THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Acts 26:8

4-15-79     10:50 a.m.

 

This is the pastor bringing the message entitled The Resurrection from the Dead.  In our preaching through the Book of Acts, we are in chapter 26.  On a high raised desk is King Herod Agrippa II with his sister, the children of Herod Agrippa I—who was the grandson of Herod Agrippa the Great—and they are guests of the Roman procurator Festus.  And Agrippa has asked that he might listen to this prisoner named Paul, who is on trial for his life. 

And as Paul stands on the pavement below, and he addresses those distinguished jurists and kings and procurators who are seated there on the raised dais.  And as he makes a defense for his life, and as he pleads the faith that once he destroyed and now proclaims to the world, he turns to Agrippa and asks a question that is our text for the day.  “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?” [Acts 26:8]; preaching the resurrection of our Lord, which is the heart of the gospel; then asking Agrippa, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you?”  Agrippa, a Jew, one who believes in Jehovah God; believing in God, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible to you that in the omnipotent power of the Almighty God, He should raise the dead?” 

Out of all of the doctrines of the Christian faith, there is none that was more viciously, and violently, and vigorously assailed by heathen philosophers than the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.  They spurned and ridiculed it.  For example, in the seventeenth chapter of this Book of Acts, Paul is in the ancient university city of Athens.  And speaking in the agora, down in the marketplace, listening to him the Athenians said, “He seems to be a setter forth of strange gods: because,” Luke explains, “Paul was preaching Jesus and the resurrection” [Acts 17:18]. 

In Greek; Iesous and anastasis.—Iesous is masculine, and anastasis is feminine.  And all their lives, they had been introduced to pairs of gods.  They came in pairs: a male and a female.  There would be Isis and Osiris; there would be Jupiter and Juno; there would be Venus and Adonis—always a male and a female God.  So listening to Paul speaking of Iesous and anastasis, they said, “We never heard of that pair of gods.”  So they brought him up to the Areopagus, to the Supreme Court of the Athenians, and asked that he speak to them concerning these unknown gods.  And they listened intently and well, until Paul came to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  And when he spoke of the resurrection of the dead, the Epicurean and the Stoic philosophers laughed out loud.  And scoffing and in ridicule, they bowed themselves out [Acts 17:32]. 

In this twenty-sixth chapter of the Book of Acts, as Paul stands in the court of the Praetorium in Caesarea, and speaking to Agrippa, and to Festus, and to the elite of the Roman province of Judea as he spoke concerning Christ—that He should be the first that should rise from the dead.  When he said that, Festus, the Roman procurator, cried with a loud voice, “Paul, thou art beside thyself!” [Acts 26:24].  “You have lost your mind!  You are mad; unbalanced, speaking of a resurrection from the dead!”  One of the contemporaries of Paul living at this very time was Pliny—Pliny the elder—living south of Rome; one of the most distinguished of all Roman orators, and writers, and scholars.  Pliny said, and I quote him, “Even the gods themselves could not raise the dead.” 

It is to be admitted that all appearances are on their side. It is easy to defend that every thing dies and that the grave holds its victims for ever.  Every thing does die; all of the creation is a dying creation.  Little things, big things, a microbe, a man, trees and flowers and fruits, and all living dies; the day dies; the seasons die; the year dies.  The very stars in the firmament die—they fade and flicker and finally turn into cinders.  Our sun is dying.  All creation dies and of course that includes the man the Lord God made.  We belong to a dying people and we ourselves are dying. 

The fifth chapter of the Book of Genesis, those long genealogical tables, every one that is written there, his life is closed with, “…and he died.”  Adam lived so long, begot sons, and he died; and Methuselah, and he died.  Hebrews 11:13: “These all died,” a phrase that refers to uncounted billions and billions of mankind; we die.  There is hardly any one of us but that knows the way to the cemetery.  And there is no family that does not have a remembrance of some body loved and lost for a while.  Death is universal and final.  These wonderful medical scientists have found ways to prolong our lives.  But they haven’t found a way to keep death at bay.  We have bomb-proof shelters and bullet-proof vests, but we do not have any death-proof homes.  And it seems that the grave holds its prey for ever.  As Shakespeare said, “No one returns from the bourn of that undiscovered country.” 

I listened to a professor many years ago who was teaching in Shanghai University in China and standing before his class of brilliant young Chinese university students, he asked them why they could not accept the Christian faith.  And he said, “I would like for you to come up here and write it on the blackboard and we will discuss thesis by thesis what you say.”  And the first young man immediately stood up, walked to the blackboard and wrote in big Chinese characters, “The dead do not rise.”  That is the position of the heathen philosopher, the rationalist, the infidel,”The dead do not rise.” 

But when Paul addressed this question to Agrippa, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?  As a Jew, King Agrippa, you believe in God, why should it be thought a thing beyond His omnipotence to speak to the dust of the ground and to raise from the grave these who have fallen prey to that awesome enemy—that is, if you believe in God?”  If you do not believe in God, there is nothing else to say.  No other word to be added.  If you don’t believe in God, there is no hope, there is no star, there is no meaning, there is no purpose, there is no tomorrow; death is final and dark and ominous and the end of all. 

One of the girls in our church brought to me a young man with whom she had fallen in love and he was an infidel, and it bothered her.  You have a scriptural injunction, you are not to marry an unbeliever; you are not to be yoked with an unbeliever.  It bothered her, so she brought the young man for me to speak with.  So I spent a long time talking to the young fellow, and I said, “You are an infidel?  You are an atheist and you don’t believe in God?”  Well, I said, “Would you tell me what you think is the destiny of your home, and your marriage, and your life, and if God gives you children, of your children?  And your own father and mother, what is the destiny, what the future?”  And he replied, “There is no future, there is no destiny, there is no meaning, there is no purpose—just death.”  I said to the young fellow, “You want to build your life, and you want to marry, and you want to have a home, and you want to raise your children on the basis that home, life, marriage, soul has no meaning, and no destiny, and no purpose—no God?”  It startled him; it would any body, except clowns. 

“King Agrippa, why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?” 

There are two omnipotent, almighty miracles in this universe; and I see them with my own eyes, and I sense them and feel them with my own soul.  Mighty miracle number one; the creation of the universe around me; the infinitude above me; the macrocosm arching like a chalice over my head, and the microcosm beneath me—the whole world around me.  God created it by fiat.  He spoke the world into existence.  And by His word—every thing made that was made—the miracle of the almightiness of God!

The second miracle is no less wonderful and marvelous; namely, the miracle of regeneration, recreation, rebirth.  It is as marvelous as the first miracle and I see it walk down the street.  Look at this verdant earth; and this time of the year, the whole world bursts into the glory of God!  Trees that looked dead are foliated and emerald; seeds that are dead burst in germination into life; bushes that were dead are aflame with flowers! Grass that looks dead is verdant and green.  The whole earth is alive with the charming, precious, beautiful, quiet, glorious presence of the omnipotent God.  How would you explain this universe and leave God out of it?  How would you explain the flower that bursts out of the dust, and mud, and dirt of the ground other than the almightiness of God? 

And thus it is with our bodies, it is the ableness of God to raise us from the dead.  “Agrippa, why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?”  That is why I had you read the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke.  And they thought He was a spirit; He was a ghost; He was a phantom; for they had seen Him die; for three days buried, and now He stands in their presence. 

And when they cried out in terror, He said, “Be not afraid.  Shalom; shalom.”  He said, “Handle Me and see that it is I; for a spirit hath not flesh and bone as ye see Me have.”  And he showed them the nail prints and the scars in His hands and in His feet.  And then they could not believe for gladness and joy—too good to be true.  He said: “Have you anything to eat?” [John 21:5].  “And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish and of an honey comb, and He did eat before them.” 

The same Lord Jesus, immortalized, glorified; raised from the dead.  And the great apostle says that because He lives, we also shall live; because He was raised He broke for ever the power of the grave and of death, and we shall be raised also.  This body planted in corruption, raised in incorruption; this body planted in dishonor, raised in glory; this body planted in weakness, raised in power; this body planted in—a natural body made of the dust of the ground—raised a spiritual body, immortalized, glorified, like the body of our Lord.  And of course against such a doctrine infidelity, and atheism, and false philosophy, and pseudo-science inveighs day and night. 

The ancient Roman took the Christian, burned him at the stake; and in derision of his doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, he took the ashes of the Christian and scattered them to the four winds of the earth.  And then scoffed—ridiculed the doctrine of the resurrection of the body—burned, reduced to ashes and scattered to the winds.  Strange; believe in a God of the universe maybe, a great God of the infinitude, but He is not the God of the microscopic, and the little, and the tiny, and the minuscule.  That’s where they do not understand; for the great God of the universe—of the infinitude above us—is also the great God of the molecules and the atoms that make up my physical frame.  And He is infinitely careful for both; whether the infinitude above me or the infinitesimal below me—that’s God. 

Did you ever touch a moth?  There will be little dust come off of the wings of the little creature.  Those are little tiny colored scales.  And a scientist one time said to me, “I want you to look under this powerful microscope.”  And I looked under that powerful microscope.  And he said, “You see that wing of a moth.  There are forty-two million little tiny brilliantly tinted scales to the square inch, forty-two million!”  And then he took a little something colored red, red, red; solid red paint—it was painted red.  And he put that under the microscope and he said, “Look at that.”   With my naked eye it looked red, red, red; solid red.  I looked at it under that powerful microscope and it looked like blobs—a blob there, blob there, blob there, blob, blob; it just looked like stuff.  Now he said, “Look again.”  And he put underneath that powerful microscope the wing of a butterfly, and all of the color was beautifully even, beautifully arranged, symmetrically made. 

And as he was just doing that, I can see the difference between what a man could do in making paint and what happens when you look at a butterfly.  Well you know what?  It just moved my heart and still does when I think of it.  How God, how God arranges for the most momentary and temporary of his creatures—a moth, a butterfly, a creature of a day and of a night—and yet look at the infinitude of God’s Almighty hand as He makes those little tiny infinitesimal tinted scales and colors and rainbow arrangements.  Oh, the almightiness of God!

Shall I therefore stumble, as though it is too big a burden for God or too much trouble for God, that He mark the molecules and the atoms of my body?  Wherever I may fall, God marks the dust of the ground; and in His omnipotence and in His almightiness, some day the trumpet shall sound and this dust shall be raised incorruptible and we, we shall all be changed.  That’s God! 

Agrippa, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?”  May I close?