Bible descriptions of a mortal soul. You may be sure that they had a hope. Rest assured that the God who gave his first perfect human creation the hope of living forever if obedient did not leave these faithful, if dying, Bible writers without hope.

Paul the apostle reviews some of their faithful life histories in his letter to the Hebrews, chapter eleven. With eloquence he records their triumphs of faith, triumphs over sword, fire, beasts, opposing kingdoms, yes, and their own weaknesses. Why did they endure all this so faithfully? “In order that they might attain a better resurrection.” (Heb. 11:32-35 NW) Not immortality, but resurrection is our hope!

Resurrect a soul that has disintegrated? How? What is there to resurrect? What trace remains of faithful men now dead for centuries? The one factor in the universe that allows resurrection is memory, the greatest memory in the universe, God’s memory. “The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of the wicked shall rot.” (Prov. 10:7) The willfully wicked may be gone forever, gone and forgotten, but, because of Jehovah’s powerful memory, faithful men like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob “are all living from his standpoint.” (Luke 20:38, NW) True, as living souls they have long since passed out of existence; they “are not,” but Jehovah is the God “who makes the dead alive and calls the things that are not as though they were.”—Rom. 4:17, NW.

Faithful life patterns are preserved indelibly, in all their intricate detail, in the mind of the One who is able to have a personal acquaintance with each and every one of seemingly innumerable stars: “He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.” (Ps. 147:4) Laid away in their tombs, wherever they may be, the faithful are encompassed by God’s illimitable memory. Moreover, “the hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out.” (John 5:28, 29, NW) He whose matchless power created or constituted the first human souls can reconstitute faithful human souls back to life again, can re-stand them again to life. That is the meaning of resurrection.

That is the true object of man’s desire, the accomplished end of his long search for continued existence, the answer to his question, voiced by faithful Job: “If a man die, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14) “Yes,” answers the Bible, “if his faithfulness preserves him in God’s memory.” To some people in these troubled last days of this old world even greater blessings may come, the privilege of surviving this world’s end and never dying, even as “a few people, that is, eight souls, were carried safely through the water” when the flood of Noah’s day descended. (1 Pet. 3:20, NW) May your reasonings, longings, searchings, set your faith and hope, not on false pagan immortality promises, but on the God-given promise you have seen through the eyes of his Word.

Another Admission of Christendom’s Failure

● Writing about Jehovah’s witnesses in the article “The Startling Witnesses” in the February 13, 1957, issue of The Christian Century, Marcus Bach concludes his subject: “How shall we deal with them? What shall we do? What should be our advice to those who insist that ‘somebody ought to put a stop to them’? What shall we say to the black-robed cleric who jostles them on the street? There is but one answer: Jehovah’s Witnesses are not a threat, but a challenge calling once more upon the traditional church to—witness!”