Page 69 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

mystification results, followed by a statement to this effect: “We don‟t quite
understand what you mean!” Then we call attention to the fact that the great sage,
Confucius, was buried, in Chufu, in Shantung, the Gautama Buddha in the Himalayas,

and Mohammed in the plains of Arabia, and then we ask them if they have ever heard
of these worthies emerging from their places of interment, to which there is an
immediate and emphatic reply in the negative. “No,” we say, “nor has anyone else.
Their sepulchres are with us unto this day. But we are preaching a Person Who was

delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God to be slain at the
wicked hands of men, but Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pangs of
death; because it was not possible that He should be holden of it (death).” Then we
show them that since He alone was the possessor and originator of life it was

necessary that He, the first corn of wheat, must rise, while all others who possessed no
life but were chaff to begin with, could not rise.

What could distinguish our risen and victorious Christ more clearly from the poor

dead philosophers and “religious leaders” of this world, who by their pallid codes of
ethics actually deepened the darkness of this world by conveying the false impression
that man can make something out of himself? All who ever came before Him were
thieves and robbers. They never shed any light because they never had any life. In

Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

Life through death is the divine principle for the transmission and releasing of that
wondrous quality which is inherent only in Deity. Every believer is incorporated by

the Holy Spirit into the stalk of Him Who was the first corn of wheat and thus we are
made partakers of the divine life and ourselves the possessors of a life from which we
were originally alien.

The principle persists for the believer, and if he in turn is to transmit the life which
he has received from another and not abide alone, it is necessary for him to fall into
the ground and die and he likewise shall be conformed to the death and resurrection of
that Other. Before Jesus was anointed to the ministry of His first advent, John the

Baptist looked forward to His second advent in glory and judgment, saying, “Whose
fan is in His hand and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into
the garner, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Unhappy chaff of

this world, who refuse to receive by faith the life that He has released and must
inevitably be purged away in the burning fires of judgment! The writer of the Epistle
to the Hebrews gives another phase of this great principle of life through death in
chapter two, verse fourteen: “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh
and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might

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