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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 21. Jesus' Resurrection Incidentals
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Jesus' Resurrection Incidentals
That great resurrection climax of Paul's in his letter to his Corinthian converts and friends is one of the choice classics of this sacred Book. The whole story there is one of the most fascinating from the Tarsan's thoughtful pen.
The resurrection of Jesus is the chief corner stone of the whole fabric of Christian truth and fact. But we are not concerned just now with that. But with the other things, the incidentals, tremendous incidentals, that are part and parcel of the other.
Look at these incidentals. There is another world, a spirit world. Jesus is alive up there. He is in command up there. He has at his disposal all things in heaven and on earth. His power is more than we can take in. He is the same Jesus who fed men down here, and healed, and taught, and that died.
That upper spirit world is the big thing in comparison with this old earth. It is the center of things, the center of earth control. All things here are regulated there, even the desperate fight against the revolutionary powers of evil. It's the real world.
Jesus' whole heart and thought is in things down here. He holds as precious to Himself, unspeakably precious, every one who follows Him simply and fully, and so is in touch of heart with Himself. His plans of action center here on earth. There's a waiting time just now. With infinite patience He is letting the great pore problem of evil work itself out on the earth.
But one day He will intervene. Intervention is plainly on the schedule. With most studiously careful regard to every one involved, human being and spirit being, he is holding intervention back. For He is just to all, even to the great evil spirit prince.
But the intervention day is as surely coming as that He died and rose again. - In this great Corinthian climax the program of action for the earth is given in broad outline (1Co_15:22-27). When the intervention day does come then all of His who have died will rise up out of their graves even as He did. As He comes down toward earth, the spirit magnetism of His presence coming nearer will draw their bodies up into reunion with their glad spirits.
Then follows the new order of things on the earth, His order of things at last. And when the purpose of that is achieved, and all contrary rule and authority is utterly abolished, then the kingdom is turned over to the Father. And the climax of the kingdom is this, that death, man's last enemy, is itself put to death.
There is given here too, what may be called the personal program He has arranged for His own trusting ones (1Co_15:50-57). It is called a "mystery," that is simply instruction or information for the inner circle. The intervention day will be heralded by the sounding of a trumpet as of a summons to form in rank.
Instantly, quicker than you can blink your eye-lid, the bodies lying in the grave of those in touch, will know a new life as their spirits, now in Christ's presence, re-enter their old dwelling places, each spirit to his body. And they will rise up toward their center of spirit gravity, the glorified Jesus.
And all those who are living on the earth, and have that same vital heart touch, will as instantly experience some change in their bodies, making them answer to a pull of gravity upward. Courteously they wait until those who have died have preceded them, and then all together, loved one living joined with loved one who has died, they will be at once in the presence of Jesus.
Christ is called here in regard to His resurrection, "the first-fruits" (1Co_15:20-23). That is, He becomes the model on which His followers' resurrection will be shaped. He rose. They will rise. His body rose: theirs will be raised. His was a changed body, its limitations gone, and new powers come; so theirs. His identity remained, and he was recognized; so with them.
Joseph's emptied tomb becomes a guarantee of countless other emptied graves. Jesus living up there now becomes a guarantee that these others are living. They share the same sort of life as He, a full abundant victorious over-flowing life. He is the "first fruits."