THE OMNIPOTENT SUMMONS
The moment has now come for the voice of Omnipotence to
give the mandate. The group has gathered around the sepulchral grotto—the
Redeemer stands in meek majesty in front—the teardrop still glistening in
His eye, and that eye directed heavenward! Martha and Mary are gazing on His
countenance in silent emotion, while the eager bystanders bend over the
removed stone to see if the dead be still there. Yes! there the captive
lies—in uninvaded silence—attired still in the same solemn drapery. The Lord
gives the word. "Lazarus, come forth!" peals through the silent vault. The
dull, cold ear seems to listen. The pulseless heart begins to beat—the rigid
limbs to move—Lazarus lives! He rises enveloped in the swaddling-bands of
the tomb, once more to walk in the light of the living.
Where Scripture is silent, it is vain for us to picture
the emotions of that moment, when the weeping sisters found the gloomy hours
of disconsolate sorrow all at once rolled away. The cry of mingled wonder
and gratitude rings through that lonely graveyard—"This our brother was
dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found!" O most wondrous power—Death
vanquished in his own territory! The sleeper has awoke like Samson,
snapping the bands with which the King of Terrors had bound him. The star of
Bethlehem shines, and the Valley of Achor becomes a door of hope. The
all-devouring destroyer has to relinquish his prey.
Was the joy of that moment confined to these two bosoms?
No! The Church of Christ in every age may well love to linger around the
grave of Lazarus. In his resurrection there is to His true people a sure
pledge of their own. It was the first sheaf reaped by the mower's sickle
anticipatory of the great Harvest-home of the Final Day "when all that are
in their graves" shall hear the same voice and shall "come forth."
Solemn, surely, is the thought that that same portentous
miracle performed on Lazarus is one day to be performed on ourselves.
Wherever we repose—whether, as he did, in the quiet churchyard of our native
village, or in the midst of the city's crowded cemetery, or far away amid
the alien and stranger in some foreign shore, our dust shall be startled by
that omnipotent summons. How shall we hear it? Would it sound in our ears
like the sweet tones of the silver trumpet of Jubilee? Would it be to gaze
like Lazarus on the face of our best friend—to see Jesus bending over us in
looks of tenderness—to hear the living tones of that same voice, whose
accents were last heard in the dark valley, whispering hopes full of
immortality?
True, we have not to wait for a Savior's love and
presence until then. The hour of death is to the Christian the birthday of
endless life. Guardian angels are hovering around his dying pillow ready to
waft his spirit into Abraham's bosom. "The souls of believers do immediately
pass into glory." But the full plenitude of their joy and bliss is reserved
for the time when the precious but redeemed dust, which for a season is left
to molder in the tomb, shall become instinct with life—"the corruptible put
on incorruption, and the mortal immortality." The spirits of the just enter
at death on "the inheritance of the saints in light;" but at the
Resurrection they shall rise as separate orbs from the darkness and night of
the grave, each to "shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."
However glorious the emancipation of the soul in the
moment of dissolution, it is not until the plains and valleys of our globe
shall stand thick with the living of buried generations—each glorified body
the image of its Lord's—that the predicted anthem will be heard waking the
echoes of the universe—"O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your
victory?" Then, with the organs of their resurrection-bodies ennobled,
etherealized, purified from all the grossness of earth, they shall "behold
the King in His beauty." "The King's daughter," all glorious without, "all
glorious within"—"her clothing of wrought gold"—resplendent without with the
robes of righteousness—and radiant within with the beauties of
holiness—shall be brought "with gladness and rejoicing," and "enter into the
King's palace."
This will form the full meridian of the saints' glory—the
essence and climax of their new-born bliss—the full vision and fruition of a
Savior-God. "When He shall appear, we shall see Him as He is!" The first
sight which will burst on the view of the Risen ones will be Jesus!
His hands will wreath the glorified brows, in the presence of an assembled
world, with the crown of life. From His lips will proceed the gladdening
welcome—"Enter into the joy of your Lord!"
But this will not exhaust the elements of bliss in the
case of the "perfected just" on the day of their final triumph. Though the
presence of their adorable Redeemer would be enough, and more than enough,
to fill their cup with happiness, there will be others also to welcome them,
and to augment their joy. Lazarus' Lord was not alone at the sepulcher's
brink, at Bethany, ready to greet him back. Two beloved sisters shared the
joy of that gladsome hour. We are left to picture for ourselves the reunion,
when, with hand linked in hand, they re-traversed the road which had so
recently echoed to the voice of mourning, and entered once more their home,
radiant with a sunshine they had imagined to have passed away from it
forever!
So will it be with the believer on the morning of the
Resurrection. While his Lord will be there, waiting to welcome him, there
will be others ready with their presence to enhance the bliss of that
gladdening restoration. Those whose smiles were last seen in the
death-chamber of earth, now standing—not as Martha and Mary, with the tear
on their cheek and the furrow of deep sorrow on their brow, but robed and
radiant in resurrection attire, glowing with the anticipations of an
everlasting and indissoluble reunion! Can we anticipate, in the resurrection
of Lazarus, our own happy history? Yes! happier history, for it will not
then be to come forth once more, like him, into a weeping world, to
renew our work and warfare, feeling that restoration to life is only but a
brief reprieve, and that soon again the irrevocable sentence will and must
overtake us! Not like him, going to a home still covered with the drapery of
sorrows—a few transient years and the mournful funeral tragedy to be
repeated—but to enter into the region of endless life—to pass from the dark
chambers of corruption into the peace and glories of our Heavenly Father's
joyous Home, and "so to be forever with the Lord!"
Sometimes it is with dying believers as with Lazarus.
Their Lord, at the approach of death, seems to be absent. He who
gladdened their homes and their hearts in life, is, for some mysterious
reason, away in the hour of dissolution; their spirits are depressed; their
faith languishes; they are ready to say, "Where is now my God?" But as He
returned to Bethany to awake His sleeping friend, so will it be with all his
true people, on that great day when the arm of death shall be forever
broken. If now united to Him by a living faith—loved by Him as Lazarus was,
and conscious, however imperfectly, of loving Him back in return—we may go
down to our graves, making Job's lofty creed and exclamation our own, "But
as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that he will stand upon the
earth at last. And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God!
I will see Him for myself. Yes, I will see Him with my own eyes. I am
overwhelmed at the thought!"
One remark more. We have listened to the Omnipotent
fiat—"Lazarus, come forth!" We have seen the ear of death rousing at the
summons, and the buried captive goes free! Shall we follow the family group
within the hallowed precincts of the Bethany dwelling? Shall imagination
pour her strange and mysterious queries into the ear of him who has just
come back from that land from whose precincts no traveler returns? He had
been, in a far truer sense than Paul in an after year, in "Paradise." He
must have heard unspeakable and unutterable words, "which it is not possible
for a man to utter." He had looked upon the Sapphire Throne. He had ranged
himself with the adoring ranks. He had strung his harp to the Eternal
Anthem. When, lo! an angel—a "ministering one"—whispers in his ear to hush
his song, and speed himself back again for a little season to the valley
below. Startling mandate! Can we suppose a remonstrance to so strange a
summons? What! to be uncrowned and unglorified!—Just after a few sips of the
heavenly fountain, to be hurried away back again to the Valley of Baca!—to
gather up once more the soiled earthly garments and the pilgrim staff, and
from the pilgrim rest and the victor's palm to encounter the din and dust
and scars of battle! What! just after having wept his final tear, and fought
the last and the most terrible foe, to have his eye again dimmed with
sorrow, and to have the thought before him of breasting a second time the
swellings of Jordan!
"The Lord has need of you," is all the reply. It is
enough! He asks no more! That glorious Redeemer had left a far brighter
throne and heritage for him. Lazarus, come forth! sounds in his old
world-home, where his spirit had soared, and in his beloved Master's words,
on a mightier embassy, he can say—"Lo, I come! I delight to do Your will, O
my God."
Or do other questions involuntarily arise? What was the
nature of his happiness while "absent from the body?" What the scenery of
that bright abode? Had he mingled in the goodly fellowship of prophets? Had
he conversed with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob? Was his spirit
stationary—hovering with a brotherhood of spirits within some holy limit—or,
was he permitted to travel far and near in errands of love and mercy? Had
Bethany been revisited during that mysterious interval? Had he been the
unseen witness of the tears and groans of his anguished sisters?
But hush, too, these vain inquiries. We dare not give
rein to imagination where Inspiration is silent. There is a
designed mystery about the circumstantials of a future state. Its
scenery and locality we know nothing of. It is revealed to us only in its
character. We are permitted to approach its gates, and to read the
surmounting inscription, "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord."
Further we cannot go. Be it ours, like Lazarus, to attain a fitness for
heaven, by becoming more and more like Lazarus' Redeemer!
"We shall be LIKE HIM," is the brief but comprehensive
Bible description of that glorious world. Savior-like here, we shall have
heaven begun on earth, and lying down like Lazarus in the sweet sleep of
death, when our Lord comes, on the great day-dawn of immortality, we shall
be satisfied when we awake in His likeness!