First Great Deception
457
William Tyndale, Preface to New Testament (ed. 1534). Reprinted in
British Reformers—Tindal, Frith, Barnes, page 349.
It is an undeniable fact that the hope of immortal blessedness at
death has led to a widespread neglect of the Bible doctrine of the
resurrection. This tendency was remarked by Dr. Adam Clarke, who
said: “The doctrine of the resurrection appears to have been thought
of much more consequence among the primitive Christians than it is
now! How is this? The apostles were continually insisting on it, and
exciting the followers of God to diligence, obedience, and cheerfulness
through it. And their successors in the present day seldom mention
it! So apostles preached, and so primitive Christians believed; so
we preach, and so our hearers believe. There is not a doctrine in the
gospel on which more stress is laid; and there is not a doctrine in the
present system of preaching which is treated with more neglect!”—
Commentary, remarks on
1 Corinthians 15
, paragraph 3.
This has continued until the glorious truth of the resurrection has
been almost wholly obscured and lost sight of by the Christian world.
Thus a leading religious writer, commenting on the words of Paul in
1
Thessalonians 4:13-18
, says: “For all practical purposes of comfort
the doctrine of the blessed immortality of the righteous takes the place
for us of any doubtful doctrine of the Lord’s second coming. At our
death the Lord comes for us. That is what we are to wait and watch
for. The dead are already passed into glory. They do not wait for the
trump for their judgment and blessedness.”
[548]
But when about to leave His disciples, Jesus did not tell them that
they would soon come to Him. “I go to prepare a place for you,” He
said. “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and
receive you unto Myself.”
John 14:2, 3
. And Paul tells us, further,
that “the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with
the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead
in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be
caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air:
and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” And he adds: “Comfort one
another with these words.”
1 Thessalonians 4:16-18
. How wide the
contrast between these words of comfort and those of the Universalist
minister previously quoted! The latter consoled the bereaved friends
with the assurance that, however sinful the dead might have been,
when he breathed out his life here he was to be received among the