Vol. VI
No. 1 Jan. 14, 2007
Preaching
from Beyond the Grave
Written
by Christopher Mentzer and Ben Franklin
As we begin another
year, I wonder what it will take to convert people to the Lord. Sometimes I look at society and think that maybe
God himself should have to actually come down just to get people’s attention. Course if that were to happen, we’d get more
that we’d expect. Other people would
want their relatives who’ve died to come back from the dead and tell them to
change their lives before it’s too late.
However, this is not possible either.
Gospel preacher Ben Franklin had this to say in regards to speaking from
the grave:
“The very idea of our returning from the dead and converting persons who could not be converted by all the divine testimonies of Moses and the prophets, Jesus and the apostles, is supremely ridiculous. It is taking the position that departed human spirits could achieve more in turning sinners to God and saving them, than Moses and the prophets, and Jesus and the apostles. This is clothed with an affrontery, an arrogance, and absurdity almost unequaled. A few "table-tippers," "spirit-rappers," "spirit-mediums," or, in other words, persons possessed by unclean spirits, assuming to convince people who could not be convinced by either the mediator of the first, or the Mediator of the second covenant, Moses or Jesus, the prophets or apostles, is certainly the climax of absurdity! Then the convinced people, under this new system of mediation, spirit-mediation, human spirit-meditation, who could not be convinced by the divine mediation of him who was with God, and who was God; in whom dwells all the fullness of the Deity bodily, what a set of convinced people they are! What do they believe, now that they are convinced? They believe nothing, and are nothing but wandering stars, raging waves of the sea, clouds without rain, unstable souls--mere subjects of duplicity. They have not a redeeming quality, not an element to commend them or their teaching to a soul of our race. They have despised, rejected, and turned away from the Mediator of the New Testament, and are now seeking the mediation of human spirits of the dead! How transcendently ridiculous and absurd! This is only equaled by King Saul, turning away from the commandment of God, and seeking light from "the woman of Endor."
Paul says: "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Who is this "we" that has our earthly house of the tabernacle"--or of the body, which is the meaning of it--and who has "a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens?" See 2 Cor. v: 1. Is not this the being, the personality? "For," says the apostle, "in this we groan, longing to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: seeing that we should be found clothed, not naked." The person or the "we" in the tabernacle, is not the tabernacle or the body, but the tenant in the body. He proceeds: "Now he who has wrought us for this very thing is God, who also gave to us the earnest of the Spirit. Being, therefore, always confident, and knowing that while at home in the body we are absent from the Lord, (for we walk by faith, not by sight,) we are confident, and are well pleased rather to leave our home in the body, and to be at home with the Lord." "We," the person, the being, may be "at home in the body," or "may leave our home in the body, and be at home with the Lord;" or, as it is in the common version, present with the Lord. When we die, we leave home in the body; are absent from the body, and at home, or present with the Lord.”
~The Gospel Preacher (1869)
In
Matt. 12: 39 Jesus said, “An evil and
adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there
shall no sign be given it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.” God’s word is the only proof a person needs
to understand what must be done in order to go to heaven.