ESTABLISHED FACT

ESTABLISHED FACT

“What sign showest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest these things." “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." John 2:18-19

The remaining section of this article is that of a restatement of the arguments for the historic FACT of resurrection. Having considered how that FACT, if granted, is indeed the anchorage for faith, it now remains to repeat in briefest form, the lines of proof. And yet nothing can be of more importance. It is utterly false to declare that it is unimportant, whether the Man of Nazareth did actually rise from the dead. It is unfair and illogical, and outside the final possibility of reason's acceptance to affirm that the value of the resurrection remains if its FACT be denied. The idea that the matter of utmost importance is value, apart from FACT is absurd, because it is presupposing impossibility. The value has been created by the FACT. Had there been no FACT there could have been no value. Permanent values can only exist upon the bases of established FACTS. A value of perpetual force has never been created upon the basis of a so-called working hypothesis. Sooner or later the hypothesis will almost invariably cease to work, and when that happens, the value passes like the mirage of the desert. If the hypothesis is to continue, it will be because it is finally demonstrated as being BASED UPON FACT, and we need to never call this account a story of the RESURRECTION. Kids are read stories and most are made up.

The permanent value therefore is the outcome of ESTABLISHED FACT. All the working values of the Gospel of grace are founded upon THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

To follow this statement further: It is declared that the value is here, and we need take no time in arguing concerning the FACT. That may be abandoned seeing that the value is now at the use of men. This again is evidence of shortsightedness. Abandon the FACT, and the value will be lost. This may not be seen immediately, but in the process of years it will be seen. When the great rock foundations of our faith are reckoned of no account, the values that have accrued may seem to abide, but they will inevitably even if slowly, lose their transforming power.

The FACT of the resurrection has created the value of high life. Once deny the FACT, and its value will cease to grip, and regulate the consciences of men, and they will revert, sooner or later, to the bestial materialistic ideal of  life; which issues in such rottenness as that of Rome, and of Greece. To trifle with the foundations of God is to render the building insecure so the controlling factions take away prayer and the teaching of the Bible from the school systems. Now we must arm our teachers and secure the buildings and they are clueless as to the degradation of the minds of the children. The actuality of the resurrection of the Man Jesus is necessary to the permanent value of the Christian Gospel.

It is therefore absolutely necessary that the question be asked, did He rise? Take the apostolic formula of supposition, “If Christ be not risen," there are certain inevitable deductions will follow.

First, His teaching was false for He distinctly declared that He would rise again, and so faith's central claim was never realized, and all other claims are valueless. His one final sign was that of His own resurrection. “What sign showest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest these things." “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."(John 2:18-19) "We would see a sign from Thee." "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matt. 12:38-40) When He said these things, men did not understand them. But looking back at them, it is perfectly obvious that to the mind of the Master, the resurrection was the one indisputable seal of the Divinity of His mission. Yet again earnestly and solemnly it must be declared that if He did not rise, either He was Himself deceived, or He was intentionally a deceiver.

"If Christ be not risen," then to adopt the first supposition, He was mistaken, for He thought He would; or else, to adopt the second, if He never expected to rise, He deliberately attempted to deceive men, by promising them that He would.

And yet again, if He did not rise, His work was the direst failure. At the erection of the Cross, there was indeed to all human seeming, a final failure for Him. His own were against Him, His disciples abandoned Him, and they are seen scattering as fast as they knew how to go back to their fishing nets. They had had a dream of exquisite beauty in the days of their discipleship, but the whole thing had melted like the mirage of the desert. To affirm this in the face of the stupendous victories of Christ during twenty centuries is an absolute absurdity. If He did not rise, then the victories were not gained by Him, but by the men who were His followers, who reconstructed an idea out of a dismal failure, and made it the dominating and all-victorious force that it has been in human history.

And yet this cannot be, for they abandoned hope of the Christ, and scattered. There must have been something which re-gathered them, and reunited them. Not the Cross, but something other, for the Cross broke up the unity, and scattered the units. Not one of them waited to watch. They are seen drifting away, with the sadness of a great love for a lost Leader in their hearts, feeling that while He was true indeed to them, He was utterly mistaken, and that the only logical sequence of the Cross is that they shall go back to their fishing.

But to take the larger outlook, “If Christ be not risen," then the atoning value of His death cannot be maintained, and it is worthy of careful notice that the doctrine of Atonement always goes, where men call in question the FACT of the resurrection.

And yet again, “If Christ be not risen," then the world has no authoritative message concerning the life hereafter. If indeed He did not return, then has man no well-established hope of seeing again those faces loved long since and lost awhile. A man often says—thoughtlessly in all probability—that no one has ever come back to tell us concerning the beyond. That statement is absolutely correct if Christ be not risen from the dead. No one, however, whose faith is fastened upon the resurrection, can make that assertion. One has come back, and in His coming has brought life and immortality to light.

“If Christ be not risen” then there is no type of humanity, for all the perfections, which seem to be resident in Him, are spoiled by the revelation of His ignorance, or His attempt to impose upon the trust of man.

"If Christ be not risen" there is no new power at the disposal of man, and he is left alone to struggle, and altogether unavailingly, with the forces of evil.

If Christ did not rise, what then did happen? What was it that recalled that scattered group of frightened souls, and turned them into men and women of such marvelous force, that within one brief generation they had filled Jerusalem with their doctrine, spoken to the known world, and undermined the corrupt Roman empire? How are these FACTS to be accounted for? It may at once be declared that every attempt to account for the victories of the Church apart from the resurrection is philosophically absurd, and historically without proof.