Dear Weekly Diner!
Thank you so much for your prayers for our travels in the
USA! We have safely arrived home on
Friday. We surely had a wonderful time in
fellowship with Christians in the southern part of our country!
This week’s article is written by Pastor Cal Niemela.
In Adam All Die…
In
Christ Shall All Be Made Alive
The
desire of every human being is a long and healthy
life. Man dreads the thought of dying, and, while
he avoids the subject on the one hand, he knows
that he must die and therefore spends time and energy
caring for his body with the hope that such an
investment will put off that fearful reality. If there is
one statement in the Holy Scripture that even the
most hardened infidel believes, it is the text we have chosen for this short message: For as in
Adam all die… (1 Corinthians 15:22) There is not one person so foolish
as to deny this Bible truth. All know and believe that
man is mortal, having a day of birth and a day of
death. Everywhere we see evidence of this unavoidable
reality.
The reason
each of us must eventually experience the
frightening grip of death squeezing the life from our bodies and
leaving us a cold corpse is that we all possess the
seeds of mortality within our earthly frame. How did they
get there you ask? The answer: Adam, the father of
all mankind, was told by God in the Garden of Eden that if
he ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil he would die, and, as it is recorded,
Adam (with his wife Eve) was tempted by the devil,
ignored God's Word and warning, and ate of that forbidden
fruit. At the very moment of Adam's disobedience, his immortality was dealt a death blow. He was now a
dying creature subject to the power of death. Since
that time, the posterity of Adam have all been born of
corruptible seed (1 Peter 1:23), which binds with
strong cords our future to the grave, where our natural
bodies will return to the dust of the earth. If that was
the end of the matter it would be bad enough, but
it's not; it gets even worse. There was another part
in Adam, that spiritual portion or, as the Bible calls
it, his "living soul" that was also affected by his act of
disobedience and suffered a like fatal blow. Dead in
trespasses and sins, Adam and his children faced
eternal death where their souls would be condemned to
spend eternity in hell. For the wages of sin is death… (Romans 6:23)
Here every
sensible and wise person will stop and ponder his
own predicament and hopefully ask the all important question: What must I do to be saved? (Acts 16:30) The answer is found in God's
Word: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved… (verse 31) If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. (Romans 10:9) In another place
Jesus told the people: Repent ye, and believe the gospel. (Mark 1:15) When a
person has been given the gift of faith he becomes a
new creature in Christ. Unbelief is overcome of faith and
it can be said that God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7)
T hen
that person found resting in the finished work of
Christ Jesus can rejoice in the closing words of our
text, when the Apostle says …even so
in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:22) Later in the
same chapter, he says: For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (1 Corinthians 15:53), and that dreadful enemy, Death, is swallowed up in victory! ~
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