Mark 12:26

But as touching the dead, that they are raised; have ye not read in the book of Moses, in the place concerning the Bush, how God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living: ye do greatly err.

The utmost significance of this passage derives from: (1) the fact that Jesus here stated that "God spake ... in the book of Moses," thus equating the Pentateuch with the word of God, (2) that he made an argument for the certainty of a resurrection to rest upon a single Old Testament verb, and the tense of a verb at that! and (3) that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in some meaningful sense, are not "dead" but "living." As Grant said, "This is probably the strongest of all arguments for immortality: not the nature of man but the character of God."[10]

Ye do greatly err ... Some things must be denounced as error. As Luccock said:

These words of Jesus remind us that there is a legitimate place in life for forthright, dogmatic declaration. We live so much in a world of relativism, of a "tolerance" which is really indifference - not breadth of spirit at all! - that we become tentative and apologetic rather than affirmative, even about things which are the very axis of faith.[11]

[10] Frederick C. Grant, Interpreter's Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 1951), p. 845.

[11] Halford E. Luccock, Interpreter's Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 1951), p. 845.