It's the resurrection of Christ that means that no amount of suffering, no amount of apparent hopelessness, can ever be ultimate.

This was the down payment for the human race. This is the firstborn of many brethren.

This represent a cosmic victory over the ultimate enemy of our humanity.

If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

Don't give me this patronizing stuff about religion being good for the soul.

You know, if religion is based upon a false premise, if there's no corresponding reality

to the hope that lies within us, then let's face it, our preaching is an exercise and futility.

And the faith that we express is useless.

It's useless if Christ isn't raised.

And if only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

I know in our culture we're told that the only meaningful dimension of religion is what happens here and now in this world, and where there's nothing

worse than these pie in the sky people who are always talking about heaven. If I can't

have my pie in the sky, ladies gentlemen, I don't want to eat here. Because if all we have is a religious experience and a religious hope that is

confined and restricted to this world, then we are of all of the people in this world the most

to be pitied. Because here we are throwing our lives away to a delusion.

As Paul goes on to say, if Christ does not raise, then let us eat, drink, and be married,

for tomorrow we die.

Let's be unrestrained, hedoness.

Don't laugh at this generation of kids who are doing everything in their

power to intoxicate their senses and to find some means of escape from the grim reality of the

world we show them every day. That's not stupid. That's wisdom if there is no resurrection.

Let's eat, let's drink, let's be merry, let's party until we're drunk as we can be

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