Resurrections Few And Far

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle

Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her king.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name's Mike Abendroth, and we are recording some shows today.

I just got done recording a couple with Pastor Steve. I do have a full -time job, so just a couple hours a week, we try to record shows, and then off to pastoral ministry.

I often think to myself, if this was my full -time job, I don't think I'd like it because I love being a pastor, but it might be better.

It might be better if I could put more time into it. So anyway, we have a great team of No Compromise Radio folks and so I appreciate

Josh and the rest of the crew for all that they do behind the scenes. Well, cryonics is in the news today.

Why would cryonics be in the news today? And what is cryonics? Well, Captain America is in the news, so cryonics should be in the news.

Remember how popular he was back in the 1940s? Well, maybe you don't, because you weren't alive then.

Maybe there were a few no -co listeners who were alive back in those days. But then he kind of faded out because people's attention span wanes, and then he comes back in 1964 and there needs to be explanations.

And so how do you explain things in comic world, in comic book world, in comic land book world land?

What you do is you come up with special stories, see, because you have scientific license.

No, you have science fiction license. And so 1964, he comes back and the explanation was that he had been in the

Arctic ice, completely frozen. And so now

Captain America has come back. When I was growing up, I loved to watch the show, even though I don't really think it's very good.

I liked the idea at the time and I thought it was really cool. 1965, it started Lost in Space.

And so cryonics was used there as well because you had this entire family,

I think maybe Billy Mummy was the kid, right? Is that correct? And they had to be suspended kind of like in cryonics for five and a half years to get to where they were going to go.

Cryonics has been in popular culture for a while as well. You've got aliens and they were kind of frozen to do the space travel and Avatar, that was 2009.

Maybe the one that's most popular though is Han Solo. And Han Solo was in Star Wars, episode five.

In my mind, it's episode two and always will be, but it's episode five, Empire Strikes Back. 1980, and they froze him, remember?

When he woke up and was revived, he was blind a little bit. Well, what is cryonics and why is it in the news today?

Well, I'm making it in the news. I'm a news maker. Cryonics comes from a

Greek word. Lots of things come from Greek words, lots of American words, English words. Kruos, cryos, icy cold is what it means.

And so what happens with cryonics is that you, upon death, have already arranged, well, before you die, you've arranged to have someone freeze you really fast.

Not just in a regular deep freeze, not with just a regular freezer. You do need certain special neuropreservation, allegedly.

You need chiroprotectants. So the damage done by lowering your temperature or cooling your body to 77 .15

Kelvin. That's not Calvin. We have a new measuring device and it's what degree

Calvin you are. 75, 77 .15 Kelvin. And by the way, if you don't know what 77 .15

Kelvin is, I think you probably should know. Maybe John Dawson in Idaho, he would know because I think that's how he cooks his barbecue.

Patio Daddy, go there, Patio Daddy barbecue. I think the food looks good.

I've never been sent any. And I think if John had half a brain, he would do some cryopreservation of some of his favorite barbecue and then send it to No Compromise Radio.

The other day, I got some coffee in the mail, some peach coffee. I was very thankful to John in New Hampshire for that very special gift.

Anyway, Kelvin, 77 .15 Kelvin to be exact is the boiling point of liquid nitrogen.

Now, where am I going with all this? Here's where I'm going. I'm going to be playing today, the taping day, no -coat day, real time is

Good Friday, and it's going to be played later. So I'm thinking about Easter.

I'm thinking about resurrection. I'm thinking about mankind's desire to live. God has given us a desire to live and those that don't believe in God, by their own voice, they say they don't believe in God, but we know that's different because Romans 1 says they do, but they suppress the truth of God and unrighteousness.

But even people who will say, I don't believe in God. They have a desire to live. Now, they'll attribute that desire to live to evolution.

But they have a desire to live and their desire of many is to live beyond the grave.

How do I live forever? What about nirvana? What about bliss? What about paradise?

What about Atlantic City? Imagine living there your whole life.

City of Atlantis, of course. I know what I was talking about, but we want a little humor. Actually, we've gotten some emails.

Thank you for the humor. See, we learn a little bit of theology and have humor as well. And since this isn't a sermon,

I don't have to get to a text yet. This is my show and I have sovereign will over the show. And I'm going to get to my text in just a moment, but I'm talking about something

I think is interesting. Cryonics. People want to live forever. They have a desire.

And in fact, what they don't know very often is that they will live forever. But their desire to live forever is to live in a place of bliss, of happiness, eternal joy.

What they don't know is that if they're an unbeliever, yes, in fact, they still will live forever.

You had no, you had no, you know, nothing before your beginning. You had a beginning. You weren't eternal in terms of the past, but you will be eternal in the future.

And so I think built -in people, they have this desire to be frozen.

No, that's not built into the people. The people who are frozen have a built -in desire to live forever.

And so as of last year in 2013, 270 people have been cryopreserved.

And of course, we know Ted Williams was cryopreserved. He believed in that kind of stuff.

And it's a very tricky deal because you can't kill someone and then quick freeze them because then that would be assisted suicide.

You would be found guilty. Of course, it's okay to kill a baby in the womb, but you can't kill anybody outside the womb because otherwise that's would be, you know, homicide or maybe assisted suicide if we want to be technical.

So what do you do? You have to be, you have to have a team ready. And so to me the real sad part is people use their life insurance to cover the cost because somebody's got to pay to keep you preserved.

And so you've got to have a team ready. You have to pay for that too. Or if you want to wait a little bit without a team, you can take your chances.

It will long -term memory and identity stored in cell structures actually work.

So you've got the people there ready. So your brain information is still there.

And hopefully if our science and technology improves like it has in the last couple hundred years, well, maybe with some bioengineering like we have here in Worcester, this is the home of biomedical engineering here, you can be resuscitated or resurrected.

That's the word I would use. Now, sometimes they don't even think that you need the whole body. So you just need the brain.

You just need the head. So they surgically remove your head and that's a little easier to store. And so the European cryonics company

CryoRus, R -U -S, yeah, it's only 12 ,000 for the head, our brain, 250 ,000 for everything.

Alcor overseas, you know, you've got some teams at the very end for last minute deals, 80 ,000 for the head, 200 ,000 for the body.

So this idea that we're going to live forever, I think it's latent in people.

I think it's just part of being an image bearer that you realize you're going to live forever and there's going to be a resurrection.

So today what I want to do is I want to talk to you about the person who's able to resurrect you from the dead.

Now, when you look at the scriptures, what you won't see is regularly prophets and Jesus and apostles raising people from the dead.

It's not a regular thing, regular thing. Now we have some crazy, crazy word of faith kind of charismatics and they say that they can raise people from the dead in Timbuk 3 and Sri Lanka and Madagascar and Malawi and wherever else.

But I want you to think to yourself from Genesis to Revelation, how many resurrections are included?

Now you say there could be more resurrections that weren't included and there's some allusion to some other resurrections happening in Luke chapter 8.

But how many by name, how many by exact identity do we have? And I won't look at the two in the

Old Testament, but looking at the Gospels, Luke 7, we have Jesus raising up the widow's son at Nain.

What we're going to find out is Jesus does have power over life and death. There's not that many here.

And then we'll ultimately talk about the resurrection of Jesus himself and your resurrection. You're going to be resurrected.

You're going to live forever. Every person listening to my voice and beyond will live forever.

There's no annihilation. There's no cessation of being. You are unlike Jesus in the sense that he is the eternal

God, no beginning, no end. But you are going to live forever.

There's an eternality to your creaturehood that lives past the grave. Your body will cease to exist.

It dies. Your spirit slash soul I'm not like a trichotomous person, but I understand the arguments.

Body, soul, spirit. Your body slash soul will then go to heaven or hell.

Then you're going to get a new body and then you're going to go to heaven, you know, then you'll stay in heaven or you're going to go to the lake fire.

So resurrection is important. So I want you to know who the person is who raises people from the dead.

And I want you to just see it in scripture clearly. So we're going to look at the gospel accounts of resurrection. And then we'll see how that impacts our living, our theology, our thoughts, our evangelism, et cetera.

Soon afterward, this is Luke 7, 11, Jesus went to a town called

Nain and his disciples and a great crowd went with him.

As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out and so the only son of his mother, she was a widow and a considerable crowd from the town was with her.

So if you're a woman in that society, you need to have a husband, provider, protector.

And if your husband's gone, you need to have a son because the son would do what the father would do in the sense of protection, provision, caring for his mother.

You didn't want to be a widow back in those days. Some widows would have to resort to prostitution, other things.

It was very sad. If Israel as a nation wouldn't take care of her own, there were bad problems.

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, do not weep. You just see the kindness of God, the compassion of God.

You have a God who's not just transcendent, but a God who's eminent, who's close. And we see that in the humanity of Christ, don't we?

We see that in the incarnation. We see the Isaiah 61 fulfillment and how he stoops low to care for people and really when you think where it says here, he said to her, do not weep.

I'm here. I'm going to act. I'm going to intervene. I'm going to intervene to the extent that people are going to say, who is this?

You know, when Jesus walked on the water, when he stilled the storms, the responses of the people, who is this?

They're going to do the same here, even though they might not say it directly. Then he came up and touched the beer,

B -I -E -R. It's like an open coffin deal. It's the support underneath it.

It's like the wood that goes underneath it. And the bearers stood still.

And he said, young man, I say to you, arise. So you don't really want to touch the dead bodies.

You don't want to touch the wood that the dead bodies touch. You don't want to become unclean ceremonially.

But when Jesus touches something, instead of him becoming unclean, he cleans what he touches because he's so holy.

He's so powerful. He is the son of God. And the dead man sat up, began to speak.

Jesus gave him to his mother. Very similar to the account of Elijah, but here we have

Jesus. The first resurrection found in the gospels. And I don't mean you can't find this in Matthew or Mark.

I'm saying when you put the gospels together, Harmony of the Gospels, if you don't have this book, Harmony of the Gospels by Robert Thomas.

Thomas and Gundry. I don't care if you get NES, NIV, it doesn't matter to me. Harmony of the Gospels.

You need to get that book, Harmony of the Gospels. It'll put all the gospels together chronologically.

You say, I already have one. Well, sometimes the ones that you have, maybe they aren't conservative. Dr. Thomas, very conservative.

Verse 16, what's the response of this resurrection? We celebrate

Resurrection Sunday once a year in America. And what's the response of Jesus raising people from the dead?

Not really what you'd think initially. Fear sees them all. Why would they be afraid?

Shouldn't they be happy? Son of God is here in our midst. This is God. They glorified

God saying a great prophet has arisen among us and God has visited his people. A great prophet, you say, that's kind of a slam.

No, no, think of Jesus prophet, priest, and king. Think of Deuteronomy 18, a greater prophet than Moses is going to show up.

We know who that prophet is, Jesus, and he is among us. And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.

Jesus is the Christ. He has the power to raise the dead. He has the will to raise the dead.

He has the love to raise the dead, the compassion to raise the dead, the holiness to not be defiled by the dead.

Who is this? Account number two of the resurrection of others.

Luke chapter 8, the gospel resurrection accounts. People raised from the dead in the gospels.

You'll find a couple in Acts, you'll find a couple in the Old Testament, but right now we're looking at the gospels. My name is Mike Gabendroff, NOCO Radio.

You can order the new book, Things That Go Bump in the Church, just click on our website. By the way,

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Luke 8, passage 2. We're talking about the resurrection today. When Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him,

Luke 8, 40. For they were all waiting for him. There came a man named

Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue. And falling at Jesus' feet, he implored him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter.

Interestingly, that Luke, the physician, gets these details, like he's the only daughter.

She's the only daughter, rather. About 12 years of age, and she was dying.

And so he, Jairus, is desperate. He is not concerned about dignity and social decorum and pride.

He's in front of a crowd, and it's, my little daughter's at the point of death. That's how

Mark talks about it. An endearing description. My little daughter. My little daughter.

My little girl. Jesus went, and the people pressed around him as Jesus went.

And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood. There's a little interruption here. For 12 years, though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone.

She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased.

Jesus said, who was it that touched me? He knew, by the way. He just wanted her to say something, identify herself.

When all denied it, Peter said, Master, the crowd surround you and are pressing in on you. But Jesus said, someone touch me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me.

And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling and falling down before him, declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him and how she had been immediately healed.

He said to her, daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. I wonder what

Jairus was thinking right about now. I wonder what he was feeling right now.

Well, my daughter's dying and you're helping another person. I'm glad for that.

But I think Jairus knew that Jesus was powerful. And I think

Jairus must have been encouraged because he sees now the power of Jesus. If Jesus can heal this lady, he could heal my daughter.

While he was still speaking, verse 49, someone from the ruler's house came and said, your daughter is dead.

Do not trouble the teacher anymore. He's just a teacher. I'll leave him alone. When it comes to raising people from the dead,

I don't even know. But it might even be too big a job for Jesus. He's just a teacher.

Verse 50, but Jesus, on hearing this, answered him, do not fear, only believe, and she will be well.

Stop fearing. Keep believing. When you first approached me, you had faith.

You had faith that I could do it. Otherwise, you wouldn't have come. You started well, finish well.

Keep on believing. When he came to the house, he allowed no one to enter with him except Peter, James, and John, the father and mother of the child, and all who were weeping and mourning for her, and all were weeping and mourning for her.

But he said, do not weep for she is not dead, but sleeping. And so, we

Westerners, American folks, it's a quiet morning.

It's a sad morning, more introspective.

And for those Easterners there, oh, it was sad, but they'd hire people, and they would sing loudly.

Matthew 9 says, Jesus saw the flute players in the crowd in noisy disorder, you'd hire professional mourners.

Josephus said, even the poorest in Israel provide no fewer than two flutists and one female mourner.

And they're laughing at Jesus, knowing that she was dead. This is jeering.

This is ongoing, ha, ha, ha, unbelief, laughing Jesus a scorn, laughing at Jesus for not being at his face, derisively mocking him.

And none of those people get to go in to see the miracle. But taking her by the hand, he called, saying, child, arise.

And her spirit returned, and she got up at once, and he directed that something should be given her, no

Latin, no mumbo -jumbo, no incense, no chanting.

I say, arise, the authority of Jesus. Child, arise. Mark's the one that says,

I say, arise, Talitha, cum. He's not just talking to the body, he's talking little lamb, little youth, arise.

And her parents were amazed, but he charged them to tell no one what had happened. They were astonished.

Power over death. Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son can conquer death, not just for himself, but for others.

John 5, 21, for just as the father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the son also gives life to whom he wishes.

And that's either in Luke 7 and 8, physical life, he could do that, but more in particular and more special to this verse, the authority of this verse, he raises the dead, ultimately for spiritually salvation and forgiveness.

Well, my name is Mike Abendroth. We're looking at resurrection. You don't need cryonics. It's not going to work. You can freeze the body, but the soul is going to go stand before God.

And what about you? How are you going to stand before God? I think you need a mediator, Jesus Christ, the righteous, and to be clothed with his righteousness.

I think that's what you need. I think you need a Savior who forgives your sins. Jesus Christ, the risen Savior. This is

Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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