RESURRECTION OF BODY

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 986, 31 May 1930, Page 5

RESURRECTION OF BODY

REV. WALTER BENTLEY’S SERMON MISSION NEARS END The Rev. Walter Bentley’s mission at St. Matthew’s is drawing- to a close Last evening Mr. Bentley took as his subject the resurrection of the body. After dealing with its difficulties from many angles, Mr. Bentley continued: “So we see this subject, which is part of the Christian faith and a vital section of the Apostles’ Creed, is very confusing until we think it through and realise that resurrection is not something that will take place after death, but is a process which is going on all the time both here and now.

“Any physiologist will tell you that the physical body changes entirely every seven years, so that if we live to be 70 years of age we are actually inhabiting our tenth body. What has preserved our identity all through these changes? There must be something inside which does not change, and St. Paul calls it the spiritual body which we already possess, for ‘there is (not simply will be) a spiritual body.’ “In this body then we are clothed in the next world, and there it will be developed into our celestial body for our final entrance into glory. So like our Maker being made in His Image, we too, are triune, having a physical body, changing finally into a spiritual and this in our next stage becoming celestial in which we shall live forever.

“What is the highest product of the vegetable world? The nut on the tree. Thus we are all nuts on the tree of life, and when this outer husk is worn out and discarded, we enter paradise clothed in our inner shell, which in turn develops? (or evolves) into our celestial body, (‘not made with hands, eternal in the heavens’) in which we abide forever. Thus recognition attends us all the journey from the cradle to the judgment. “The Woolworth Building on Broadway, though covered with stone, is nevertheless a steel structure, and if the stone was removed the building would still be intact. So, too, our inner bodies are invisible and preserve our identity through our whole range of life both here and hereafter.”

This evening at 7.30 Mr. Bentley will lecture in the Parish Hall on “"What the Church is Doing for the Theatre,” and will follow it with readings. At the final service on Sunday evening the subject will be “The Second Coming of Christ and the Universal Judgment.”