically, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is, as R. A. Torrey put it, "the cornerstone of Christian doctrine." As he points out, it is mentioned 104 times or more in the New Testament and was the most prominent and cardinal point in the apostolic testimony: (12)When the apostolic company, after the apostasy of Judas Iscariot, felt it necessary to complete their number again by the addition of one to take the place of Judas, it was in order that he might be "a witness with us of the resurrection" (Acts 1:21,22). The resurrection of Jesus Christ was the one point that Peter emphasized in his great sermon on the Day of Pentecost. Its keynote was, "this Jesus hath God raised up whereof we are all witnesses" (Acts 2:32).
When the apostles were again filled with the Holy Spirit some days later, the result was that with great power they gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus (Acts 4:10). When Paul went to Athens, the burden of his message was the supreme importance of the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ (Acts 17:18 and 1 Corinthians 15:15). At the same time Paul says, "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14). And later on he adds, "If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:17).There is no doubt that Torrey was perfectly correct when he said: (13)
The crucifixion loses its meaning without the resurrection. Without the resurrection, the death of Christ was only the heroic death of a noble martyr. With the resurrection it is the atoning death of the Son of God. . . .
Disprove the resurrection of Jesus Christ and Christian faith is vain.
But the Lord Jesus Christ was not fallen man; He was unfallen, sinless man. When He died, His death was not the consequence of His life, as it is for all other men; and to allow Him to remain in the tomb would have been to assent to a conclusion which in relation to Him was totally false.
I believe that God might have raised the Lord Jesus from the grave the very moment He was laid within it, or perhaps even the very moment He died. But there were certain reasons why this would not have been appropriate. These reasons are made clear enough by careful attention to certain incidents recorded in the Gospels and by relating these to some beliefs regarding the process of dying which are still surprisingly widely held and were shared by the Jewish people in our Lord's time.
I'm not suggesting that there is any firm basis for these beliefs or that Jesus Himself actually shared them. It is rather that, wishing to communicate something of fundamental importance about His mission, He accommodated His actions to these beliefs in order that there should never be any doubt in their minds as to the reality of His sacrifice and its meaning. I have in mind, first of all, the fact that constant reference is made in Scripture to the circumstance of His having arisen the third day. The Lord Himself emphasized this point on a number of occasions, as Paul did, for example, in I Corinthians 15:1, 3, 4. What, then, is the significance of the fact that He spent three days in the tomb?
There was, and is, a very widespread belief that the spirit of man does not immediately leave his body when he dies. Various cultures account for this in different ways. The Tasmanians held that the spirit did not leave the body until the sun went down, even though death had occurred first thing in the morning. (14) In the Bronze Age the Greeks believed that the spirit remained in or about the body until the body began to decay. (15) The Aztecs held that the spirit remained for four days in or about the body, (16) a belief which was shared also by the Northwest Coast Indians. Herodotus tells us that in his day embalming was never undertaken until three days after death. (17) The Dobuans, (18) a people from Oceania, put seed yams near the corpse and did not believe that the soul or spirit had really left until there was no further evidence of nibbling.
In the Old Testament a man defiled by contact with a corpse was to purify himself on the third day (Numbers 19:11,12), and the flesh of the peace offering was not to be kept beyond the third day. Whether it was because of their rather extraordinary ways of interpreting the Scriptures, particularly such Scriptures as these, or whether it was because they shared the feeling of many other people that it is dangerous to assume too quickly that a man really is dead, but yet believing that evidence of physical decay could be taken as adequate evidence (and such decay would normally occur within three days), we cannot be sure. But the fact is that they believed quite widely that the spirit could be persuaded back into the body and the individual revived under certain circumstances up to but not beyond the third day. Talmudic tradition held that mourning for the dead should culminate "on the third day," because after that the spirit would not return. In his classic work The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Edersheim has a valuable section on this matter: (19)
It is at least a curious coincidence that the relatives and friends of the deceased were in the habit of going to the grave up to the third day so as to make sure that those laid there were really dead. The Rabbis were in the habit of referring to Hos. 6:2 in this connection, where it is written, "After two days will He revive us: in the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight."
At the present time in medical circles there is considerable uncertainty as to the actual time of death, if by "death" is meant the point of no return. For in recent years many people have been brought back to life by various heroic measures, who in previous days would have been counted irretrievably lost. In fact, so difficult has it become to be legally or clinically sure that an individual really is dead that medical conferences have been devoted simply to this issue, and the general consensus of opinion at the present moment is that the only realistic way of determining death is to accept a qualified medical opinion about the matter in each case. (20)
The fact is, therefore, that if God had raised up Jesus Christ any sooner, the Jewish people as a whole might have argued that He was never really dead. And it seems likely that even in the minds of the disciples themselves there would have been some doubt. The Jews never did argue that Jesus was not dead -- perhaps on this account. All that they pretended to believe was that someone had stolen His body (Matthew 28:12,13).
I think the most striking proof of the importance of preventing such uncertainty is beautifully borne out if we follow carefully four incidents in our Lord's ministry which have been recorded in different Gospels, but which can be set in their chronological order with the help of any good Harmony of the Gospels.
The first of these incidents is found in John 4:46-53 in which the Lord restored to health a young child who was "at the point of death." Jesus healed him, and he did not die.
The second instance is found in Mark 5:21-24, 35-43. In this case a child died while the Lord was on the way, and although the Lord was delayed for perhaps a few minutes by the events which transpired between verses 24 and 35, it does not seem that the child can have been dead for more than a very short time before He arrived at the home. Here, taking the child by the hand, He raised. her from death and restored her alive to her parents. The third incident is recorded in Luke 7:11-17, and this is the story of the raising of the widow of Nain's only son. In this case the young man was being carried out to be buried. The Lord approached the bier and touched it to signify that they who were carrying it should put it down. And then He said, "Young man, I say unto thee, Arise." And he who was dead sat up and began to speak.
A careful reading of each of these accounts shows the growing impression which was made upon those who were witnesses to these events or who heard about them subsequently, as in each successive event the individual restored was, as it were, "more completely dead." In John 4:53 we are merely told that the immediate household was so impressed that they believed on Jesus. In the second instance (Mark 5:43) the people "were astonished with great astonishment." It was remarkable enough to restore someone on the point of death just by a spoken word; it was more remarkable still when somebody, who was to all intents and purposes dead, was restored to life with equal ease. In the third case the young man had been dead long enough that he was being carried out for burial and the impression made by his restoration to life was even greater still. As the account says (verse 16f.), "And there came a great fear on all: and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us; and That God hath visited his people. And this rumour of him went forth throughout all Judea, and throughout all the region round about."
Nevertheless, in each of these instances it might always be argued, by some of the Jews at least, that in no case were these individuals really dead. It was wonderful enough, but not conclusive evidence that Jesus had absolute power over death. What was yet required was one instance in which the dead was dead by all the standards of their traditional faith, that is, a restoration to life of somebody who was known to have been dead for at least three days. And so we come to the fourth incident; namely, the raising of Lazarus.
We have the details of this event set forth in John, chapter 11, more elaborately than in any of the other accounts -- and for good reasons. For it is here and nowhere else that Jesus finally demonstrated that He was Lord of Life indeed. The story is too familiar to require quoting at length but certain verses must be underscored in the present context. His companions, knowing that Jesus had learned that a beloved friend, Lazarus, was very ill, naturally expected that He would immediately make the journey to the home of Martha and Mary where the sick man lay. In verse 5 this expectation is reinforced by the words, "Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus." It seems as though the writer was trying to make it quite clear that from the human point of view, Jesus ought to have left at once. But in verse 6 it is written, "When He had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was." The "therefore" in this sentence seems a contradiction, for it would not be normal, in our experience, to delay going to the help of a friend for the very reason that we loved that friend. One might expect quite the opposite. In any case it transpired as a consequence of this delay that Lazarus died and was buried, and had actually lain in the grave for more than three days (verse 17) by the time Jesus had arrived.
Not unnaturally, in spite of her great love for the Lord and her faith in His compassion, Mary could not help giving expression to a kind of rebuke for the Lord's delay. She said (verse 32), "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." I think the Lord accepted her rebuke and thereby took any bitterness out of it which might have been there, for He did not reply to her, but only openly shared her grief. Then He asked her where Lazarus was laid, and coming to the grave He commanded them to take away the stone. Martha, ever the practical one, immediately said, "Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days."
One wonders what might have happened if the Lord had simply said in a loud voice, "Come forth." He is yet to say this, and the dead will rise, the dead in Christ of all the centuries, in every part of the world. But here He called to Lazarus only, and in some way He must have used even that name in a singular manner, for I'm quite certain that there were others named Lazarus who might also have responded -- perhaps even the Lazarus in Abraham's bosom (Luke 16:20). The effect of this upon those who witnessed it and upon those who soon heard about it from others was, to use a modern term, absolutely stunning. Curiously enough, John is silent about the matter in this particular part of the narrative, but the real effect is witnessed by the Pharisees' confession (John 12:19): "Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing: behold, the world is gone after him." And it will be noted that this exclamation had direct reference to the fact that Lazarus had been raised from the dead.
The raising of Jairus' daughter was wonderful enough: the raising of the widow of Nain's son was even more extraordinary. But the raising of Lazarus was the last straw, the final proof. And that these events took place in this order is surely not an accident. They serve to demonstrate unequivocally that the Lord remained for three days in the tomb for a very good reason indeed, to circumvent entirely any challenge which might have legitimately been raised by the Jewish authorities to the effect that Jesus could never be counted as the sacrificial Lamb of God with any certainty because it was not certain that He ever really died.
THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS
There still remains to be considered, however briefly, the question of exactly how these three days are to be reckoned. A number of erudite attempts have been made in the past to demonstrate that the tradition, which appears to have existed from very early times, to the effect that the Lord was crucified on Friday, is a mistake. The argument is that although Sunday was unquestionably the day of resurrection, one must go back precisely three whole days and three whole nights, a total of 72 hours, if one wishes to determine the actual day of the Lord's death and burial.It is insisted that the words of the Lord in Matthew 12:40 are unequivocal and must be taken literally: "For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Certainly, by our standards of reckoning time the appeal is convincing.
Yet one has a strange feeling that somehow the early Christian church would hardly have made a mistake about the day upon which an event of such tremendous importance as the Lord's death had occurred. After all, the event is rather clearly hemmed in, on the one hand, by the fact that the earlier-than-usual deposition from the cross is specifically stated to have been occasioned by the circumstance that the next day (which began at 6 P.M. that evening) was a Sabbath or Holy Day, and on the other hand by the fact that the Resurrection occurred apparently very early in the morning following what appears to be the same Sabbath. We do not know precisely when the Lord broke forth out of the tomb. It could have been any time during the night after 6 P.M. of the previous evening. We do know that all four Gospels seem to go out of their way to make it quite clear that no one who visited the tomb arrived there early enough to find the Lord still there.
Matthew 28:1 "Now, after the end of the Sabbath(s). . . " (see below).
Mark 16:1,2 "very early in the morning. . ."
Luke 24:1 "Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning. . ."
John 20:1 "The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early. . ."
, According to modern lexicographers 
has the basic meaning "after the close of," followed by the genitive. It has been argued by some that the plural here, Sabbaths, could mean that these were two Holy Days in succession, which would be Friday and Saturday. This would allow more time to fill out the supposed 72 hours. However, two Holy Days probably fell together on this occasion, much as Christmas Day may fall on a Sunday. The use of the plural is perhaps accounted for in this way. At any rate the meaning "after the close of" is represented in one way or another in the translations made by Rieu, Knox, The Twentieth Century New Testament, Berkeley, Williams, Smith and Goodspeed, the Jerusalem Bible, and the Revised Standard Version. The simplest reading of the record is that burial was just prior to the beginning of the Holy Day, perhaps between 4 and 5 P.M., and the Resurrection late in the evening or very early in the morning of the day which followed the Sabbath. I say, "the simplest reading," because even if an extra Sabbath day were allowed in order to increase the time interval, we are still not provided with the necessary 72 hours, and if we postulate three Sabbaths, we have far exceeded the allotted time. Attempts to extend the period, such as have been made in the past by people like Bullinger, (21) are unnecessarily complicated when we once learn to accept the well-recognized fact that the Jewish people did not reckon days in the precise way that we normally do. And I use the word "normally" advisedly, because it will be apparent that we also "toy with time" and adopt a similar system of reckoning to that of the Jewish people when it is to our advantage to do so -- from an economic point of view.
The principle which governed their thinking in such matters has been rather clearly set forth in some of their own commentaries on the Scriptures. It is this: that any part of a whole period of time may be counted as though it were the whole. A part of a day may be counted as a whole day, a part of a year as a whole year. Furthermore, a part of a day or a part of a night may be counted as a whole "night and day." I suspect that in the Lord's parable of the man who paid his labourers for a whole day, whether they had worked for a whole day or not (Matthew 20:1-16), is really a reflection of this principle. Thus, in the Babylonian Talmud, the Third Tractate of the Mishnah (which is designated "B. Pesachim," at page 4a) it is stated: "The portion of a day is as the whole of it."
In order to elucidate the next quotation of this kind, it is necessary to explain that the word 'onah'
, a word which occurs in late Hebrew, means simply "a period of time." Thus in the Jerusalem Talmud, in the First Tractate of the Mishnah (which is designated "J. Shabbath," at chapter 9, paragraph 3), it is stated: "We have a teaching (Rabbi Eleazar ben Azaryah who flourished between A.D. 80-100 and tenth in descent from Ezra) which says, 'A day and a night are an 'onah and the portion of an 'onah is as the whole of it'." Even more extraordinary to our way of reckoning is the fact that if a king has reigned for even the smallest fraction of a year, he is credited with a whole year's reign. It is ignorance of this fact which for centuries confused European scholars in their attempts to harmonize the various lengths of reigns of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah. For, every so often, cross references are given which should allow the accumulated years to be harmonized between the two, but every attempt made to achieve such a harmony by taking the totals literally led to hopeless contradiction. Using the key which is supplied by this principle of crediting to any monarch any part of a year as a whole year, enabled Edwin R. Thiele to produce a complete harmony of these lists. (22) He did, however, find that certain other clues were needed in certain situations. In the quotation which follows it should be remembered that 30 days were allowed for the month of "March" and that New Year's Day was "April" 1st, according to the Jewish calendar.
In the Babylonian Talmud, and the Eighth Tractate of the Mishnah (which is designated "B. Rosh Hasshanah," at page 2a and b), it is stated: "Our rabbis have taught that if a king begins his reign on the 29th of Adar ("March"), as soon as it is the first of Nisan ("April") a year is reckoned to him . . . and one day in a year is counted as a year."
I have not been able to verify this, but I understand that formerly, if not even now, Russian railway tickets are issued for whole periods of time which are termed "suthees." If it happens that a suthee has to be used for only a few minutes at the end of a day, it must then be surrendered and does not provide the user with a pass for the balance of 24 hours. The actual date of the calendar day is the important thing. But then, under certain circumstances we make use of the same principle. For example, if a baby is born and the birth is registered as being a few minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve, the proud parents can claim a dependent for the whole of the year which is so soon to end. And ministers are not infrequently asked to perform weddings on New Year's Eve in order to gain the financial advantage of married status for the year that is already 99.9 percent over.
With this background material, then, we could reconstruct the events of those three crucial days as follows:
In this diagram three days only are shown, Friday, Saturday (the Sabbath), and Sunday. Each is divided by shading into a night and a day, and each begins at 6 P.M. in the evening and ends at 6 P.M. on the following evening. On Friday morning the actual Crucifixion is shown as beginning at 9 A.M., the third hour of the day (Mark 15:25). Three hours later at 12 o'clock noon there began a period of supernatural darkness which continued until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, as indicated, at which time -- or very shortly after -- the Lord dismissed His life. Sometime between 3 o'clock and 6 o'clock He was taken down from the cross and laid in the tomb before the onset of the Holy Day, a day which was doubly holy being also the first day of the Passover. The deposition from the cross is marked by an arrow pointing downwards which is arbitrarily positioned. Between this and the close of Friday would then represent that portion of the first night and day, i.e., Day 1 by Jewish reckoning. From this to the end of Saturday would naturally represent the second night and day. Sometime during the night of Sunday, as indicated arbitrarily by the arrow pointing upward, the Lord rose from the tomb. The interval from 6 P.M. to this resurrection time would be the portion which represented the third night and day.
This straightforward reconstruction satisfies, as far as I know, all the legal requirements which the Jewish concept of "assured death" apparently demanded. The following is a list of the essential references to this time period which are to be found in the Gospels and Acts.
Matthew 12:40 Matthew 20:19 Mark 8:31 Luke 9:22 Luke 24:7, 21, 46 16:21 27:63 9:31 13:32 John 2:19 17:23 27:64 10:34 18:33 Acts 10:40
Justin Martyr, who lived between A.D. 100 to 167, left us a famous work titled Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew. In Section 107 of this he said that the story of Jonah signifies that "on the third day after the Crucifixion He should rise again." Many Jews apparently engaged with him in this controversy, but in no case is there recorded any challenge to Justin Martyr's interpretation of the Lord's words in Matthew 12:40 with reference to Jonah's three days and three nights.
MARY MAGDELANE AT THE TOMB
We have yet one aspect of the bodily Resurrection which seems to me to have tremendous theological importance, even though some of the most renowned authors of books on the subject of this Paper have not seen fit to pay any attention to it. For this, we need to put together four passages of Scripture which seem in a special way to be so obviously related that I cannot believe we are simply reading into Scripture more than we are intended to do. The first of these is found in John 20:11-18. I think it is desirable to quote this passage in full, and to note that what immediately precedes it (verses 1-10) tell how Mary Magdalene had come to the tomb very early on Sunday morning, while it was yet dark, and found to her surprise that the stone had been rolled away. She immediately ran to tell Peter and John that someone had removed the Lord's body. These two disciples ran together to the tomb, John getting there first but hesitating about entering it, while Peter coming up behind him ran straight on in, in his characteristically impetuous manner. Then these disciples "went away again unto their own home," apparently fully convinced that Jesus was not there, but not realizing that He had really raised from the dead.Meanwhile, Mary had arrived back at the tomb and stood there, overcome with grief and perhaps a little bewildered. Scripture records what followed (John 20:11-18):
But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, and seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou?
She said unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.
Jesus said unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?
She, supposing him to be the gardener, said unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou has laid him, and I will take him away.
And Jesus said unto her, Mary.
And she turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni!
Jesus said unto her, Touch me not: for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my God and your God.
Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord and that he had spoken these things unto her.
I have seen it argued that there was a peculiarly close attachment on the part of Mary Magdalene to the Lord's Person and that it was this attachment which the Lord was forbidding her to give expression to because He now bore a different relationship to all His disciples. But, it seems to me clear from the Lord's words that He meant something much more significant. He said, "for I am not yet ascended to my Father." In what way could His ascension to His Father change the propriety of allowing those who loved Him to touch Him? The words are meaningless unless one assumes that after He had once ascended to His Father, such personal contact would then be allowable. But this in turn indicates that after the ascension to His Father He would come back to the disciples in such a form, i.e., bodily, as to be accessible to them in this sense. So the use of the word "ascension" here cannot logically be equated with His ascension into heaven at the end of the forty days, though many Bibles assume that it does by giving a reference at this point to the Ascension.
I think we have a clue as to the significance of the Lord's words in the fact that He instructed Mary to go and tell the disciples, "my brethren," as the Lord so beautifully puts it, that He was about to "ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my God and to your God." It seems to me important to note that on three occasions Jesus referred to His Father by the more austere title God. The first of these occasions is in Hebrews 10:7, at which point we seem to be given a momentary glimpse of the events which transpired at the very instant when the Lord entered into the little baby which Mary bore and actually became a part of our world of time and space. It might be possible to speak of it as "the moment of Incarnation." In verse 5 the announcement is made in heaven that when "he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, but a body hast thou prepared me..." And in verse 7, "Then said I, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God."
The second occasion must surely be the most familiar of all: at the time of the Crucifixion, when darkness fell upon the world and all our sin was laid upon Him -- which, after all, was the time of the fulfillment of Hebrews 10:7 -- when the Lord cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46).
We have, then, two occasions recorded, in both of which, clearly, there is implied a special relationship between Jesus Christ and His Father in which the crucial factor was not one of love and sonship, but one of judgment. In the first, the Lamb was offering Himself as a sacrifice, addressing Himself to God as Judge. And in the second case He is again appealing, as the Lamb being sacrificed, not to His Father, but to His God.
And in the third case with which we are concerned in the present passage, the Lord is evidently still seeing Himself in two roles. He is now fully restored to fellowship with the Father, but He has yet apparently to present before God as the sacrificial Lamb some essential symbol of the completed sacrifice. In some mystical way this symbol is His blood, the blood of the Lamb.
In the Old Testament temple ordinances, after making the sacrifice on behalf of the people according to the Law of Moses, the High Priest took some of the blood which was the proof of death and entering into the Holy of Holies poured it upon the Ark of the Covenant which contained the two Tables of the Law. This was practical acknowledgment of the fact that God's Law had been broken and that an innocent sacrifice of life had been made in recognition of the penalty. We know from the New Testament that these Mosaic institutions were symbolic, shadows of a heavenly reality. This reality is outlined in some detail in Hebrews 9:12-24. The last two verses of this passage read as follows:
It was therefore necessary that the copies [RSV] of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
For Christ has not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the copies of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.
Shortly after, in what seems to have been a matter of hours, He appeared to the disciples and this time had not the slightest hesitation in allowing them to handle Him, indeed He invited them to do so and to see that it really was He, bodily, who stood among them. Moreover, they held Him by the feet (Matthew 28:9). The highly significant thing to my mind is that when the Lord offered Himself to their uninhibited examination in proof of His real identity he said (Luke 24:39):
Behold, my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have.
What I think is so important here is that the Holy Spirit has not adopted the commonly accepted phrase in the New Testament for a living person, namely, "flesh and blood." I cannot think this was an accident.In the Old Testament it is common to find the phrase "flesh and bones," and it will be observed that this phrase is used to indicate blood relationship and is usually accompanied by a personal pronoun (cf. Genesis 2:23; 29:14; 2 Samuel 5:1,19; 12:13). This is curious in view of the omission of the word "blood." By contrast, we do not find in the Old Testament a phrase which is descriptive of the living individual as an abstract idea and without reference to personal relationships. But in the New Testament this is not the case: with two exceptions, one of which is the present passage. The phrase "flesh and blood" is used, as will be observed by reference to 1 Corinthians 15:50, Galatians 1:16, Ephesians 6:12, and importantly, Hebrews 2:14 -- none of which are concerned with the relationship between individuals, but rather with existence of the individual per se as a living organism. The deliberate change in terminology is therefore exceptional enough that it should be noted and an explanation sought for it.
The body which the Lord now presented to the disciples -- and presumably Mary Magdalene was one of them -- was a body in which the life-giving principle, namely, the blood, upon which we are dependent, was no longer present. In some way the Lord had changed, not merely because in the new plane in which He now moved blood was no longer the source of life, but because His blood had been presented in heaven as an everlasting memorial of a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice made on our behalf.
The beautiful thing about Scripture is the way in which it supplies concordant statements almost incidentally, which one may read again and again and never see their significance -- until one day they suddenly stand out illuminated by the Holy Spirit. As we have suggested above, between the incident with Mary Magdalene at the tomb and the subsequent meeting with the disciples, a significant change had taken place in the Lord's resurrected body. The wonderful thing is that this change is reflected in Mark 16:9-12. In order to set the precise chronological order of events, the Holy Spirit tells us, through Mark, that the Lord had appeared first to Mary Magdalene and that she had immediately gone to tell the others, who were incredulous. Then in verse 12 we find these words:
After that He appeared in another form unto two of them as they walked [emphasis mine].
So we are being quietly told that a change had taken place in the form of the Lord between His appearance to Mary Magdalene and all those to whom He appeared subsequently. The Greek has en hetera morphe, which means, without a shadow of doubt, "in another form." It seems, then, that Mary Magdalene found Him as He was about to present His blood, the symbol of His death on our behalf, before God's presence as Judge, in heaven. In some way this act of presentation changed the constitution of His body from flesh and blood to flesh and bone -- albeit in a mystical sense which nonetheless was a real change in form. Mary was the only one who saw Him in that form which He bore immediately after the Resurrection. All the others saw Him in that form which He bore after He had presented His blood in heaven.
As noted above, there is one other occasion where we meet with the phrase, as it applied to the Lord's body, which was not "flesh and blood," but "flesh and bones," for we are told so very appropriately that we who now constitute His church, are members of His body, "of his flesh, and of his bones" (Ephesians 5:30).
Reverting once more to the Old Testament system of temple worship, in the Day of Atonement when the priest had carried the blood of the sacrifice into the Holy of Holies, those present must have waited breathlessly to learn whether the sacrifice had been acceptable. The signal of God's acceptance was that the High Priest re-appeared from the Holy of Holies alive, for as the bearer of an unworthy sacrifice into the very presence of God he would otherwise have been judged unfit to live. Thus, the re-appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ alive after presenting His blood was -- and is -- our final assurance that His sacrifice is indeed "full, perfect, and sufficient." Hallelujah!
THE EXPERIENTIAL ASPECT OF THE RESURRECTION
In John 14:19 and 20, the Lord Jesus said, "Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye shall see me: because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you."
Many years ago, as a group of students, we were discussing different world religions. There were a number of strongly nationalistic native Africans from different parts of the continent present and one professor who was violently anti-Christian. Various ones were arguing that Christianity was simply a religion like all the rest; even the atheistic professor argued thus. When, after some hesitation due to lack of courage, I finally said, "This is not so, because Christian experience results from the actual reincarnation of Jesus Christ in the believer," the whole tone of the argument changed with remarkable abruptness. One of the most militant of the Africans present was quite silenced and watched me intently afterwards for some time. I have no idea what was really going on in his mind, but evidently this was an entirely new line of thought. That the Saviour Himself should effect the experience of new life by entering into the believer, in Person, was to him a new concept of salvation. And, sadly enough, it is a new concept to many Christian people who are, nevertheless, genuinely born-again believers. Yet this is surely the meaning of the Lord's words, "Because I live, ye shall live also."
The mode of admission is very simply set forth in Revelation 3:20, "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." This is clearly a statement of the fact that if a man will open the door of his heart Jesus Christ will come in and take up residence within his soul. Thereafter, like a seed planted in a plot of earth, He will begin a process of growth of an entirely new creature within the believer (2 Corinthians 5:17). As we have shown in another Doorway Paper (see ref.23), the Lord in some wonderful way summed up in Himself all the potential of human personality, so that He is able supernaturally to engender within the believer the growth of a new person, which, although it is an expression of Himself and the direct result of His presence within, is nevertheless entirely appropriate to the individual's capacity. Paul expressed this of his own experience in Galatians 2:20, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Much of John's First Epistle is concerned with this wonderful fact. The experiential certainty of the Lord's indwelling in the consciousness of the believer is the work of the Holy Spirit, as John put it (1 John 3:24), "Hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit whom he hath given us." The simplest form of the equation of eternal life is stated by John (1 John 5:12): "He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." The Lord was assuring His disciples (John 14:19,20) that as a consequence of His death and resurrection, which together guaranteed their forgiveness and acceptance with God, the latter would allow Him to enter personally into each one of them individually to initiate a new kind of life, life eternal. We in Christ: this is our assurance of salvation. Christ in us: this is our hope of glory, that is, the hope of achieving something of the glory of His character which the disciples saw to be "full of grace and truth" (John 1:18).
We are far from expressing this new life in any way that is satisfying to ourselves or to anyone else. Nevertheless, this is the new life which is visible to God and which, alone, will survive after death. All else that has sprung from the old nature will be buried with the body which was natural to it, and only the new man in Christ, the new man which resulted from His presence, will survive with theresurrected body which is entirely appropriate to it.
I am fully persuaded in my own mind that this is the intent of two passages in John's First Epistle which have always seemed so difficult to understand. We only need to remember that this is a new Seed planted within us and that this Seed is Christ, "the begotten of God" (Galatians 3:16). I think in both these passages as rendered in the Authorized Version the use of capitals might have helped to clarify the meaning. There is no doubt that "his seed" should be capitalized and there is no doubt that the words "in him" should not be capitalized. It is equally certain that to say that we ourselves cannot sin, that the individual believer is incapable of sin, is quite contrary to our own experience. And therefore we must suppose that the words "he cannot sin because he is born of God" (1 John 3:9) must once again refer back to the Seed who is Christ, i.e., He who is born of God (which is Christ Himself) cannot be the author of sin in the believer's life. In 1 John 5: 18 we meet with the same basic claim: "We know that he who is born of God sinneth not; but He that is begotten of God keepeth the believer and that wicked one toucheth him not." Or even more simply, "Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world [i.e., Satan]" (1 John 4:4).
Whatever may or may not be useful in the way I have proposed that these two difficult passages may be understood, the wonderful truth remains that the only acceptable part of our lives now is that which is the direct expression of the outworking of the Person of Christ within, re-incarnate in us who believe. All else is mercifully hidden in Christ and no longer counts with God as an expression of the new man in Christ Jesus. Paul put it so beautifully in Romans 7:22: "I delight in the law of God after the inward man," or as the Greek actually has it, "according to the man inside. . . " And that man inside is Christ, who rose again the third day. Amen!
Sex
Sex by Josh Bell
Intro
Have you ever seen something in nature that was so beautiful that for a moment you were totally captivated by it- something like the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls or maybe something as simple as a sunset over the ocean? It was so beautiful that you wanted to become a part of it, to reach out and touch it and become one with it, but you couldn't. You were left with a great sense of longing, but no way for it to be fulfilled. Sex in some way is the one thing this side of heaven that gives us that chance- the chance to be united with beauty and become one with it. What's more is that this beauty is a living person with personality and life and love. Not only is there the possibility of fulfilling your own desire of being united with beauty, but if things are ideal this beauty actually desires you as well! It almost sounds too good to be true, but it isn't. We were created for this!
Why we crave sex
According to the Biblical account of creation mankind was made in the image of God. This means that man was made with the capacity to know and relate to God. We also know that God made Adam and then made Eve so that Adam would not be alone. From the beginning it is evident that we were made for relationship with God and each other. Without this capacity for relationship we would be machines. It's hard to imagine two machines longing for one another and falling in love, but without God how can something like love be accounted for? On the other hand, if God is love like the Bible says He is and He created people with a similar capacity to experience love then there is a reason behind what we feel and there is significant meaning behind sex. If we leave God out, then there are only two options. Either love just appeared out of nothing- which doesn't make any sense- or there is no such thing as love and we really are just machines. Somehow that doesn't begin to explain the magnitude of our incredible longing to be united with beauty. Our sexual longing is so strong that it points to something beyond ourselves and not something less. The greatness of sex demands a great explanation. If that something beyond us is God then we have a desire for sex because we were made in the image of God with the capacity to relate. Sex is relationship in its most intimate form.
Marriage is necessary
Do you ever remember being a kid on the playground playing a game of basketball and having someone suggest that you play without fouls or out of bounds? It may have sounded like a fun idea at first, but before you knew it the game could hardly be called basketball. Whether you could shoot, dribble and pass well didn't seem to matter. Your freedom to shoot was no longer protected and instead the game was destroyed. At best it had become a very sorry version of football! Imagine the seventh game of the NBA Finals being played with out any referees. It would never happen simply for the integrity of the game. So what about the integrity of sex? What rules and boundaries do we have set up to guarantee that sex will be fun, fair, and even healthy? It is easy to jump under the banner of safe sex by just using a condom, but does that really make everything safe? If all it took was a condom to make sex safe then we would be denying what it means to be human. Essentially, that we are more than flesh and blood. There has to be a way to safeguard the total person and not just the physical. What if some guy told you that he wanted to have sex with your sister and his only reason was because she's hot? She is more than a hot body- she is your sister. You know her as a person with real hopes and dreams, and if any guy is going to get with her he better prove that he sees her as something more than sexual candy. So if he really loves her and sees her as more than a sex object how can he prove it? First, he better be willing to take the time to get to know her family and her friends and gain their approval. Having done that he better be willing to stand before all of them plus his own family and friends, and with a ring say to her, "I promise to love you until death do us part." He might argue that it's too high of a price for a night of pleasure, but he would be missing the whole point. If he really loves her, then he won't reduce her solely to a means of pleasure. Guided by the love you have for your sister you have shown him what constitutes a foul and what you consider out of bounds. If he'll play by the rules, then game on. Enjoy the honeymoon! Marriage is absolutely essential to a great sex life. Sure, it sets up walls, but they are the walls of a playground!
Culture fails to be a credible guide for sexual morality
Marriage may be the right context for sex, but what does that say about all those having sex outside of marriage? Is it wrong? Fifty years ago in American culture most people thought it was. Now, much of our culture accepts it as normal, but there still remains an element of Bible-believing Christians that say it's wrong. Why have their views of sexual morality not changed along with the majority of culture? The answer is simple. In the Bible after God created everything including sex, He stepped back and concluded that all that He had made was good. If God is real and He is good then how can one improve or change His design for sex within marriage? The answer is that one can't. This is why the views of Bible believing Christians have not changed with culture. In truth, the bigger question is for those who don't have an absolute moral basis. When God is taken out of the equation and our existence is accounted for by the evolution of some primordial slime then human dignity really is in jeopardy. There is no way to explain where intellect, personality and emotion come from. They must be an illusion. Humans are left as a chance make-up of cells. Finally, if that is true what prevents the stronger from forcing sex with the weaker? Couldn't that be excused as survival of the fittest? Unfortunately it doesn't stop here. What if fifty years from now sex between adults and children is decided to be okay as long as there is mutual consent? On what basis could it be judged? How can a chance make-up of cells be held accountable for doing anything wrong? These are difficult questions, but when God given guidelines for sexuality are discarded and culture defines its own rules these questions must be asked.
Conclusion
In his essay, The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis writes, "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
There really is something to be learned here. When we fool around with sex outside of the context which God has given us to enjoy it in we demean the whole experience. We lose the opportunity to enjoy it to its fullest, but more importantly we lose the ability to see that as great as sex is it points to something even greater!