We need not be surprised, therefore, that the biblical words of
death and resurrection occur quite readily to the pastor in thinking about the care of souls.
Once His sacrificial
death and resurrection occurred those in the OT who had faith in God had their sins taken away, but not before then.
Not exact matches
Jesus became man (God manifest in the flesh) at a point in time
and His
death on the cross
and His
resurrection occurred at a point in time.
All people are ultimately saved by Jesus
and His work on the cross, but during the time of the OT they were not saved by Jesus» work on the cross because it had not yet
occurred and because to be saved by Jesus» work on the cross you have to believe in Jesus
and His
death and resurrection on your behalf which those in the OT were not aware of.
This is the earliest material in the Old Testament in which there is an unmistakable description of a
resurrection from
death to life,
and that in spite of the fact that the basic words «rise»
and «dead» never
occur.
When we spoke of the life
and death of Jesus, we spoke of them as remembered,
and when we spoke of the
resurrection, we spoke of it as
occurring within the experience of the first disciples.
So, in short, this «evidence» that proves Christianity isn't so much scientific evidence as it is idealistic / philosophical / rhetorical resonance that may or may not
occur when an individual encounters the Christian idea of Jesus
and the
death /
resurrection story.
Scholarly adoptions
and modifications of Spitta's view abandoned his notion of a pre-existent Christ as the proclaimer
and posited Christ's proclamation to the imprisoned disobedient angelic spirits of the flood generation as
occurring on the occasion of his
death,
resurrection,
and ascension into heaven (with varying nuances: B. Reicke, 1946; E. G. Selwyn, 1947; W. Dalton, 1964; J. R. Michaels, 1988;
and J. H. Elliott, 2000).
We can prove this by 1 Peter 3:19 - 20: «By whom also He went
and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah...» This event
occurred between Christ's
death and resurrection.
But most important in his message, as in that of the teacher also, would always be the good news of God's action in Christ, the event of Christ's advent, life,
death,
and resurrection, which had so recently
occurred — which indeed was still
occurring, for the coming of the Spirit was a part of the event
and Christ was soon to come again to bring to fulfillment what had been begun.