Paul in his second epistle to
the Corinthians in chapter 3 sets before us the exceeding glory
of the gospel and the ministry of the gospel in contrast to
the glory which was seen in the Old Testament in the law and
the prophets and the ministry therein. Such is the contrast
between the glory in the Gospel and that of the former ministration
that Paul refers to the ministration that came in the law under Moses
as the ministration of condemnation and the ministration of death. In contrast to the ministration
of the Spirit and the ministration of righteousness. He shows us the difference between
that which brings life in the gospel and that which brought
death under the law. Both were given of God, both
are the truth But one was sent to show man what he is, to condemn
him and bring him in as a dead man before God, that the other,
the gospel, should bring under him life. Paul opens this chapter with
these words. Do we begin again to commend
ourselves or need we as some others epistles of commendation
to you or letters of commendation from you? Ye are our epistle
written in our hearts, known and read of all men. For as much
as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ,
ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit
of the living God, not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables
of the heart. And such trust have we through
Christ to God would. Not that we are sufficient of
ourselves to think anything of ourselves, but our sufficiency
is of God, who also have made us able ministers of the New
Testament. Not of the letter, but of the
Spirit. For the letter killeth, but the
Spirit giveth life. who also have made us able ministers
of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter killeth, but the
Spirit giveth life. What a contrast! What a contrast
between the New Testament and the Old and the ministration
of the Spirit of God in contrast with the letter. Paul states
under these Corinthians that he doesn't need, and the other
apostles don't need to commend themselves to others, they don't
need to prove their worth unto men, they don't need to show
letters of commendation, as it were, from others in the church
that say, receive this preacher, receive this man because we commend
him to you. They don't need to prove their
ministry. by the report of others in such
a way because the proof of their ministry is seen in the life
which God has conveyed by it to their hearers. Paul and the
other apostles could say unto those at Corinth, you are our
epistle written in our hearts and known and read of all men.
You're the proof of the life and the power in the gospel we
preach. For we came unto you in Corinth. We came unto you in a heathen
nation. when you were worshipping idols,
when you were following after false gods, when you knew nothing
of the one true and living God and his gospel, when you knew
nothing of Christ, when you were dead in your sins, we came unto
you with the gospel and we preached the gospel unto you and by that
gospel God made you to live. God took you in the desperation
of your sin. God took you in the darkness
wherein you dwelt. God took you in your captivity
and he brought life into your soul. He delivered you from the
darkness and shone the light of God into your heart. He brought
you out of captivity. He took the chains of sin, condemnation
and hell off of your arms and set you free. He breathed life
into your heart. He made you to live. And you
know it. When you heard of Christ and
Him crucified, when we preached unto you Christ and set before
you the Saviour and you beheld by faith, Jesus Christ bearing
your sins, suffering in your place, dying under the judgment
and wrath of God that should come down upon you and your sins,
When we sat before you, Christ himself in your place, dying
the death that you should die in order that you should live.
The chains fell off, the light shone in, and you fell down before
him and worshipped. Here you saw your Saviour, your
salvation, your deliverance, and all that held you down in
the darkness, and all that kept you bound in your captivity in
the chains of your cell, all the desperation you felt yourselves
under, because sin held you captive, you could not escape. You could
not live as you should. You could not attain unto salvation
and you knew it. All that held you down fell away. And in the gospel you saw a saviour
who loved you even when you hated him. A saviour who loved you
even when you were afar off. a Saviour who came from heaven's
glory into the darkness of this world and came for you in particular. The King of Kings, the Lord of
Lords, the Creator and Sustainer of heaven and earth, came into
this world for you. And He was nailed to a cross
for you. and he was beaten and bruised
for you sinner. He suffered the hatred and the
scorn and the mockery of all men for you. Even while you hated him, he
loved you and gave himself for you. And when you heard that
you were broken, you were melted, you were moved. and life rushed
into your soul and you rose again you as it were went into the
grave with him you felt yourself crucified with him and your sins
nailed to the tree with him and you went down into the darkness
of the grave with Christ himself but with him you rose up again
and the sin was no more and the judgment was no more and the
condemnation was no more but the Spirit of God entered into
your soul and you lived and as a consequence ye are our
epistle written in our hearts known and read by all men Paul
and the apostles and any faithful preacher of the gospel of Jesus
Christ can say unto those who have heard this gospel and believe
this gospel and have been brought to life by this gospel that you
are our epistle. You're the proof of the power
of the gospel that the gospel brings life forasmuch as ye are manifestly
declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us written
not with ink but with the Spirit of the Living God, not in tables
of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart. The Word of God,
the Word, Christ Himself, the Epistle of Christ, the Truth
of God has been conveyed by God, by His Gospel and written in
the fleshy tables of your heart. What a thing. What a thing to
say. And what a thing to know. If
you know the effect of the Gospel, if you know the life in the Gospel,
and the power of the Gospel, if you know what it is to have
the truth of Christ, the epistle of Christ written in your heart,
then what glory you will see therein. And how you will be
able to say with Paul that of a truth the New Testament came
unto you, not in the letter, but in the Spirit. For the letter
killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. what glory there is in
the gospel and what a contrast with the Old Testament and the
letter and any ministry or any so-called gospel or any religion
which is merely in the letter which is merely words which is
merely outward, any message which goes no further than your mind,
no further than the intellect, which does not penetrate the
heart, which does not enter into the soul, which does not convey
life by the Spirit of God, Any such ministry, any preaching
or teaching which is simply in the letter, kills. For the letter killeth, but the
Spirit giveth life. And what glory there is in the
message of Paul in this chapter. But what a warning there is also.
because this ministration of death, this ministration of condemnation
with which he contrasts the gospel, is not simply and only found
in the law as delivered by Moses, but is also found in any and
all religion delivered in the same manner. Any religion which
is merely in the letter, which is outward, and which does not
come by the Spirit of God in power into the soul, is simply
in the letter and it kills. And there is plenty of that in
religion today. But not so in the Gospel. not
in the ministry of Paul and the apostles, not in the gospel of
Jesus Christ when it comes in power from God on high by the
Spirit of God through the preachers he sends unto your soul. This gospel is not something
you can take and write down on a page and read it and think
you have it. That is where many go wrong today. They have the Bible, they have
the scriptures, they have the record, they have the words of
Christ recorded on the page. And you can take those words
and read those words without ever hearing them from Jesus
Christ's lips himself. You can profess to believe those
words and not know Christ. You can attempt to live by those
words and still be under condemnation, still be dead, still not know
God despite all your profession, despite all your belief, despite
all your claims. Oh I believe Christ and I'm trying
to serve him and I'm trying to live before God and yet you don't
know him. You have the words but you don't
have Christ you have the imprints and the
remains much like if you went into the grave when Christ had
risen as the women went and as the disciples went they came
to the grave and they found the stone rolled away and they found
the place where Jesus lay but he wasn't there the evidence
that he had been there was there they came to where he once was
but he wasn't there and the angel said unto them why seek ye the
living among the dead he's not here he's risen You could go and you could find
the very tablets on which the law of God, the Ten Commandments
were written. As written by the finger of God. But you wouldn't be in the presence
of God. You'd find what he wrote. You'd find where he'd been. You
could read what he spoke. but you're not where he is now
and you're not hearing his voice now you simply have that which is
written in stone likewise with the scriptures you can pick up
a Bible you can read it from cover to cover and these words
are the inspired words of God that he sent by holy men moved
of God They are the words that God caused to be written down
by the prophets and by the apostles. But you're not hearing the preaching
of those prophets or the voice of the apostles or the voice
of the Spirit of God if all you've got are the words on the page. Oh, you may say, but this is
the Word of God, it's the Scriptures. Yes, it is. But like the law
engraved on stone, it may be true. It may be His Word. It may be where He's been. But
the Spirit of God must come with that Word and speak that Word
and preach that Word unto your soul for you to hear it from
God and for it to be a ministration of life and the Spirit. Otherwise all it is, is the letter. Paul says that God have made
us able ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter. but of the Spirit. For the letter
killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. Not of the letter, not
simply words written in stone like the law was. Not just the
words on the page, even in the Bible, even in the New Testament
Scriptures, not simply of the letter, but of the Spirit. And yet so much in religion is
no more than that, no more than the letter. So much preaching
is no more than the letter, no more than words. Right words
perhaps, right doctrines. They may be oh so orthodox, but
right words and right doctrine in the letter is not enough. It's just words. It may be the
words that are recorded in the scriptures. It may be the words
that God spake. But unless God speaks them now,
they're just words. There's no life in them of themselves. There's no power in them of themselves. When you pick up a Bible from
a bookshop, it's not something holy. and as it were magical
in itself, mysterious in itself, simply because it's the Scriptures. That physical item is simply
a book, but it happens to be the book in which the truth of
God is written. But for that truth to do your
soul any good, the Spirit of God must take those words and
speak them. So much preaching in the churches,
so much of religion is just words. There's no life in the words,
there's no power in the words. Just having the right words and
the right form and the right worship and doing the right things
at the right times is not enough. When Christ came into this world,
He came into Jerusalem, and the scribes and the Pharisees were
oh so right in their religion. They had the scriptures that
God had given them. They had the temple that God
had given them. They went to the right place
at the right time. They had the priesthood. They
had the sacrifices. They did the right things in
the right way consistently and repeatedly. And yet they knew
not God. And when the Spirit of God in
Jesus Christ, when the life of God stood before them, they rejected
Him. They condemned Him. They put
Him to death. Then what was the ministry that
they had? It was a ministration of death.
A ministration of condemnation. It was the letter which killeth. It not only killed them, it not
only brought death to them, but such was the death that reigned
in them that they took the Son of God, they took the heir that
God sent unto them, and they slew him. the one man in the
world that could come unto them and speak words, as the disciples
said, which were words of eternal life, they took and put to death. Peter said, to whom else shall
we go, Lord? Thou hast the words of eternal
life. Yet those around him, in the
ministry, in the churches, who would have had no time for this
poor fisherman Peter. Those around him who should have
known and received him, put him to death. Oh how blind religion
can make us. This is what Paul goes on to
say in this chapter. The ministration of Moses, the
law, the scriptures that they had, the religion that they had,
didn't set them free. It condemned them. It didn't
bring them life, it brought them death. It didn't make them to
see. It was as a veil around their
eyes. Seeing then that we have such
hope, Paul says, we use great plainness of speech, and not
as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children of
Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which
is abolished. But their minds were blinded. For until this day remaineth
the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament.
which veil is done away in Christ. But even unto this day when Moses
is read, the veil is upon their heart. And what was true in Paul's
day remains true in our day. Even unto this day when Moses
is read, the veil is upon their heart. and their minds are blinded. And the veil is there in the
reading of the Old Testament. And in the churches today and
amongst the people today, they may read Moses, you may read
Moses, you may read the Old Testament, you may read the New Testament
with the same attitude and the same spirit. But the veil will
remain upon your heart. There's no light in simply having
the letter. Was the Old Testament true? Yes,
it was true. Did the Old Testament in type
and figure point to Christ? Indeed it did. But these never
saw him in it. And unless God opened your eyes
to see Christ in the scriptures, In the Old Testament and the
New Testament, all you will have are words and your eyes will
be veiled. No matter how much you read,
no matter how much you study, no matter how much you know,
no matter how much preaching of this vein you sit under, all
will come as the letter and the letter Caliph. Your heart will
be a stone. Your heart will be hard. And
when the gospel comes, you will reject it. You may make a pretense
of believing on Christ, of following Christ, of serving Christ, but
all is in your strength. All is according to your understanding. All is through your own learning
and wisdom. God has never broken you. God has never brought you in
as nothing before Him. And the Spirit of God in the
Gospel has never brought you unto life to look and see the
glory which is in Christ. There's only one way the veil
can be taken away. In Christ. Their minds were blinded
for until this day remain if the same veil untaken away in
the reading of the Old Testament which veil is done away in Christ. How will the veil be taken off
your eyes so you may see and live in Christ? then how do you expect that veil
to be taken away when all you look upon are commands and exhortations
and instruction in what you should and shouldn't do and you have
no time for Christ. God hath made us able ministers
of the New Testament not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter killeth, but the
Spirit giveth life. Of the Spirit, Paul says elsewhere,
concerning his gospel, that it came unto you not in word only,
but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance. As you know what manner of men
We were among you for your sake. What a contrast there is with
Paul's gospel and those that come in the letter. Their message
may have all the right words and all the right doctrine. It
may cross the T's and dot the I's, but it's just in the letter. and that may be their message
and all their message and there may be no more to their message
and no more to their gospel than right words and right doctrines but our gospel came not unto
you in word only but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost,
and in much assurance, and therein lies the difference. The Gospel
is not just the words on their own. The Gospel is spoken by
Jesus Christ. It's preached from on high. and it's preached in power in
the Holy Ghost and in much assurance and if you ever heard this Gospel
and you ever know this ministration of the Spirit and the ministration
of righteousness if it ever has any impact on you if you ever
feel the light shining into the darkness of your heart and life
quickening you from the grave then you will hear it because
Christ will preach it unto your soul and it will come unto you
not in word only but in power in the Holy Ghost and in much
assurance you will know that God liveth and reigneth on high. You will know that Christ has
died for your sins and risen again. You will know that he
bore your sins in particular. You will know that he set you
free. You will know that the chains
have fallen off. You will know that God reigns
and reigns in your heart. And you will know the difference
between a ministry in the letter and a ministry in the spirit. You'll know the difference. And
when you come and you sit under those who just preach in the
letter, you'll know the death. You'll know the deadness in your
soul. You'll go to a place to hear
of Christ and you'll go hungry and you'll go away empty. no
matter what they've said no matter how much they've quoted from
the scripture no matter how many right things they may have said
you'll know it's dead and of course should you mention
anything should you say to them anything they'll wonder and say well what
did I say wrong? what was wrong? but you know
it's wrong You know the difference between that which is in the
letter and that which is in the spirit. The child of God does. He knows when a shepherd comes
with the gospel. And he knows when an highling
comes. You'll know, you'll know the difference between that which
comes of the letter and that which comes of the spirit. How
will you know? Because the letter, Kilith. and
the Spirit giveth life. Because the letter killeth and
the Spirit giveth life. I can't stress this enough or
declare it boldly enough or impress upon you forcibly enough that
the letter killeth and the Spirit giveth life. that the gospel,
our gospel, is not in word only. You can't take it and run away
with it and think that you can preach it simply because you
have the words on the page. God preaches the gospel God sends
forth his gospel. God calls preachers to preach
the gospel and he prepares them. He prepares them through their
own experience. He prepares them through teaching
them the reality of it. He prepares them through giving
them the grace of God. He prepares them through the
trials and experiences of life and he sends them forth to preach
that gospel. And when he preaches it through
them, He preaches it in power. But those who like the Highlands
come in another way and take the scriptures and take the doctrines
and send themselves and say well I want to serve God and I'm going
to preach and they go forth and they take the right words and
say the right doctrines. If God never sent them they're
dead. and they're ministers of the
letter and the letter killeth and the children of God can sense
it and know it there's no life in their preaching there's no
life in their gospel the gospel our gospel is not in word only
and if the preachers you hear are in word only if they are
of the letter if they say perhaps the right things and do the right
things but there's no power in their ministry and there's no
life in it and there's no light in it if they see no more in
the scriptures except what's there and what they read in their
books by other men and they repeat the orthodox doctrines that they've
read and picked up from others if there's no light in them if
they see nothing in the scriptures except what men can show them
and what can be studied with the wisdom of men if God isn't
showing them things if God isn't revealing Christ unto them and
if God isn't revealing Christ unto you through their ministry
if all they've got is the letter then why are they preaching?
And why are you listening? Why do so many continue to sit
under their dead words, their dead letter, their killing ministry? Why do they sit under a dead
ministry? And why do the churches invite
these dead preachers to preach their dead ministry unto others? Why do we go where there is no
life? As the angel said unto the disciples,
why seek ye the living amongst the dead? And it's not just in
the places and in the churches which may outwardly seem dead,
which may seem old-fashioned. to modern man. It's also in those
places which put on an appearance of life with all their noise
and all their music and all their worship but there's no life in
their message. It's just dead. It's a masquerade,
it's a charade. And the child of God knows it.
Oh, we can go to a congregation filled to the brim, filled with
hundreds. all full of themselves and he
feels the death in the midst. Why go where there's no life? Oh how we're constrained by good
manners and politeness. Well this man's always come here,
we must continue to have him. It would be rude to tell him
no thank you. So awkward, and yet they confess
there's no life in that ministry. Well, be bold. Stand in the faith
and look for that which is of God. Seek that which comes from
on high. If you're hungry and thirsty,
you can do no else. If you must live, you must have
food. You must have the Gospel. You
must have life. You must have the Spirit of God. Pray that God sends you the Gospel. Pray that He deliver you from
captivity. And seek that which comes from
above. Seek the ministration of the
Spirit. Because the letter kilith but
the spirit giveth life it is so important the spirit giveth
life and we dead sinners by nature need life we need the spirit
of God we need the gospel and the ministration which comes
from God And this Gospel, this Spirit,
this Gospel which comes not in word only but in power, in much
assurance, in the Holy Ghost, this Gospel which comes of God
is not so elusive today that it does not exist. God hasn't
ceased to preach His Gospel. God hasn't finished the work. God hasn't sat down for a rest
and stopped the building of his church. It may seem that way when you
go to some places. It may seem like a day of small
things. But it isn't. God is on his throne,
Christ is on his throne and he is still preaching the gospel
today and still sending forth that gospel and it behoves the
child of God to seek it out, to look for it, to search for
it, to listen for it. God didn't just send forth this
gospel with that power in the apostolic age, in the era in
which Paul writes here in this epistle. He didn't just send
that gospel forth in power at certain points in history, at
the Reformation, or in the 1700s or the 1800s. He didn't only
preach by this preacher or that preacher. It is no good for us to shrug
our shoulders and bemoan a lack of power in the preaching in
the churches and just say, well, what can we do? We wait for a
better day. God is preaching his gospel and
he is sending it forth in power. We must seek it out. And we will
seek it out if we're hungry and thirsty after righteousness.
The child of God will. The child of God can do no else.
He's come to discover, as Paul shows in this passage, the wondrous
glory in the Gospel and the contrast between a ministration of the
Spirit and a ministration of the letter. And he will seek
out the ministration of the Spirit and seek out the Gospel, for
he must live. and he must feed on the truth. We must have life, we must hear
the Gospel. We must turn from the letter
to that which is of the Spirit. If we don't, we die. For there's no neutral state.
To sit under administration of the letter is to be killed by
the letter. God hath made us able ministers
of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the Spirit.
For the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. If you sit under the letter,
it will kill. If you hear the ministration
of the Gospel, the Spirit of God, it will give life. It will give life. What a difference there is in
the Gospel. Where's the difference? Where's the difference? Firstly, it comes from God, as
I've said. Christ preaches this Gospel from
on high. He sends it forth by the Spirit
of God through those He sends with the Gospel. He preaches
it. It comes from His lips. But it
concerns Christ and His work. The Spirit of God is sent forth
to honour the Son, as John says in his Gospel. The Spirit testifies,
not of Himself, not of the Spirit, but of Christ. He makes known
Christ. And the Gospel makes known Christ. The message of the Scriptures
from cover to cover concern Jesus Christ and His salvation. They concern the grace of God
which brings salvation. No matter where you read in the
scriptures, the whole message is Christ. Even in the Law, even
in the Old Testament, throughout it, the types and the figures
were pointed unto a Saviour, pointing unto the coming Messiah,
pointing unto God's Son who should come and offer Himself as a sacrifice
for sin. All the sacrifices pointed unto
Christ. All the priesthood pointed unto
Christ. All the righteousness demanded
by the law pointed unto Christ and the need of righteousness
and the absolute lack of it that we find in ourselves. All the message is Christ. Their minds were blinded, for
until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the
reading of the Old Testament. Which veil is done away in Christ? If when you read the Old Testament,
the New Testament, the whole of the Bible, there is a veil
upon your eyes, then you won't see Christ in it. You have all
the words, but you don't know Him. You may even read the words
concerning Christ, but you don't know the true Christ. You don't
know the true Christ until the veil is taken away, until God
shows Him unto you. And then in every word in the
Scriptures, Old and New Testaments, Law and Gospel, wherever you
look, there is Christ. There is life. There is the grace
of God displayed. There is the cross of Christ. There is a saviour. And there
is the difference. The veil is done away in Christ. The only way for the veil to
be taken off people's eyes and for them to hear something more
than just the letter, something more than just words, is for
Christ to be preached. And the only way for Christ to
be preached is when Christ himself preaches. and when the Spirit
of God takes his speech and conveys it unto us. When He preaches
by the power of the Gospel and the Spirit of God takes His words
and makes them known unto us, then the veil is taken away and
we see Christ and we see Him crucified in our place. We behold
Him suffering upon the cross for our sins, for our unbelief. for our rejection of the Gospel,
for our deadness, for our going astray, not just in sin, not
just in the world, but in religion. When the veil is taken away,
then we see ourselves as Paul crucified with Christ. And when Paul saw himself crucified
with Christ, when he looked upon Saul nailed to the tree, what
did he see? He saw a sinner. He saw a desperate sinner slain
with Christ and judged under the wrath of God. But he saw
a religious sinner. He saw himself. born of the tribe
of Benjamin, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, as concerning the
letter of the law, blameless. He saw that man who stood by
when Stephen preached the gospel and when Stephen was stoned. and he sanctioned it, and he
saw that religious man stoning Stephen who preached the gospel
unto death, he saw that wicked religious sinner crucified with
Christ. He saw himself as a minister
of the law, as a minister of Moses, as a minister of the letter,
crucified with Christ. He saw himself as a preacher of the oracles of God, of the
priesthood, of the sacrifices, of the temple, of all the Jewish
religion as he knew it until that day he saw that crucified
with Christ. and he saw his hatred of the
gospel, and his hatred of this ministry of the Spirit, and he
saw his hatred of the disciples of Christ, he saw his persecution
of the church, he saw his hounding to death of believers, he saw
all of that nailed to the cross and crucified with Christ. he saw his religion and himself
as a minister of the letter crucified with Christ and oh my friend
except you see yourself in the same state you will never know
the difference between the ministry of the letter which kills and
the ministry of the spirit which gives life until you see all
of your religion nailed to the tree like the handwriting of
ordinances were nailed to the tree and taken away until you
see all that you've done in God's service in your own strength
for your own glory in your own wisdom nailed to the cross and
taken away and judged and destroyed you'll never know Christ and
if you're a preacher who's preached and taken holy things of God
and precious things of the gospel and taken that which is Christ
which he never gave you and you went forth to preach and preached
in the letter except you see that taken and nailed to the
cross like Paul saw it taken and nailed to the cross then
you'll never know Christ Paul with the other, Saul with the
other Pharisees and scribes and the people of the day when Christ
the Son of God came before them cried out crucify him. They cried
out crucify him. They tried to put this message,
this gospel, this truth to death and so many in religion do the
same today. and except you see that, that
attitude, that hatred of the gospel, that suppressing of the
gospel, taken a nail to the cross, you will never know Christ. Paul's message was different.
He preached the Spirit of God. He preached in the Spirit of
God. He preached life in Jesus Christ
by the Spirit of God. He preached in power, not in
word only. He preached the grace of God. He declared that salvation is
all of God and that all that he ever did in religion went
against it all that he ever did in religion hindered the gospel
all that he ever did with the ministry of Moses hindered the
gospel and he preached that salvation is entirely entirely by the grace
of God at the will of God by the power of God through the
cross of Jesus Christ. To Paul everything was centred
upon the cross. Which is why when he first wrote
to these people at Corinth in 1 Corinthians when there was
division and sin in the church there, he brought them back to
the preaching of the cross. Everything he saw through the
light of him being nailed to the cross and rising again in
Jesus Christ. That is what made him an able
minister of the New Testament. not of the letter but of the
spirit for the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life Oh
may God be pleased to show us the difference and deliver us
from that which is of the letter and give us that which is of
the spirit deliver us from that which is of man and give us that
which is of God. Deliver us from that which is
of Jerusalem here below, and religion here below, and give
us that which comes from Jerusalem above, from the city of Zion,
from a heavenly country, that which is of God by grace alone,
through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. that which comes
from the voice of the Son of God. For as Christ says in John's
Gospel, the hour is coming and now is when even the dead in
the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God and live. Amen.