On Living Forever* – Sunday, April 06, 1947
There is no compromising with death. We may differ much in our preparedness to meet it but not in our ability to avoid it. And the prospect would be dark indeed except for the event which this day commemorates: the return from death to life of Jesus the Christ, the son of God, the “first-fruits of the resurrection,” by whose triumph over death all mankind are assured a like coming forth from the grave.
This brings us face to face with these uncompromising facts: Either this event as witnessed and recorded in history is true or it is not. Either men are immortal, or they are not. Either we ourselves shall pass through death to life and shall come forth again by resurrection or we shall not. Such issue is not to be set aside or explained away. They are true or they are false. Of course, we are free to believe what we want to believe. It is quite reasonable that men should. be reluctant to accept what they cannot explain, and it is certainly true that no man now living can explain the process of resurrection. But the fact that there are some things the Lord God has not told us would be a miserable excuse for not accepting what He has told us. And who is there among us to explain how life came to be in the first place—and who is there to deny that we live?
There will always be unanswered questions—questions that rise upon questions as hills rise upon hills on an eternal horizon. And if we should have to give up everything that men cannot explain, we should have to give up much indeed, including life itself. But it is fortunate that neither truth nor God is limited by man’s understanding. If they were, we might expect nature and the universe to be in the same chaos as are man’s own affairs. Fortunately, they are not. That we should live forever is surely no greater miracle than that we should live at all, for the same God who gave us life here, has also given us life hereafter—us, and all men, and all those we love and cherish. And so, we accept this day in recognition of the reality that if a man die, he shall rise again. “Believest thou this? . . . Yea, Lord: I believe . . .”1
*Revised.
1(John 1.26 and 27).
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, April 6, 1947. 11:30 a.m., to 12:00 noon, EST. Copyright 1947.
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April 06, 1947
Broadcast Number 0,920