The Resurrection of Lazarus

168:1.1Af­ter Je­sus had spent a few mo­ments in com­fort­ing Martha and Mary, apart from the mourn­ers, he asked them, “Where have you laid him?” Then Martha said, “Come and see.” And as the Mas­ter fol­lowed on in si­lence with the two sor­row­ing sis­ters, he wept. When the friendly Jews who fol­lowed af­ter them saw his tears, one of them said: “Be­hold how he loved him. Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind have kept this man from dy­ing?” By this time they were stand­ing be­fore the fam­ily tomb, a small nat­u­ral cave, or de­cliv­ity, in the ledge of rock which rose up some thirty feet at the far end of the gar­den plot.

168:1.2It is dif­fi­cult to ex­plain to hu­man minds just why Je­sus wept. While we have ac­cess to the reg­is­tra­tion of the com­bined hu­man emo­tions and di­vine thoughts, as of rec­ord in the mind of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster, we are not al­to­gether cer­tain about the real cause of these emo­tional man­i­fes­ta­tions. We are in­clined to be­lieve that Je­sus wept be­cause of a num­ber of thoughts and feel­ings which were go­ing through his mind at this time, such as:

168:1.31. He felt a gen­uine and sor­row­ful sym­pa­thy for Martha and Mary; he had a real and deep hu­man af­fec­tion for these sis­ters who had lost their brother.

168:1.42. He was per­turbed in his mind by the pres­ence of the crowd of mourn­ers, some sin­cere and some merely pre­tenders. He al­ways re­sented these out­ward ex­hi­bi­tions of mourn­ing. He knew the sis­ters loved their brother and had faith in the sur­vival of be­liev­ers. These con­flict­ing emo­tions may pos­si­bly ex­plain why he groaned as they came near the tomb.

168:1.53. He truly hes­i­tated about bring­ing Laz­a­rus back to the mor­tal life. His sis­ters re­ally needed him, but Je­sus re­gret­ted hav­ing to sum­mon his friend back to ex­pe­ri­ence the bit­ter per­se­cu­tion which he well knew Laz­a­rus would have to en­dure as a re­sult of be­ing the sub­ject of the great­est of all demon­stra­tions of the di­vine power of the Son of Man.

168:1.6And now we may re­late an in­ter­est­ing and in­struc­tive fact: Al­though this nar­ra­tive un­folds as an ap­par­ently nat­u­ral and nor­mal event in hu­man af­fairs, it has some very in­ter­est­ing side lights. While the mes­sen­ger went to Je­sus on Sun­day, telling him of Laz­a­rus’s ill­ness, and while Je­sus sent word that it was “not to the death,” at the same time he went in per­son up to Beth­any and even asked the sis­ters, “Where have you laid him?” Even though all of this seems to in­di­cate that the Mas­ter was pro­ceed­ing af­ter the man­ner of this life and in ac­cor­dance with the lim­ited knowl­edge of the hu­man mind, nev­er­the­less, the rec­ords of the uni­verse re­veal that Je­sus’ Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster is­sued or­ders for the in­def­i­nite de­ten­tion of Laz­a­rus’s Thought Ad­juster on the planet sub­se­quent to Laz­a­rus’s death, and that this or­der was made of rec­ord just fif­teen min­utes be­fore Laz­a­rus breathed his last.

168:1.7Did the di­vine mind of Je­sus know, even be­fore Laz­a­rus died, that he would raise him from the dead? We do not know. We know only what we are here­with plac­ing on rec­ord.

168:1.8Many of Je­sus’ en­e­mies were in­clined to sneer at his man­i­fes­ta­tions of af­fec­tion, and they said among them­selves: “If he thought so much of this man, why did he tarry so long be­fore com­ing to Beth­any? If he is what they claim, why did he not save his dear friend? What is the good of heal­ing strangers in Gal­i­lee if he can­not save those whom he loves?” And in many other ways they mocked and made light of the teach­ings and works of Je­sus.

168:1.9And so, on this Thurs­day af­ter­noon at about half past two o’clock, was the stage all set in this lit­tle ham­let of Beth­any for the en­act­ment of the great­est of all works con­nected with the earth min­istry of Mi­chael of Neb­a­don, the great­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of di­vine power dur­ing his in­car­na­tion in the flesh, since his own res­ur­rec­tion oc­curred af­ter he had been lib­er­ated from the bonds of mor­tal habi­ta­tion.

168:1.10The small group as­sem­bled be­fore Laz­a­rus’s tomb lit­tle re­al­ized the pres­ence near at hand of a vast con­course of all or­ders of ce­les­tial be­ings as­sem­bled un­der the lead­er­ship of Ga­briel and now in wait­ing, by di­rec­tion of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster of Je­sus, vi­brat­ing with ex­pectancy and ready to ex­e­cute the bid­ding of their beloved Sov­er­eign.

168:1.11When Je­sus spoke those words of com­mand, “Take away the stone,” the as­sem­bled ce­les­tial hosts made ready to en­act the drama of the res­ur­rec­tion of Laz­a­rus in the like­ness of his mor­tal flesh. Such a form of res­ur­rec­tion in­volves dif­fi­cul­ties of ex­e­cu­tion which far tran­scend the usual tech­nique of the res­ur­rec­tion of mor­tal crea­tures in mor­ontia form and re­quires far more ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties and a far greater or­ga­ni­za­tion of uni­verse fa­cil­i­ties.

168:1.12When Martha and Mary heard this com­mand of Je­sus di­rect­ing that the stone in front of the tomb be rolled away, they were filled with con­flict­ing emo­tions. Mary hoped that Laz­a­rus was to be raised from the dead, but Martha, while to some ex­tent shar­ing her sis­ter’s faith, was more ex­er­cised by the fear that Laz­a­rus would not be pre­sentable, in his ap­pear­ance, to Je­sus, the apos­tles, and their friends. Said Martha: “Must we roll away the stone? My brother has now been dead four days, so that by this time de­cay of the body has be­gun.” Martha also said this be­cause she was not cer­tain as to why the Mas­ter had re­quested that the stone be re­moved; she thought maybe Je­sus wanted only to take one last look at Laz­a­rus. She was not set­tled and con­stant in her at­ti­tude. As they hes­i­tated to roll away the stone, Je­sus said: “Did I not tell you at the first that this sick­ness was not to the death? Have I not come to ful­fill my prom­ise? And af­ter I came to you, did I not say that, if you would only be­lieve, you should see the glory of God? Where­fore do you doubt? How long be­fore you will be­lieve and obey?”

168:1.13When Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing, his apos­tles, with the as­sis­tance of will­ing neigh­bors, laid hold upon the stone and rolled it away from the en­trance to the tomb.

168:1.14It was the com­mon be­lief of the Jews that the drop of gall on the point of the sword of the an­gel of death be­gan to work by the end of the third day, so that it was tak­ing full ef­fect on the fourth day. They al­lowed that the soul of man might linger about the tomb un­til the end of the third day, seek­ing to re­an­i­mate the dead body; but they firmly be­lieved that such a soul had gone on to the abode of de­parted spir­its ere the fourth day had dawned.

168:1.15These be­liefs and opin­ions re­gard­ing the dead and the de­par­ture of the spir­its of the dead served to make sure, in the minds of all who were now pres­ent at Laz­a­rus’s tomb and sub­se­quently to all who might hear of what was about to oc­cur, that this was re­ally and truly a case of the rais­ing of the dead by the per­sonal work­ing of one who de­clared he was “the res­ur­rec­tion and the life.”