and our hope is lost, and we are cut off,” separated from the land of the living; but go and tell them: “Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves, and will bring you out of your sepulchres,…and you shall know that I am the Lord,”[1] and that it is I who have done it.
And in the New by Our Lord. What God showed in a vision to His people in the Old Testament Our Lord declares still more clearly in the Gospel of St. John: “Amen, amen, I say unto you, that the hour cometh.…when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God. All that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God: And they that have done good things shall come forth unto the resurrection of life: but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.”[2] And again in the same gospel: “This is the will of my Father that sent Me: that everyone who seeth the Son, and believeth in Him, may have life everlasting, and I will raise him up in the last day.”[3] These prophecies are as certain to be fulfilled as it is certain that God cannot lie.
All that Christ prophesied has been exactly fulfilled. All that Our Lord prophesied in the gospel has been fulfilled so completely hitherto that even His most bitter opponents cannot with any show of reason deny its fulfilment; much less can there be any doubt regarding His prophecy concerning the resurrection of the body, for that is the foundation of the whole gospel. He had foretold that the service that Magdalene rendered Him by pouring the precious ointment over His head should become known throughout the whole world, wherever the gospel was to be preached: “Amen I say to you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, that also which she hath done shall be told for a memory of her.”[4] But
- ↑ Eduxit me in spiritu Domini, et dimisit me in medio campi, qui erat plenus ossibus…erant autem multa valde super faciem campi, siccaque vehementer. Fili hominis, putasne vivent ossa ista? Ossa arida, audite verbum Domini. Hæc dicit Dominus Deus ossibus his: Ecce ego intromittam in vos spiritum, et vivetis. Et dabo super vos nervos, et succrescere faciam super vos carnes, et superextendam in vobis autem, et dabo vobis spiritum, et vivetis. Factus est autem sonitus prophetante me, et ecce commotio; et accesserunt ossa ad ossa unumquodque ad juncturam suam…et ingressus est in ea spiritus, et vixerunt; steteruntque super pedes suos, exercitus grandis nimis valde. Ossa hæc universa, domus Israel est; ipsi dicunt: Aruerunt ossa nostra, et periit spes nostra, et abscissi sumus. Hæc dicit Dominus Deus: Ecce ego aperiam tumulos vestros, et educam vos de sepulchris vestris, et scietis quia ego Dominus.—Ezech. xxxvii. 1-7, 10-13.
- ↑ Amen, amen, dico vobis, quia venit hora, quando mortui audient vocem Filii Dei. Omnes qui in monumentis sunt, audient vocem Filii Dei; et precedent qui bona fecerunt, in resurrectionem vitæ; qui vero mala egerunt, in resurrectionem judicii.—John v. 25, 28, 29.
- ↑ Hæc est autem voluntas Patris mei qui misit me, ut omnis qui videt Filium, et credit in eum, habeat vitam æternam, et ego resuscitabo eum in novissimo die.—Ibid. vi. 40.
- ↑ Amen dico vobis, ubicumque prædicatum fuerit hoc Evangelium in toto mundo, dicetur et quod hæc fecit in memoriam ejus.—Matt. xxvi. 13.
