ied trusting in His promise He either did not have the
power or did not care to keep His promise.

Such a conclusion in either member of the proposition is impossible.
It is impossible, for no such postulate as inability or
faithlessness can be laid against the Son of God.

By His own immortality as the first-fruits of them that slept, as
the ordained forerunner and sample of all those whom He has redeemed
He is, and in the nature of things, under bonds to give immortality
to each, to raise the dead and transfigure the living in His
likeness.

As the dead can be raised and the living changed only when He is
personally present then He must come to this world again to give
that immortality of which seated on yonder throne in heaven He is
the promise and the pledge.

He made this promise by the grave of Lazarus.

Standing there with His cheeks wet with tears of sorrow over the one
He loved and in profound sympathy with the grief-stricken sisters,
groaning in Himself, not merely as one who was under the spell of
sorrow and heartache, but full of "indignant protest" (this is the
meaning of the word "to groan") against the havoc of death as the
work of that being whom we so familiarly call "Devil," without
stopping to measure his dignity, malignity and power, He said:

"I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live:

And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."

Wondrous, gracious, far reaching and full of measureless comfort is
the promise, but nine out of ten who repeat it seem never to have
comprehended the full import of it.

For this is what He meant.

Listen to it as I quote it in its fullness of intent:

"I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though
he were dead, yet--when I come again--shall he live:

And whosoever liveth and believeth in me--when I come again--shall
never die."

Nor is this a fictional fancy of mine, but the direct declaration of
the Holy Spirit to the Church speaking through the Apostle Paul; for
he says:

"Behold, I shew you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall
all be changed,

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and
we shall be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must
put on immortality.

So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruptio