Now of all the doctrines which
the gospel has brought to light, perhaps the most difficult to
human reason is the resurrection of this body from the grave. You take all of the doctrines
of the gospel, and I won't mention all of them. They're going through
your mind, I know at this time. The cross, substitution, redemption,
eternal life. Perhaps the most difficult to
human reason is the actual resurrection of this body from the grave. I'm told that the Greeks and
Roman philosophers talked about the soul and the spirit of those
who died existing in some future state, either happy or unhappy. And then we know that superstitious
people talk about ghosts and spirits of the dead floating
about in haunted houses. And then others have taught reincarnation
I knew a man in Alabama several years ago who believed that he
lived here on this earth many years ago in another body. In fact, he contended sincerely
that he was at the city of Jerusalem when Christ was tried and crucified,
and he was one of the soldiers that helped to nail him to the
cross. and that he saw some of his friends there, too. He knew
that they were there in other bodies, and now he'd come back
again and again and again until he had assumed his present body. There are a lot of people who
believe that, that the dead will come back to this earth in the
form of an animal or in the form of another human being. But the
teaching of the Word of God is totally different. The Bible
doesn't talk about just the soul and the spirit of the dead coming
back, existing either happy or unhappy only as a spirit. The Bible doesn't talk about
ghosts and spirits floating about haunting houses, and the Bible
certainly knows nothing about reincarnation. But the teaching
of the Word of God is this. This is the teaching of this
Bible, that the believer will have a perfect body, that the
believer will enjoy perfection, not only in soul, but in body,
that we will have an eternity of happiness in flesh and bones,
body and soul. The Bible teaches that as we
are now, so shall we be hereafter. a body of flesh and bones inhabited
by a perfect spirit. That's what the Word of God teaches.
The Bible teaches that the same individual who loved Christ and
who believed on Christ here on this earth will share his glory
in the same form in which you now live. That's what the Bible
teaches. The Bible teaches that the man who died in unbelief
will in the same form in which he sinned, will in the same form
in which he rebelled against God, be sentenced to spend eternity. There is a resurrection of the
body. The Lord Jesus Christ promised
that to his disciples. Turn to the book of John. Now
listen to the Lord in the book of John, chapter 5. John 5, verse
25. Now this was the teaching of
Christ, that this body shall rise. We know that the Bible
says that when a man dies, the body returns to the dust from
which it came, and the soul to God who gave it. And that's just
about as far as we get, the soul with God and the body in the
ground. But Christ went farther, and He said in John 5, verse
25, listen, "'Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming,
and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of
God, and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath
life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself,
and hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because
He is the Son of Man. Marvel not at this, for the hour
is coming in the which all that are in the grave That's the body. "...shall hear his voice, and
shall come out of the grave." They shall come forward. "...they
that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they
that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation." But
they are coming forward. Christ taught that. And then
in John 11, let's turn over there, John 11, verse 21. This was the promise of the Savior
to his disciples, that these bodies shall rise. There is a
resurrection of the dead in John 11, verse 21. Now listen to Christ
here. Then said Martha unto Jesus,
Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
But I know that even now whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will
give it thee. And Jesus saith unto her, Thy
brother shall rise again. Thy brother shall rise again.
And Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the
resurrection at the last day. Jesus saith unto her, I am the
resurrection and the life. He that believeth on me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth
in me shall never die. Believest thou this?" Christ not only taught the resurrection
of the dead, but Christ revealed the resurrection of the dead.
He showed his disciples what he meant. Now we know that Christ
died. Let's turn to Luke chapter 23.
He did not faint on that cross. He did not swoon. He was not
in a coma. He died on that cross. In Luke
chapter 23, turn over there with me, verse 52. Then this man,
that is, Joseph of Arimathea, this man went to Pilate and asked
for the body of Jesus. Christ had died on the cross.
His body was hanging on that cross, dead. And this man Joseph,
who owned a sepulchre, a burial place, went to Pilate and asked
for the body of Jesus, the lifeless, dead body. And he took it down
from the cross and he wrapped it in linen and he laid it in
a sepulchre that was hewn in stone where never man before
was laid. Christ was buried. You and I
have had this experience. We've taken those who are very
dear to us and very precious to us to the graveyard, to the
cemetery. And we have put in the ground
bodies that mean an awful lot to us. We buried our loved ones. We put them in the grave. Just
like the Lord Jesus Christ was taken down off that cross, and
he was wrapped in burial clothes, and he was taken to the grave,
and he was put in the ground. He was put in the grave. And
the stone was rolled over the door and sealed. Christ is buried. All right. Luke 24, now verse
1. Now upon the first day of the
week, very early in the morning, they came unto the grave where
Christ was buried, bringing the spices which they had prepared
and certain others with them, and they found the stone rolled
away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and they
found not the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. They came to pass,
as they were much perplexed thereabout, two men stood by them in shining
garments. These are angels, two men. And
as they were afraid and bowed down their faces to the earth,
they said, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here. Now that's going to happen to
every one of us. We're going to die. Our bodies
are going to be put not in grave clothes, but in caskets. We're
going to be lowered in the ground, or put in a mausoleum, or put
in a drawer somewhere, or down in a vault, or we're going to
perhaps be burned up in a building, our ashes blown to the wind,
but we're going to be buried. We're going back to the dirt.
And then one of these days, when somebody comes to visit our grave,
it's going to be opened, and we're not going to be there,
just like Christ here. He is not here! He is not here. The same one who was buried is
not here. He is risen. The same one who
died and was buried is risen. He is risen. He's not here. And then Luke 24, verse 33. He appeared to his disciples.
The Lord Jesus Christ appeared to his disciples in bones. He had died on the cross. He
had been put in the grave. They had gone to visit the grave,
and he had risen. And now he appears to them, in
verse 33, and they arose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem. They found the eleven gathered
together, and them that were with them, and they said, The
Lord is risen indeed, and he hath appeared to Simon. And they
told what things were done in the way, and how he was known
of them in breaking of bread. And as they thus spake, Jesus
himself stood in the midst of them. and saith unto them, Peace
be unto you." They were terrified and affrighted. Of course they
were. They'd seen him die on that cross. They knew he was
dead. And they'd taken his body, and I'm sure they followed the
funeral procession as they took his body to the grave and put
it dead in the grave and rolled a stone in front of it, and they
were afraid. And suppose that they'd seen a spirit. You'd do
the same thing if someone we buried a year ago, or last week,
or a few months ago, walked through the door right there, you would
discount it. You would say it's someone in
disguise, or it's an hallucination, or it's something we're seeing
that doesn't exist, or it's something like that. But we saw him buried. He's not here. He can't be. He's
dead. And that's what the disciples
were going through. And Christ said unto them, verse 38, Why
are you troubled? Why do thoughts arise in your
hearts? Why do you doubt God? Behold my hands and my feet.
It is I myself. Touch me. Handle me. That's the first thing I'd do.
If my son walked through that door there, who died four years
ago, and the first thing I'd do is touch him. Find out if
it is a spirit or an hallucination or a vision. And that's what
Christ said. He put out his hand and said,
take hold of my hand. You know when you're touching
flesh and bones, don't you? Handle me. A spirit doesn't have
flesh and bones, as you see me have. And when he had thus spoken,
he showed them his hands and feet. He showed them the scars.
You see, they saw the nails go in those hands. And they saw
the flesh rip as the weight of the body pulled down on those
nails. And they saw the nails in his
feet and the blood spurting from the veins as he died. They saw those things. He said,
Reach out, you see that scar? It is I myself. Verse 41, And
while they yet believed not for joy and wonder, he said, Still, we have a problem with faith,
don't we? These natural hearts, we walk by sight so much, well,
I'll believe it if I see it. And even sometimes when we see
it, we don't believe it. And here the disciples were seeing
him, and still they doubted. And while they believed, not
for joy, it was just too much. He said, Do you have some meat?
And they gave him a piece of fish and a honeycomb, and the
Lord took it and ate it right there in front of them. Now that's the resurrected body. And so these disciples went forth
from there preaching two doctrines that brought upon them the wrath
of the church. I'm talking about the synagogue
and the tabernacle and organized religion. Two doctrines that
brought upon their heads the wrath of organized religion that
brought upon their heads the wrath of the Sadducees and the
Scribes and the Pharisees and the leaders of religion, that
brought upon their heads even the wrath of organized politics
and nations and leaders, they preached two things. They preached
salvation by the cross, by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
They preach that man lives by Christ's death. They preach that
we have a righteousness which is worked out and perfected and
imputed unto us by the obedience and righteousness of the Lord
Jesus Christ, that our sins were punished in his body on the tree. that He died that we might live,
that our access to God is through the blood of our substitute,
that Christ is our priest, that Christ is our sacrifice, that
Christ is our offering, that Christ is our altar, that Christ
is our atonement. And our wisdom and righteousness
and sanctification and redemption is all in Christ and His cross. And a sermon without the cross
and without Christ is an empty sermon that ought not to be preached.
And the second doctrine that they went forth preaching was
the resurrection of the body from the grave. Now you turn
back to 1 Corinthians 15, and Paul summed this whole thing
up right here, 1 Corinthians 15. Now listen to it. This is
our gospel, this is our message, this is our hope, this is our
redemption, 1 Corinthians 15. 1. Brethren, I declare unto you
the gospel which I preached unto you. and which also you have
received, and wherein you stand, and by which you are saved. If
you keep in memory what I preached unto you, that is, unless you
believed in vain, here it is, I deliver it unto you first of
all, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
according to every prophecy, and according to every type,
and according to every promise in the Old Testament. Every ceremony
pointed to Christ, every holy day, every sacrifice, everything
Moses gave in his law pointed to Christ, and he died according
to the scriptures. He is our Passover sacrifice
for us. Listen. And that he was buried,
his body was put in the ground, and that he rose again the third
day according to the scriptures. And Cephas saw him, and the twelve
saw him, verse 6, and five hundred brethren at one time saw him,
of whom the greater part remain unto this present time, but some
are dead. And he was seen of James, and then of all the apostles,
and last of all, I saw him," Paul said. He arose from the
grave. He arose from the grave. Now
then, I don't want to weary you. But I want to point out several
things I think that will be glorifying to our Lord and will give some
confidence and assurance to us who are close to this day when
we shall realize these blessings. First of all, there's going to
be a resurrection of all the dead. All the dead. Let us not suppose that the dead
in Christ will rise only. that the dead in Christ will
rise to enjoy eternal glory, and the unbeliever remain in
the tomb. That's not true. All men are
going to rise. Christ said, Marvel not at this,
the day is coming when all that are in the graves, all that are
in the graves, shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and
they that hear shall live. Turn to Acts chapter 24. Now,
I want to point something out to you here, perhaps you've never
seen before, and that's no disgrace. I see things every day I've never
seen before in the Word of God. Back some years ago, I saw this
in the Word of God, and it was amazing to me. Did you know that
most of the time when the disciples were brought before the magistrates
to be punished and to be whipped and imprisoned, do you know why
they were brought before them? for preaching the resurrection
of the dead. Did you know that? That's right. You look at Acts
24, verse 21. Now, Paul, these Jews had nearly
torn him apart, these religious Jews, but he said he was a Roman
citizen, so he was rescued from them by the Roman soldiers and
brought before Felix and brought before the magistrates, and this
is what he said in verse 21, Acts 24. for this one voice that I cried
standing among you, touching the resurrection of the dead,
I am called in question by you this day." That's why I'm here,
Paul said, for preaching the resurrection of the dead. That's
why I'm here. So I'm not going to compromise
this doctrine. I'm not going to say, I believe
we're going to live again someday in a spirit, or as a ghost, or
in a shadowy form. I'm going to say, as Christ said,
and as the apostles said, and as the Bible teaches, that this
body, in this form, in flesh and blood, able to eat and to
be touched and handled, is coming out of the grave. That's what
Paul taught. And that, he said, is why I'm called into question
this day, for preaching the resurrection of the dead. Now back in verse
15, what I'm talking about now is that all men are going to
rise. Paul says in verse 15, "...and have hope toward God,
which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection
of the dead, both of the just and the unjust." Turn to the
book of Revelation, chapter 20. Revelation 20, beginning with
verse 11. And John, writing, inspired of
the Holy Spirit, from the Isle of Patmos, said, I saw a great
white throne. Revelation 20, verse 11. And
him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and heaven fled
away, there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead,
and I saw the dead. small and great, stand before
God. And the books were opened, and
another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the
dead were judged out of those things which were written in
the books according to their works. And the sea gave up the
dead which were in it, every sailor that's ever perished at
sea, every sailor that's ever been buried at sea. The sea gave up the dead, and
death, that is, the grave, gave up the dead, and hell gave up
the dead. and they were judged. Every man
shall ride. There's an hour coming, my friend. There's an hour appointed on
the calendar of God, on the clock of God Almighty. There's an hour
coming when the sea and the forest, when the wilderness and the desert,
when the mausoleums and the graveyards are going to give up their prey. in that hour, all flesh that's
ever lived on this earth, every baby ever born, kings and prophets,
unbelievers and believers. All men, small and great, rich
and poor, black and white, young or old, all men, from the first
baby ever born on this earth to the last life that ever breathed,
in that hour, in that day, every person shall come forth in the
body. They are all going to live again. All right, back to our text now.
Let's get down to the heart of this message. in verse 36. In verse 35, somebody
said, All right, Paul, how are the dead raised up, and with
what body do they come? The objective seems to indicate
that since the body is buried and goes back to the dust. Now,
I've never Yes, I have, too, down in Mexico. I watched them
dig up a dead body. I watched them dig up. Some of
you men sitting right here were with me. We walked up to the
cemetery down in Mexico, in the Yucatan, and this man had just
finished digging up what was left of a woman's body. She'd been dead, what was it,
two years or three years? Don was standing right beside
me. Three years. They dug her up. And I'll tell you, there
wasn't anything left but bones. There wasn't a piece of flesh
in that wooden, what was left of the wooden coffin. She was
a skull and her hair was hanging from the skull, just the skull.
And the bones were, and they weren't, it wasn't a skeleton
together, they were just all just piled together in a piece
of cloth. That was all that was left. All
right? This objector says, OK, Paul,
assuming that your resurrection of the body is true, that the
body's going to rise. Now, let's tell me. Tell me how
in this world that that body, that's rotten, decayed, decomposed,
nothing left, is going to come forth. All right? The Apostle
uses the same illustration that Christ used in John 12. Let's
go to John 12 a minute. Stay with me. And I'll help you
here because it helped me. It gives me confidence. It gives
me joy. It takes away the dread and the
fear of the tomb. It makes me happy concerning
my loved ones whose bodies I know are already decomposed. And the
worms, not only, my friend, eat from without, they eat from within.
That's what some folks miss. They think, well, I'll put this
body in a good, strong a vault, and I'll put it in the ground,
and the rain will never get in, and the worms will never get
in, and that body is going to decompose from within. It's going
to rot no matter what you put it in. In John 12, verse 24,
Christ said, Verily I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat,
that is, a seed, unless a seed of corn of wheat fall into the
ground and decay, it abideth alone. But if it die, it will
bring forth much fruit." Now then, in 1 Corinthians 15, verse
36, Paul says the same thing, "...thy fool. That which thou
sowest," that which you plant, talking about a seed of wheat
or corn, "...is not quickened, does not live, does not bring
forth fruit, unless it decays." And that which thou sowest, you
don't sow the body that shall be. You just sow bare grain. You just plant a seed. You don't
plant a whole stalk. You don't plant a whole air corn.
You plant a seed. That's not what you're going
to get. You're going to get something much better than just a seed.
All right, now watch this. The seed, listen to me real carefully
here now. The seed is put into the ground.
I'm talking about a piece of corn, a grain of corn or a grain
of wheat. Here I'm going to be a farmer
for a few minutes now and I take that grain of corn and wheat
and I go out in my garden and I dig a row there and put in
a little fertilizer and mix the dirt around and take that seed
and drop it in the ground and cover it up. I plant it. And that seed decays. It rains
on it and the moisture and it rots. It became by water and
dirt. By and by, I walk out to the
garden a few days later, and there's a green blade appears. And that green blade, I watch
it day after day, and it keeps growing, and it grows until it
becomes a whole stalk. And it gets three or four feet
high, or maybe five feet, six feet high. And then after a while
I see a full ear corn on that stalk. Now, is this the same
corn that I planted? It is, isn't it? Certainly it
is. It came up right where I put it. I took the little seed of
corn and I put it in the ground, and this is the result. It rotted
and it decayed, it died, and now coming up from the same place,
and if I dug around further, I may find a little bit of that
seed underneath there somewhere. I've planted flowers before and
went out to thin them, you know, and you pull up one of the little
tender shoots like this, and there's the pod broken open,
there's the seed still hanging on the bottom of the root. It's
the same thing I planted. The same thing. Now I put this
seed in the ground, and it springs up a whole stalk, a whole ear
of corn, and yet we take this miracle for granted. Don't we? We take this for granted. All
you took out there was a little shrivel, dried up seed, and you
put it in the ground. And you went on about your business,
and one day you went out there and there was a beautiful flower,
or a beautiful stalk of corn, and I don't see anybody getting
excited about it. I don't see anybody marveling
about the miracle of this resurrection. And that's what it is. There's
no doubt it's the same seed. It shriveled and it rotted and
it decayed, but this is the same seed. This new corn came from
the old corn. And so shall it be in the resurrection
of the dead. Now listen to me. The body is
going to be buried as a shriveled seed. My mother passed away less
than a year ago. And I remember my mother when
she was a beautiful woman. But we buried a body that was
ugly. It wasn't beautiful. It was a
shriveled seed. And that's the way your body
is going to wind up. Don't put too much confidence
in your strength and in your beauty and in your health, because
you're going. You're going to decay. The old
body is going to shrivel up. It's going to be ugly. And there's
no beauty about it, and it's fit for nothing. We don't even
want to open the casket. I dread to open these caskets,
because we're looking at a body of a person we really didn't
know. Just looking at an old shriveled seed. And we take it
out and we put it in the grave, and like we put wheat in the
ground, there it decays and there it rots. But bless your heart
when the trumpet of the archangel of God shakes the heavens some
day. In God's good time, it's going to come forth in the full
flower of beautiful manhood. It's going to come forth in the
full flower just like the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
these bodies are going to be different. Sure they're going
to be different. Just like that, when I planted the shriveled
seed of corn, and the full ear of corn of the stalk came up.
It's the same seed. It came from the same planting. But it's 10,000 times more beautiful. It's 10,000 times more wonderful. But it came from that seed. And
I don't know how God, in His marvelous, mysterious wisdom,
sustained some amount of growth from these bodies, but somehow
the seed of life is there, and one of these days God's going
to call it forth, the same body, and everybody gets all excited
about that, and they say, how can these things be? I'll explain
it to you when you explain to me how that shriveled dead seed
brings forth a stalk of corn. Now, you don't marvel at that.
You plant them every year. I sowed some tulips and all the
other day out there in my yard. I'm fully confident they're coming
up. I know they're going to come up. What's going to come up?
Tulips. Right where I planted them. All I planted was a swivel,
dead, rotten seed, and it's going back to the dust. But someday,
next March or April, I'm going to stand out there, and bless
your heart, I'm going to see a beautiful red tulip. And I
expect one of these days to stand out at Rose Hill and see some
beautiful tulips come forth. God's going to bring them forth.
I know that. Fresh and bold. bodies just like the Lord Jesus
Christ in the full beauty and power and strength of His glory. Now suppose this morning I just
got up here in front of you and I reached in my pocket and I
pulled out a seed. And I told Don, I said, Now Don,
come up here and identify this seed for the people. He looks
at it and he said, I don't know what it is. It could be anything. I don't know. I can't tell you
what a seed is. I don't know. So I go out and
I plant it, and it comes up. And then I say, Don, come over
here to that way. He said, it's a lily. That's
what it is, a beautiful white lily. Well, what did I plant?
Well, you planted a lily. How do you know I planted a lily?
Because that's what came up. Everybody knows if you plant
a violet, a violet will come up. If you plant a lily, a lily
will come up. The identity is the same. Brother, when I come out of this
grave, I'm going to come out the same fellow you put in. You
plant a lily and a lily is coming out. You plant Henry Mahan, he's
coming out. And you plant Aidan Brown, he's
coming out. That's right. How is he coming
out? Well, let's look at verse 42.
Let's go over just a little bit. Now, this is important here,
don't leave me. In verse 42, So also is the resurrection of
the dead. It is sown in corruption. It's
a frail body. It's subject to disease and decay
and death. It's a vessel of clay with principles
of decay in its essence. It's sown, it's buried in corruption. But bless your heart, it'll be
raised in incorruption. It's going to be raised. When
my body at the trumpet of God, when it sounds, when my body
comes out, of the grave, it's going to come out without the
possibility of weariness, without the possibility of wear, without
the possibility of sickness, without the possibility of violence,
without the possibility of suffering, indestructible like Israel's
clothes in the wilderness and their shoes that never wore out
for 40 years. My body will never wear out.
Not my resurrection. It's going to come out incorruptible. Look at the next verse. It's
sown in dishonor. Brethren, my body is subject
to deformity, which makes it ugly. It's subject to losses,
which make it useless. I may lose my arms someday. I
may lose my legs. I may lose my eyes. And that
makes my body useless. It's subject to bruises and wounds
and sores, it's subject to age and wrinkles and wretchedness,
but he says it's going to be sown in dishonor and raised in
glory in unblemished holiness. It's going to be raised from
the grave in flesh and blood with the loveliness of Eden.
It's going to be without spot or wrinkle, it's going to be
a delight to the eye. Our bodies are going to be like
those of our first parents, naked and not ashamed, pure and holy. Look at the next verse. It's
sown in weakness. My body's weak in ability. I
can't work without getting tired. My body's weak in ability to
think. I can't think without thinking
foolishness. My body's weak in the ability
to live without sin. My body's weak in the ability
to continue without someday failing. But my body's going to be raised
in power, and I'll never know any emotional, physical, or mental
burden. Nothing will be too great. Nothing
will be too great. And it's raised, what's this,
it's stone, it's buried a natural body, and it's coming out a spiritual
body. Now that's what he means back
here when he says, Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not
quickened except it die, and that which thou sowest is not
the body that shall be. We're not going to get out of
the grave a wrinkled, crumpled, corrupted old body. with a white
beard and a white mane and decayed teeth and a hunched back. No
sir, you might bear that kind, but when she comes forth, it's
coming forth a spiritual body. The natural body is the source
of all fleshly lust, and the flesh lusteth against the spirit,
but it'll be raised a spiritual body, therefore holy in all its
thoughts, desires, feelings, and wants. The spiritual body will be the
never-failing instrument of the perfect will of God. My eyes
shall see unlimited distances. My ears shall hear the voice
of God. My memory shall never fail. My mind shall comprehend all
things. And here's something that I'm
interested in. my heart's going to be able to love perfectly. Perfectly. In the days of Bloody
Mary, the Queen, they erected a stake outside the Tower of
London to burn two Christians. One was a crippled man and the
other was a blind man, but both of them were strong believers
in Christ. And just as they lit the fire
to burn these two martyrs, the lame man threw away his crutch,
and he cried to his companion, who could not see. Courage, my
brother! This fire is going to heal us
both. So all believers can say one
to another, courage, my brother. The grave will heal us both. We're going to take into the
grave a lot of weaknesses, a lot of corruption, a lot of infirmities,
but we're not going to bring them out. We're going to come
out incorruptible, immortal, eternal, just like the Master. Just like the Master. Our Father,
teach us by thy Spirit, and take away our doubts and our fears,
and forgive our unbelief. O God, we cry with a centurion,
I believe, help my unbelief. Give me faith, strong, confident
faith in my living Lord, and give us hope That unquenchable
eternal hope that's as certain as Christ's resurrection, and
give us love, break our hearts, make us to see that which is
important. It matters not what a man has
in this life, it matters who he knows. Our life consisteth
not in the things that we possess materially. Our lives consist
in a saving interest with the Lord Jesus Christ. Because he
lives, we're going to live, and we're going to be joint heirs
with him. Bless the message to our prophet,
and to thy glory we pray in Christ's name. Amen.