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"I am the resurrection and the life..." (Jn. 11:25). "I was dead, and behold, I
am alive for evermore..." (Rev. 1:18 ASV).
It has been said that we live this life between two curtains. Behind us is one curtain — the Past. It shuts out all possibility of first-hand knowledge of things before we came upon this scene of action. Before us is another curtain — the veil of the Future. It cuts off all possibility of actually knowing what is to come. In the "Russia that used to be" it is said that the children of the Czar, going from the palace where they were immured with their mother and aunts, to the great cathedral in Moscow, walked between curtains held on either side by serfs, that the people might not see them and that they might not see the people. Again, someone has said it is like that with all of us. On this earth, during our few short days we walk with a curtain on either side, one hiding the past, the other hiding the future. We cannot see backward or ahead. We know only that we must die — go on. In the far-off days of Job, one of the oldest, most serious questions of the world was asked. "If a man die, shall he live again?" (Job 14:14). In the nearer days of Jesus Christ that question was answered by an actual demonstration. The disciples of the Teacher who said, "I am the resurrection, and the life," followed Him to the cross, and then afterwards lifted the lifeless body from the suspending nails and buried it in a rock-hewn tomb. Three days later these disciples found the tomb tenanted by nothing but the graveclothes in which they had wrapped a dead body. But in another place that day they saw Him whom they had buried — alive again. For 40 days they saw Him repeatedly, manifest in the body that had been pierced by the Roman spear and buried in Joseph's tomb. Saw Him! Heard Him! Handled Him! These men, whose testimony we have summarized, were not speculative philosophers. They were rather witnesses telling what they had seen and heard. And their testimony answers the question of whether it is possible to have life after death, for, as we know, their witness is that, though they saw Jesus die, they also saw Him alive again after burial in a sealed tomb. Their claim is, We know Jesus died and lived again, because He "shewed himself alive" to us "after his passion by many infallible proofs..." (Acts 1:3). They heard Him say, "I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore." Now, this evidence of competent witnesses that the resurrection of Jesus was an actual fact confirms what the masses of mankind have always believed, and still believe — that there is life beyond this life. Though human hearts in all ages and in all countries have struggled with the question of whether there is life beyond death, the majority of men are ready to believe God's affirmative answer in the gospel of His Son — the grave is not the end. In our day there seems to be an increasing number of men who are glad to deny the hope of immortality. Some of these are ostentatious and sensational in parading their doubts. Among these was the noted criminal lawyer, Clarence Darrow who was taken with beguiling himself with the great questions that stir the human mind. When he was three years past "the allotted span," — three score and ten years — and the long morrow which was soon to come, he believed it would be one lost in complete forgetfulness. Darrow said, "The evidence against the persistence of personal consciousness is as strong as the evidence of gravitation, and much more obvious. It is as convincing and unassailable as the proof of the destruction of wood or coal by fire." He, of course, never knew anyone to go on the long journey and return with the desired information. The beginning of life, he said, yields no evidence of the beginning of a soul, and fading memory of past events in personal experience convinced him that consciousness, too, is dulled with the weight of time and will slip away with death. Darrow said, "The thing we call 'life' is nothing more than a state of equilibrium which endures for a short span of years between two opposing tendencies of nature — the one that builds up and the one that tears down. In old age, the tearing-down process has already gained the ascendancy, and when death intervenes, the equilibrium is finally upset by the complete stoppage of the building-up process, so that nothing remains but complete disintegration. The energy thus released may be converted into grass or trees or animal life, or it may lie dormant until caught up again in the crucible of nature's laboratory. But whatever happens, the man — you and I — like the lump of coal that has been burned, is gone — irrevocably dispersed. All the King's horses and all the King's men cannot restore it to its former unity." And that was Darrow's authority on immortality. But remember, there is nothing in science or philosophy inconsistent with a belief in immortality, and there is no possibility of proving that immortality does not exist, for no one is justified in making that statement until he has explored the entire universe and the spirit world and found that they contain no immortal souls. It has been shown that our sense organs are not sufficiently acute to discern all qualities of matter (radio waves, for instance). Why then should they be expected to discern a spirit? And the soul's capacity for "endless improvement, service, and worship," argues Clarence T. Wilson, "points to a future which will make possible further developments than we achieve here." For, "If immortality be but an iridescent dream, the most illustrious lives that earth has known may well be represented by broken pillars and unfinished shafts." Justice also demands the existence of life beyond the brief span of an earthly walk "between the curtains of time." Life here is all too brief to exemplify the full scope of divine justice. But the partial view of justice which we now see does not in any sense forbid the hope that, in the continuum of life, a man like Paul may reap the full reward he so richly deserves. Nor does it appear unreasonable to expect that monsters like Nero may somehow, sometime, be made to answer to that Justice which in this life they managed to evade. It has been said that, "Death is another life." In just this form these words are perhaps more suggestive than literal. It is more accurate to say of death that it is "the threshold of another life." "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment..." (Heb. 9:27). "...it doth not yet appear what we shall be,: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." (1 Jn. 3:2). Another life! A life — not known now as to all its scope and meaning — but life! It is a precious, appealing, world-wide hope. And even the most pessimistic doubter must admit that it is no more difficult to think of an awakening from death to another life than it is to think of life ending forever in death. Indeed, one of the hardest things to think of is why the life of a loved one should vanish into eternal nothingness. The brother of Robert Ingersoll illustrated that difficulty as he stood beside his brother's grave: "From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word. But in the night of death, Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing." To be sure! And let us rejoice that it is so. |