Third, we are to remember the resurrection because so long as we remember it, we will always have a scriptural Gospel. This means that our faith will not be a novelty. Instead, we will have a faith linked—as all true faith must be linked—to God’s great and eternal purposes in human history.
This truth was of great importance to the early preachers of the Gospel, for they were proud of the antiquity of the faith and commended it partially on that ground to their contemporaries. Jesus taught that all that happened to Him happened because it was foretold in the Scriptures. After His resurrection, for instance, we read that Jesus opened “their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, and said unto them, ‘Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day’” (Luke 24:45-46).
Paul later wrote that he delivered to the Corinthians that Gospel which he had first received, “that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (I Cor. 15:3-4). Peter preached that David had written of Christ’s resurrection: “Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt thou allow thine Holy One to see corruption” (Acts 2:27; see Ps. 16:10). Others of the early preachers did likewise. These men were conscious of the fact that what they had been called upon to proclaim was eternal. It was not a fad. It was no novelty. Instead, it was the overriding theme of the universe. It was that which had been proclaimed from before the beginning of the world and would be proclaimed to the end.
We preach no novelty. We preach no fads. America is filled with fads. Americans are idealistic, but the difficulty lies in the fact that their idealism lasts for so short a time. Every year the theme of the crusade changes. Yesterday’s burning issue is forgotten and another takes its place. Aren’t you glad that our faith is not like that, that it is not so ephemeral? Our Gospel is not something that man dreamed up in the twentieth century. It is God’s great plan, and has been known in all ages by men who know Him.
We are part of that great company. We are one with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with David the king, Isaiah the prophet and all the other prophets, with James and Peter and John, with the early church fathers, the later church fathers, the Reformers—Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and others—and with those from our own time also. We will remember this if we remember Christ’s resurrection.
