Job 14:14 If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. If a man die, shall he live again? The true answer to this solemn question is the only sufficient response to the sad wail of the previous verses. "There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again,... but man dieth, and wasteth away." The answer cometh from afar. It is difficult to determine the measure of light that Job had on the question of the future life. Read in the light of our New Testament teaching, some of his phrases are full of hope; but we may have put the hope there. Generally it is the language of inquiry, and often of inquiry unsatisfied. Sometimes faith bursts through all doubt and gloom, and the confidence of a strong and assured hope takes the place of tremulous fear. Still the question rings in every breast; still the longing for a fuller life in which the ideals of the present may be reached prevails; still men go to the side of the dark river and look into the gloom, and hoping and half fearing ask, "If a man die, shall he live again?" The only satisfactory answer to this comes to us from the lips of the Redeemer, and that is wholly and entirely satisfactory. We mark - I. THE EAGER, UNSATISFIED CRY OF MEN APART FROM DIVINE REVELATION. II. THE PARTIAL UNFOLDING OF THE TRUTH IN THE EARLIER REVELATIONS. III. THE PERFECT AND UNEQUIVOCAL REVELATION MADE BY JESUS CHRIST Of this last we may notice. 1. Christ's teachings all proceed on the assumption that there is a future life. 2. His teachings are constantly supported by an appeal to the future conditions of reward and punishment. 3. Very much of his teaching would be unmeaning and inexplicable in the absence of such future. 4. But he crowns all his teaching by himself becoming the Disputant, and affirming and demonstrating the future life. "But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed in the place concerning the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, anti the God of Jacob. Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him." 5. He crowns all by the raising of the dead to life, and by the example of his own triumph over death. But Job had not this consolation, and he still abides in gloom, as must all who have not the perfect revelation of God. - R.G. Parallel Verses KJV: If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. |
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