the Received Text); John 6:39,40,44,54 and over sixteen times in the Acts and

epistles.  The first complete revelation of the Saviour's own resurrection is

found in Matthew 16.  In Matthew 4:17 we read:

'From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the

kingdom of heaven is at hand',

but in Matthew 16:21 a new note is struck:

'From that time forth (identical terms here, as in Matthew 4:17) began

Jesus to shew unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem,

and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and

be killed, and be raised again the third day'.

If we include passages where resurrection is implied, as it is for

example in Matthew 16:27, we should greatly augment our quotations, but we

are keeping strictly to definite testimony to the resurrection, and so pass

on to 17:9 where, after the vision of the Transfiguration, the Saviour

commanded His disciples, 'Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of Man be

risen from the dead'.  In verses 22 and 23 of this same chapter, the

betrayal, death and resurrection on the third day is again announced.  Yet

once more, in 20:17 the Lord 'took the twelve disciples apart in the way' and

went over the treatment He would receive at the hands of the chief priests

and scribes, adding, 'And shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock, and to

scourge, and to crucify Him, and the third day He shall rise again'.  Apart

from the record of the actual resurrection that is found in the closing

chapters of each of the four Gospels, the testimony to the resurrection is

confined in Matthew and in Luke to the problem posed by the Sadducees.  In

Matthew 22:23-33, the Sadducees who said, 'there is no resurrection', brought

to the Lord the hypothetical case of a woman who married successively seven

brethren, 'In the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven?'  The

Lord's answer was:

'Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.  For in

the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are

as the angels of God in heaven' (Matt. 22:29,30).

This is expanded a little in the record of Luke 20:36 which adds:

'Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and

are children of God, being the children of the resurrection'.

The Sadducees were not allowed to go, however, without some definite

word concerning the reality of the resurrection.  The fact that God still

called Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, revealed that while these

men may have died, they 'all live unto Him' (Luke 20:38), for He is not the

God of the dead but of the living, and whatever we may think of these words

'all live unto Him' they are introduced by the Saviour Himself with the

words, 'Now that the dead are raised' (Luke 20:37).  It is therefore an

intrusion into the Lord's own argument to introduce any thought of an

intermediate state; nothing but the resurrection of the dead is in view.

We now turn to John's Gospel, where we shall find several passages that

are not found in the synoptic Gospels.

'For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so

the Son quickeneth whom He will'.