35. God raised the dead, through the instrumentality of His prophets, especially Elijah and Elisha. God’s saints were tortured in all sorts of ways. It is said that Isaiah, the prophet, was sawn in twain. All these terrible sufferings did they endure that they might obtain a better resurrection.
ARGUMENT 15
THE BETTER RESURRECTION.
“Better” is not antithetical to bad, but to good. Hence the logical sequence follows that while there is a bad resurrection for the wicked, there are also two resurrections for the righteous — the good and the better, the first and the last. It is stated positively
“Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: over these the second death hath no power, they shall be priests of God
and Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.”
(<662006>
Revelation 20:6)
This Scripture, as well as others, settles the question of the two
resurrections without the possibility of cavil. I am sorry this important revelation has been obscured by the spiritualization of the first
resurrection. This is a gross and flagrant error, utterly untenable, as it breaks up and destroys the antithesis, doing away with the corporeal resurrection altogether, and plunging headlong into the Swedenborgian heresy. The Greek is ezeean in both cases, which simply means, “they lived.” If it is spiritual in one sense it is in the other, and physical resurrection is forever gone. Hence we see the utter untenability of this construction and receive unequivocally the doctrine of the two
resurrections. In the rapture described by Paul (<520413>
1 Thessalonians 4:13- 18), we have another graphic account of the first resurrection, when the Lord shall come after His bride, preparatory to His millennial kingdom.
<500311>
Philippians 3:11,
“If perchance I may attain unto the resurrection which is out from among the dead.”
The Old Testament saints were not ignorant of the glorious reality of the Lord’s bridehood. Therefore they suffered the most terrible tortures of martyrdom that they might have a place in the first resurrection; which will take place before the millennium, the last resurrection being postponed till the final judgment. It is certainly a glorious privilege to rise and shout o my grave a thousand years before the general resurrection, especially when we consider the glorious privileges of the bridehood to reign with Christ during the millennial ages.
36-38. Here the Holy Ghost describes the terrible tortures inflicted by a wicked world and a fallen Church on the Old Testament martyrs. They shouted in the fires anticipating the glories awaiting them in the Lord’s bridehood and the first resurrection.
39. “All these having received the witness of the Spirit through faith, obtained not the promise.”... While the Bible is flooded with thousands of promises, especially considering the synonymy of promise and
commandment in the Greek and Hebrew, by which the number is doubled, the great Messianic promise of the Lord’s incarnation and the world’s literal and actual redemption by the bleeding Christ on the cross, his triumphant resurrection, glorious ascension and mediatorial coronation and
intercession throughout the Bible is magnified as “the promise” by way of pre-eminence and exaltation. While the saints of all ages lived in glowing anticipation of this wonderful prophetical fulfillment, and the realization of the Messianic promise, yet they all died without the sight.
Contrastively with the verification of this promise, theirs was a
dispensation of Christian imperfection. Yet their stalwart and sanguine hope swept onward through the lights of type and prophecy into the personal experience of Christian perfection. This grand faith brigade lived, testified and shouted, in the realization of Gospel experiences many centuries in advance of their age and generation, while the rank and file of the Church barely reached perfection in the article of death, passing into eternity in a state of spiritual infancy, like the great bulk of the Gospel Church of the present day. Their case was apologizable, as they were in harmony with their dispensation, while the unsanctified millions of the Church of the present day, both clerical and laic, are blundering along amid the fogs of carnality, three thousand years behind the age.
CHAPTER 12
ARGUMENT 16
THE KINGDOM AND STADIUM
When I was at Athens, Greece, in 1895, they were busy repairing the old Stadium, after an iterregnum of fifteen hundred years. In the apostolic age the Olympic games celebrated in this Stadium had worldwide notice. They took place at the end of every quadriennium, attracting the attention of all nations. The contestants diligently labored and passed through all sorts of gymnastic exercises four solid years preparatory for these games, the racers carrying weights which they laid aside to run, wrestle and box in the Stadium. Time was measured by these Olympiads, and the year named in honor of the victor. Hence the great prominence of the Olympic races in the Pauline Epistles.
1. “Cloud of witnesses” refers to the faith brigade given in the preceding catalogue. How cheering to the apostolic saints to contemplate this cloud of heroes and martyrs! But we have the same cloud augmented by two hundred millions of Christian martyrs. Hence we certainly have an inspiring spectacle. Regeneration brings us through the gate of confession into the kingdom of grace. Heaven is still a long way off. If we ever get there we must run through the Stadium, under the inspection of multiplied millions of saints, angels and devils. The Athenium Stadium here alluded to is about a thousand yards long, terminating in an amphitheater, seating one hundred thousand spectators besides the multiplied myriads viewing the scene from Mount Hymettus, which overshadows the Stadium. This gospel metaphor is intensified by the renewing of the amphitheater and the reopening of the Olympic games, April, 1896. What a fatal mistake when you get converted to sit down at the gate, incurring the constant
temptations by Satan to go back and enjoy the flesh-pots of Egypt! The sad effects of an emasculated Gospel preached by an unsanctified ministry is to leave converted people just inside of the gate. Soon attracted by Satan’s phantasmagoria, they slip out and participate in his pleasures. The
avenger of blood gets on their track and chases them. Again they run to the gate and cry so pitifully that the Lord lets them in. Instead of moving right on, they still loiter about the gate, yield to temptation, slip out and take the devil’s bait. Again the bloody avenger chases them, and with greater difficulty than before, because they have gone further off, by the hardest effort they make the gate, crying so pitifully and promising so fairly that a merciful Savior takes them back. Again they linger about the gate as
formerly, get out and this time becoming more venturesome than ever, wander far away. The third time the avenger of blood gets oil their track.
So great is the space intervening between them and the gates, he heads them off, overtakes them, hewing them to pieces without mercy. We see in this verse an indispensable preparation, absolutely necessary to the
heavenly racer, i.e., laying aside every weight and the besetting sins. The participle here is in the aorist tense, showing its instantaneity. It was impossible for an Olympic racer to win the prize unless he were utterly disencumbered. Entire consecration turns over everything we possess to God, thus completely divesting us of every ounce, so we are light as a bird of paradise, on celestial pinion, darting through the air. The Greek adjective euperistaton is from eu, good; peri, around; isteemai, to stand; hence it means the sin always standing round you and sticking close to you. Here the Holy Spirit is addressing the citizens of the kingdom, whose actual sins have all been left in the devil’s country, whence they came. Therefore, in harmony with the Greek definition of this word, we see it can be none other than the original inbred sin, which still inheres in the hearts of the regenerate. Hence we see, beyond the possibility of cavil, that entire consecration, disencumbering you of every burden, and complete sanctification, eradicating all besetting, i.e., inbred, sin, constitute the indispensable qualifications for the heavenly racer. Just as it was
impossible for the Olympic racer to win a prize in the Athenian Stadium without these preparations, so it is absolutely nonsensical for the
Christian to flatter himself that he shall wear a crown in heaven unless he consecrates all to God, gets wholly sanctified from all besetting sin, and then runs with patience the race set before him.
2. “Looking unto Jesus, the Beginner and Perfector of the faith.” Jesus begins our faith in regeneration and perfects our faith in sanctification.
Hence, with a faith not only begun but perfected, we are to run this race,
keeping our eyes on Jesus. So long as we keep our eyes on Him He keeps His hand on us, giving us all the help we need successfully to run the heavenly race. Meanwhile we are constantly inspired, energized and indefatigably electrified by His own heroic example; when He braved the rage of men and devils, stormed the bloody tide of Cavalry, thus
triumphing over all of His enemies, and becoming our glorified Mediatorial King at God’s right hand.
3. This verse continues the thrilling exhortation to us, constantly to