The Death Part 2.3

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3. " Being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead." (Acts 4:22Being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. (Acts 4:2).) This chapter records the first movement of the ecclesiastical rulers against the truth after the resurrection. It says they were Sadducees: this, in measure, accounts for their hatred to the resurrection, but not entirely; for the doctrine here taught as the resurrection from the dead was not merely the general resurrection which their antagonist party the Pharisees held-which would have been rather the resurrection of the dead. This latter was simply that there would be a resurrection of the dead, that is, of all men, but the former was a much more specific and blessed thing, even that there was through Jesus a resurrection from among the dead-that is, the first resurrection. So that I conceive it was not the mere bruit of the resurrection which these Sadducees feared might strengthen and be upheld by the faction to which they were opposed, but in addition thereto, the presenting so alluring and winning a hope before the people, one too so full of grace and blessedness as that God would grant to those that followed the banner of Christ here below to arise first, (1 Thessalonians) of which the resurrection of the Lord Himself was a sort of pledge and type. And this surely it is which is of such power to the saint when known, and which is so little known in our own day among the saints. How few comparatively even know or are established in the truth of the first resurrection. Reader, art thou? If not, surely thou hast overlooked one of the richest fruits of Jesus' resurrection and of God's grace, and hast one thick fold of the veil of nature's darkness still over thy mind. And if this were more clearly preached, would not both the manifest tendency of it and the practical results in them that believe lead to more persecution? Nothing but this hope will give victory over the world, because nothing but it enables the Christian to see the worthlessness of the world.