'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'.

'Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that

are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that

have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that

have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation' (John

The next outstanding exhibition of the fact of literal resurrection is

recorded in John 11, where Lazarus, dead and buried, hears the voice of the

Son of God, and 'comes forth'.  In their distress, the two sisters had cried,

and they give expression to the burden of their cries, when they expostulated

with the Lord, separately, saying:

'Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died' (John

Martha added to these words her own conviction, saying:

'But I know, that even now, whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will

give it Thee',

and to encourage this spark of faith to burst into flame, the Saviour said,

'Thy brother shall rise again', but Martha appears to shrink back from the

apparent presumption of the words 'even now' and 'whatsoever', and falls back

upon the accepted belief that her brother should rise again 'at the last

day'.  This brings from the Lord the most stupendous claim that ever came

from the lips of man.  He Who wept at the gravestone (John 11:35) said, 'I Am

The Resurrection, And The Life: He that believeth in (on) Me, though he were

dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth (is living) and believeth

(believing) in (on) Me shall never die' (John 11:25,26).  Here, the provision

made for those who have died and those who are living, is expanded later in 1

Thessalonians 4.  The one other testimony that must be included is that of

John 12:24:

'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the

ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much

This figure we shall find expanded a little further in 1 Corinthians

15.  The reader will realize how closely this testimony to the resurrection

is interwoven into the fabric of the Gospels; to deny the resurrection and to

accept the moral teaching of these four Gospels is a feat of mental

gymnastics that is impossible for the normal mind to accomplish.  Like the

testimony to miracle, the Gospels stand or fall in so far as their testimony

is received intact, or in so far as any one feature is rejected.  We have

purposely refrained from comment upon these citations, believing rather that

their accumulated testimony to the one great fact would be of more service if

left undisturbed, than if each passage were analysed, and the problems

suggested, examined and explained.  This will come better into place when all

that has been written concerning the fact of the resurrection has come before

us.  We therefore turn our attention to the testimony that is given after the

death and resurrection of the Lord is an accomplished fact, and first, the

character of the preaching on this point, as found in the Acts.  To the

writer of the Acts, the literal resurrection of Christ was an accepted fact: