The Resurrection is a unique personal experience; it is by definition the resurrection fo the Christ. Though the resurrection itself is nowhere described in Scriptures it represents the central point of the Christian faith. It marks the division between this age and that age in which even the law of death is broken -where one does not die any more, where all are equal to angels, sons no longer of this world but of that world, of God and of the resurrection: it is a new creation.
To become someone else is to extinguish one’s self – in effect to die. It is in this sense that God died for man.
He was in the form of God … but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men.(Phil. 2: 6-7).
God became man that man may become God.
I lay down my life, to receive it back again. No one has robbed me of it; I am laying it down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down, and I have the right to receive it back again.
(John 10: 17-18)
After the Resurrection, man reads back into the ancient Scriptures intimations and foreshadowings of the truth as he experienced it.
In the role of the book it is written of me.
(Ps. 40:7)
Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?
(2 Cor. 13:5)
Christ could not “emerge” from the man in whom he did not exist.
They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him … for as yet they did not know (i.e. understand) the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.
(John 20: 2, 9)
One of the men at the tomb found “The Babe”, the sign of the supernatural birth “but him they did not see” (Luke 24:24), the man who was supernaturally born. He is risen! he is born anew he said:
but these words seemed to the others an idle tale, and they did not believe them.
(Luke 24: 11)
To be raised is to “bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor. 15:49). There is no loss of identity but there is a radical discontinuity of form.
He will change our lowly body to be like (lit. of one form with) his glorious body
(Phil. 3:20-21)
God’s primal wish “Let us make man in our image” is maturing to its appointed hour. And,
It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority.
(Acts 1:7)
The vision has its own appointed hour;
it ripens, it will flower;
if it be long, then wait,
for it is sure, and it will not be late.
(Habakkuk 2:3)
Israel’s sacred history, as it is recorded in the Old Testament, is a completely prophetic history which God brings to climax and fulfillment in Jesus Christ in you.
The Lords of hosts has sworn:
As I have planned,
so shall it be,
and as I have purposed,
so shall it stand.
(Isaiah 14:24)
The promises of God, so long cherished as buds upon the tree of his unfolding purpose, will burst into flower – in four mighty acts – in Christ in you. The full force of this truth may be missed because you are not conscious of any sudden break with the past. A new thing has happened. You are born anew.
Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion.
(1 Timothy 3:16)
Everything written in the Scriptures about Jesus Christ is written about Man.
And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him
(Luke 23:33)
The “rock-hewn tomb, where no one had ever been laid.” (Luke 23:53) is the skull of man.
And
if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
(Rom. 6:5)
I have related my own experience that you may know the truth concerning the Christian mystery – the message of salvation as I myself have experienced it.
The Divine image is unveiled in this series of supernatural events which evoke the response of awe and wonder. Personal experience must seal the truth of Scripture.
God is buried in the skull of man. His name is I AM. He will awaken in the skull of man. He will emerge from the skull of man and be born anew. God became man that man may become God.
Jesus Christ is the true identity of every man.
And now, go write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come as a witness for ever.
(Isaiah 30:8)
The Bible quotations in “HE BREAKS THE SHELL” are from the King James, Revised Standard Versions, the NEW English Bible and Moffatts.
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