Resurrection

Today's reading contains the second half of the story of Lazarus. Yesterday's (October 25th) reading told of his passing, and Jesus, as he comforts Mary and Martha, tells them that he "will rise again." Martha replied in John 11:24:

Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” 

For a word that is a central part of our belief, the Bible is strangely silent on the subject of resurrection, at least up to this point. Since I'm always interested in determining what people knew and when they knew it, I went immediately to my NIV Study Bible to check for any notes on this verse--nothing. That's right, NOTHING, not one word on it, so I checked the cross-references instead, of which there were three:

John 5:28-29, which didn't really expand my knowledge

Acts 24:15, which likewise didn't help--it only mentions that the resurrection will occur

Daniel 12:2--here I hit some paydirt

Whenever you run across a difficult section of the Bible, I always suggest going to Daniel for a clear explanation (this is a joke, actually a HUGE JOKE--feel free to laugh), but much to my surprise, I found one here. The note for Daniel 12:2 gave me two important nuggets:

1. The first clear reference to a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.

2. everlasting life. The phrase occurs only here in the OT.

As you recall, Daniel was writing 500 years prior to Christ's birth, and in that intervening period, some dissent began to occur between the Jewish sects regarding eternal life--the Pharisees believed in it, the Sadducees didn't. All of this is academic, since Martha made clear that she and her sister believed in the resurrection of the dead--she just had no idea she was going to see it a bit sooner than she expected.

AFTER the Gospels, there is no shortage of references by Paul and others to the resurrection and eternal life (I count about 40 or so), but by that point, they had a reference point in Christ's resurrection to point to. Martha demonstrated true faith at this point, believing in the resurrection prior to seeing the proof she would see within the year. For us today, there's nothing to be confused over--there IS a resurrection, there IS eternal life, and there ARE eternal consequences to decisions that we make in this life. This makes it incumbent upon us to do two things on a DAILY basis:

1. Be sure that we continually repent of our sins to God and beg for his forgiveness.

2. Be sure we're telling those people who don't know about God what they need to know AND how to live it. If you don't feel you know how to do this, FIND OUT HOW--these discussions will have eternal repercussions.

Scott