John 11 — Paul Ravenhill

Reading John 11 and the Resurrection of Lazarus

The Gospel according to John, St. John, Chapter 11. We should read the whole first part of the chapter, I don't want to take the time to do that. So we'll read the first few verses and then the center of the story.

Chapter 11, then, of John, verse 1, Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.

Therefore his sister sent unto him, unto Jesus, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. Verse 17, Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already. Now Bethany was not into Jerusalem about fifteen furlongs off, and many of the Jews came to Martha and to Mary to comfort them concerning their brother.

Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him, but Mary sat still in the house. Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know that even now whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.

Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus saith unto her, I am the resurrection and the life, he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and he that and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die.

Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world. When she had so said, she went her way and called Mary, her sister, secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee.

As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly and came unto him. Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in the place where Martha met him. The Jews then, which were with her in the house and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth to the grave to weep there.

Then when Mary was come to where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, the Jews also weeping, which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and said, Where have you laid him?

They said unto him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold, how he loved him, and some of them said, Could not this man which opened the eyes of the blind have caused that even this man should not have died?

Jesus therefore again, drowning in himself, cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it, and Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, said unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four days.

Jesus said unto her, I not unto thee, that if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God. Let's stop right there, you know the rest of the story. All scripture is given for our instruction.

The Gospel Stories as Pictures of Christian Life

I think many times we skim over the Gospels as though they were written for our entertainment. The stories are interesting incidents of the life of Jesus, but have no direct application for us. I want to look at this as a picture tonight, a picture of life, a picture of the Church, a picture of the individual.

There are three principal people in this story. John's order is Lazarus, Mary and Martha. Jesus' order is a little bit different, Martha, Mary and Lazarus. I don't want to look at why they are different, let's just say what they are.

As I said, it's a picture of life, three people forming a unit, a family unit in this case. But I like to think of them as three areas of our life. One life, three areas. I suppose we'd better start with Lazarus, because Lazarus is the kind of person we never know quite what to do with.

And your family, they have three kids. The eldest daughter was Mary, the next daughter was Martha, and then a little boy came along. The father wanted to call him Lazarus, but I guess he didn't get his own way.

They call him what they call him, they call him Tom, Thomas. Let me just say this, Lazarus is the same name in the New Testament, the Greek name, equivalent to the Old Testament name of Eleazar, which is very common among the priests, very common in the Old Testament.

Eleazar means, God is my help. Once again, we're looking at this symbolically, we're looking at it allegorically. This is part of the family group, part of life itself. God is my help, represents faith, exercises the headship on earth, not in heaven now.

Once again, this is the earthly order, Jesus' order is different. On earth represents the headship of this family, or let's just say it this way, this human personality which is body, soul and spirit.

Faith is the soul, which ties the body and the spirit together. Let's get the right order, Mary. Mary is the spirit. Mary worshiped. It's noticeable the emphasis in the story, as you read it, Mary says the next verse, that was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, wiped his feet with her hair.

It was the Mary also which sat at Jesus' feet and was rebuked, or whose sister could not understand and whose sister came to the Lord grumbling about her dedicating all her time, all her energy, all her intensity to just do nothing else except sit at Jesus' feet, abide in that position and hear his words.

Mary is the worshiper, represents the spirit. Lazarus represents the soul. Martha represents the body. Martha is work. Once again, I don't know how long ago it must have been, 100 or 150 years when they started doing these.

What do you call those drawings they do in the newspapers? Cartoons. Thank you, thank you. That's a great question. People down in South America still remember, and this happened 21 years ago, when I first went down to South America.

There was a girl about 15 years of age, and she had been up in the States for about a year. She came back and she was giving a testimony. Somewhere in the testimony she wanted to share about something she had read in a book.

She got to a place and she said, oh, and she talked in Spanish with a real English accent, she said, oh, I can't remember, how is that word, book, book, book? Somebody said, libro, and everybody still remembers.

She couldn't remember. She had been away for almost a full year, and she couldn't remember how you say that word, book. Sometimes it seems to me that I'm just about as bad. Anyway, when they start out with cartoons, I think the first thing is they start drawing with these caricatures.

You've seen the drawings from a hundred years ago? Little bodies, big heads, large noses, everything exaggerated. Sometimes it's done in literature, too, and sometimes I think it's done in the Bible. We get Mary there, the only glimpse of her, I'm sure that she had a life apart from the life sitting at Jesus' feet, but the only glimpse we get of her is she's doing that.

Nothing else. That is her whole life, once again, Martha. We get a glimpse of Martha, the only thing she does is work, work, work, work, work. And between the two of them, once again, between the works and the worship, between the spirit and the body, there must be a soul, and faith is the expression of the soul.

There is no life if our body is separated from our spirit, there's no life on this earth, right? If somebody cuts off my head, I'm just about ended, and if the spirit leaves the body, the body leaves the soul, that is the end of it.

This is the, once again, let me just underline this again before we start going on, this is the functioning unit. I don't want to underline it, feel I need to underline it, because we've got such a lopsided church nowadays, we've got such lopsided teaching.

There is no real expression of that which God desires the church to be, or make it personal, your life to be, unless the worship is total, unless there is a total giving of that part of the body which is made for worship to worship.

On the other hand, there is no such thing as a coherent Christian life unless that part of the body which is external works to the limit of its strength. I've said before, most of life is defined through a kind of process of inertia.

We sit there as the days and months and years go by. In young people, they usually get caught up somewhere along the line in a career or marriage or something else. The callings of God, those things which call for a decision, those things which call for a breaking with the past, a stepping out, this is the only life.

Faith as a Life of Continual Obedience

Abram was the father of the faithful. It was not, I've said before, maybe last week or the week before, what didn't just happen, that Abram was called out to walk physically, live in tents, that Isaac lived exactly the same lifestyle, that Jacob lived the same lifestyle.

They had no permanent abiding place. Their life was a continual walk behind the revelation of God, or at least it was meant to be. In Abram's case, it was. The others, of course, Jacob had his comings and goings, but at the end he ended up in obedience, moving from Canaan down to Egypt in obedience to the word of the Lord.

This is the life that God has for all of his children. The Apostle Paul talks about having things and living as though we did not have them. Whatever we have, not only the physical things, but even the spiritual things, we need to hold with our hands wide open.

We'll get into that a little bit further along. That was the situation of the Jews. They closed their hands upon something spiritual, they were caught. Once again, the functioning unit, and you ask the secret of spiritual life, you ask the secret of successful ministry, you ask the secret of being different than this world which is mediocre.

The only way is intensity. This is a prayer meeting tonight. Prayer is not measured by time. Once again, you've heard me say that I used to get so amazed that people would pray four hours, six hours, eight hours, ten hours a day, and anymore I'd say, well, okay, fine, now what do they say, what do they do, where do they get, what does it do?

Prayer is not measured by time, it's measured by intensity. It can be just a heart cry that somehow penetrates beyond a year of normal praying. I think the situation of most people is that those moments of intensity come so few and far between in the journey of life that they are remembered.

I remember five years ago when this happened, I remember ten years ago, I remember three, four, five times in a lifetime. It's not supposed to be that way. God is a God who reveals himself. Look at the record of Jesus, the things which he saw his Father do, the words which he heard his Father speak, the purpose which his Father revealed on a daily, hourly basis, moment by moment.

And so, again, let's underline it again, it's going to be heavily underlined, the body must do. I see a meeting like last week's meeting, Brother Andrew is here and he's giving out all those facts, and it's so easy to say yes, but it's hard not to say yes.

And yet there's not one person in a thousand, I think, really vitally affected by a meeting like that. I have a friend the Lord used in revival, and he said, you know, when you see those meetings so hot, don't forget that 90 percent of that is the external.

The essence, the kernel of the whole thing is very small. There will be many people shouting glory and many people saying yes, and many people like Peter and Laura, though all should forsake you, I'm going through, I'm going to be a missionary or I'm going to whatever.

We don't know that Peter is always, in the moment of crisis, is always defeated. It's only the Spirit of God that can lead us through, that's why, once again, besides the body, we need the Spirit in that place of adoration constantly, waiting on God.

He is our strength, he is our life, he is our salvation, he is everything we need. And even later on, Jesus in this passage, I am the resurrection and the life. Way back there in the beginning of the Bible, the book of Exodus, when God for the first time was bringing a people, not just one person now, Abram apparently just left his city and went out, but when he was taking a people who were bound, taking a people out of bondage, when there was necessity of deliverance and miracles and a divine intervention, the whole book of Exodus, the ten plagues, the 40 years in the desert, the revelation on Mount Sinai, the sea that rolled in upon the Egyptians, the water that followed them, the manna from heaven, all was built upon one revelation, the word of God to Moses, I AM.

It was on the basis of that word that God unveiled the rest of the story. Without that word, without that equipping, without that meeting, there could have been no book of Exodus, there could have been no deliverance, there could have been no miracles, there could have been no provision.

I AM. The word, I understand, means he, rather the word Jehovah, which is used thousands of times in the Old Testament, means he who was, he who is, he who will be, and it means he who works. The God who did work, is working, will work.

The God who is always active. Jesus said, My Father from the beginning works. Once again, the soul must draw. If I quit breathing, that's the end. The spirit is the, if you like, the part of our being which breathes, spiritual air.

I want to stress this because we're, as I said before, I get culture shock whenever I come back to our Christian subculture in the United States. We've got it all, we've got it all. We've got a Christian subculture where we've got Christian music, Christian books, Christian TV, Christian films, you name it.

We've got it all. And yet this three-fold functioning life, very few people have. So Lazarus was sick. The sister sent to him and said, Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick. Jesus loves our faith. Something beyond our emotion.

He doesn't love our works so much. He doesn't love our knowledge. We love a lot of things that he doesn't love. We get involved in a lot of things that he doesn't need to get involved in. He loves our faith.

He said, Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick. Jesus came and verse 17 found him laying four days in the grave. It amazes me how God puts the stories together in the Bible. There are things which maybe are not at first glance at all relevant, which are somehow woven in right in the middle of the story.

He has to stop right there and say that Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, near to Jerusalem, about 15 furlongs, about two miles away. And many of the Jews came to Martha and to Mary to comfort them. When Lazarus died, Mary died and Martha died.

The home did not function any more. The effectiveness of the home was totally destroyed. You look at when Jesus came, the orders were totally inverted. It wasn't Mary now that went running out to meet Jesus, it was Martha.

Religion Replaces Living Faith

But before that point, it said that many of the Jews came to Martha and to Mary to comfort them. This is what always happens when faith dies. Religion comes in. Religiousness or religiosity, which was represented by the Jews.

The nation which had taken the revelation of God and used it as a guidebook to be analyzed, systematized, to be used to separate one group from another group, one sect from another sect. There is a picture there in the Old Testament that always hits me with a tremendous impact in Ezekiel, chapter 16.

It's a thumbnail sketch of the Jews. We could talk for a long time on that, but let me just pick up a couple of things here. In Ezekiel, he said, the word of the Lord came and caused Jerusalem to know her abominations.

Jerusalem is the center, Jerusalem is the essence of Jewry. Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem, Thy birth and thy nativity is the land of Canaan. Thy father was an Amorite, thy mother was a Hittite.

As to thy nativity and the day that thou wast born, thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed with water to supple thee. Thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None eye pitted thee to do any of these things unto thee, to have compassion upon thee.

But thou wast cast out into the open fields of the loathing of thy person in the day that thou wast born. When I passed by thee, I saw thee polluted in thine own blood, and I said unto thee, When thou wast in thine own blood, live.

Yea, I said unto thee, When thou wast in thine own blood, live. This is the miracle. There was nothing to command Jerusalem. My mother was a Hittite, my father was an Amorite. We've said before that every name has a significance.

The Amorite speaks of talk, speaks of a publicity, speaks of a height. My father was pure talk, as they'd say in Spanish. Pure talk. Where is it? The Daniel's Image, was it? No, over in Revelation 4. The image which was given a mouth which spoke great things.

My father was words without end. My father was expressing a confidence, expressing a position which was not real. My mother was a Hittite. The word means terror. To be broken down, prostrated through terror, through fear, through confusion.

He says, this is what you were. Your life was not worth a thing. It was cast out onto the open field. Thine navel was not cut. There was no separation then in him from the mother. Thou was not washed with water.

There was no cleansing. Thou was not swaddled. There was no containing. There was no limiting. There was no restriction. This was a life just abandoned. You probably know the story. It goes on. The Lord passed by, gave life, said he grew.

Verse 9, I washed thee with water. I throughly washed away thy blood from thee. I anointed thee with oil. I clothed thee also with broidered work, shod thee with badger skin, girded thee about with fine linen, covered thee with silk, decked thee with ornaments, put bracelets on thy hands and a chain upon thy neck, a jewel in thy forehead, earrings in thy ears, a beautiful crown upon thy head.

And he goes on to say, Thou was decked with silver and gold thy raiment. Thou didst eat flour and honey and oil, and so on and so forth. And that one, as you read the story, turned from God, turned into fornication, turned into sin, turned into degeneracy, turned into utter loathsomeness.

The Lord comes at the end, compares her to Sodom, and he says, verse 49, Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, abundance of idleness. Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy, they were haughty.

They committed abomination before me, as Dave Wilkerson said a few weeks ago. I'm trying to think if it was in a meeting. It wasn't in a meeting, we were talking. There's such an arrogance in this day and age, there's such an arrogance in the Church.

It's easy to lose sight of the fact that Mary, Martha and Lazarus are the Church, that in the Old Testament this people under judgment, this abominable people, is the Church, that it was the Church, once again it was the Jews that killed Jesus.

Spiritual Abortion and the Church's Self-Sufficiency

Americans against abortion. We should out-claim Christians against spiritual abortion. Maybe when they get through with that they'll start it. Christians against spiritual abortion, because there's a lot going on.

If we get right down to it, I don't know which is the most important, in the sight of God. Spiritual things, we spiritualize them so much. You know why God hurts? The Spirit groans. The Son of God died on the cross.

It wasn't for a physical thing merely, but for something far beyond that. You and I as Christians can be hurting God more than an abortion. I can be an apostle as Paul was, and yet be so close to being cast away.

There can be groaning and yearning and a tearing apart of the fibers of eternity, because of me. This is what God is saying to his people in the Old Testament. You are like Sodom, not because of the outward fornication, not because of the sin.

Once again, I think we've talked about the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah, the list that Jesus gives there in Luke 17, because they sought their own, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built it, they did all these things.

It gives seven aspects of the human life, and it doesn't even mention their degeneracy. Here in the Old Testament you are like your sister Sodom. What was her problem? Her problem was pride. One of the first things that pride produces is a don't-touch-me attitude, that I know.

I don't know if you all sense it, living in this blessed country. But allow me to say it, I notice it coming from outside. I've been to churches, I've traveled around, I've had meetings here and there.

I'm not talking about anybody here or anybody in this whole zone, just in case anybody thinks I am. But I've been to church and I see such a self-sufficiency, little man, little, tiny, so neatly combed.

So neatly groomed, everything so perfect, everything so nice, so committed. Listen to the way the Jews were. When Lazarus died, the living faith died, the Jews came right in. From out of Jerusalem, they gathered like a bunch of bees after the honey.

Do you know what I mean? A bunch of crows coming down to a dead body. They gathered automatically. There is such a thing as spiritual affinity. You can be in a meeting, you can have a congregation, you can have one bitter person, and amazingly enough, some other person who is totally unbittered will come, and the next thing you know, they are closest friends.

How does it happen? There is far more power in an atmosphere than what there is in teaching. You've heard me say before about kids learning language. You remember that? You all heard it, right? Well, this man has.

Have you heard that? No? Okay, yes. Briefly. In the first five years of life, they discovered that children, this is a study on bilingual learning processes, but it applies to one language. Children pick up in the first five years of life the equivalent amount of language learning ability, which would take ten linguists ten years to program into a computer.

In other words, in five years, that child absorbed a hundred man years of language, language handling, language using ability. In the first five years, we can't very well count the first months, because lots of times a kid is crying at night and needs his sleep during the day, and he's getting it all together emotionally.

He's learning to move his hands, and he's learning to put his tongue out, and he's learning to do a whole lot of things, and then he has to have potty training, and all the rest of those wonderful things.

In the first five years of life, and what I'm trying to say is, in those first five years when he's totally unprepared, without any basis, once again, emotionally, physically, in a state of flux and growing, in those five years, when his mother is not looking at night, he goes to bed and says, I am, she is, he is, we are, they are, and how do I say that past tense?

He doesn't do that, does he? I was, I were. He doesn't do that. He absorbs it. Once again, let me go back. That's why worship is important. I read of a person in a time of pressure, a time of crisis, all of a sudden the Spirit spoke and said, you know more than what you know.

Well, we know more than what we know if we would get it in the center. I can have a complete picture over here, but if I'm not looking over here, I'm not going to see it. If I focus on it, I'm going to see.

That's the way it is with a lot of the spiritual life. We don't need more teaching. We don't need excuses. All we need, is concentration. All we need is intensity. But let's get back to the Jews. Lazarus died.

Once again, that living faith died. The unit stopped functioning and the Jews came in. They came to comfort. Actually, the word is more like our word, relate. They came to relate to Mary and Martha. They came to share what they had to share.

They came to put their atmosphere around about Mary and Martha as a source of comfort. The living relationship had died and they brought in the dead relationship. I wish we could understand how God hates religion.

I think I said before, I don't know what I said before, but anyway, the word religion means bondage. The word itself means bondage. God hates religion. And the Jews had no relationship. They had a religion.

They had no life. They had no faith. They were already on the way to crucifixion as far as Jesus is concerned. They've already separated themselves from him. But they come. When Jesus steps out of the picture, they come into the picture.

It's true. It's always true of spiritual life. When I lose Jesus, I start getting Jewish. I hope I'm not going to offend somebody. Now, you've got to be real careful here with the ethnic things. What I mean is, I get religious.

When I lose Jesus, then I start being dogmatic, basing my relationship on knowledge. I start being intolerant. I start being inflexible. Look sometimes at the Jews with whom Jesus had encounters. I don't remember them now, but I remember one man there who has a list of seven different classes, the scribes and the Pharisees and the Herodians and all the rest of them.

The Pharisees were those who had taken the law and had carried it on and had interpreted it and had interpreted the interpretation of the interpretation of the interpretation. They got so far out. And because of this, maybe we can say this simply, we're always in difficulty, we're always in problems, when the means becomes the end.

And they had taken the form of religion, and to them it had become religion. The way had become the goal. The lifestyle had become everything. They judged everybody by how they were relating to this lifestyle which the Pharisees had set up.

Jesus Calls the Church Back to Faith

Then Martha, we're going to have to hurry here. Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. Once again, as I said before, the order has been reversed. It wasn't Mary that was hearing, it wasn't the Spirit that was hearing, it was the body that was hearing, it was the external that was becoming aware.

Mary is not even aware. Martha goes out, the Spirit stops and the body goes on. We could talk a lot about that also, but we won't. Martha goes out and says to Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here. A lot of people have said, Lord, I've looked at this passage and I guess I've heard it and I guess I've absorbed the thinking, too.

Why did he die? What was the deal here? Mary and Martha didn't have any problem knowing why he died. They both said the same identical words. Martha here in verse 21, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.

Verse 32, Mary, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. The same identical words. They knew what the problem was. Once again, we're looking at this as a spiritual allegory. When Jesus, when the communion, when the contact of being re-emplaced with something else, faith dies.

Faith cannot live without the presence of God. Faith cannot live outside the presence of God. Paul says, he always leadeth us in victory. If he doesn't lead, then I'm not in victory. Once again, I can go through the forms.

I can crystallize and set up my religion until it's totally inflexible. But unless he is there, there is no living faith. Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. It's interesting, as Jesus speaks to her, he gives her instructions.

He doesn't give any instructions in this passage to Mary. There's something physical. There's something external that God puts before each one of us, which opens the way into the spiritual. I've got to start from the world in which I live.

It's a cop-out. Relegate everything to spiritual realms. Say I have a functioning relationship with God here, but not here. You can't have a functioning relationship up here if it doesn't function down there.

I think the emphasis is rather the other way. You get it functioning down here, and then you'll know it's functioning up there. Because you cannot know anything up there. You're so limited to subjective things.

You hear people talk about miracles, and you hear people talk about visions. I could only see a vision. You know, a vision is not the deepest thing. A vision is not in the spirit. A vision is in the soul.

A vision is so subject to my own conscious and unconscious influences. God calls us to something beyond that. A more sure word of prophecy, that which we have seen and handled of the word of life. Paul appeals to the church.

He says, you know that in your midst the signs and wonders and miracles have been wrought. He says, the signs of an apostle have been wrought. What were they? He says, in all patience, 2 Corinthians 12 .12.

Let me read it and get it right here. The signs of an apostle were wrought in all patience in signs and wonders and mighty deeds. This is ministry. There is a mark of the heavenly upon the earthly. And if we'd have to judge the churches, and if we'd have to judge our lives by that standard, it might hurt, but it brings us a lot closer to reality.

A lot closer to reality. What sign is there that God is upon my life? What miracle, and I'm not talking about just the healing of the sick, I'm talking about something which would not, could not ever happen on this earth.

What has God done over above and beyond the laws of this world around me? What wonders have been done to show his greatness, to show his power? This is what Jesus, not only the apostles, he sent them all to do that.

Going through all the world, he said, if you raise the sick, heal the dead. I mean, heal the dead, raise the sick. Where are we at? Raise the dead, heal the sick, cast out demons. These signs shall follow them that believe.

You and me, if we don't have them, we don't have it either. We don't have the belief, we don't have the faith. Right? I mean, 2 plus 2, is it or isn't it? If he says these signs shall follow them that believe, then the only reason I'm not going to have them is because of unbelief.

This is a whole passage, it's how many verses, 45 verses, given to the relating of this incident because it's important. The lesson is important. Right here in the middle of John, right in the middle of the book, the faith on which everything depends, on which everything else is based.

“I Am” as the Present Reality of Resurrection Life

The words of Jesus to her, he says, she said, Lord, I believe. I believe in that abstract, undefined, ambiguous, someday, somewhere, somehow resurrection. They tell us nobody ever believes that they're going to die.

We all say, of course I do. But he's saying that nobody ever, ever really believes that they're going to die right now. Even if you're sick in bed and for sure you're going to die, well, it won't be right this minute, it won't be this hour.

We never get it down to confront it. The same thing with life and the same thing with the things of the Spirit of God. I believe, Lord, yes Lord, I believe there's a resurrection, it'll be the last day, everything will be ended, there'll be just one thing, life from out the dead.

I believe that. Jesus comes, he said, I, he's standing right before her, right here, right now, I am. The same revelation that was given to Moses, I am. Somebody said it's like a blank check, you can fill in what you need after the I am.

In this case it's resurrection, it's life. This is the power of God. This is the power once again in Ezekiel 16, which had brought the Jews into life, into existence. God had passed by in the midst of their death when they were exposed, in the midst of the earth, he says, live.

Speaks that word of authority, live. They cannot die, they will not die, he has spoken. So Jesus comes and he says to her, I am the resurrection. I am the life. Life is not an object, life is not a substance, life is not something which is given to people, I am.

I am the life. Somehow there's an impartation beyond our understanding. I am the life. And he that believeth, though he were dead yet shall he live. And he that liveth and believeth shall never die. Then he asked her, believest thou?

Once again he's not speaking to the spirit, he's speaking to the body. I can believe in the spirit, I can believe in her resurrection at the last day, but can I believe here and now? You know, it's always hard to tie things down.

As I said before about that meeting last week, we can have a thousand people in a meeting like that, or ten thousand people in a meeting like that, and everybody will be touched, but very few people will see it right here, right now God is speaking to me, and I've got to decide yes or no, as though I'd heard an audible voice, as though I was seeing his form, his person.

Believest thou? Some people think she's kind of a cop-out, what she said, yes, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ. I don't think so. What she's saying, Lord, I believe that thou art the anointed one, the one who bears upon his shoulders all the fullness of heavenly authority and heavenly power, that in your person there is all the resources of God.

Lord, I believe that you have come as was promised, that in this world, you notice her words there. I've been in that situation, and somebody died, and the man that was telling me, quite an educated man, a doctor, he was telling me, you know, he said, Paul, he said in that place, he said there was nothing.