The last days of the manifestation of God in Christ were signalized by a great deprivation and a great recovery. A life beyond the dread confines of the grave completed the cycle of wonders associated with the earth-life of Jesus. This, although not sufficiently realized ere it actually occurred, is a part of a continuative development. It is no awkward and hasty fragment joined on to another and more legitimate narrative. To intelligent students of the life, it appears the sublimely consistent outcome of all that preceded the death. The evangelists, from the very beginning of their histories, prepare one almost unconsciously for such a denouement. It is in a sense the necessary conclusion towards which they move, and It throws into new relations and proportions all the preceding events. The earthly actions and experiences of Christ are sufficiently verified, but in describing them evangelists do not seem to think of having to furnish proof. It is only when they begin to tell us of the resurrection that all is alertness, and that conscious collation of evidence takes place. This is the arcanum of the faith which must be preserved from all uncertainty; this fact must be certified that all else may be made intelligible and morally effectual. And the moral significance of the Resurrection is even more insisted on than its physical wonder. It is the defeat of evil machinations, and a triumph over every precaution of his enemies.

I. SOME IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION, The number and variety of Christ's appearances have been noted by the evangelists. The spiritual nature perceives the supplementary effect and educative efficiency of his resurrection fellowship. There is also a marked absence of all appearance of collusion.

1. Conspirators would have striven to keep the grave sealed until its emptiness should be discovered.

2. The Roman watch was all but inviolable.

3. Those who might be expected to conspire remained at a distance, and were informed of the event.

4. Many of them at first refused to believe the news.

5. From the Emmaus and embalming incidents, we see that most of the disciples did not look for his (at all events immediate) reappearance.

II. THE NATURE OF THE RESURRECTION. The question of those who deny the physical, yet emphasize the ideal and spiritual resurrection - "What can a few pounds more or less of dust and ashes matter?" - is shallow and impertinent.

1. The senses were appealed to: sight, hearing, touch; physical results were produced; fellowship was realized with him under physical conditions (the fish and honeycomb).

2. was not recognized at first. A great change had, therefore, been produced. And such a thing might be looked for. Mary, Emmaus, Thomas and the stigmata.

3. The manner of disappearance as described is suggestive of a real body (Acts 1:9; Luke 24:50, 51).

III. THE BEARINGS OF THIS FACT UPON CHRISTIAN FAITH AND LIFE. In considering these, we see how the foregoing question betrays an incapacity for discussing the highest practical problems.

1. Christ came to save the entire nature - body, soul, and spirit. He is, therefore, himself the Firstfruits and the Type. There is, in his resurrection state, a hint as. to the possibilities of our material nature when completely purified and redeemed.

2. The bodily resurrection of Christ is a more signal marvel than the spiritual alone would have been, and was at the same time more susceptible of sensible demonstration.

3. It was in harmony with the method of his miracles, and the grand key to them. How the moral element in this life grew and expanded into ever more powerful effects and general relations! At last, when earnestly and carefully regarded, doubt is overwhelmed by it. How it appeals to our sense of the highest fitness, and answers the unconscious longings of the spiritual life! - M.

Consider their sedulity — sedulity that admits no intermission, no interruption, no discontinuance, no indifference in religious offices. Consider we therefore their sedulity, if we can. I say, if we can; because if a man should sit down at a beehive or an ant hill, and determine to watch such an ant or such a bee in its work, he would find that bee or that ant so sedulous, so serious, so various, so concurrent with others, so contributory to others, as that he would quickly lose his marks and his sight of that ant or that bee. So, if we fix our consideration upon these devout women, and the sedulity of their devotion, as the several evangelists present it to us, we may easily lose our sight, and hardly know which was which, or at what time she or she came to the sepulchre. "They came, in the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week," says St. Matthew; "they came very early in the morning, the first day of the week, at the rising of the sun," says St. Mark; "they prepared their spices, and rested the Sabbath, and came early the next day," says St. Luke; "they came the first day when it was yet dark," says St. John. From Friday evening till Sunday morning they were sedulous, busy upon this service; so sedulous, that thinks these women came four several times to the sepulchre, and that the four evangelists have relation to their four comings, and argues that this variety is no sign of untruthfulness in the evangelists, but testifies the sedulity of the women they speak of, going and coming, and unwilling to be far distant or long absent from their devout exercise. Beloved, true devotion is a serious, a sedulous, an impatient thing. He who said, "I fast twice in the week," was but a Pharisee; he who can reckon his devout actions is no better; he who can tell how often he has thought upon God today, has not thought upon Him often enough. It is St. 's holy circle, "to pray that we may hear sermons profitably, and to hear sermons that we may learn to pray acceptably." Devotion is no marginal note, no interlineary gloss, no parenthesis that may be left out; it is no occasional thing, no conditional thing: "I will go if I like the preacher, the place, the company, the weather;" but it is of the body of the text, and lays upon us an obligation of fervour and continuance.

(John Donne, D. D.)

James, Jesus, Mary, Peter, SalomeGalilee, Jerusalem, NazarethBody, Dawn, Early, Morning, Risen, Rising, Sabbaths, Sepulcher, Sepulchre, Sunrise, Tomb, Week1. An Angel declares the resurrection of Jesus to three women.
9. Jesus himself appears to Mary Magdalene;
12. to two going into the country;
14. then to the apostles;
15. whom he sends forth to preach the gospel;
19. and ascends into heaven.

Mark 16:2

     4918   dawn
     4921   day

Mark 16:1-5

     4366   stones

Mark 16:1-6

     2012   Christ, authority

Mark 16:1-7

     7930   Lord's Day, the

Mark 16:1-8

     1436   reality
     2421   gospel, historical foundation

Mark 16:1-11

     5745   women

Mark 16:1-14

     2555   Christ, resurrection appearances

Mark 16:2-4

     4354   rock

Mark 16:2-6

     9311   resurrection, of Christ

The World-Wide Commission
'Every creature.'--Mark xvi. 15. The missionary enterprise has been put on many bases. People do not like commandments, but yet it is a great relief and strength to come back to one, and answer all questions with 'He bids me!' Now, these words of our Lord open up the whole subject of the Universality of Christianity. I. The divine audacity of Christianity. Take the scene. A mere handful of men, whether 'the twelve' or 'the five hundred brethren' is immaterial. How they must have recoiled when they …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Enthroned Christ
'So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.'--Mark xvi. 19. How strangely calm and brief is this record of so stupendous an event! Do these sparing and reverent words sound to you like the product of devout imagination, embellishing with legend the facts of history? To me their very restrainedness, calmness, matter-of-factness, if I may so call it, are a strong guarantee that they are the utterance of an eyewitness, who verily saw …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Perpetual Youth
'And entering Into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment.'--Mark xvi. 5. Many great truths concerning Christ's death, and its worth to higher orders of being, are taught by the presence of that angel form, clad in the whiteness of his own God-given purity, sitting in restful contemplation in the dark house where the body of Jesus had lain. 'Which things the angels desire to look into.' Many precious lessons of consolation and hope, too, lie …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Love's Triumph Over Sin
'Tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth before yon into Galilee.--Mark xvi, 7. This prevailing tradition of Christian antiquity ascribes this Gospel to John Mark, sister's son to Barnabas, and affirms that in composing it he was in some sense the 'interpreter' of the Apostle Peter. Some confirmation of this alleged connection between the Evangelist and the Apostle may be gathered from the fact that the former is mentioned by the latter as with him when he wrote his First Epistle. And, in the …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Incredulous Disciples
'And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint Him. 2. And very early in the morning, the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. 3. And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? 4. And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great. 6. And entering into the sepulchre, they saw …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Angel in the Tomb
'They saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were aifrighted. 6. And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted. Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: He is risen; He is not here; behold the place where they laid Him.'--Mark xvi. 5,6. Each of the four Evangelists tells the story of the Resurrection from his own special point of view. None of them has any record of the actual fact, because no eye saw it. Before the earthquake and the angelic descent, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Christ Crowned, the Fact
"When God sought a King for His people of old, He went to the fields to find him; A shepherd was he, with his crook and his lute And a following flock behind him. "O love of the sheep, O joy of the lute, And the sling and the stone for battle; A shepherd was King, the giant was naught, And the enemy driven like cattle. "When God looked to tell of His good will to men, And the Shepherd-King's son whom He gave them; To shepherds, made meek a-caring for sheep, He told of a Christ sent to save them. …
by S. D. Gordon—Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation

Baptismal Regeneration
Our Lord having thus given us an insight into the character of the persons whom he has chosen to proclaim his truth, then goes on to deliver to the chosen champions, their commission for the Holy War. I pray you mark the words with solemn care. He sums up in a few words the whole of their work, and at the same time foretells the result of it, telling them that some would doubtless believe and so be saved, and some on the other hand would not believe and would most certainly, therefore, be damned, …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 10: 1864

Unbelievers Upbraided
On Thursday Evening, June 8th, 1876. "He . . . upbraided them with their unbelief."--Mark 16:14. I SHALL not dwell so much upon this particular instance of the disciples' unbelief as upon the fact that the Lord Jesus upbraided them because of it. This action of his shows us the way in which unbelief is to be treated by us. As our loving Saviour felt it to be right rather to upbraid than to console, he taught us that on some occasions, unbelief should be treated with severity rather than with condolence. …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 50: 1904

Sermon for Ascension Day
This third sermon on the Ascension tells us how man ought continually to follow after Christ, as He has walked before us for three and thirty years, passing through manifold and great sufferings, before He returned unto His Father. Mark xvi. 19.--"So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God." AFTER the Son of God, Jesus Christ, had eaten with His disciples upon the Mount of Olives, and reproved them, that they had been so long time …
Susannah Winkworth—The History and Life of the Reverend Doctor John Tauler

The Necessity of Faith for Justification
1. THE LUTHERAN HERESY VS. THE TEACHING OF THE CHURCH.--The Protestant Reformers, notably Luther and Calvin, did not deny that justification is wrought by faith, but they defined justifying faith in a manner altogether foreign to the mind of the Church. a) They distinguished three kinds of faith: (1) belief in the existence of God and the historical fact that Christ has come on earth, suffered, and ascended (fides historica); (2) the sort of trust which is required for exercising the gift of miracles …
Joseph Pohle—Grace, Actual and Habitual

Fifth Appearance of Jesus.
(Jerusalem. Sunday Evening) ^B Mark XVI. 14; ^C Luke XXIV. 36-43; ^D John XX. 19-25. ^b 14 And afterward ^c as they spake these things [while the two from Emmaus were telling their story] , ^b he was manifested unto the eleven themselves as they sat at meat; ^d 19 When therefore it was evening, on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus ^c himself ^d came and stood in the midst, ^c of them, and saith unto them, Peace …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Third and Fourth Appearances of Jesus.
(Sunday Afternoon.) ^B Mark XVI. 12, 13; ^C Luke XXIV. 13-35; ^E I. Cor. XV. 5. ^b 12 And after these things he was manifested in another form [i. e., another manner] unto two of them, as they walked, on their way into the country. ^c 13 And behold, two of them were going that very day to a village named Emmaus [Several sites have been suggested, but the village of Emmaus has not yet been identified beyond dispute. Its location is probably marked by the ruins called el Kubeibeh, which lies northwest …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

The Ascension.
(Olivet, Between Jerusalem and Bethany.) ^B Mark XVI. 19, 20; ^C Luke XXIV. 50-53; ^E Acts I. 9-12. ^b 19 So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken unto them, ^e 9 And when he had said these things, ^c he led them out until they were over against Bethany: and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. 51 And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he parted from them [it is significant that our Lord's gesture, when last seen of men, was one of blessing], and ^e as they were looking, he was taken …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Obedience to the Last Command
Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations.' --Matt. 28:19. Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.'--Mark 16:15. #8216;As Thou didst send Me into the world, even so send I them into the world' -- John 17:18; 20:21. Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be My witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth.'--Acts 1:8. All these words breathe nothing less than the spirit of world conquest. All the nations,' all the world,' …
Andrew Murray—The School of Obedience

Baptism, a Divinely Appointed Means of Grace.
When we inquire into the benefits and blessings which the Word of God connects with baptism, we must be careful to obtain the true sense and necessary meaning of its declarations. It is not enough to pick out an isolated passage or two, give them a sense of our own, and forthwith build on them a theory or doctrine. In this way the Holy Scriptures have been made to teach and support the gravest errors and most dangerous heresies. In this way, many persons "wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction." …
G. H. Gerberding—The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church

Of the Places of Burial.
There were more common and more noble sepulchres. The common were in public burying-places, as it is with us: but they were without the city. "And through that place was no current of waters to be made; through it was to be no public way; cattle were not to feed there, nor was wood to be gathered from thence." "Nor was it lawful to walk among the sepulchres with phylacteries fastened to their heads, nor with the book of the law hanging at their arm." Some sepulchres were extraordinary; that is, in …
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica

Baptism.
Literature. The commentaries on Matt. 28:19; Mark 16:16; John 3:5; Acts 2:38; 8:13, 16, 18, 37; Rom. 6:4; Gal. 3:27; Tit. 3:5; 1 Pet 3:21. G. J. Vossius: De Baptismo Disputationes XX. Amsterdam, 1648. W. Wall (Episcopalian): The History of Infant Baptism (a very learned work), first published in London, 1705, 2 vols., best edition by H. Cotton, Oxford, 1836, 4 vols., and 1862, 2 vols., together with Gale's (Baptist)Reflections and Wall's Defense. A Latin translation by Schlosser appeared, vol. I., …
Philip Schaff—History of the Christian Church, Volume I

Christ Risen
"And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him. And very early on the first day of the week, they come to the tomb when the sun was risen. And they were saying among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the tomb? and looking up, they see that the stone is rolled back: for it was exceeding great. And entering into the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, arrayed in …
G. A. Chadwick—The Gospel of St. Mark

The Ascension
"So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken unto them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed. Amen." MARK 16:19-20 (R.V.) WE have reached the close of the great Gospel of the energies of Jesus, His toils, His manner, His searching gaze, His noble indignation, His love of children, the consuming zeal by virtue of which He was not more truly the …
G. A. Chadwick—The Gospel of St. Mark

Of Baptism.
1. Baptism defined. Its primary object. This consists of three things. 1. To attest the forgiveness of sins. 2. Passages of Scripture proving the forgiveness of sins. 3. Forgiveness not only of past but also of future sins. This no encouragement to license in sin. 4 Refutation of those who share forgiveness between Baptism and Repentance. 5 Second thing in Baptism--viz. to teach that we are ingrafted into Christ for mortification and newness of life. 6. Third thing in Baptism--viz. to teach us that …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion

Dispute with Whitefield
1741. Sunday, February 1.--A private letter, written to me by Mr. Whitefield, was printed without either his leave or mine, and a great numbers of copies were given to our people, both at the door and in the Foundry itself. Having procured one of them, I related (after preaching) the naked fact to the congregation and told them, "I will do just what I believe Mr. Whitefield would, were he here himself." Upon which I tore it in pieces before them all. Everyone who had received it, did the same. So …
John Wesley—The Journal of John Wesley

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