HARBINGER OF HOPE
[Power to Raise the Dead]

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Acts 9:32-43

10-30-77

 

For the thousands of you who are listening on radio, watching on television, this is the pastor bringing the message entitled POWER TO RAISE THE DEAD.  In our preaching through the Book of Acts, we have come to the last part of the ninth chapter.  We begin reading at verse thirty-two, and we read to the end of the chapter.  If you have opportunity to get a Bible, could I encourage you to open it to the ninth chapter of the Book of Acts and follow as I read this holy passage.  Acts 9:32—

Now it came to pass, as Peter passed through all quarters, he came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda. 

And there he found a certain man named Aeneas, this man had kept his bed eight years and was sick of the palsy. 

And Peter said unto him, Aeneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole: arise, and make thy bed.  And he arose immediately. 

And all that dwelt at Lydda and Sharon saw him, and turned to the Lord. 

Now, there was a Joppa

—that is just a little west of Lydda on the seacoast.  When you go to Israel today, you land at Lydda.  And then the sea port is just over the way at Joppa.—

There was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha.  Which by interpretation is called Dorcas: . . .

—which in English is gazelle.  Tabitha is Aramaic.  Dorcas is Greek.  Gazelle would be our English word for her.—

. . . this woman was full of good works and alms and deeds which she did. 

And it came to pass in those days that she was sick and died: whom when they had washed, they laid her in an upper chamber. 

Then because Lydda was close to Joppa, the disciples having heard that Peter was there, they sent two men, desiring him that he would not delay to come. 

Then Peter arose and went with them.  And when he was come, they brought him in the upper chamber: and all of the widows stood by him weeping, and showing the coats and garments [which] Dorcas had made, when she was with them. 

And Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down and prayed; and he turned to the body and said, Tabitha, arise.  And she opened her eyes: and seeing Peter, she sat up. 

And he gave her his hand and lifted her up, and when he had called the saints and widows, presented her alive. 

And it was known throughout all Joppa; and many believed in the Lord. 

And Simon Peter tarried there in Joppa, several days” [Acts 9:36-43]. 

So we begin an exposition of the passage.  It starts off: It came to pass as Peter went through all of the area, he came also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda.  Now, I have not heard anything about that before, have you?  In reading the annals of the apostles, I never came across any saints at Lydda.  I did not know there were any saints there.  And yet it says here in the holy Word, as Peter went through all area he came to Lydda and there he met with the saints in Lydda.  Isn’t that a strange but marvelous thing?  There are saints in the most unexpected places.  [We] would not look for them.  Never heard of them.  Did not’ know they were there—saints in unexpected places. 

When I was a younger man, there was an airplane that fell on the tundra on the top side of Alaska, and the world was shocked by the news.  In that plane, Wiley Post, the most famous aviator, was killed, and Will Rogers his famous companion, was killed.  And the whole world was overwhelmed by the death of those two distinguished and gifted Americans.  But [do] you know who advertised it to the world?  A Presbyterian mission up there in Point Barrow, over there on the other side of the Arctic tundra of Alaska—saints in Lydda.  Never heard of them.  In the annuals of the Christian faith, [we] did not even know they were there.  And yet, when that plane came down burying to death Wiley Post and Will Rogers, the saints were already there--saints in unexpected places.  I was with a physician, a Christian doctor missionary, on the inside of the West Africa continent.  And we were driving in his little English car way back in the bush.  I have no idea where it was.  And there, through those mud huts and those villages way back in the interior of dark Africa, suddenly there appeared on the side of the road a little cottage with a little white picket fence around it and the front yard so beautifully trimmed and groomed.  And he stopped the car.  And outside through the door there came an English missionary, and he greeted us and invited us into his house for tea and crumpets—saints in Lydda.  Never dreamed in the world that they were there.  And they are all over the world just like that, in the most unexpected places. 

Now, it says here that as Peter passed through all of those quarters, he came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda.  Isn’t that a marvelous thing? This apostle Peter, when he comes into the town of Lydda, there we find him with the saints.  They are drawn together by some kind of heavenly magnetism.  Simon Peter, God’s chief apostle, and the saints at Lydda.  But did you know that all mankind is like that? We are all that way.  No matter where you go or into whatever city you enter, you will meet yourself.  You are already there.  If you are a drunkard and go into a strange city, you will find your fellow drunks.  They will meet you at the bar where you are.  And you will be drinking together your life away.  You will meet yourself wherever you go.  If you are a whoremonger and go into a strange city, you will find yourself.  You will be holed up with a prostitute in a hotel room or you will be in a bawdy house.  You will meet yourself.  If you are a gambler, when you go into a city, there you will find yourself and your fellow gamblers.  You will be at the table with dice or with cards or at the roulette wheel.  If you are a member of the underworld and you go into a strange city, there you will meet yourself.  Out of the sewer they will come to welcome you, and on the dark seamy sides of the city, there you will be plotting some of the dark travesties on human nature.  Wherever you are, there you will see yourself any where in the world.  And how precious and beautiful if you are a Christian.  And if you love God.  Wherever in the world you go, there you will meet yourself.  There will be fellow Christians with arms out stretched to welcome you. 

One of the most unusual things I ever experienced was many years ago, coming for the first time into Istanbul.  And it was in the days when they pulled up ramps to the plane.  And there at the bottom of the ramp holding an umbrella above his head because it was raining, there was a tall, young Greek in Istanbul.  And to every body who stepped off that plane, he asked them: Are you the two missionaries from America?  And as he kept asking every body at the foot of that ramp, I turned to my companion Dr. Duke McCall, and I said, “I wonder if he knows about us?”  So when we finally got to the bottom of the ramp, with that umbrella over his head, he asked us, “Are you the two missionaries from America?”  

And I replied to him.  I said, “Young fellow, we are not missionaries, but we are Christians and we are from America.” 

And he said: It must be you they want to welcome. 

And with that young fellow, that night we crossed the Hellespont and for the first time, I put my foot down on the continent of Asia.  And guess where we went?  To a home for a prayer meeting, a devotional, a testimony and the praising of the blessed Jesus together.  I can illustrate that all over this world.  The first time I was in Calcutta, that night in that vast illimitable, poverty-stricken and heathen city, that night, that first night, I was in a home on my knees before God’s open Book, praising to Jesus, praising his blessed name.  You see, you will find yourself wherever you go.  And thus it was with Simon Peter, he is in Lydda., and he has found himself with the saints. 

Do you notice also that he is an answer to a great human need? There in Lydda there is a man who is sick and he needs Jesus—the hand of the great physician.  And when he comes to Joppa, there is a godly woman by the name of Dorcas who has sickened and died—human need.  This woman Dorcas must have been a very affluent woman.  She gave what she had to the Lord.  And she was filled with good works.  And not only did she take what she had and give to the Lord, but she also worked with her needle and sewing.  She made coats and garments and gave to the poor.  Now, you would think a woman like that would live for ever, wouldn’t you? But the Book says that she sickened and died.  Now, that is one of the most inexplicable things that I see in human life.  Every time a good woman dies, like Dorcas, there are a thousand prostitutes walking up and down the streets.  Every time a good man dies, there are a thousand worthless bums begging on every corner.  Why is that? That is one of the strangest things in the world.  These sorry, good-for-nothing flotsam and jetsam of humanity that are an reproach to the name of God, filled with cursing and violence and rejection and evil and darkness and sin, they seem to have some kind of an earthly immortality.  I do no understand it.  The heaviest frost does not freeze them and the overflowingest rivers do not drown them.  They just continue to live. 

Take a fella like this butcher of Uganda named Idi Amin.  If ever there was a reproach to the human race, that wretch is one.  Uganda was our brightest mission field.  One of our men, Jimmy Hooten and his family worked in Uganda.  When I was there preaching in that nation, I meet a young black pastor who, from the September of the previous year to that spring of the year that I was there, in about nine months or less, he had baptized more than one thousand converts into his Baptist church.  It was a jewel—Uganda.  And now, it has reigning over it a pig, a dog, a wretch.  And they have tried to assassinate him time and again.  And how many good men, able, have been assassinated, but they do not kill him?  Like [Fidel] Castro, how many attempts have been made on his life?  But he still swaggers all over the Spanish world pouring out his revolutionary despicable communist faith and religion.  I do not understand those things.  I do not see them.  But there they are.  And at the same time, these people of God, the Lord’s saints, they sicken and die.  That is true in your life.  How many people have you known in your life have been taken away and all of the world seems sad and dreary?  Some times the house is no longer a home because she is gone, or he is gone, or the child is gone.  And sometimes, in despair we only wait for the grave.  These that we have loved and lost.  How sad and dreary, the world sometimes is.  But my brother, God is not done yet.  The Book is not closed yet.  The last chapter is not written yet.  God purposes some better thing for us.  And that is why you have these marvelous narratives written on the page of the sacred Book.  You see, these are adumbrations.  These are harbingers.  These are earnests and promises of what God is yet to do in the ultimate and final triumph of the Christian faith. 

One of the most remarkable things that I find in the Word of God is this, that whatever God intends to do at the consummation, He does it in miniature, on a smaller scale before our very eyes.  There are no surprises at the consummation of the age.  God has laid it all out before us.  The Lord has done it before, and when He comes to the end of the age and He does it, it is just something that He has already told us about—already done.  Every great event at the denouement of time, God has already done.  He has already demonstrated it.  He has already laid it before us.  We have already seen it.  For example, at the end of the age there is the great judgment day.  But God has already seen to it that we understand what He means by that awesome and final visitation and interdiction from heaven.  It was a judgment day when God destroyed this world by flood, and the antediluvians perished in the breaking up of the deep and the rising of the waters.  It was a judgment of God upon Sodom and Gomorrah, when the cities of the plain were destroyed by fire and brimstone.  It was a judgment of God upon Jerusalem when in 70 A. D., when Titus and his Roman legions [destroyed] the city and scattered the nation to the ends of the earth.  God speaks of a great judgment, and these judgments that we read about in the Bible are but harbingers and adumbrations of what God is going to do.  We read at the end time of the tribulation.  We know what tribulation is.  We have already seen it.  In the days of the judges, when they departed from God, they were sold to their enemies and they went through agony—tribulation.  In the days of the four hundred thirty years that Israel was in Egypt, they groaned under the task masters—the tribulation, the fiery furnace.  In the days of the Babylonian captivity when they hanged their harps upon the willow trees and wept because they were asked to sing by the rivers of Babylon—that is a tribulation.  God has sent to us adumbrations and earnest and harbingers of what it is to come. 

All of the things that God is going to do at the consummation He has already demonstrated to us.  The translation—the rapture.  In the days of Enoch he walked with God and suddenly he was taken away.  In the days of Elijah, a whirlwind carried him up to heaven in a chariot of fire—the rapture, the translation.  Whatever God is going to do, He has already done that we might know and see.  The resurrection; the resurrection—these recessations that we read in the Bible are harbingers, they are announcements beforehand of the power of God to raise us from among the dead.  In the days of Elijah, he raised, he brought back to life the son of the widow of Zerephath.  In the days of Elisha, he brought back to life, he raised from the dead, the son of the Shunamite woman.  In the days of Jesus, he spoke to Lazarus, and he was raised from the dead.  These are earnests and announcements.  They are promises.  They are harbingers.  They are adumbrations of what God is going to do at the end of the age. 

The glorious return of our Lord—what adumbration could that be?  Is there any thing in the Word of God that beforehand would present when the clouds bear down the glorious coming of the Lord, the Shekinah and the glory of God, when the heavens are rolled back like a scroll, and Jesus personally appears?  Did He do something like that in adumbration that we would know what it would be like when finally he comes?  Oh, yes He did.  The sixteenth chapter of Matthew closes, “The Lord says, Verily—truly, amen—I say unto you, There be some standing here, who shall not taste of death, until they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” [Matthew 16:28].  And then, immediately follows the incomparable story of the transfiguration of our Lord upon the mount.  Now, you look, Simon Peter writes of that glorious experience in the first chapter of his Second Letter.  And he says, “We made known unto you the . . . parousia.  What is the parousia? The parousia is the personal coming of our Lord in glory and power.  “We made known unto you the [power and]  parousia of our Lord Jesus” [2 Peter 1:16].  And then he describes it, “we were eyewitnesses of his majesty; . . . and we heard that voice from glory that said, This is my beloved Son, [in whom I am well pleased], hear him” [2 Peter 1:17].  He is describing a transfiguration [Matthew 171-5].  What they saw and what they experienced on the Mount of Transfiguration was an adumbration.  It is a harbinger of the glorious day of the Lord, when Christ comes down “and His face shines like the brightness of the sun, and his garments are white as no fuller could make them, white as snow” [Matthew 17:2].  And the Lord Jesus, deity shining through, appears personally, visibly, bodily.  Whatever God is going to do, He has given us a preview before the day it comes to pass. 

So it is also in the day of the recreation of the heavens and the earth.  The apostle John writes in Revelation 21:1: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the old first heaven and the old first earth were passed away” [Revelation 21:1].  God has given an adumbration and a harbinger of that.  The Bible begins like that, as it ends.  The most marvelous thing in the world, from the beginning, God is setting before our eyes what He is going to do at the ending.  The first verse of Genesis begins, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” {Genesis 1:1].  And if God made it, it was perfect.  It would be unthinkable and inconceivable that God would make anything imperfect, chaotic, dark, for God is light.  He made the creation beautiful and perfect: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  And then, the second verse: “And the earth was void, and dark, and chaotic” {Genesis 1:2].  The whole thing is destroyed.  Why?  Because of sin.  Satan, Lucifer introduces sin into God’s world, and wherever sin is, sin hurts and sin destroys.  Sin tears apart and God’s whole perfect universe fell into chaos and into darkness.  Then follows in the first chapter of Genesis, the recreation.  God makes it anew.  And the first day and the second day and the third day and the fourth day—you have it so cleared out, so remade, that you have the phenomenon of sunset and sunrise.  God remade it.  That is exactly what God is going to do at the end.  He is going to rejuvenate.  He is going to remake this world.  I do not think destroy it and create another one.  When it says, “Behold, I make all things new” [Revelation 21:5].  That word “new” is exactly as you use it in II Corinthians 5:17: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.”  God is going to take this world and make it new.  And God is going to take this old burned-out universe, with its stars turned to cinders, and so much of it where life could not exist, God is going to remake it all, rejuvenate it all, regenerate it all.  And the harbinger of it is what God did in the beginning, that we may know what He is going to do at the ending. 

Thus it is with this story that I have just read in the ninth chapter of the Book of Acts.  There is going to be a resurrection and there is going to be a healing at the great consummation of the Lord.  You see, the Lord Jesus said in John 5:25: “Truly, truly, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.”  There are two ways the Lord means this.  One, he is speaking to us who are dead spiritually.  We are dead in trespasses and in sins, and this body which ought to be a holy temple of God, is now nothing but a sepulcher with dead man’s bones.  This whole world is a vast cemetery of dead people.  But those who listen to the voice of God are spiritually raised.  They are brought to life.  They are regenerated and recreated.  They are Christians.  They are saved.  They that hear the voice of the son of God shall be raised.  And then, it also applies to our physical death.  This world is also a vast cemetery in which we bury our dead.  And the day is coming, says the Lord Jesus, when they shall hear the voice of the Son of God and hearing, shall live, shall be raised from among the dead.  Oh, triumph.  Oh, glory.  Oh, victory.  We have an adumbration of that.  He stopped the procession out of the little city of Nain, and that poor widow weeping for her own son.  He stopped it.  And putting his hand on the bier said, “Young man, I say unto thee, Arise” [Luke 7:14].  And he arose.  And the Lord gave him back to his weeping mother.  He did the same thing in the passage that you read.  Stop your weeping.  And he spoke to the twelve-year-old daughter of Jairus and she came to life at the voice of the Son of God.  And He gave her back to her weeping father and mother [Luke 8:-41-56.  He did the same with Martha and Mary, weeping over Lazarus.  Stood there and spoke and said, “Lazarus, come forth” [John 11:43].  I think one of the funniest things I ever heard in my life and one of the most apropos, was in the life of the infidel Bob Ingersoll, who was making fun of Jesus.  And scoffing at His miracles and among the crude, contemptuous things he said was, “Why did he say, Lazarus come forth?”  And a saint out there listening to that infidel rave, said, “I wil tell you why the Lord said. Lazarus, come forth.  Had the Lord not said Lazarus, come forth, the whole cemetery would have stood up and walked out to meet the Lord.  The dead shall hear the voice of the son of God.  And they that hear shall live. 

Back in the days of the old South, there was a black slave who loved his master.  And the master died and was buried in the garden on the plantation.  I wish I could say this.  I cannot frame the words to intone it, but you will catch it.  The old colored saint, father of a numerous family, living in north Georgia in 1833, when the notable meteoric display known as the falling stars occurred, being wakened by the noise and the confusion outside, he looked out from the window of his humble home and seeing as he supposed the stars falling like snowflakes from heaven, he thought the end had come.  And quickly, he roused his wife and children saying, “De day of the de Lord am at hand.”  Hurrying them into the street where the scene was indescribable, the old black man turned to his companion, his wife and said, “Ole woman, the de Lord ever comin, and just you take the children along up to the public square and stay tills I come.  I going to go down in the garden and see ole master get up.  And just as soon as he do, him and me wil come along up through the square and well all go up to meet the Lord together.  An old man who could no read and he could no write, but he was stung by the Holy Spirit of God—“going to be there at the grave to see old master get up.  And when he does, we will be by and we will all meet the Lord together.”  This that I read in Acts is a harbinger.  It is an adumbration of what God is going to do at the end of the age. 

I haven’t time to speak of Aeneas, who is healed.  What does the Book say?  And there shall be no more death.  Neither sorrow nor crying.  Neither shall there be any more pain.  We won’t be sick any more.  We won’t hurt any more.  For these things are all passed away.  And the twenty-second chapter is just like it.  And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the people.  Did you ever see blind eyes?  No blind eyes in heaven.  Did you ever see crippled limbs?  No crippled limbs in heaven.  Ever see someone bent with age?  No age in heaven.  These things are all passed away.  What God hath prepared for those who love him. 

And that is our invitation to you—to join with us in our pilgrimage to the holy city God is preparing for his saints—those in Lydda; those in Joppa, those in Africa; those in Calcutta; and those who are here in Dallas.  Would you join us? Sweetest pilgrimage you will ever know.  Walking with the saints of God.  Going down the glory road that ends in the beautiful and heavenly city.