Bear Vent

What a moment that was when the Lord, looking up to heaven, stood before Lazarus' open tomb! All was quiet inside the cave, for death was there; and all must have been quiet outside, while the Son of God prayed to His Father in heaven. The first sentence shows His faith. “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me.” ( John 11:41 ) The next showed His confidence in His Father's love — “I know that You always hear Me.” (v. 42 ) The last displayed His own love to sinful people — “Because of the crowd standing here I said this, so they may believe You sent Me.” He knew their unbelief, and He wanted to convince them that He and the Father were One. Who can conceive the breathless expectation that filled every heart when He uttered the words, “Lazarus, come out?” (v. 43 ) If that voice had not been obeyed, it would have been little wonder that the sisters had never again seen their brother; the hopes of all the dead, the hopes of all the living, the hopes of future generations, were ...

All God's children desire to be with their Father, and their Father desires to have all His children with Him. Sin, like a cruel tyrant, has scattered His family abroad. Death divides them from each other, and even divides their souls from their bodies. But Christ's death on the cross has taken away the guilt of sin, and has destroyed the power of death. At the sound of the last trumpet, the bodies that lay rotting in the graves, or forgotten in the depths of the sea, shall be glorified and united to the happy spirits of the righteous ones. Those who were born in different ages of the world, or who were separated by wide oceans, shall see each other for the first time in their Father's everlasting home.