Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust!
The stone is rolled away.
Shines from the opened tomb
The light of resurrection's day.
(Ted L. Gibbons)
Through His resurrection, the Saviour Jesus Christ, placed an indelible stamp of divine authority upon all His claims and teachings and thereby fulfilled all that was prophesied of Him (Luke 24:44-46). With His resurrection, the Atonement was complete. This Atonement was performed in three parts:
1. The sanctification of the Garden of Gethsemane;
2. The blood sacrifice of Calvary;
3. The victory over death through the Resurrection.
If there was no resurrection, the suffering of the Garden and Calvary would have been in vain for the suffering alone would not have brought about eternal life. If there was no sanctification in the Garden but there was only death and resurrection, all mankind would have been resurrected in corruption and sin, not fit to enter the Kingdom of God. By completing the act of Atonement through His victory over the grave, Christ not only conquered death for Himself and brought forth His own glorious resurrected body, but in so doing He also brought about a universal resurrection. What is universal, however, is also intensely personal. Consider the fact that Jesus chose to appear as a resurrected being to only one person first, Mary of Magdala, and not to a group of people. "After the other disciples left the empty tomb, 'Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping.' Then, alone in the garden, she was the first mortal to encounter the risen Lord: 'Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him Rabboni; which is to say, Master' (John 20:11,16). It is hard to overstate the significance of this moment to each of us, for each of the faithful followers of Christ will someday have this identical experience: Jesus will call each of us by name, we will meet Him face to face, and we will recognise Him as our Master. This is what is meant by Atonement, to come into the loving presence of the Lord, to have Him know us for our faithfulness, and to know Him for who He is. For this moment, the faithful Saint lives and gives everything" (Breck England, Lesson 27, He Is Not Here, For He Is Risen, Meridian Magazine). In that moment of private audience with the resurrected Christ, Mary must have understood the personal nature of the Atonement, that for her individually Christ had suffered, died and risen again, so that she could have eternal life.
"Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David."
(Isaiah 55:3)
Nothing can help us understand better the 'resurrection for the one' than 'the sure mercies of David'. In his youth, King David, was a man after the Lord's own heart (1 Sam. 13:13-14). David loved the Lord and praised Him through his victories and led Israel in righteousness. In turn the Lord blessed him with a throne and kingdom of power and King David became the symbol of the future throne and kingdom of the Son of David. But David fell and adultery stained his soul and innocent blood dripped from his hands. In sincere remorse and tears he sought forgiveness, which, because of Uriah's murder, was not forthcoming. Despite his heart searing repentance David, with the wicked, will suffer the 'vengeance of eternal fire' until the fullness of time and be resurrected to the telestial glory at the end of the Millenium (D&C 76:105-6, 132:39). "In the doctrinal laws which guaranteed him [David] a resurrection and a lesser degree of eternal reward, are two great truths: (1) That the Holy One of Israel, the Holy one of God, the Son of David, would die and then be resurrected; and (2) that because he burst the bands of death and became the first-fruits of them that slept, all men also would be resurrected, both the righteous and the wicked, including saints who became sinners, as was the case with David the king. These two truths became known as and were called 'the sure mercies of David', meaning that David in his life and death and resurrection was singled out as the symbol to dramatize before the people that their Holy One would be resurrected and that all men would also come forth from the grave" (McConkie, The Promised Messiah, p 272).
God had promised David that Jesus, the Messiah, would come from "the fruit of his loins" (Acts 2:30), meaning the Saviour would be David's direct descendant. The sublime beauty of this arrangement cannot be overlooked: Jesus brings salvation to the ancestor from whom He inherits a mortal body and is born of the "symbol of hope" to be "the hope". David knew and understood this when he wrote 'Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou will not leave my soul in hell...' (Psalms 16:9-10). Isaiah also wrote about "the sure mercies of David" (Isaiah 55:3) which means the principle was known and taught in ancient Israel and Peter and Paul taught this truth in the meridian of time: "And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David" (Acts 13:22-37). Thus David is made the 'witness' and symbol of hope in the power of resurrection. Universally this means, that all will be saved from hell and death, unconditionally. This is salvation. Being saved in the Kingdom of God, however, to enjoy the fruits of exaltation is conditional and dependent on our worthiness.
We likewise, must cultivate this hope of resurrection that will bring us to eternal life. When Ammon recounted to his brethren how merciful God had been to them by snatching them from their 'awful, sinful and polluted state' and had brought them 'over that everlasting gulf of death and misery, even to the salvation of our souls' (Alma 26:17-20) he joyed in this knowledge to the point of exhaustion (Alma 27:17). The people of Ammon, once converted, forsaking their weapons of war and murder, were not afraid to die at the hands of their brethren the Lamanites because they 'never did look upon death with any degree of terror, for their hope and views of Christ and the resurrection; therefore, death was swallowed up to them by the victory of Christ over it' (Alma 27:28). Moroni spoke extensively of faith, hope and charity and said that you cannot have faith without hope: "And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise" (Moroni 7:41). What a glorious truth to have hope in when the world has no hope. When many refuse to glimpse life beyond the grave; when so many falsehoods are taught to the children of men; when false beliefs abound and there is no hope of eternal and continuing associations with those we love. But in Christ all this is made possible through the power of His glorious resurrection. In Him is our salvation, in Him is our faith, in Him is our hope.
Jesus remained on earth for 40 days following His resurrection to teach and instruct those He had placed in authority over His Church. Many were witnesses of His resurrection for He came to them, spoke to them, ate with them. Mary Magdalene who saw Him first; other women who came to anoint His body, Mary the mother of Joses, Salome, the mother of James and John, Joanna and others who were not named; two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Cleopas and another, possibly Luke, as he is who records the event (McConkie, The Promised Messiah, p 279); Peter and Thomas and the rest of the Apostles; Paul on the Damascus road (Acts 9:1-9); John as he suffered banishment on Patmos; 2,500 Nephites saw him, heard him and bore record 'every man for himself' (3 Nephi 17:35); and in our day He was seen by Joseph Smith and others, "not a few. Of some of these appearances we have record; others are sealed in secrecy in the hearts of the recipients'. All this is scarcely the beginning of His resurrected ministry among men. Every faithful member of His Church - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints - has power, through righteousness, to see His face and become a special witness of His holy name in this personal sense, while he or she yet dwells in mortality (D&C 67:10-14; 93:1; 107:18-19)" (McConkie, The Promised Messiah, p 281). The Saviour desires to encircle us in the arms of His love, to hold us close, to receive us into His bosom, and when we forsake our sins He has promised "the veil shall be rent and you shall see me and know that I am" (D&C 67:10). Each one of us can be a witness of His resurrected glory as we journey towards our own immortality through Him who has rescued us from the sting of death and won the victory over the grave.
"The ever-enlarging ocean of true believers will continue to increase until the knowledge of God shall cover the earth 'as the waters cover the sea' (Isa 11:9), until all men know, as this disciple knows, that Jesus is Lord of all, and that He rose from the dead, as all men shall. There is no fact of revealed religion more surely established than the fact of resurrection. And there is no Messianic utterance more certainly known than that the great Jehovah, Israel's Deliverer and Saviour, is the Messiah who came and who has now risen from the grave" (McConkie, The Promised Messiah, p. 283).
"The Light, the Life, the Way"
"I am with you always, even unto the end of the world" (Matt 28:20)
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