The Battle for the Resurrection, Third Edition - Paperback

by Norman L. Geisler (Author)

There is a trojan horse inside the evangelical camp. A battle has broken out, and the enemy is on the inside, not the outside. In fact, the enemy has secretly placed dynamite at the evangelical foundation which supports the whole superstructure of Christian truth. Alarming? Yes, but true. Who is the enemy, and what is the evangelical foundation of truth?The answer emerges from recent significant actions by some evangelical schools and denominations. For example, one of the largest Protestant denominations in the world retains on the faculty of its school a professor who has denied in print that Jesus rose from the tomb in a literal, physical body. He contends Paul was convinced that the Christ who appeared to him be¬longed to another order of existence than the Christ the disciples had known in the flesh. The risen Christ has not a physical but a spiritual body (emphasis mine).A smaller influential denomination that sponsors a well-known evangelical seminary in America has just pronounced orthodox a professor who denies what the Apostle's Creed af-firms: "I believe . . . in the resurrection of the body [flesh]." He wrote of Christ: This suggests that after his resurrection his essential state was one of invisibility and immateriality. It will be spiritual also in that it is . . . neither fleshly nor fleshy. From this point of view the new body is qualitatively and numerically distinct from the old body (emphases mine).These developments signal a new and crucial battle inside the evangelical church-the battle for the resurrection. Fighting for the resurrection is not new; fighting for it inside evangelical circles is. Once it was only liberals who denied the physical, material resurrection; now some evangelicals have joined them. Traditionally, the historicity of the resurrection was denied; now it is the materiality of the resurrection body that is denied.Suppose you were in Jesus' tomb on that first Easter morning. What would you have seen? Jesus' dead body literally come to life and leave the tomb? No. According to this new departure from orthodoxy, you simply would have witnessed Jesus' body vanish before your eyes! In short, you would have observed the annihilation of His material body, not its resurrection.The implications of this new doctrinal departure are far reaching. They threaten the very foundation of our evangeli¬cal faith. The Bible declares that the resurrection is the very heart of the gospel (1 Cor. 15:1-3) and is even a condition of salvation (Rom. 10:9). Thus, to tamper with this foundation of faith is to undermine the whole superstructure of Christian truth.This book is an attempt to sound the trumpet of concern about this current trend in evangelical doctrine. It reveals alarming information about the latest attempts to redefine historic biblical truths to suit contemporary inclinations. It is an earnest plea to alert the body of Christ to one of the most significant doctrinal deviations of our time-one that hits at the very essence of the Christian faith.The Trojan horse is within and the dynamite has been placed. The battle for the resurrection is now within the evangelical church!