Homicide. "Jesus of Nazareth, a man ... ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain" (Acts ii, 22, 23). Regicide. "The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David" (Luke i, 32). "This is the King of the Jews" (xxiii, 38). "There they crucified him" (33). Deicide. "The Word [Christ] was God" (John i, 1). "I and my Father are one" (x, 30). "They crucified him" (xix, 18). Suicide. "I [Christ] lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself" (John x, 17, 18). 522 What did Jesus teach respecting the resurrection of the dead and the doctrine of immortality? "For the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth" (John v, 28, 29). "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life" (39). "As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away, so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more."--Job (vii, 9). "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish."--Psalms (cxlvi, 4). "For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts.... As one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath, so that man hath no preeminence over a beast."--Ecclesiastes (iii, 19). 523 His resurrection is accepted by Christians as a proof and type of man's resurrection and immortality. What was the nature of his resurrection? According to all of the Evangelists it was merely a reanimation of his undecayed body. Other bodies supposedly dead have been revived, but neither these resuscitations nor the supposed reanimation of Jesus' corpse affords proof that bodies which ages ago crumbled into dust and whose particles subsequently entered into the composition of myriads of other bodies will be reunited into the original beings. And as Jesus almost immediately disappeared after his alleged resurrection and has never since been seen this resurrection did not evince his own immortality, much less that of mankind in general. 524 Did Christ descend into hell? Peter: He did (Acts ii, 31; 1 Peter iii, 19). Peter states that "his soul was not left in hell," which necessitates the assumption of his having gone there. He also declares that after his death he "went and preached unto the spirits in prison [hell]." The Confession of Faith (Art. III) says: "As Christ died for us, and was buried; so also is it to be believed that he went down into hell." For what purpose did Christ descend into hell and preach to its inhabitants? If it was to redeem them his mission was fruitless; if it was not to redeem them his mission was useless. Early Christian writers almost uniformly spelled the name of Christ, not "Christos" (the Anointed), but "Chrestos." Chrestos was a Pagan name given to the judge of Hades in the lower world. 525 What is taught regarding justification by faith and justification by works?