Arizona republican., 1908-04-20
THE CHURCHES
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

! FRS PHESBI BRIAN CHURCH. 1 Sunday morning the pastor, Rev Henry Martyr Campbell, preached ! from the text, But now is Christ risen | from the dead, and become the first ! fruits of them that slept" I. Cor. 15:20
 Following is an abstract from the ser | mon:
 ''Of all the men who wrote the New 1 Testament, none understood bette.
 what he was saying than did the Apos- i tie Paul. Scarcely is. there an impor- tart truth to which he does not refer directly or indirectly. and I am certain
 that there is not a single truth, so far as I am able to read the Word of God.
 that he makes more of than that the Lord Jesus Christ has risen from the grave. It is always present in a great CT or less degree in his mind and in his heart. Paul distinctly had in mind the 1 thought of victory over death, decay. and the grave. His words are colored by the idea of the new life springing
 around him at the Easter time when
 he says, and become the first fruits of them that slept"
 What establishes the fact of Christs
 resurrection? It might seem out of
 place to argue about the resurrection of Jesus but for the fact that there are those who still doubt. The first argu-
 ment that 1 shall use to prove that Christ burst the bands of death is the
 time of the writing of this Epistle
 This letter to the Corinthians was written not more than twenty-five or thirty years after the resurrection of Christ. At that time the Christian church believed in the resurrection.
 Now put that fact side by side with this other fact that in those twenty five or thirty years the world had been full of enemies of Christ and the church, and you have a strong proof of the truth of the belief. Then, the Apostle Paul himself believed it. He had been a disbeliever, an enemy, d prosecutor, and yet before he has gone out of the world, we have him placing on record the fact that he believes as certainly in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ as he believes that there was a Christ at all. Another proof of Christs resurrection is his ap- pearance to those who knew him be- fore. These witnesses were not pre- judicial in favor of the fact. They thought Him dead; they were amazed at His appearance; they did not expect Him; they were unbiased witnesses. Then He appeared at least ten times and not only to one or two. but on one occasion to over five hundred persons at once. Another proof of Christ's resurrection is the change that it made in the disciples to be convinced of it. In the garden, they all forsook Him and fled; Peter followed afar off and soon entered his threefold denial of his Master. See them on the day of Pentecost, as bold as lions, and you can not point to a line in history that shows that Peter was ever afterwards afraid to stand up for Christ. The very existence of the church proves the res urrection. If Christ has not risen, the Church of Christ is founded upon lie Nothing is harder to believe than an absurdity. and I take the liberty to say that it is absolutely absurd to believe that the church is founded on lie. An other proof is that Christ was buried. If the body of Christ was still in the grave, how could the disciples have been so foolish as to utter the state ment that He was risen when His body COulu HdNt Dttl lO falsity of it? If Christs enemies had His body, why did they not produce it? Did his friends have it? If so, they were the basest of deceivers and we know that is completely out of har- mony with the rest of their lives. There is not d fact in history that can be demonstrated with stronger evidence than the fact of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ Christianity has never come forth from an unbroken grave.
 What does the fact of Christ's res. urrection establish? First of all that Christ has power over brute force. They crucified Him and laid Him in the grave, but when He burst the bands of death, how emphatically did he present the fact that He has power over brute force. Then the fact of His resurrection establishes the truth of Christs power over the nations of the world. When the combined power of the Jews and Romans had crucified our Lord they said: Now that we have disposed of this pestilent fellow, the nations can have peace" but the seal is broken, the stone is rolled away, and Christ comes forth and declares Himself the King of the Nations.