The promise of the resurrection was especially comforting to a woman named Freida Barkman after her 15-year-old foster son, Vernon, was killed in an accident. Afraid that he would soon be forgotten by most of his friends, she was writing feverishly, hoping she could in some way help to keep alive the memory of her son. Then suddenly she realized that she did not need to do this. Vernon was still alive. He was not out of existence. He and all his Christian loved ones and friends would meet again. How did she know? Here is her answer: “Because of Easter. Because at our last family devotions he had prayed, ‘Thank you, God, that I am Your son.'”


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In a cemetery in Hanover, Germany, is a grave on which were placed huge slabs of granite and marble cemented together and fastened with heavy steel clasps. It belongs to a woman who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Yet strangely, she directed in her will that her grave be made so secure that if there were a resurrection, it could not reach her. On the marker were inscribed these words: “This burial place must never be opened.”

In time, a seed, covered by the stones, began to grow. Slowly it pushed is way through the soil and out from beneath them. As the trunk enlarged, the great slabs were gradually shifted so that the steel clasps were wrenched from their sockets. A tiny seed had become a tree that had pushed aside the stones.

The dynamic life force contained in the little seed is a faint reflection of the tremendous power of God’s creative word that someday will call to life the bodies of all who are in their graves. He will also bring back every person drowned at sea, cremated, or destroyed in some other way.

This is no problem to the one who made something out of nothing when he spoke the universe into existence.


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