Acts 26:8 Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead? The resurrection is credible because — I. POSSIBLE. It is exhibited in the Bible, not as a speculative truth which must be believed because taught, but as so intimately bound up with our salvation that to prove it false were to prove the human race unredeemed. "If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." The question is, whether there lie such objections against its possibility as justify us in rejecting the testimony of Scripture. But, then, nothing short of distinct impossibility would bear us out in such rejection. It is not its stupendousness, nor that it countlessly outmatches all finite ability, which will warrant our questioning it. The alone point is, Can we demonstrate that the effecting of it would surpass the Omnipotent? If the Bible had ascribed it to a finite agent the disproportion between the thing done and the doer would furnish ground enough for rejecting it. But will anyone say that it exceeds the capabilities of Him who is to achieve it? We cannot see why the work should be reckoned too great for God, unless we are prepared to say the same of the other works confessedly His. I look out on the wonder workings of creative wisdom and might, and I gather from the magnificent spectacle witness in abundance that a resurrection is possible. It is possible that that august Being, who cannot be perplexed by the multiplicity of concerns, may, yea, and must, take cognisance of each atom of dust, as well as of every planet and of every star; and why should He be unable to distinguish what hath belonged to man, and to appropriate to each individual his own? II. IT RESTS ON SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE. Christ rose, why should not we? It is impossible that the apostles wilfully propagated a lie. Who would undertake the advocacy of falsehood, if, instead of being a gainer, he was certain to be a loser? We have only then to decide whether their belief rested on sufficient proof. The length of their previous acquaintance, and the ample opportunity of after identification, concurred to secure them against taking a person for Christ who was not Christ. If, then, they were neither deceivers nor deceived, we prove, with a kind of mathematical precision, that they must have been both rightly intentioned and informed. And when you add to this, that the number of these witnesses is greater than is required for the establishment of a matter in a court of assize, we think that the vindication of the credibility of their testimony is to be set aside by nothing short of an obstinacy which will not, or an infatuation which cannot, be convinced. III. IN THE DETAILS WHICH ARE GIVEN AS TO THE BODY IN WHICH THE DEAD SHALL APPEAR. The grand characteristic of the resurrection body is to be likeness to the glorified body of Christ, seeing that St. Paul declares of the Saviour that He shall "change our vile body," etc., and there is every reason for concluding that Christ, when transfigured, appeared in that glorified humanity in which He now sits at the Father's right hand. And if so, we learn that our bodies, though made wondrously radiant, shall be distinguished as now, the one from the other, by their characteristic features. We, then, shall be changed, but not so changed as to interfere with recognition. And if we would examine more minutely into the change which shall pass upon our bodies, enough is told us by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, to satisfy all but a presumptuous curiosity. "It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption," etc. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?WEB: Why is it judged incredible with you, if God does raise the dead? |
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