Straight Thinking 111267 Resurrection Religion

Straight Thinking

111267

RESURRECTION RELIGION

Sunday. Job said, “There is hope for a tree if it’s cut down, that it will sprout again”; but, “If a man dies, will he live again?” Jesus answered this haunting question by showing that people do not go into the grave, but through it to heaven on the other side. Is it incredible that the corpse in a coffin will live again? Not anymore! (Read Job 14:7-14.)

Monday. The resurrection of Jesus makes other people feel a connection with the spiritual realm. Like a possession of a deceased relative that unites us with the one that has passed beyond the veil, the empty tomb at the foot of Golgotha is a permanent memorial to the conquest of death and a visible association between the temporal and the eternal. (Read 2 Corinthians 4:16, 18.)

Tuesday. Occasionally we hear someone say that if there were a God, he would not allow friends or loved ones to die. Now that Jesus has risen from the dead as proof and prefigure of our own resurrection, no one has a right to bear a grudge against God, because the death of righteous people is promotion to better things rather than an end to it all. (Read 1 Corinthians 15:22-23; 42-49, 55-58.)

Wednesday. The disciples huddled together in the gloomy midday darkness on crucifixion day. Their despondent sorrow and fear of the Jewish leaders left them on resurrection day. Like these disciples who preached the Pentecost gospel in front of their enemies, our belief in the resurrection of Jesus gives us a confidence and joy that will overcome the world. (Read Luke 23:49; John 19:19-20; 1 Corinthians 15:19.)

Thursday. The resurrection of Jesus gives us a firm faith that he is the Christ. The tremendous impact of his preaching and miracles and glorious claims simply does not fit with his shameful death between two criminals in the end. What an anticlimax! Besides, he had claimed that he would rise from the dead. What a fraud! But he did rise! What a finish! (Read Matthew 16:21.)

Friday. We believe that Jesus shed his blood on the cross of Calvary to cleanse the sins of people that believe on him. But if Jesus had not resurrected, why would we think his death differed from the death of those he died with? Only the victim on the middle cross left us an empty grave! (Read Mark 15:27; 1 Corinthians 15:17.)

Saturday. If Christ had not arisen, there would have been no Christian religion. At his death his disciples lost all hope, and his enemies claimed victory. Since Jesus’ preaching revolved around his claim to deity, his message could not be true if he could be conquered: how can men kill God? Truly the Christian religion is resurrection religion. (Read Acts 5:34-39.)

Virgil Warren, Straight, November 12, 1967, p13                                                                 chiristir.org