The ineffable glory; thoughts on the resurrection

Introduction

The family Bible shows that the father of Rev. Edward M. Bounds, Thos. Jefferson Bounds, was born in Maryland Sept. 5th, 1801. His mother, Hester Ann Purnell, was born in Maryland. They married November 12th, 1823. Came to Kentucky, lived there for a few years, then moved to Marion County, Mo. Edward M. Bounds was born in Shelbyville, Mo., April the 15th, 1835. His father, Thos. J. Bounds, died and was buried in Shelby County. His mother died in 1882, June the 7th, and was buried in Kirksville, Mo.

Edward M. Bounds and his brother, Charles L., went to California under the lure of the gold discovery in 1849. Bounds was then only 14 years old. It is said that he and his brother were the only two boys who went across the plains — and carried their religion with them.

There were eight brothers and three sisters born to the family of Thos. J. Bounds, father of Edward M. Bounds. Edward M, studied law and was admitted and located in Hannibal, Mo., vi INTRODUCTION

but the urgency to preach was so insistent that he gave up law after two years. He joined the Confederate Army at the opening of the war and was made a chaplain.

Bishop W. F. Mallalieu, having read these chapters on The Resurrection, said in 1908, "I have recently read two books by Rev. Edward M. Bounds. The classical quotations at the heads of the chapters are more than worth the money asked for the books. Bounds says the resurrection of Jesus Christ was complete, literal, entire and absolute; that the resurrection of the bodies of the dead, whatever disposition may be made of them, whether buried in the sea or burned to ashes, will be precisely analogous to the resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ."

I met this great saint in May, 1905, when he was 70 years old. He was then writing his Preacher and Prayer and these "thoughts on the Resurrection." We shared our board and bed with him off and on until he died. It was worth much to hear him talk. He would sit for hours in silent meditation and prayer and then begin in a delightful slow, sweet way, and if we broke in upon him he became very intense. To understand his meaning and his earnestness at times was painful. He coaxed us to rise with him at the 4 a. m. hour and wrestle for the lost world and for money to publish his books. At last God gave him the loan of enough money to publish

INTRODUCTION vii

Preacher and Prayer and The Resurrection in 1907. The two books were written (figuratively speaking) in his blood and saturated through and through with his tears. Brother Bounds took his edition of The Resurrection home with him to Washington, Georgia, and there they remained locked up for 12 years. He wrote me in Brooklyn, N. Y., 15th Dec., 191 1, these words, "These books I send you as a gift are my books on The Resurrection. They are God's great truths and will serve you well and any who read to refresh on that vital truth. On 21st Dec, 191 1, he having so many of these books in his attic stored and no way to sell them, writes me these lines, "I send you via express twenty-five copies. They must be out preaching. They are God's truths. Choose your occasion and persons; give them away for God. I would like to see New York City sowed down with them." Scatter them as you can and more if you can and I will send them to you gladly. His longing soul knew the great hope of the Christian and he was interceding with God that his precious and priceless book might have readers for God's glory and God answered though ten years later, and now with a becoming binding and enterprising publishers one of the most glorious of all spiritual doctrines is opened and portrayed scripturally to a reading world who desire to read all he has ever written.

Dr. A. F. Scofield of London, England, in viii INTRODUCTION

studying the history of the Roman empire written by Polybius, the famed historian, discovered that the Roman army used three trumpet calls in breaking camp. First the trumpet blew loud and continuous for a few moments, which meant, "Strike your tents, pack your baggage, secure the animals. " The second trumpet was to assemble the companies, battalions, in formation and await the last trumpet. The last trumpet was simply "March" The argument would run thus : Paul was among Roman soldiers at different places and even chained to one in Rome and had no doubt often heard the Three Trumpets sounding in the years gone among the victorious legions of imperial Rome. Being therefore familiar with the sound of the trumpets and their meaning he utters this marvelous statement in ist Corinthians 15:52, in reference to the resurrection (thirtyfive years before St. John wrote the nth chapter of Revelations), "Behold I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, at the Last Trump" The inference is that Paul made no reference at all to John's seventh trump in Revelations, but referred to the third trump of the Romans. If this hypothesis be true then we stand with those who are God's eagles. Having heard the first and second trump, we await the last command, "March," that we may

INTRODUCTION ix

be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air : and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

Bounds' interpretation is that Christ will come to be glorified in all them that believe when that prayer of His shall be answered, "Father, I will that they whom Thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory." He did not believe that Christ would come to be glorified in only a portion of His saints and admired only in so many of them that believe as have lived before the millennium, the rest to be brought in by degrees after Christ comes and to remain in the flesh as subjects of the former class.

Thank God that Christ purchased on the cross virtual redemption and actual redemption. Our Spirits have been virtually redeemed and actually redeemed : while the body has been only virtually redeemed. Ephesians 1:14: "Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the Purchased Possession" The purchased Possession is the body, it has not been actually redeemed until God glorifies it at the Resurrection. Then "the Lord Himself will descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the x INTRODUCTION

air and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words." Glory be to God, Amen.

Homer W. Hodge.

Brooklyn, N. Y.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Prefatory 15

II. The Diurnal and Annual Resurrection ........ 17

Chapter I Prefatory

J hear the thunder of eternity in my ears night and day: "Behold He cometh with clouds and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail on account of Him; even so, amen!'

Christ is near at hand for His prayer in the 17th chapter of St. John is evidently on the eve of being answered: "Father I will that they whom Thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory!*

—Rev. Homer W. Hodge.

Besides the principles of which we consist and the actions which flow from us, the consideration of the things without us and the natural course of variations in the creature will render the resurrection yet more highly probable. Every space of twenty-four hours teacheth thus much in which there is always a revolution amounting to a resurrection. The day dies into night and is buried in silence and darkness; on the next morning it appeareth again and reviveth, opening the grave of darkness, rising from the dead of night. This is a diurnal resurrection. As the day dies into the night, so does the summer into winter; the sap is said to descend into the root, and there it lies buried in the ground; the earth is covered with snow or crusted with frost, and becomes a general sepulcher. When the spring appeareth, all begin to rise; the plants and flowers peep out of their graves, revive, and grow and flourish. This is the annual resurrection. The corn by which we live and for want of which we perish with famine is, notwithstanding, cast upon the earth and buried in the ground with a design that it may be corrupted and, being corrupted, may revive and multiply; our bodies are fed by this constant experiment, and we continue this life by a constant succession of resurrections. Thus all things are repaired by corrupting, are preserved by perishing, and revived by dying; and can we think that man, the lord of all these things which thus die and revive for him, should be detained in death, never to live again? Is it imaginable that God should thus restore all things to man, and not restore man to himself? If there were no other consideration but the principles of human nature, of the liberty and remunerability of human actions and of the natural revolutions and resurrections of other creatures, it were abundantly sufficient to render the resurrection of our bodies highly probable. — Pearson on the Creed.

Chapter II The Diurnal And Annual Resurrection

Even the most illustrious [skeptic] has no better end than that of displaying his powers in confounding and darkening truth, and the happiest efforts of whose skepticism cannot be more leniently described than as brilliant feats of mental debauchery,

— Sir James Mackintosh.

The whole system of Jesus Christ is based on the immortality of the man. It is not the philosophical idea or guesses of the immortality of the soul, but the immortality of the man. The whole man, in his dual or triune nature, is to live forever. The spirit or higher department defies death; the body is to come out of the ruins and prison house of death and be raised to life. Man immortal; the whole man, soul, body, spirit, immortal — this is the keystone and keynote of the redemption by Christ. The deathless nature of the soul has been taught in the philosophies of earth, pagan and Christian, but the resurrection of the body is distinctively a Christian doctrine. It belongs to the revelation of God's Word. It is found in the Bible, and nowhere else. Nature may have echoes, analogies, figures ;, but nowhere is the doctrine fully asserted, fully assured, but in the Scriptures which contain the revealed will of God.

This doctrine of the resurrection of the body is not a mere inference from Bible statement. It is the statement itself, the key of its arch, the corner stone of its foundation. It is not a rich afterthought of the gospel, but coordinate "Jesus and the resurrection" are the gospel.

Faith can make no appeal to reason or the fitness of things; its appeal is to the Word of God, and whatever is therein revealed faith accepts as true. Faith accepts the Bible as the word and will of God and rests upon its truth without question and without other evidence.

Faith accepts the Word of God as indubitable evidence of any fact, and rejoices in the fact as true because God asserts it in his Word. Many of the facts revealed to us in the Bible receive the credence of our reason as fit and proper things. Others extend beyond the range of reason, and it has neither vision nor analogy to measure them.

The resurrection of the human body, its coming back into life from the ravages, decay, and oblivion of the grave, is one of these supernatural facts. It has been the anxious and tearful question of the ages: "Can the dead live? Is there strength anywhere to vanquish death? Is there any hope of victory over the grave?" Reason

DIURNAL AND ANNUAL RESURRECTION 19

has neither answer to the question nor hope for the questioner. Analogy starts some faint light, but this goes out amid the increasing night of the tomb.

There are but two questions to quicken and satisfy faith in the resurrection of the body. These questions are of promise and ability: Has God promised to raise the body from the dead? Is he able to perform his promise in this respect? The body is a distinct, a very important part of the man. It is the part seen, known, handled, described as the man, the organ, the outlet, through which the man comes into contact, sympathy, and action with the world around. A part, an all-important, indispensable part, of the man, the body belongs to the man, is an original, organic part of the man, evident and conspicuous — will this body rise from the dead where it has been laid amid tears and heart-breaking farewells? Its death is a fact distinct and clearly outlined. "Will it live again?" is the passionate question of love and longing.

The heathen world sighed out their upbraidings, emptiness, and despair. The flowers, said they, died by the chill of winter, but spring's warm breath brings them to life again. The day declines into darkness and night, but rises again into the full day; suns set, but come again fullorbed out of the eclipse of their setting; moons wane, but wax into fullness and brightness again ;

but their loved ones leave them, eclipsed and lost in the darkness of death, but no spring, no morn, no rising ever brings them again.

Christianity hushes these sighs, fills this emptiness, lifts this despair. She lights the darkness of the grave with the morning star of hope, and sheds the luster of the resurrection day upon the night of the tomb. Faith asks of unbelief, of doubt and despair: u Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead? Is anything too hard for God?" She declares: "All that sleep in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God and shall come forth."

Faith puts the brightness of an immortal hope amid our graveyard griefs; writes on every tombstone, "I am the resurrection and the life;" calls aloud to every mourner, "Thy dead shall live." Christianity is not agnosticism, but faith, assurance, knowledge; not negative, but positive. "I believe in the resurrection of the body," is a fundamental and enduring item of her creed.

Christianity is not rationalism, but faith in God's revelation. A conspicuous, all-important item in that revelation is the resurrection of the body.

Chapter III The Whole Man Immortal

Present and future are alike bound up in our belief of our Lord's resurrection and ascension; and dreary indeed must this present be, and gloomy and clouded that future, if our belief in our risen and ascended Lord be uncertain, partial, precarious. — Bishop Ellicott.

To the front, as the solid foundation for the resurrection of the body, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ His resurrection opens the doors of the grave and lets in light and creates hope. "Go tell his disciples that he is risen." This angel announcement carries assurance and brightness to all earth's realms of doubt and death.

"The resurrection of Christ is the cause of our resurrection," as Pearson on the Creed says, "by a double causality as an efficient and an exemplary cause— as an efficient cause in regard that our Saviour by and upon his resurrection hath obtained power and right to raise all the dead, Tor as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive ;' as an exemplary cause in regard that ail the saints of God shall rise after the similitude and in conformity to the resurrection of Christ, 'For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.' He shall change our vile bodies that they may be fashioned like unto his glorious body. As we have borne the image of the earthy, we may bear the image of the heavenly. This is the great hope of the Christian that Christ rising from the dead hath obtained the power and is become the pattern of his resurrection. " Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth her dead. The Scriptures link these two facts together, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and the resurrection of man's body from the grave. The dire results of his failing to rise, the gloom and wreck of an unrisen Christ is not too strongly put by an inspired writer: "Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ : whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised;

THE WHOLE MAN IMMORTAL 23

and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the first fruits; afterwards they that are Christ's at his coming."

Paul puts it strongly again: "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you. And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power. Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you."

The Scriptures bear ample and continuous evidence that the faith of the resurrection of the body lies in the faith that Jesus Christ died and rose again. If his flesh rotted in the sepulcher of Joseph, then our hope of coming out of the grave rots also; if his body went to the dust of Palestine, then our faith, fancied faith and vaunted hope, of the resurrection is as pulseless and dead as dust.

All the simple and invincible proofs of the resurrection of Jesus Christ are confirmations deep, true, eternal as Holy Writ that our bodies, at the call of Jesus Christ, shall roll off the reproach and break the iron chains of death.

The resurrection of Jesus is the great affirming and cementing fact. By it he was declared to be the Son of God with power; it is the fitting and necessary complement to his advent and crucifixion; it binds into a complete whole all the facts of his wondrous life and puts the seal of truth on them; the keystone of the sacred arch, the crown of the system, the miracle of all miracles. It saves his crucifixion from scorn. It puts divinity and glory on the cross. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was necessary to establish the truth of his mission and put the stamp of all-conquering power on his gospel. His death met the law, conciliated divine justice; his resurrection sent the proclamation of liberty through all the realms of the dead and led the conqueror Death in chains.

The most casual reader of the New Testament can scarcely fail to see the commanding position the resurrection of Christ holds in Christianity. It is the creator of its new and brighter hopes, of its richer and stronger faith, of its deeper and more exalted experience. It is the salient point

THE WHOLE MAN IMMORTAL 25

of New Testament preaching. "Jesus and the resurrection" summarized the subject of their sermonizing. Without this to them there was nothing but gloom and despair. If Christ, says the apostle, be not risen, then is our preaching vain, our faith vain, we are perjured as false witnesses for God, we are yet in our sins, our dead in Christ have perished hopelessly, and we are of all men most miserable. All these dire results are predicated of us if Christ be not risen. But the apostle arrests all these appalling consequences, and throws a flood of light and hope and life over the scene by this restatement and reassurance : "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.'' The resurrection of Christ reanimates our hopes of heaven and fixes them as sure as its foundations of adamant, and as precious and beautiful as its jeweled walls.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the birth of a new, glorious, immortal life on the realms of the midnight of death, the rising of the new sun on the terrors of darkness and night. It is the opening of a bright and noble highway to heaven where everything had been closed and sealed and every hope withered. Peter's rapturous acclaim is not the transport of impulse, but it is born of the most glorious and divine fact — a fact as solid and enduring as the granite of heaven, as enrapturing as the bliss and beauty of heaven.

The resurrection of Christ not only lifts darkness and dread from the tomb, but also spans the abyss which separates us from our loved dead, and puts into us the strength and hope of a glorious reunion in the very face of a separation ' the most painful, disastrous, and despairing.

The resurrection of Jesus both assures and patterns our resurrection; the two are conjoined. The nonresurrection of the body relegates Jesus back to his grave, and seals it as forever dead. Peter's triumphant shout plants the flower of immortality and life on every tombstone where faith had wrought its wondrous work.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that f adeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Wherein ye greatly rejoice. "

Hope throws its rich luster over the night of the tomb and thrills with deathless joy the heart where the resurrection of Jesus has been realized. We are to come out of the grave because Jesus came out of his grave. Our tombs will f be empty of our bodies because Joseph's new tomb on the

THE WHOLE MAN IMMORTAL 27

third morn was empty of his body. There is an inevitable, insuperable connection between the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of our bodies.

The resurrection of Christ is the assurance and type of ours — his body which died, the same and not another, was raised. These bodies we now bear, the same ones we shall put in the grave, will be raised and fashioned after his glorious body. His resurrection takes the tyranny and sting from death, destroys its fears and vanquishes its dominion, brings the angels down beside our grave, plants hope and immortality on the ruins of that grave. His resurrection conquers for us a way through the dark domain of death; by it corruption puts on incorruption, mortality puts on immortality. Death is swallowed up, the victor's song is on our dying lips, and death becomes our coronation day.

Chapter IV Christ The First Fruits Of The Resurrection

Never was there an age when it was more necessary to set forth events that not only imply but practically prove the resurrection of the body, and that not only suggest but confirm the teaching of the Church in reference to the future state which it is the obvious tendency of the speculations of our own times to explain away, to modify, or to deny. — Bishop Ellicott.

In the person of Jesus, his acts and teachings, death holds an essential, conspicuous place. It could not be otherwise. Death holds a commanding and ruinous reign over the race which Jesus Christ came to redeem. There could be no redemption of man without an invasion of the realms of death. No sunlight to humanity while the clouds and night of death hung heavy and dread, no spring bloom to man while the winter of death swept and froze with its polar blasts and killing frosts. The Emancipator must break the thrall which holds, throttles, and enslaves. Of his coming and of himself the longaway prophet had declared: "I will ransom them from the power of the grave : I will redeem

CHRIST THE FIRST FRUITS 29

them from death : O death, I will be thy plagues ; O grave, I will be thy destruction." An age frivolous, recklessly treading on the verge of agnosticism and suicide, may reck nothing of death, its mystery and fear; but a serious age will open its eye and seriously and prayerfully confront death, recognize and lament its reign and ruin, as the king of terrors, the woe and blight of earth. Jesus Christ came to confront death, to war on death, to dismantle its empire, to discrown its king until every one of Christ's imprisoned ones shall shout: "Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

Jesus holds in his own person the death of death. He boldly declares: "If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death." He said in the presence of a death whose ruthless ravages had desolated his friendliest home and filled with bitterest grief his most devoted hearts: "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live : and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." He attested the wealth and glory of his triumph over death: "I am the first and the last, and the living one; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades."

What does Jesus, the great Teacher sent by God to teach us the great things of God, say about the rising again of the body from death? In raising the dead does he not in action and in plain, unmistakable fact declare his ability to raise the dead and intimate the possibility and encourage the hope of the resurrection? u And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain; and many of his disciples went with him, and much people. Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother. And there came a fear on all : and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us ; and, That God hath visited his people. "

Is there not in this picture the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead? Is it not a prophecy and, even more, a pledge that death in all its forms shall be conquered? Shall he live and death reign? Does not this great miracle raise hope in him as the Lord of death? Can we not say, looking with wonderment on this display of the power of Jesus: "My flesh shall rest in hope?"

CHRIST THE FIRST FRUITS 31

On his way to Jairus's house to heal his daughter, and while pausing to cure the woman with the issue of blood: "While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue's house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead; why troublest thou the Master any further? As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he said unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe. And he suffered no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and John the brother of James. And he cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly. And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel was lying. And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi ; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, (I say unto thee,) arise. And straightway the damsel arose, and walked; for she was of the age of twelve years. And they were astonished with a great astonishment. And he charged them straitly that no man should know it; and commanded that something should be given her to eat."