Are Men Immortal?

There is no compromising with death. We may differ much in our preparedness to meet it but not in our ability to avoid it. And the prospect would be dark indeed except for the return from death to life of Jesus the Christ, the son of God, the “first-fruits of the resurrection,” by whose triumphs over death all mankind are assured a like coming forth from the grave. This brings us face to face with these uncompromising alternatives: Either this event as witnessed and recorded in history is true or it is not. Either men are immortal or they are not. Either we ourselves shall pass through death to life and shall come forth again by resurrection or we shall not. Such issues are not to be set aside or explained away. The answers to all of them are true or false. Of course, we are free to believe what we want to believe. It is quite reasonable that men should be reluctant to accept what they cannot explain, and it is certainly true that no man now living can explain the process of resurrection. But the fact that there are some things the Lord God has not told us would be a miserable excuse for not accepting what He has told us. And, who is there among us to explain how life came to be in the first placeand who is there to deny that we live? There will always be unanswered questions. And if we should have to give up everything that men cannot explain, we should have to give up much indeed, including life itself. But it is fortunate that neither truth nor God is limited by man’s understanding. If they were, we might expect nature and the universe to be in the same chaos as are man’s own affairs. Fortunately, they are not. That we should live forever is surely no greater miracle than that we should live at all, for the same God who gave us life here has also given us life hereafterus, and all men, and all those we love and cherish. And so we accept the reality that if a man die, he shall rise again. “Believest thou this? . . . Yea, Lord: I believe . . .”