was "good." There was no sin and therefore no suffering or death. Why then did God give Adam and Eve the ability to sin, knowing full well that they would sin and bring death and pain to the human race? Some believe that if Adam had been created without the ability to choose, then he would have been a "robot." A father cannot make his children love him.
They choose to love him because they have a free will. Others point out that humanity would never have seen the depth of the love of God, as displayed in the cross, unless
Adam had sinned, and that fact could be one reason why God allowed sin to enter the world.
CHAPTER 15 Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you have received, and wherein you stand;
2 By which also you are saved, if you keep in memory what I preached to you, unless you have believed in vain.
3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:
6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain to this present, but some are fallen asleep.
7 After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
8 And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.
9 For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
10 But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.
11 Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so you believed.
QUESTIONS & OBJECTIONS 15:39 "Evolution disproves the Bible!"
The Book of Genesis tells us that everything was created by God—nothing "evolved." Every creature was given the ability to reproduce after its own kind as is stated ten times in Genesis 1. Dogs do not produce cats. Neither do cats and dogs have a common ancestry. Dogs began as dogs and are still dogs. They vary in species from Chihuahuas to Saint Bernards, but you will not find a "dat" or a "cog" (part cat/dog) throughout God's creation. Frogs don't reproduce oysters, cows don't have lambs, and pregnant pigs don't give birth to rabbits.
God made monkeys as monkeys, and man as man. Each creature brings forth after its own kind. That's no theory; that's a fact.
Why then should we believe that man comes from another species? If evolution is true, then it is proof that the Bible is false.
However, the whole of creation stands in contradiction to the theory of evolution. Dr.
Kent Hovind of Florida has a standing offer of $250,000 to "anyone who can give any empirical evidence (scientific proof) for evolution." Evolution—true science fiction.
His website is www.drdino.com.
12 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
13 But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:
14 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.
15 Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.
16 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:
17 And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; you are yet in your sins.
18 Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
QUESTIONS & OBJECTIONS 15:45 "Adam was a mythical figure who never really lived."
Adam is a key figure in Scripture. He is described as the "first Adam," the one who brought sin into the world. He made it necessary for Jesus, the "last Adam," to atone for all humans, and then rise from the grave with the promise of complete redemption for fallen man and fallen creation. If Adam was just a myth, we would not be able to fully understand the work of Jesus.
If Adam and Eve were not real, then we ought to doubt whether their children were real too, and their children ... and then we ought to doubt the first 11 chapters of Genesis, and so on. All the genealogies accept Adam as being a literal person, so their children Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:9,10;
Luke 11:50,51) must be real too. Jesus was descended from Adam, and it is impossible to be descended from a myth.
23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.
24 Then comes the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.
25 For he must reign, till he has put all enemies under his feet.
26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
27 For he has put all things under his feet.
But when he says, all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him.
28 And when all things shall be subdued to him, then shall the Son also himself be subject to him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.
29 Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?
30 And why stand we in jeopardy every hour?
31 I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.
15:55 Last Words of Famous People Fearful Last Words:
Cardinal Borgia: "I have provided in the course of my life for everything except death, and now, alas, I am to die unprepared.
Elizabeth the First: "All my possessions for one moment of time."
Kurt Cobain (suicide note): "Frances and Courtney, I'll be at your altar. Please keep going Courtney, for Frances. For her life will be so much happier without me. I love you. I love you."
Ludwig van Beethoven: "Too bad, too bad! It's too late!"
Thomas Hobbs: "I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark."
Anne Boleyn: "O God, have pity on my soul. O God, have pity on my soul."
Prince Henry of Wales: "Tie a rope round my body, pull me out of bed, and lay me in ashes, that I may die with repentant prayers to an offended God. O! I in vain wish for that time I lost with you and others in vain recreations."
Socrates: "All of the wisdom of this world is but a tiny raft upon which we must set sail when we leave this earth. If only there was a firmer foundation upon which to sail, perhaps some divine word."
Sigmund Freud: "The meager satisfaction that man can extract from reality leaves him starving."
Tony Hancock (British comedian):
"Nobody will ever know I existed. Nothing to leave behind me. Nothing to pass on. Nobody to mourn me. That's the bitterest blow of all."
Phillip III, King of France: "What an account I shall have to give to God! How I should like to live otherwise than I have lived."
Luther Burbank: "I don't feel good."
Voltaire (skeptic): "I am abandoned by God and man! I will give you half of what I am worth if you will give me six months' life.
Then I shall go to hell; and you will go with me. O Christ! O Jesus Christ!" (The talented French writer once said of Jesus, "Curse the wretch!" He stated, "Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror ... Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world."
He also boasted, "In twenty years Christianity will be no more. My single hand shall destroy the edifice it took twelve apostles to rear." Some years later, Voltaire's house was used by the Geneva Bible Society to print Bibles.
Philosophical Last Words:
Aldus Huxley (humanist): "It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try and be a little kinder.'"
Karl Marx: "Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!"
Napoleon: "I marvel that where the ambitious dreams of myself and of Alexander and of Caesar should have vanished into thin air, a Judean peasant—Jesus—should be able to stretch his hands across the centuries, and control the destinies of men and nations."
Leonardo da Vinci: "I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have."
Tolstoy: "Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six."
Benjamin Franklin: "A dying man can do nothing easy."
Grotius: "I have lived my life in a laborious doing of nothing."
H. G. Wells: "Go away: I'm alright."
General John Sedgwick (during the heat of battle in 1864): "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist—!"
Bing Crosby: "That was a great game of golf."
Mahatma Ghandi: "I am late by ten minutes. I hate being late. I like to be at the prayer punctually at the stroke of five."
Diana (Spencer), Princess of Wales: "My God. What's happened?" (per police files) Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.: "Never felt better."
Franklin D. Roosevelt: "I have a terrific headache."
Sal Mineo: (stabbed through the heart):
"Oh God! No! Help! Someone help!"
Jesse James: "It's awfully hot today."
Lee Harvey Oswald: "I will be glad to discuss this proposition with my attorney, and that after I talk with one, we could either discuss it with him or discuss it with my attorney, if the attorney thinks it is a wise thing to do, but at the present time I have nothing more to say to you."
Vincent Van Gogh: "I shall never get rid of this depression."
James Dean: "My fun days are over."
Oscar Wilde: "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go..."
W. C. Fields: "I'm looking for a loophole."
Louis XVII: "I have something to tell you..."
Assurance of Salvation:
Jonathan Edwards: "Trust in God and you shall have nothing to fear."
Patrick Henry: "Doctor, I wish you to observe how real and beneficial the religion of Christ is to a man about to die..." In his will he wrote: "This is all the inheritance I give to my dear family. The religion of Christ which will give them one which will make them rich indeed."
John Owen: "I am going to Him whom my soul loveth, or rather who has loved me with an everlasting love, which is the sole ground of all my consolation."
D.L. Moody: "I see earth receding; heaven is opening. God is calling me."
Lew Wallace (author of Ben Hur): "Thy will be done."
Alexander Hamilton: "I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner. I look to Him for mercy."
William Shakespeare: "I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Savior, to be made partaker of life everlasting; and my body to the earth, whereof it was made."
Martin Luther: "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit! Thou hast redeemed me, O God of truth."
John Milton (British poet): "Death is the great key that opens the palace of Eternity."
Sir Walter Raleigh (at his execution): "So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lieth."
Daniel Webster (just before his death):
"The great mystery is Jesus Christ—the gospel. What would the condition of any of us be if we had not the hope of immortality? ...
Thank God, the gospel of Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to light." His last words were: "I still live."
General William Booth (to his son): "And the homeless children, Bramwell, look after the homeless. Promise me..."
David Livingstone: "Build me a hut to die in. I am going home."
Charles Dickens: "I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children humbly to try and guide themselves by the teaching of the New Testament."
Andrew Jackson: "My dear children, do not grieve for me ... I am my God's. I belong to Him. I go but a short time before you, and ... I hope and trust to meet you all in heaven."
Isaac Watts (hymn-writer): "It is a great mercy that I have no manner of fear or dread of death. I could, if God please, lay my head back and die without terror this afternoon."
32 If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantage is it to me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.
33 Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.
34 Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame.
35 But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?
36 You fool, that which you sow is not quickened, except it die:
37 And that which you sow, you sow not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:
38 But God gives it a body as it has pleased him, and to every seed his own body.
39 All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.
40 There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.
41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differs from another star in glory.
42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:
43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:
44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.
45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.
47 The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.
48 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.
49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption.
5 1 Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
5 3 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
5 4 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written,
Death is swallowed up in victory.
55 O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?
5 6 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
5 7 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
15:6 "The fact that Abraham Lincoln was born, became president, or was assassinated cannot be proven using scientific methods. To be 'scientific' it must be repeatable (as in the testing of gravity). The proofs that Lincoln did exist and was a historical figure are: 1) the written evidence; 2) eyewitness testimony; and 3) physical evidence that remains to this day—the Ford Theatre, birth records, and newspaper articles regarding his election. All these facts are acceptable in a court of law as proof to a judge and jury.
"The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is "evidential": 1) the empty tomb still exists; 2) His birth record is documented all the way back to Adam and Eve; 3) the four
Gospels record His death; 4) the location, and even the names of the political leaders who sentenced Him are historically recorded; 5) there were more than five hundred eyewitnesses who saw Jesus after the resurrection, recorded by the New Testament writers; 6) the very existence of the Christian faith, based on His death and resurrection; 7) the cultural and political evidence of the time, including the Roman calendar separating all of time into 'Before Christ' (b.c.) and 'in the year of our Lord' (a.d.)." Garry T. Ansdell,
15:10 "There is nothing but God's grace.
We walk upon it; we breathe it; we live and die by it; it makes the nails and axles of the universe." Robert Louis Stevenson 15:14 If Jesus Christ didn't rise from the tomb, then the Bible is a fraud and any hope of resurrection is therefore in vain. However,
God has given us irrefutable evidence in His Word to strengthen our faith in His promises —historical, scientific, medical, archeological, and prophetic evidence.
15:17 "How can anyone lose who chooses to become a Christian? If, when he dies, there turns out to be no God and his faith was in vain, he has lost nothing—in fact, he has been happier in life than his nonbelieving friends.
If, however, there is a God and a heaven and hell, then he has gained heaven and his skeptical friends will have lost everything in hell!" Blaise Pascal 15:29 Some believe in baptizing for the dead, which Paul mentions in these verses.
Note that Paul does not say "we," but "they," thus distancing himself from the practice. See Acts 2:38 comment for the biblical basis for baptism.
15:31 "We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved: we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms ... To surrender a self-will inflamed and swollen with years of usurpation is a kind of death ... Hence the necessity to die daily: however often we think we have broken the rebellious self, we shall still find it alive."
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain 15:34 False converts. Paul acknowledges that there were false converts in their midst; to their shame, some among them did not know God, were dead to righteousness, and were continuing to sin. We also should feel a sense of shame at the state of the lukewarm contemporary Church, where only 2 percent have any real concern for the salvation of the world.
15:39 "This notion of species as 'natural kinds' fits splendidly with creationist tenets of a pre-Darwinian age. Louis Agassiz even argued that species are God's individual thoughts, made incarnate so that we might perceive both His majesty and His message.
Species, Agassiz wrote, are 'instituted by the Divine Intelligence as the categories of his mode of thinking.' But how could a division of the organic world into discrete entities be justified by an evolutionary theory that proclaimed ceaseless change as the fundamental fact of nature?" Stephen J.
Gould, professor of geology and paleontology, Harvard University 15:58 Discouragement in witnessing. It is easy to become discouraged after trying to reason with sinners. But to do so is to demean the influence of the Holy Spirit in our witness.
If the salvation of a single soul depended solely upon us, we should be depressed if we see little visible and immediate fruit for our labors. However, the Bible tells us that "salvation is of the Lord." We do play a part as a co-laborer with Christ—He may instruct us to roll the stone away, but it is the Lord alone who calls the sinner from the tomb of his deathly state. He gives us opportunity, but He opens the heart of the sinner, and it is Him alone that makes the sinner come to life.
Our confidence should then be in Him.
Jesus said, "With God, nothing shall be impossible." We therefore can always abound in the Lord, knowing that our labors (even with cults) are not in vain. His Word cannot