TV’s “Resurrection”

I don’t know if it just happened this way, or if it was planned, but the new ABC television show Resurrection premiered shortly before the Easter season. The show has an interesting premise. People who had been dead for years suddenly come back to life and visit their old friends and family members. The first to return to life is Jacob, an 8-year-old boy who wakes up in a field in China after being dead for 32 years. He is quickly reunited with his family in America in an emotional reunion.

          The main idea behind Resurrection is very intriguing because it speaks to a deep desire that lives in all of us. We all long to be reunited with loved ones who have passed away. Being separated from someone we love is painful, and who wouldn’t want the ache of that separation to go away? When you think about it, the thing that makes death so frightening and mysterious is that it is so final. When someone dies we know we will never see them here again. They are gone and they aren’t coming back.

          The Resurrection television series doesn’t offer any real hope, but it does raise some interesting questions. Why do people have to die? Why is death so random? What is it like to die? Are miracles possible? Could a dead person actually come back to life?

          Those are haunting questions because death is totally in the realm of the unknown. We know we only experience death once, so the next best thing would be to learn about death from someone who has already been there and come back.

          I know there are some people who talk about their “near death” experience, but it’s hard to know if it was real or the result of an over active imagination. Thankfully, our Creator has made a way to take the mystery out of death.

          Our Creator became one of us, lived on this earth, died and stayed dead for three days, and then raised Himself up to life again. We know this is true because Peter announced publicly, before the very same people who just days earlier had clamored for Christ’s death that, “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses” (Acts 2:32). Peter would have been laughed out of town if he was just making that up.

          Let me show you how the Bible takes the mystery out of death. Death exists because sin exists (Romans 5:12). Jesus stepped into this world and experienced the “sting” of death by enduring the penalty for our sin (1 Corinthians 15:56). That makes is possible for us to give “thanks… to God, who gives us the victory