This Easter Week Christians Need to Remember....

 

Jesus Christ’s Promise; He said, “I will come again”!

“I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” (John 14:2-3).

“When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:” “Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:” (Matthew 25:31,34).

“So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.” (Hebrews 9:28).

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:  Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”  (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

“Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11).

“For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be... And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.  And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” (Matthew 24:27-31).

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ;” (Titus 2:13).

Just remember what the Easter season is all about.  It is about Jesus saying, “I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” (John 14:3).

Salvation at The Cross of Calvary.

"It is Finished"!

The act of Christ dying on the cross for our salvation and access to heaven justified us to God and God and His Son in dealing with the rebellion of Satan.  It is seen that for the salvation of a fallen race, the Ruler of the universe had made the greatest sacrifice which love could make. 

One of the most solemn and yet most glorious truths revealed in the Bible is that of Christ’s second coming to complete the work of redemption.  To God’s people, a precious, joy inspiring hope is in His promise of His appearing again to take His people to their home in heaven. 

Christ’s second coming is the very keynote of the scriptures.  From the day when Adam and Eve turned away from Eden, we have waited for the coming of Jesus to break Satan’s power on the human race and bring back Paradise.  The coming of Christ to usher in the reign of righteousness has inspired and impassioned writers from all levels from poets to prophets, the Bible’s words have dwelt upon the hearts of those who seek redemption.

The assurance that Jesus Christ will come a second time finds a large place in the Scriptures and in the hearts of those who believe in Him and is the keynote of prophecy throughout the Bible.  Those who truly love Jesus can rejoice and be assured that His promise will be fulfilled and eternal life is in the reach of all those who receive Him.

It will be at that great day in time which this world will come to an end and an eternity with Christ will begin.  Christ will deliver all who gloriously and truly love and obey Him.  He will be coming back as King of kings and Lord of Lords!

The Crucifixion and The Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

 

“Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.  But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:  For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.  (Matthew 12:38).   

Jesus told them that the only sign He would give was that of the prophet Jonah: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40).  Jesus told them point blank that He was going to be in the tomb for three days and for three nights.

We now come to the week Jesus was crucified.  “And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said unto his disciples, Ye know that after two days is the feast of the Passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified. Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and consulted that they might take Jesus by subtlety, and kill him.  But they said, not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people.” (Matthew 26:1-5).

“Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the Passover?  And he said, go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Master said, My time is at hand; I will keep the Passover at thy house with my disciples.  And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them; and they made ready the Passover.  Now when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve.” (Matthew 26:17-20).

Since it was against Jewish law to do anything on a Sabbath Day, this preparation had to take place the day before and it did because the scripture said that they sat down to eat, “when the even was come”.  It was after sunset, night time now, Tuesday night into Wednesday morning when they are celebrating the Passover meal and then leave to go to Mount Olives.

“And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.  And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, drink you all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.”  (Matthew 26:26-28).

After the meal they left the room where they were and went to Mount Olives where Jesus prayed.  It would have been Tuesday night into Wednesday morning when this transpired.  It was during this time period that Jesus was betrayed by Judas, captured, tried, convicted and sentenced to death.  The scriptures indicate this all happened during the night into the next morning when it was that day that they executed Him.  That would place the crucifixion on Wednesday, during the daylight hours of that week when Jesus dies on the cross. (Matthew 26:30 thru Matthew 27:55).

“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?  That is to say, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, this man calls for Elias.  And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.  The rest said, let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him.  Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.”  (Matthew 27:46-50)

“When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus’ disciple:  He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered.  And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed. (Matthew 27:57-60)

Notice the next events outlined in Luke 23. Jesus’ moment of death, as well as His hasty burial because of the oncoming Sabbath that was going to begin at sundown.  This is also narrated in Luke 23:46-53.

John also writes, “The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath day, (for that Sabbath day was a high day,) sought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. (John 19:31)

Luke 23:54 also states, “That day was the Preparation, and the Sabbath drew near.”  Could that day they are talking about here be the Saturday Sabbath?  If He was placed in the tomb at sunset of the day He was crucified, that means the first full day He was in the tomb would have been Saturday.  But the scriptures, thru Jonas told us that Jesus was going to be the tomb for three days.  That day could not possibly be the Saturday Sabbath.

Many assume that it is the weekly Sabbath mentioned here, and that Jesus was therefore crucified on a Friday. But John 19:31 shows that this approaching Sabbath “was a high day”—not the weekly Sabbath (Friday sunset to Saturday sunset) but the first day of Unleavened Bread, which is one of God’s annual high, or Sabbath, days.   John wrote; “The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day, (for that Sabbath day was a high day,).” (John 19:31). 

These feasts are explained in the Old Testament.  “These are the feasts of the LORD, even holy convocations, which you shall proclaim in their seasons.  In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD’s Passover.  And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread to the LORD: seven days you must eat unleavened bread.  In the first day you shall have a holy convocation: you shall do no servile work therein.  (Leviticus 23:4-7)

The weekly Sabbath is not a Jewish “High Day”, therefore the next day did not necessarily have to be Saturday, it could have been another day of the week.  Exodus 12:16-17 and Leviticus 23:6-7 describe Jewish High Days. These annual Holy Days could—and usually did—fall on days of the week other than the regular weekly Sabbath day.

If we use the sign from the prophet Jonah as a benchmark for identifying the day of the week Jesus was crucified, three days before a Sunday resurrection would place the crucifixion on Wednesday. This high-day Sabbath would have to have been Wednesday during the night and Thursday during the day.

Luke 23:56 says that the women, after seeing Christ’s body being laid in the tomb just before sunset, “returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils” for the final preparation of the body.  They could not have done this work on a Saturday Sabbath or a High Day Sabbath since it would have been considered a violation of the Sabbath. 

The day that they prepared the spices would have been the next day, making it now Friday, since they celebrated the High Day on Thursday. This is verified by Mark’s account, which states, “Now when the Sabbath was past (Thursday), Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, (Friday [which they would not have purchased on the high-day Sabbath {Thursday}, or a Saturday Sabbath]), that they might come and anoint Him” (Mark 16:1).  This they were planning to do on Sunday morning, the first day of the week.

The women waited until the annual “high day” Sabbath was over before they bought and prepared the spices to be used to anoint Jesus’ body. Then, after purchasing and preparing the spices and oils on Friday, “they rested on the Saturday Sabbath according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56). This second Sabbath mentioned in the Gospel accounts is the regular weekly Sabbath, observed from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset.

By comparing details in both Gospels—where Mark tells us the women bought spices after the Sabbath and Luke relates that they prepared the spices before resting on the Sabbath—we can clearly see that two different Sabbaths are mentioned. The first, as John 19:31 tells us, was a “high day”—the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread—which, in A.D. 31, fell on a Thursday. The second was the weekly seventh-day Sabbath.

After the women rested on the regular weekly Saturday Sabbath, they went to Jesus’ tomb early on the first day of the week, which would have been Sunday, “while it was still dark” (John 20:1), and found that He had already been resurrected (Matthew 28:1-6; Luke 24:1-3).  Jesus was actually resurrected before daylight which would mean that the resurrection occurred sometime during the night.

“And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came to the sepulcher at the rising of the sun.  And they said among themselves, who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulcher?  And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great.  And entering into the sepulcher, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted.  And he said to them, be not affrighted: You seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.  (Mark 16:2-6)

The details in all four Gospel accounts indicate that the picture is that Jesus was crucified and entombed late on Wednesday afternoon at dusk, just before a Sabbath began at sunset.  Because of the sign given by Jonah, that day could not have been Friday.  It had to be another day of the week, the scriptures indicate it was probably an annual High Day that fell that year on Thursday. It was a high-day Sabbath, lasting from Wednesday sunset to Thursday sunset that week, rather than the regular weekly Sabbath, lasting from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset.

He remained in the tomb from Wednesday at sunset until Saturday at sunset, when He rose from the dead. While no one witnessed His resurrection (which took place inside a sealed tomb), it had to have happened near sunset on Saturday, exactly three days and three nights after His body was entombed. It could not have happened on Sunday morning, because when Mary Magdalene came to the tomb that morning before sunrise, “while it was still dark,” she found the stone already had been rolled away and the tomb empty.

We can be assured that the length of His entombment that Jesus gave as proof He was the Messiah was exactly as long as He foretold, which is proof that He is the Son of God.  To ignore this would disprove His claim that He was the Messiah.  Jesus rose precisely three days and three nights after He was placed in the tomb.

Because most people do not understand the biblical high days Jesus Christ and His followers kept, they fail to understand the chronological details so accurately preserved for us in the Gospels.

 

Does It Really Matter What You Believe?

The simple answer to this question is, yes it does.  To clarify the answer, it matters if you want to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and receive the gift of immortality and salvation to eternal life.  Immortality and salvation is a gift from God, given to us freely.  We cannot earn it.  But, there is one important thing that people forget.  God does not force us to take this gift.  We can accept the gift or we can refuse the gift.  If you do not care about this gift, then the answer to the question is that it really doesn’t matter what you believe.  You can believe whatever your heart desires.

                Using the Bible as a basis for this discussion, it tells us that that those who want to know and have a relationship with God should hold on to beliefs that are based on His laws and not compromise.  “Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, 'I know Him,' and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:3-4, emphasis added).

                Why should what we believe be important to us?  It is because what we do in life and what decisions we make are ultimately based in a large part on what we believe.  If our decisions are based on God's laws, then we can resist the pressures to conform to the standards and values the world imposes on us. We can live in the world, yet not take part in its sins. We can avoid the breaking of God's laws that so often takes place in society.

                “But he answered and said, it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4, KJV).  Jesus is saying that what we believe, and ultimately what we do is determined by what we think.  What we think should come from the words that “proceed out of God’s mouth”.

                There is a thought process that supports the idea that there is no absolute truth when believing in Jesus Christ, thus, the act of believing is all there is.  The theory is that "there is no objective standard by which truth may be determined, so that truth varies with individuals and circumstances" (David Elton Trueblood, Philosophy of Religion, p. 348).

                So, does it really matter what we believe?  The idea of finding the truth or real meaning to life escapes some people’s minds.  People spend their lives developing their idea of truth.  It does not matter if you are sixteen years old or sixty years old.  Up until that point in time you have spent 100% of your life developing your idea of truth and put up walls resisting any thought that would change that idea.  As you get older, most people spend what they feel is a lot of time, energy, and, (for some), money in formulating their thoughts and ideas on truth and it is only natural to defend what you developed over the years.

                People have always valued their act of belief more than the object of their belief.  William James lived from January 11, 1842 until August 26, 1910 and was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. He was the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.  He stated, "Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact”.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ William James”).

                Is this statement true, especially when we are discussing Biblical truths?  The belief in something will not make it true.  You can believe that an object is something that it is not.  You can believe it with all your heart and soul, but that will not make your belief fact, outside of your own mind.

                The truth of a belief is determined by all of the facts supporting that belief or disproving that belief.  The only alternative to this is closing your mind to ideas that are new to you and this could ultimately lead to your eternal destruction.

                Belief is not determined by the strength of one’s faith.  There are many who get seriously injured and/or die every year because of their faith in something.  Teenagers are prime examples of the support for this idea.  They develop a belief or an idea to do something.  Their parents, because of their experiences in life, tell them it is wrong and could get them in trouble or in some cases injured, or even killed.  Teens commonly think they know everything and therefore what they believe overrides any warnings or threats that their parents give them.  When things go horribly wrong, which they usually do, the teenagers and, or friends and family in the case of a death, now try to answer the question, “Why?”.

                The Bible also emphasizes the fact that it is vital what one believes.  Jesus says that we “... are from beneath” but He is “...from above: (we) are of this world; (but He is) not of this world.” (John 8:23, KJV).  Jesus went on to say, “I have many things to say and to judge of you: but he that sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him.” (John 8:26, KJV).

                Jesus said in chapter three of the gospel of John that “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” (John 3:36, KJV).  Most Bible translations interpret the first half of the verse and the second half of the verse to mean the same thing, but they do not.

                In the first part of the verse, the phrase “He that believeth” deals strictly with “belief” alone.  It means “to think, to be true, to be persuaded of, to credit or to place confidence in” something.  The phrase in the second part of the scripture comes from a different Greek word which carries the meaning of refusing belief and obedience and not to complying with something.  That is, not obeying and complying with everything that Jesus testified to.  A person is not allowed to pick and choose what they want to or do not want to believe.

                The scriptures do not place the weight on the act of belief.  It places it on the object of the belief.  It is not your act of faith but who and what your faith is based on.  Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me" (John 14:6, NLT).

                “People today believe whatever they wish to believe, but this will lead to their ultimate destruction. Let's look at an example from biblical history. One of the darkest periods in the history of Israel occurred in the time of the kings. During this time, there was a contest between the Lord God and Baal, a highly regarded cult deity. An altar of wood was built, with pieces of an oxen laid upon it as a sacrifice. The god who answered by fire and consumed the sacrifice would be acknowledged as the true god in Israel. Baal went first.

                If anyone could start a fire from the sky, it was Baal – the great nature god who controlled the weather (i.e., rain, thunderstorms, lightning). The priests of Baal paraded around the altar all morning and until late afternoon, beseeching Baal to respond. These false priests jumped all over the altar, cut themselves with swords, danced into a frenzy, raved and pleaded all day. No one can say they were not sincere, or did not believe. Yet, nothing happened.

                After they were finished and the altar was rebuilt, the Lord God answered with fire from heaven and consumed the altar and sacrifice. The false prophets of Baal were then slain.

                If sincerity and belief saved, then these prophets should have been spared. But sincerity and belief are not enough. These prophets had their trust in the wrong object. They had never chosen to investigate the truth. (emphasis added).  God requires man to put his faith in Jesus Christ; nothing less will satisfy either them or Him.” (http://www.bethinking.org/is-christianity-the-only-way/q-does-it-really-matter-what-i-believe).

                There are many people who go to their deaths believing something that had overwhelming facts that go against that belief.  History is full of people who died needlessly because of this.  The reason this is brought up here is because of the topic of this article concerning Biblical truths. 

                This statement is a two edged sword.  All but one of the apostles were put to death because of what they believed.  In the context of this discussion then, it matters which edge of the sword you are cutting with.  Are you cutting with the edge of the sword based largely on what comes out of the mouths of men?  I am talking about beliefs taken out context and not supported by other scriptures, or are disproved by other scriptures in the Bible.  Or; do you base your beliefs on what comes out of the mouth of God?  The word of God is the Bible, plain and simple.  The facts that you base your beliefs on need to be supported by “every word of God”, every word found in the Bible.  Your belief when it comes to God can be based on no more nor no less.