Job 14:14 If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. I. Of this truth we have HINTS IN NATURE. 1. The soul's longing is a promise and prophecy of immortality. The bird's wing and fish's fin prophesy air and water; the eye and ear, light and sound. If man's hope has no object it is the single exception in nature. 2. Force is never lost. It is invisible and indestructible. It passes from body to body, changes its form and mode of manifestation, but never lost or even lessened. No energy is ever lost. 3. Life, the grandest force, is therefore indestructible. Even thought cannot die; how, then, the thinker himself? Death is dissolution, decay. What is there in mind to dissolve or decay? 4. Metamorphosis in nature hints and illustrates life as surviving changes of form and mode of existence. II. Hints in the WORD OF GOD. 1. Man's creation, Made of dust. Living soul inbreathed. Death penalty inflicted on the body; but soul never said to die in same sense. (Luke 15, where death is alienation of son from father; Romans 8, where carnal-mindedness is death.) 2. Man's death as described in Ecclesiastes 12. Dust returning to the earth. Spirit unto God. Plain reference to the story of creation. The breath is given up, but does not die, and symbolises the Spirit. 3. This truth is inwrought into the whole structure of the Scriptures. The blood of Abel represented his life that was vocal even after he was dead. (Comp. Revelation 6:9, where the souls or lives of martyrs cry unto God.) The great incentive to righteousness in both testaments is union with God here, merging into such union perfected yonder, as illustrated in Enoch and Elijah. 4. Immortality is assumed. (Matthew 22:23, when Christ confronts the Sadducees.) He teaches that souls in heaven live under new and unearthly conditions; and so God is the God of the living, not the dead. III. But there is DISTINCT TEACHING ON THIS SUBJECT. Examples — The Transfiguration, where Moses represents saints who have died, and Elijah saints that pass into glory without death, but both equally alive. The words to the penitent thief, "Today with Me in paradise." Stephen's dying vision and exclamation, "Receive my spirit." Paul (Philippians 1:23, 24; 2 Corinthians 5:6, 9; 1 Thessalonians 4:14-16; 1 Corinthians 3:1), where a future life is shown to be necessary to complete the awards of this life. (Comp. Luke 16., the parable of rich man and Lazarus.) (Arthur T. Pierson, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. |
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