Thursday, April 29, 2021

Job's Q & A on State of the Dead

"If the grave is such a place, and if death is a sleep, is it, as atheism and infidelity assert, an eternal sleep? 
 
Job puts the question direct:  
Q: If a man die shall he live again? 
This is the very question at issue; and he answers it
in the language that immediately follows; 
A: All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come. Job xiv,14. 
 
Turning to some further testimony of Job's, we read, If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness. 
And where is now my hope? As for my hope, who shall see it? 
If he once went into a state of death, where was his hope? 
If he waited, the grave was to be his house.  
This shows us, plainly enough, 
--- that the waiting to which he refers, is waiting in the grave; 
--- and that the change that is to follow is the change that takes place from that condition. 
 
Q: And what is that change? 
A: Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee; thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands. 
That is it. The Lord will call him from his lowly resting-place. 
Man, the noblest work of God, will not be forgotten and left to perish.  
The Lord will have a desire to the work of his hands. 
The voice of the archangel and the trump of God, will be heard, calling them forth, and they will arise at the summons. Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee."
Uriah Smith