The Sadducee, denying there is spirit, consistently affirms the bodies of men will not rise from their graves. But there are others who affirm it also. Some tell us that the resurrection consists in the departed spirit forming a new body for itself. Others say a new body will be created, and accordingly hold that the resurrection is the creation of a new body.

It will be well to raise the inquiry, Does the word of God teach that the body will rise again ? To answer the question it will only be needful to examine those scriptures which refer to the resurrection.

In Acts 24:15 Paul, in his address before Felix, very simply declares, "There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." Did he mean that the resurrection would be a resurrection of the body? In Matt. 22:31 our Lord also speaks of "the resurrection of the dead." Did He mean the resurrection of the body ? Numerous other allusions to the resurrection are found in the Gospels and elsewhere. Is it intended that everywhere, where the resurrection is spoken of, we are to understand that it is of the body ?

Now the answer to this question is plain and unequivocal. We only need to weigh thoughtfully the various statements of Scripture to see that in its references to the resurrection it always means the resurrection of the body. Take, for instance, Matt. 27:50-53, where we read of the wonderful effects of the death and resurrection of Christ. It is said, '' And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection." Now we are not told who these saints were, nor in what age of the world they lived. It is going beyond Scripture to say that the bodies of these particular saints must have been but recently buried; that they could not have been long buried, and so have been entirely decomposed and gone to dust. This was probably true of some of them at least; but where Scripture does not speak we will not presume to do so. But there is one thing we may confidently say. If there were among this company of saints who arose at this time any representatives of, say, the age of Abraham, or the age before the flood, the bodies in which they appeared to the people in Jerusalem who saw them came out of the graves. If any of them were saints who lived in ancient times and whose bodies had undergone a complete process of disorganization, they were perfectly reorganized while yet in the graves, and thus came out of the graves.

Now this leads us to the doctrine of the reorganization of the body in the grave itself, prior to, but of course in order to, its resurrection. Is this the doctrine of Scripture ? Does Scripture really teach us to believe it ? Is the passage we have looked at in Matthew a sufficient foundation for such a belief ? Are there other scriptures which confirm it ?

Let us turn now to John 5:28, 29. " For the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth." It is clear that our Lord teaches that at the resurrection something comes forth from or out of the grave. It, of course, must be the reorganized body. The spirit is not in the grave, and does not come from there. It comes from the place of departed spirits. It is the body that is in the grave. It is to be reorganized for the spirit, that left it at death, to reoccupy it. The reorganization will take place in the grave. At the resurrection the reorganized body will come forth to be forever tenanted by its own spirit. The language employed by our Lord here certainly implies all this, and is in accord with the passage in Matt. 27:

But what we deduce from these two passages is clearly affirmed in i Cor. 15:35-58. There were some among the Corinthians who denied the resurrection of the dead. Ver. 35 makes it clear that they denied there would be a body come from the grave. They are ridiculing the very idea of a resurrection of the body in the questions the apostle puts into their mouths, "How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come ? " Now Paul answers them in a way to convict them of ignorance of the Scriptures and the power of God, as the Lord did the Sadducees. It is a question altogether of the power of God. Is God able to reorganize the body ? Even if it has dissolved and actually returned to dust, can He re-form it ? And if He is able to reorganize the body, can He not, in reorganizing it, make it such a body as it pleases Him ?

Now, that God can reorganize the body, nature itself demonstrates. The seed of wheat, or any other grain, when sown, becomes disorganized; but God, by processes which He has ordained, works in the disorganizing seed, and a body is formed, which comes up out of its disorganized state. A living body is raised up out of the dead body. If, then, nature witnesses to the power of God in death, why
should it be an incredible thing for God to raise dead men-to reorganize their bodies and raise them up out of their graves ? When once it is realized that it is simply a question of the power of God, there is no difficulty. He is able to work in death in the disorganized body, and organize it anew.

But that does not imply that the reorganized body will be just what the disorganized one has been. The body that has been disorganized is a natural body; the reorganized body is a spiritual body. The one is a mortal body, the other is immortal. The one is corruptible, the other is incorruptible. The former is a body of flesh and blood, the latter is a body of flesh and bones. As to this, the apostle appeals again to the testimony of nature. There are different kinds of flesh-one of men, another of beasts, another of fishes, another of birds. There are also bodies terrestrial and celestial, each differing from the other in character and glory. So, too, the reorganized body differs from the one that is disorganized. But here again there is no real difficulty if it be realized that it is a question of the power of God. The power of God was displayed in the formation of the natural body. The dust of which it was made was inert, lifeless, unorganized material. By the power of God it was organized into a body to be quickened by the breath of God. So, too, in the dust to which the natural body returns, God will work to reorganize it into a spiritual body. It will be reorganized in the grave, and come forth from there; but it will come forth to be no more a mortal body, but a body in which mortality is "swallowed up of life " (2 Cor. 5:4).

Thus we find that Scripture insists on a real resurrection of the body from the grave, and effectually disposes of the theory that the spirit forms a new body for itself, as also of the view held by others that God creates a new body and nothing at all comes from the grave.

There is one scripture which may possibly be quoted against me. It is 2 Cor. 5:2-"Desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven." It is better to read here "of" heaven, not "from" heaven. The apostle is not teaching that our eternal house or body will be formed in heaven and come from there, but that it will partake of the character of heaven, and be thus suited for heaven. There is, then, no contradiction here to what we have gathered from Scripture elsewhere.

I wish here to guard another point. In using i Cor. 15:as I have done, it must not be taken that I hold that in that chapter the apostle is writing concerning the resurrection of the wicked as well as the just. I have not been giving an exposition of the teaching of the chapter, but availing myself of a principle which is there, and which the apostle employs in his arguments to establish the doctrine of the resurrection of the bodies of the believing dead. It is of them, and of them alone, that he speaks there. But while this is true, it is also true that the bodies of the wicked dead will be raised by the power of God as well as the bodies of the righteous. The gates of Hades are under the control of Him whom God has made Lord of all-both the gate in and the gate out. He will raise all the dead-both the just and the unjust. It will be at His voice that all the dead will rise; the just, at the resurrection of life; the unjust, at the resurrection of judgment.

Now before closing it may be well to call attention to the serious consequences of denying the resurrection of the body. It does not matter which form of the denial we take ; the consequences are equally vital. Of course it is easy to see that the Sadducean denial of resurrection in any form sweeps away everything. According to their view, there is no Christ any more, and there is no future life for men, no future blessedness for believers, no future punishment for unbelievers.

The theory that the spirit, after leaving the body, forms a new body for itself, is also fatal, both as to Christ and as to us. If Christ's spirit formed a new body, and the body that went into the grave did not rise, then His former body saw corruption ; it must have gone to dust, and Christ has not, then, conquered death. This only needs to be pointed out. The truth of the holy humanity of our blessed Lord is too important to suffer the loss of it by allowing the resurrection to be defined as the formation of a new body by the departed spirit. In the case of the saints, it will not do to allow this definition either, for resurrection would not be '' mortality swallowed up of life " (2 Cor. 5:4). For this to be true, redemption must have application to the old body. (See Rom. 8:23.) If, when the Lord comes, the bodies of the living saints are reorganized, there will also be a reorganization of the disorganized bodies of those who sleep in Jesus.

The same serious results follow from defining resurrection to be the creation of a new body. The truth of Christ's holy humanity is lost, and He is robbed of His glory as the Victor over death, and the saints are denied their portion of sharing that victory with Him; 1:e., their bodies remain forever the prey of death. In the resurrection, if they have new bodies created, they will be a new order of men- not children of Adam redeemed and saved, not children of God by redemption-but men by creation. How great the loss !

It will now be seen that it is of supreme importance to firmly hold to the doctrine of the identity of the old and the new body. This doctrine is clearly stated in the passage we have considered in i Cor. 15:"It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body " (vers. 42-44). The apostle is here asserting the identity of the natural and mortal body with the spiritual and immortal body.

The same principle applies to the wicked also. If there is no identity of the body they have in this life and the body which they will have when they stand before the great white throne or have been consigned to the lake of fire, then they will not be the same men:it will not be the sinner that sinned that will be judged and punished.
Many other considerations might be mentioned, but perhaps it is not necessary. It is sufficiently plain that the doctrine of the Scriptures is that the body will rise again. Whatever the varying conditions of the bodies of men when the resurrection takes place, there will be a reorganization of the body:this will take place in the grave, and thus the reorganized body will come forth from there.
C. C.