Deuteronomy 31:16

Acts 7:60

Verse 60. And he kneeled down. This seems to have been a voluntary kneeling; a placing himself in this position for the purpose of prayer, choosing to die in this attitude.

Lord. That is, Lord Jesus. Acts 1:24.

Lay not, etc. Forgive them. This passage strikingly resembles the dying prayer of the Lord Jesus, Lk 23:34. Nothing but the Christian religion will enable a man to utter this passage in his dying moments.

He fell asleep. This is the usual mode of expressing the death of saints in the Bible. It is an expression indicating

(1.) the peacefulness of their death, compared with the alarm of sinners;

(2.) the hope of a resurrection--as we retire to sleep with the hope of again awaking to the duties and enjoyments of life. See Jn 11:11,12; 1Cor 11:30, 15:51, 1Thes 4:14, 5:10, Mt 9:24.

In view of the death of this first Christian martyr, we may remark,

(1.) That it is right to address to the Lord Jesus the language of prayer.

(2.) It is peculiarly proper to do it in afflictions, and in the prospect of death, Heb 4:15.

(3.) Sustaining grace will be derived in trials chiefly from a view of the Lord Jesus. If we can look to him as our Saviour, see him to be exalted to deliver us, and truly commit our souls to him, we shall find the grace which we shall need in our afflictions.

(4.) We should have such confidence in him, as to enable us to commit ourselves to him at any time. To do this, we should live a life of faith. In health, and youth, and strength, we should seek him as our first and best Friend.

(5.) While we are in health, we should prepare to die. What an unfit place for preparation for death would have been the situation of Stephen! How impossible then would it have been to have made preparation! Yet the dying bed is often a place as unfit to prepare as were the circumstances of Stephen.--When racked with pain; when faint and feeble; when the mind is indisposed to thought, or when it raves in the wildness of delirium, what an unfit place is this to prepare to die! I have seen many dying beds; I have seen many in all stages of their last sickness; but never have I yet seen a dying bed which seemed to me to be a proper place to make preparation for eternity.

(6.) How peaceful and calm is a death like that of Stephen, when compared with the alarms and anguish of a sinner! One moment of such peace, in that trying time, is better than all the pleasures and honours which the world can bestow. And to obtain such peace, the dying sinner would be willing to give all the wealth of the Indies, and all the crowns of the earth. So may I die--and so may all my readers--enabled, like this dying martyr, to commit my de- parting spirit to the sure keeping of the great Redeemer! When we take a parting view of the world; when our eyes shall be turned for the last time to take a look of friends and relatives; and when the darkness of death shall begin to come around us, then may we be enabled to cast the eye of faith to the heavens, and say, "Lord Jesus, receive our spirits;" and thus fall asleep, peaceful in death, in the hope of the resurrection of the just.

(b) "lay not this sin" Mt 5:44, Lk 23:34

1 Corinthians 15:18

Verse 18. Then they also, etc. This verse contains a statement of another consequence which must follow from the denial of the resurrection-that all Christians who had died had faded of salvation, and were destroyed.

Which are fallen asleep in Christ. Which have died as Christians. 1Cor 15:6; 1Thes 4:15.

Are perished. Are destroyed; are not saved. They hoped to have been saved by the merits of the Lord Jesus; they trusted to a risen Saviour, and fixed all their hopes of heaven there; but if he did not rise, of course the whole system was delusion, and they have failed of heaven, and been destroyed. Their bodies lie in the grave, and return to their native dust without the prospect of a resurrection, and their souls axe destroyed. The argument here is mainly an appeal to their feelings: "Can you believe it possible that the good men who have believed in tile Lord Jesus are destroyed? Can you believe that your best friends, your kindred, and your fellow Christians who have died, have gone down to perdition? Can you believe that they will sink to woe with the impenitent, and the polluted, and abandoned? If you cannot, then it must follow that they are saved. And then it will follow that you cannot embrace a doctrine which involves this consequence." And this argument is a sound one still. There are multitudes who are made good men by the gospel. They are holy, humble, self-denying, and prayerful friends of God. They have become such by the belief of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Can it be believed that they will be destroyed? That they will perish with the profane, and licentious, and unprincipled . That they will go down to dwell with the polluted and the wicked? "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Gen 18:25. If it cannot be so believed, then they will be saved; and if saved, it follows that the system is true which saves them, and, of course, that the Lord Jesus rose from the dead. We may remark here, that a denim of the truth of Christianity involves the belief that its friends will perish with others; that all their hopes are vain; and that their expectations are delusive. He, therefore, who becomes an infidel, believes that his pious friends--his sainted father, his holy mother, his lovely Christian sister or child--are deluded and deceived; that they will sink down to the grave to rise no more; that their hopes of heaven will all vanish, and that they will be destroyed with the profane, the impure, and the sensual. And if infidelity demands this faith of its votaries, it is a system which strikes at the very happiness of social life, and at all our convictions of what is true and right. It is a system that is withering and blighting to the best hopes of men. Can it be believed that God will destroy those who are living to his honour; who are pure in heart, and lovely in life, and who have been made such by the Christian religion? If it cannot, then every man knows that Christianity is not false, and that infidelity IS NOT TRUE.

1 Corinthians 15:51

Verse 51. Behold, I shew you. This commences the third subject of inquiry in the chapter--the question, what will become of those who are alive when the Lord Jesus shall return to raise the dead? This was an obvious inquiry, and the answer was, perhaps, supposed to be difficult. Paul answers it directly, and says that they will undergo an instantaneous change, which will make them like the dead that shall be raised.

A mystery. On the meaning of this word, 1Cor 2:7. The word here does not mean anything which was in its nature unintelligible, but that which to them had been hitherto unknown. "I now communicate to you a truth which has not been brought into the discussion, and in regard to which no communication has been made to you." On this subject there had been no revelation. Though the Pharisees held that the dead would rise, yet they do not seem to have made any statement in regard to the living who should remain when the dead should rise. Nor, perhaps, had the subject occupied the attention of the apostles; nor had there been any direct communication on it from the Lord Jesus himself. Paul then here says, that he was about to communicate a great truth, which till then had been unknown, and to resolve a great inquiry on which there had as yet been no revelation.

We shall not all sleep. We Christians; grouping all together who then lived and should live afterwards, for his discussion has relation to them all. The following remarks may, perhaps, remove some of the difficulty which attends the interpretation of this passage. The objection which is made to it is, that Paul expected to live until the Lord Jesus should return; that he, therefore, expected that the world would soon end, and that in this he was mistaken, and could not be inspired. To this we may reply:

(1.) He is speaking of Christians as such--of the whole church that had been redeemed--of the entire mass that should enter heaven; and he groups them all together, and connects himself with them, and says, "We shall not die; we Christians, including the whole church, shall not all die," etc. That he did not refer only to those whom he was then addressing, is apparent from the whole discussion. The argument relates to Christians--to the church at large; and the affirmation here has reference to that church, considered as one church, that was to be raised up on the last day.

(2.) That Paul did not expect that the Lord Jesus would soon come, and that the world would soon come to an end, is apparent from a similar place in the epistle to the Thessalonians. In 1Thes 4:15, he uses language remarkably similar to that which is here used: "We which are alive, and remain unto the coming of the Lord," etc. This language was interpreted by the Thessalonians, as teaching that the world would soon come to an end, and the effect had been to produce a state of alarm. Paul was therefore at special pains to show, in his second epistle to them, that he did not mean any such thing. He showed them (2Thes 2) that the end of the world was not near; that very important events were to occur before the world would come to an end; and that his language did not imply any expectation on his part that the world would soon terminate, or that the Lord Jesus would soon come.

(3.) Parallel expressions occur in the other writers of the New Testament, and with a similar signification. Thus, John (1Jn 2:18) says, "It is the last time." Comp. Heb 1:2. But the meaning of this is not that the world would soon come to an end. The prophets spoke of a period which they called "the last days," (Isa 2:2, Mic 4:1; in Hebrew, "the after days,") as the period in which the Messiah would live and reign. By it they meant the dispensation which should be the last; that under which the world would close; the reign of the Messiah, which would be the last economy of human things. But it did not follow that this was to be a short period; or that it might not be longer than any one of the former, or than all the former put together. This was that which John spoke of as the last time.

(4.) I do not know that the proper doctrine of inspiration suffers, if we admit that the apostles were ignorant of the exact time when the world would close; or even that in regard to the precise period when that would take place, they might be in error. The following considerations may be suggested on this subject, showing that the claim to inspiration did not extend to the knowledge of this fact.

(a.) That they were not omniscient; and there is no more absurdity in supposing that they were ignorant on this subject than in regard to any other.

(b.) Inspiration extended to the order of future events, and not to the times. There is in the Scriptures no statement of the time when the world would close. Future events were made to pass before the minds of the prophets, as in a landscape. The order of the images may be distinctly marked, but the times may not be designated. And even events which may occur in fact at distant periods, may in vision appear to be near each other; as in a landscape, objects which are in fact separated by distant intervals, like the ridges of a mountain, may appear to lie close to each other.

(c.) The Saviour expressly said, that it was not designed that they should know when future events would occur. Thus, after his ascension, in answer to an inquiry whether he then would restore the kingdom to Israel, he said, (Acts 1:7,) "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power." Acts 1:7.

(d.) The Saviour said, that even he himself, as man, was ignorant in regard to the exact time in which future events would occur. "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father," Mk 13:32.

(e.) The apostles were in fact ignorant, and mistaken in regard to, at least, the time of the occurrence of one future event, the death of John; Jn 21:23. There is, therefore, no departure from the proper doctrine of inspiration, in supposing that the apostles were not inspired on these subjects, and that they might be ignorant like others. The proper order of events they state truly and exactly; the exact time God did not, for wise reasons, intend to make known.

Shall not all sleep. Shall not all die. 1Cor 11:30.

But we shall all be changed. There is considerable variety in the reading of this passage. The Vulgate reads it, "We shall all indeed rise, but we shall not all be changed." Some Greek mss. read it, "We shall all sleep, but we shall not all be changed." Others, as the Vulgate, "We shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed." But the present Greek text contains, doubtless, the true reading; and the sense is, that all who are alive at the coming of the Lord Jesus shall undergo such a change as to fit them for their new abode in heaven; or such as shall make them like those who shall be raised from the dead. This change will be instantaneous, (1Cor 15:52,) for it is evident that God can as easily change the living as he can raise the dead; and as the affairs of the world will then have come to an end, there will be no necessity that those who are then alive should be removed by death; nor would it be proper that they should go down to lie any time in the grave. The ordinary laws, therefore, by which men are removed to eternity, will not operate in regard to them, and they will be removed at once to their new abode.

(++) "mystery" "secret" (d) "We shall not all sleep" 1Thes 4:15-17
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