Part 14

015:005 and was seen by Peter, and then by the Twelve.

015:006 Afterwards He was seen by more than five hundred brethren at once, most of whom are still alive, although some of them have now fallen asleep.

015:007 Afterwards He was seen by James, and then by all the Apostles.

015:008 And last of all, as to one of untimely birth, He appeared to me also.

015:009 For I am the least of the Apostles, and am not fit to be called an Apostle--because I persecuted the Church of God.

015:010 But what I am I am by the grace of God, and His grace bestowed upon me did not prove ineffectual. But I labored more strenuously than all the rest--yet it was not I, but God's grace working with me.

015:011 But whether it is I or they, this is the way we preach and the way that you came to believe.

015:012 But if Christ is preached as having risen from the dead, how is it that some of you say that there is no such thing as a resurrection of the dead?

015:013 If there is no such thing as a resurrection of the dead, then Christ Himself has not risen to life.

015:014 And if Christ has not risen, it follows that what we preach is a delusion, and that your faith also is a delusion.

015:015 Nay more, we are actually being discovered to be bearing false witness about God, because we have testified that God raised Christ to life, whom He did not raise, if in reality none of the dead are raised.

015:016 For if none of the dead are raised to life, then Christ has not risen;

015:017 and if Christ has not risen, your faith is a vain thing-- you are still in your sins.

015:018 It follows also that those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

015:019 If in this present life we have a *hope* resting on Christ, and nothing more, we are more to be pitied than all the rest of the world.

015:020 But, in reality, Christ *has* risen from among the dead, being the first to do so of those who are asleep.

015:021 For seeing that death came through man, through man comes also the resurrection of the dead.

015:022 For just as through Adam all die, so also through Christ all will be made alive again.

015:023 But this will happen to each in the right order--Christ having been the first to rise, and afterwards Christ's people rising at His return.

015:024 Later on, comes the End, when He is to surrender the Kingship to God, the Father, when He shall have overthrown all other government and all other authority and power.

015:025 For He must continue King until He shall have put all His enemies under His feet.

015:026 The last enemy that is to be overthrown is Death;

015:027 for He will have put all things in subjection under His feet. And when He shall have declared that "All things are in subjection," it will be with the manifest exception of Him who has reduced them all to subjection to Him.

015:028 But when the whole universe has been made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also become subject to Him who has made the universe subject to Him, in order that GOD may be all in all.

015:029 Otherwise what will become of those who got themselves baptized for the dead? If the dead do not rise at all, why are these baptized for them?

015:030 Why also do we Apostles expose ourselves to danger every hour?

015:031 I protest, brethren, as surely as I glory over you-- which I may justly do in Christ Jesus our Lord--that I die day by day.

015:032 If from merely human motives I have fought with wild beasts in Ephesus, what profit is it to me? If the dead do not rise, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we are to die.