And so it continues: "All that are in the graves shall hear His voice." Yes, that ear that was buried a thousand years ago, and of which there was not the slightest relic left, that ear so long lost in silence, it shall hear--hear the almighty voice of that God who made man's ear at the beginning, who makes the ear of the newborn babe now, and is able, according to the working whereby He is able to do all things, to renew and refashion the ear, and hearing it shall start up, as the next words say, "shall come forth." It is not in the power of man's speech or imagination to conceive what a spectacle it shall be when, as the heavens are passing with a great noise, and the elements are burning with furnace heat, the angels are sounding the arrival of the great day of Judgment, we shall see the multitudes in the valleys of the dead rising up from land and sea, from mountain top and deep ravines, swarming up a great and countless number before the bar of their Judge. Ah, what a sight it will be! What a wonder!
And how will they look? you may naturally inquire. In answer I would say on the basis of God's Word: Like themselves. To each one will be given "his own body." Our resurrected body, whatever it may exactly be and however different and superior it will undoubtedly be to our present body, will yet in some way be identical with our present body, and it will so far retain the appearance and individuality of our present body that in that future resurrected body we shall easily be recognized by those who knew us, and will be known as the same distinct personalities which we are now known to be in our present body. "Though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God."
We pass on to weigh the results. The text goes on to say: "And shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation." From this we gather that the whole family will be divided as it is even now, indeed, into two, and only two, classes of characters: "They that have done good," and "they that have done evil." Who are those who have done good? By nature no one is "good." We are all sinners. There is none righteous, no, not one. The best of us are unprofitable servants. We can only be "good" in our way, and that is by having the goodness of another, the goodness of Christ set down to our account. Then, when we are thus joined to Christ by faith in Him, we shall, from principle, strive to do good. Good, my beloved, is a word that may be measured according to those who use it. The "evil man," the unpardoned sinner, may "do good" in his sense and the sense of the world,--good to you, to his child, his wife, his friend, but he has no care for God, no reverence, no esteem for the great Lawgiver. Therefore, that which may be good to you may be ill to God, because done for no right motive, even perhaps done with a wrong motive. It depends upon what position I occupy towards my God and Christ that determines on the Day of Resurrection, and that position is either for or against Him; there is no middle, mixed, or mingled character. I am either a pardoned sinner or an unpardoned sinner, and my destiny will be accordingly. And what will that destiny be? Either "life" or "damnation."