Picture above: Entwined: The human remains found by archaeologists in
northern
The find
was unearthed by experts digging at a Neolithic site at a less than romantic
industrial estate. Scientists are to
examine the skeletons to try to establish how old they were when they died and
how long they have been buried.
One theory being examined
is that the man was killed and the woman then sacrificed so that his soul would
be accompanied in the after life.
Its
possible, said Elena Menotti,
who lead the dig at Valdaro near
From an
initial examination they appear young as their teeth are not worn down but we
have sent the remains to a laboratory to establish their age at the time of
death.
They are
face to face and their arms and legs entwined and are really hugging
An initial
examination of the couple dubbed the Lovers of Valdaro
revealed that the man (on the left in the picture) has an arrow in his spinal
column while the woman has an arrow in her side
(Daily Mail,
Wednesday, February 7, 2007.)
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OUR RESURRECTION BODY
By D. M. Panton, B.A.
1. - THE SAME
BODY
Our Lord reveals the exact nature of the resurrection
body. He does not quiet the Apostles
fears by saying that there is no spirit-world; or that no apparition can
appear; or that a spirit is necessarily invisible; or that a deceptive spirit
cannot appear among Apostles in the very heart of the Church.* What He does say is:- Handle Me, and see for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, AS
YE SEE ME HAVE (Luke 24: 39):
that is, feel My flesh ; and press it, so as to detect the bones
beneath. A spirit, He says who made all
spirits, is fleshless and boneless; and it is Luke, the physician, who records
this anatomy beyond the tomb. It is
exceedingly remarkable that in Ezekiels detailed analysis of what resurrection
isI will lay sinews upon you [the naked, bones], and will
bring up flesh upon you, and
cover you with skin (Ezek. 37: 6) -
there is no mention whatever of blood.**
[* To say (with the Modernist and the Spiritualist) that
resurrection is the liberating of the spirit from the body at the moment of
death, is completely disproved by the fact that Christ rose on the third
day seventy-two hours after He had given up the ghost [spirit].
** Nothing would have impressed upon
Jews more forcibly the transfiguration of Christs body than the verbal
omission of the element of blood, which was for them the symbol and seat of
corruptible life (Westcott). So believers are united, not to His flesh and
blood, but to His flesh and bones (Eph. 5: 30).
This is the key to the text on which the
Modernist supremely rests. Flesh and
bones - for that is resurrection can enter the
Our Lords words
are fearfully important. They establish
three facts: first, that resurrection is not the return of the dead spirit, or
ghost, but a complete restoration of the man who died - spirit, soul, and body;
secondly, that our Lord Himself now possesses, and will possess for ever, a
body of flesh and bones ; thirdly, that so much critically turns upon this fact
that He is more anxious than anyone else in the universe that we should know
it, and understand it, and so gave the longest recorded interview
after the resurrection to establishing this point alone. The
fact is most solemn; for it means that the body that sinned will be the body
that is judged. The eyes that lusted,
the mouth that betrayed, the hand that forged, the feet that trampled its
enemys face into gore - that body is coming again. A new body will not be punished for sins it
never did; nor can the old body escape the punishment it deserves. A mouth can be for praise that is not for
food, and hands for service, that are not for labour. The crown of thorns was no figure, no
phantom, and neither will be the many diadems.
2. - A CHANGED
BODY
The Holy Spirit is a dove that flies through Scripture and
through nature on two wings. Truth is
often a balance of opposites. Our Lords
Body in the Upper Room - at first, in its new functions and powers,
unrecognized, yet very soon, from its surviving scars, absolutely identified -
is the prophecy, though not exactly the model (for He never corrupted) of the
double entity which is resurrection. Who shall change this body of our humiliation - not
exchange it, much less annihilate it, but pass it under a profound
transformation that it may be conformed to the body
of His glory (Phil. 3: 21). Scylla and Charybdis
are rocks on either hand which the [Holy] Spirit avoids: one, that the risen body is the
exact corpse that was buried; and the other, that it is another body
altogether: he who steers too clear of Scylla founders on Charybdis. Christs
[resurrected]
body is the prophecy of ours.
Now Paul, under the guidance of the [Holy] Spirit, has seized on an analogy in nature which
reveals the ground-plan of God. The seed
we sow answers the question put to the Apostle: With
what manner of body do they come? For
what happens to the seed after burial?
It dissolves; and its husk, its material wrappings, disappear under the
action of the earths moisture and heat; later on, its life-germs, which no
biologists microscope or scalpel has ever disclosed, and which, though buried,
do not perish, simultaneously shoot upward and downward; and lo, something
breaks up forcibly out of the earth as startlingly different as a lily is
unlike its bulb. The husk never rises,
the life-germ never dies;* the husk perishes, the
life-germ comes up infinitely richer, with leaves, calyx, corolla. The giant cedar produces a seed as minute as
that of the smallest wayside weed, out of which its whole vast structure is
evolved. The lily is the very bulb that
was sown, not another; yet the ugly, black, lifeless-looking bulb is replaced
by white and gold: the new and lovely shoot is largely composed of entirely
fresh particles of matter: the breathing leaves and the waxen petals live in
the sunshine and the wind, in another world from that of the bulb.
[* Even life-germs as we know them are among the most
indestructible of all things, flourishing in poisonous and corrosive
substances, and surviving incredible temperatures of heat and cold.]
Therefore, also, in the identity of the seed and the plant
lies a truth of awful significance.
Wheat, in the tomb, does not become barley, or barley change into wheat:
there is no change, no second chance, in the grave: wheat comes up wheat, tares come up
tares: what the seed falls,
that it springs: yet how enormously
different! All the winter the bulb lies
dead, an unsightly root, hidden in the earth: but they that sleep in the dust of the earth shall
awake (Dan. 12: 2), and all that are in the tombs shall come forth (John 5: 28,
29) - in the case of the saints, lillies
springing out of the black earth, with a whiteness with which no fuller on
earth can whiten.*
[* Paul used the word kokkos - grain or berry.
The grain is not the vital part of the seed - (the sperma)
- but the mere carrier of that; while in the process of germination (as the
activity of the dormant powers of the germ are stimulated by atmospheric
oxygen) the bulk of the kokkos undergoes decomposition (it perishes)
in the presence of warmth and moisture, for its material to be used in the
metabolism of the infant plant, from the moment that that begins to send out
its ascending and descending shoots, and until these nascent organs acquire the
functional power of assimilation of food material from the air and the soil
(A. Irving).]
For (in 1 Cor. 15: 42) it is sown
- for the corpse is a seed entrusted to the earth to grow, exactly as a seed
is; we sow, we do not bury in corruption; it is
raised in incorruption: it is
sown in dishonour - physical dishonour, not moral it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness - too weak even to resist the worm
it is raised in power - of a material that will never waste, and never wear: it is sown a natural body - an animal body it is raised a SPIRITUAL
BODY - as truly a body, but
not as animal a body: for there are heavenly bodies - bodies made for heaven
like our Lords, and the bodies of the saints that came out of the tombs (Matt. 27: 52, 53) - and there
are earthly
bodies - bodies made for the earth-life [only]. So, for the heavenly life [also], since this flesh cannot inherit the
3. - A NEW
BODY
We have seen, in the scarred Figure in
the Upper Room, that our body to come is the same body that died: we have seen,
in the magic transformation of the bulb into the lily, that it is a changed
body: now, in the fall of a tent and the substitution of a mansion, we learn
the startling truth that it is a new body.
For we know, says Paul, that if the earthly house - the animal, the earthly body of our tent - the housing of the soul made of skin and hair-cloth be dissolved - for dissolution only, not
destruction, awaits this mortal frame we have a building - more substantial than a tent, and
replacing it: another creation altogether FROM GOD (2
Cor. 5: 1) - no more from the birth of an
earthly mother, nor yet from the tomb; no fragile collapsible tent, but a
marble mansion from God - pure from the hands of the Most High in a fresh
creation. Our present body is also from
God, but mediated through the human; the new body is not from my mother, who
conceived me in sin, and brought me forth in visible frailty; the new body is
the direct, unmarred workmanship of God, sinless, physically perfect, immortal. The new
body is in the heavens: it is nowhere said to be made out of the
dust of the earth. Paul sits weaving his tent-skins, so
easily rent, so perishable; then he looks at the hands that weave - themselves
the fragile tent-skins of the soul; and then he lifts his eyes and sees an
indestructible mansion of the spirit - [i.e., the re-clothed disembodied soul
after its resurrection, (Acts 2: 31)] - not woven
with fingers, which human hands never built, and human hands can never
destroy. There will be no martyrdoms
there. For it is eternal, and in the heavens:
a new, immortal, incorruptible, indissoluble, heaven born residence of the
soul. So therefore we groan, not to get
rid of the body, but to get a better; a body in which prayer will not be a weariness, sin will not be an attraction, disease will not
be a possibility, and death will not be the goal. Literally we are
not willing to divest ourselves [of our fragile tent], but to put on [the indestructible dwelling] over it (Alford);
it is not the stripping off in the charnel-house that we yearn for, but the
robing in the throne-room. We have no
desire, with the Spiritualist, to be a ghost; for to be simply disembodied is,
for humanity, to be unclothed before God, decomposed, incapable of the complex
joys of eternal life. The Holy Spirit
thus banishes for ever the pagan notion that the body is a disgrace, or itself
the source of evil; and the monkish idea which used to address the living body
as this corpse: what we yearn for is a new
body, longing to be clothed upon with our habitation
which is from heaven; not buried under the debris of the collapsible
tent, but, like Enoch or Elijah, transmuted at once into the holy and the
heavenly.
So Paul, in order to adjust together
the many-faceted diamond of resurrection truth, now gives us the master-key in
a single gorgeous phrase:- THAT WHAT IS MORTAL MAY BE
SWALLOWED UP OF LIFE; absorbed and transmuted by glowing, glorious life
in an utter, final, total abolition of death.
Here we get the junction of the two aspects of the truth. In the germinating seed there is a life germ
which survives, yet the great bulk of the plant is new: so what is mortal is not annihilated, nor dropped, but swallowed up, in absorption by the new body from
God. The tomb does not give up a
resuscitated mummy, as the old Egyptians thought; but God
giveth it a body, and to each seed [each corpse] a body of its own. So then
the risen body is the old, and yet it is the new: it is substantially physical,
but it is functionally spiritual: it is not two bodies, but an absorption of
that which issues from the tomb into that which descends out of the
heavens. All science is the advance of
mans mastery over matter, for the purposes of the soul: resurrection is a
final and miraculous mastery of the body, for the purposes of the spirit. Deep down in the bowels of the earth, by a
process no mortal knows, and which, if it could be discovered, would make a
chemist inconceivably wealthy, charcoal turns to diamond: the substance is the
same, yet beyond conception different: the charcoal has been swallowed up of
diamond. The softest of minerals in the bowels of the earth becomes the hardest
and most durable - as well as most valuable - metal known. So also is the resurrection of the dead.
* * *
* * *
*
What
Manner of Man is This?
Jesus Christ was
born in the meanest of circumstances, but the air above was filled with the
hallelujahs of the heavenly host. His
lodging was a cattle pen, but a star drew distinguished visitants from afar to
do Him homage.
His birth was
contrary to the laws of life. His death was contrary to the laws of death. No miracle is so inexplicable as His life and
teaching.
He had no
cornfields of fisheries, but He could spread a table for over five thousand and
have bread and fish to spare. He walked
on the waters and they supported Him.
His crucifixion
was the crime of crimes, but, on Gods side, no lower price than His infinite
agony could have made possible the redemption of His people. When He died, just a few mourned, but a black
crepe was hung over the sun. Though men trembled not for their sins, the earth beneath shook
under the load. All nature honoured Him - [and will honour Him again,
(Rom. 8: 19-21: cf. Isa. ch. 35.)]; sinners alone rejected Him.
Sin never touched
Him. Corruption could not get hold of His body. The
soil that had been reddened with His blood could not claim His dust.
About three years
He preached the Gospel. He wrote no
book, built no meeting house, had no money behind
him. After nearly two thousand years, He
is the one central character of human history, the perpetual theme of all true
preaching, the pivot around which the events of the age revolve, the only Regenerator of human beings.
Was it merely the
Son of Joseph and Mary who crossed the worlds horizon nearly two thousand
years ago? Was it merely human Blood
that was spilled on
What thinking man
can keep from exclaiming My Lord and my God?
- Keith L. Brooks.