The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-08-15
BIBLE STUDIES OF BROOKLYN
 TABERNACLE
By PAsToR RUSSELL

24 s5-4s.
 | And He took the damsel by the hand and said unto her, Talitha cumi. which Is, being interpreted. Damsel I say unto thee, arise."-Ys. Al.
 When Jesus and the Apostles returned to the vicinity of Capernaum, the peo- pie were on the lookout for them, es- pecially Jairus. one of the rulers of the synagogue He came and fell al Jesus
 feet In great distress. He besousht Him to come and heal his little daughter who lay at the point of death. As they went to the house of Jairus the multitude followed and .thronged and delayed the procession. Meantime q messenger ar rived from Jairus' house. telling that the child was dead. But Jesus said 10 the bereayed father, Be not afraid, only believe"
 The multitude was left, and only three of the Apostles, Peter James and John, went on with Jesus and Jairus When they arrived they beheld A great tumult connected with the customary weeping and wailing. Jesus astonished the mourn- CTS by telling them not to weep, that the
 child was not dead, but asleep. What
 did He mean? Did the Great Teacher prevaricate? He spoke in the same man.
 ner in respect to His friend Lazarus, say 1 ing, Lazarus sleepeth' and then later
 He explained that he was dead. How shall we understand these words? What were the facts? What was the truth in the case?
 "All Live Unto Him"
 | ia in our Lords own words to the Sadducees, class who denied that there would be any resurrection of the dead or any fu
 ture life (Luke xx, 27-3s). The Sadducees asked Jesus question about woman who had had seven husbands, and who died after them all They thought to make the teachings of Jesus respecting the resurrection of the dead look ridicu- lous by this question, but our Lord an- swered, You do err, not understanding the scriptures, nor the power of God | Jesus proceeded to give them a proof that the dead are not dead in the sense that the brute beasts are dead, because | God in His plan has made an arrange | ment for the resurrection of humanity | from the death state, whereas He has made no arrangement for the resurrec- ! ton of the brute beasts. The provision | for mans resurrection was that God would provide Redeemer to satisfy the claims of divine justice, and establish ing His Messanic Kingdom, would release | all mankind from the power of death. | From this standpoint, Gods standpoint, no human being is dead. Their awaken | lug will be accomplished by Messiahs s | kingdom and tall will then have fullest opportunity of coming to knowledge of Gods character and His will respecting | them; and all will be assisted back to | l. .4xl hoe they may thus reach again the perfection of life lost by disobedience. It is in view | of this divine intention, the awakening of the dead, that Jesus spoke of death a s | sleep" a period of rest, of quiet, of inconsistencies.
 | This same thought respecting the sleep | of the dead prevails throughout the Bi- be. We read that Abraham slept with his fathers;" St. stephen, stoned to death, fell asleep (Acts vii, 60 St Paul de- I clared that the church sleep" but that some of its members. alive in the end of the age, at the second coming of Christ, would not need to sleep but instead would be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.' q Corinthians XIV, 52). Again he mentions all that sleep in Jesus" Figuratively, both good and bad, are thus asleep in Jesus, because all of I Gods provision for their awakening Is in and through Jesus work of redemption and restitution.--Actsi i'll, 1921.
 l Looking into the Bible for an answer as | to where they sleep we hear the inspired worlds They that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake" Daniel xii, 2D l An, that is it,-"Dust to dust" as God | said in the beginning to Father Adam, upon whom the sentence fell and through whom inherit our share: Cursed is the earth for thy sake thorns and thstles shall it bring forth unto thee s tst tba from whence thou vast taken" Genesis | iii, 17-19) Thus God has provided for Adam and his family a redemption from | the power of death and deliverance from the tomb, by the power of the re- surrection; and it is Jesus who declared. | q am the resurrection and the life" The | church will be the first from humanity to receive eternal life, and they will be granted share with Jesus in His resur- rection- to glory, honor and immortality as His bride, His jont-heir, under His headship. Then, as said the Apostle, will come the world of mankind, "every man in his own order"
 They Laughed at Him
 Jesus put the statement about the maids being asleep in forceful way. in | order to impress the great lesson that | death does not end al even though 1t appears so to do, The awakening which He was about to perform was to be a lesson and illustration of divine power, which will be exercised toward the en- tire race under the Messanic kingdom. Thus, as He declared, All that are in
 their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Men. and come forth" This state
 ment applies not merely to the saintly Ichurch, who will come forth first, shar- |ers in the first resurrection and whose
 trial and testing will be already past, and whom divine approval will have sealed. The promise of coming forth applies also to the remainder of mankind
 The world will come forth, Jesus said, that they may have resurrection or raising up. up, up to perfection, to all