The prophet Isaiah sang thus to God's people concerning the resurrection:
"Your dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, you that dwell in dust: for your dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead." (Isaiah 26:19)
The power by which this will be accomplished, is the power by which men are now made alive, who are "dead in trespasses and sins." (Ephesians 2:1)
Jesus set it forth in these words: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father has life in himself; so has He given to the Sonto have life in himself; And has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man. Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth." (John 5:25-28, Compare with Isaiah 55:3)
No one who believes in the resurrection of the dead, can have any doubt as to Christ's power to raise any man from the death of sin to the life of righteousness; and no one can doubt His power to raise the dead, if he but reads the story of His life in the four Gospels.
Man is but dust, and unto dust he returns again. (Genesis 3:19) His breath is only in his nostrils, and therefore he is nothing to be accounted of, (Isaiah 2:33) for "His breath goes forth, he returns to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish." (Psalm 146:4)
But the same God who in the beginning made man of the dust of the ground, can of the dust bring him forth to life and glory; and that which makes us know this, is the new creation which takes place with everyone who is in Christ. Out of the dust of repentance God takes man, and makes him over entirely new, so that although he is still in mortal, sinful flesh, the perfect life of
Jesus is manifested in him. God turns man to dust, and says, "Return, you children of men." (Psalm 90:3)
All have gone astray like lost sheep, but God calls them back, and is very patient and long-suffering with them, waiting long for them to hear His voice, "Return!" But when they hear, their return is as certain as is the resurrection of the dead. God will say to His people who are in the graves, "Come!" and they will "come again from the land of the enemy." (Jeremiah 31:16)
So it really makes no difference whether we consider Psalm 90:3 as referring to conversion or the resurrection, for both are identical. Conversion is resurrection from the dead, and has in it the assurance of the final resurrection at the coming of Christ. Christ says, "To him that overcomes will I give to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in His throne." (Revelation 3:21)
So John, speaking of the resurrection, says: "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them." (Revelation 20:4)
These are they who have been raised from the dust of the grave. That will be a glorious time; but God has nothing for us in the future of which He does not now give us a taste; so "[He] has quickened us together with Christ (by grace you are saved;) And has raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ." (Ephesians 2:5-6) "You may know ... the working of His mighty power, Which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places." (Ephesians 1:18-20)
This power is that by which we are thus quickened now from our death in trespasses and sins. "He raises up the poor out of the dust, and lifts up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory." (1 Samuel 2:8)
What a blessed thing it is, then, to remember that we are dust, for God remembers it too, and He has not forgotten how to make a man of the dust and crown him with glory and honor.--Present Truth, November 10, 1898.