There is no specific instruction to celebrate or observe Easter in the New Testament. Easter is not about “Easter eggs” or wearing pastels. All these are pagan practices.

To a Christian, Christ is risen and alive ‘every day’, and his life should be enjoyed and celebrated as such. Christians also have a Passover meal regularly, for the Lord’s Supper is a Passover Meal, commemorating the liberation of Christ.

In fact the feasts of Passover, Unleavened Bread, and the First Fruits foreshadow the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:20 tells us, “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

He also speaks of keeping the feast and getting rid of the yeast or leaven because Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed (1 Corinthians 5:7).

What is more Jesus died at 3:00 P.M, “Now it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour” (Luke 23:44). This was the very time when thousands of Passover lambs were being slaughtered (see Exodus 12:18-20).

This is confirmed in the gospel of Luke “Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be slain” (see Luke 22:7-20).

Jesus said that He did not come to destroy the law but to fulfil it. So you cannot understand the New Testament without the Old.

That is why so many of the words in Exodus are used again in the New Testament-words such as law, covenant, blood, lamb, Passover, Exodus, leaven.These words are used in the New Testament but derive their meaning from the book of Exodus (see Exodus 12:1-11; 12:43-47).

Another example is six months before Jesus died on the cross He was 4,000 feet high on top of Mount Hermon in the north of Israel, talking with Moses and Elijah. Luke’s Gospel tells us that they talked about His exodus from this world, which was about to be fulfilled in Jerusalem (see Luke 9:28-31).

John the Baptist who was the forerunner sent to prepare the way before Christ intoduced Him with the words: “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”  (John 1:29).Thus he proclaimed Jesus as the appointed Savior whose sacrificial death and shed blood would accomplish all that had been foreshadowed by the Passover lamb.

Therefore, Christ is our Passover Lamb the one who has been sacrificed for us so that the angel of death would pass over those who trust in Him.

He rose from the dead on the third day and His resurrection liberates us from death, just as the Hebrews were liberated from slavery on the third day after the Passover. So we celebrate resurrection Sunday because:

The Tomb is Empty

The Gospels talk of Jesus being in the tomb three days and three nights, but traditional Friday-to-Sunday interpretations leave us with one day and two nights! Some Bible scholars believe that Jesus died on the Wednesday afternoon. For instance, prominent Bible teacher David Pawson explains:

We have assumed that Friday was the day he died, because the text tells us he died on the day before the Sabbath. But in the year in question, it was not the Saturday Sabbath. John’s Gospel tells us that the Sabbath was a special High Sabbath (see John 19:31-36).

The Passover began with a Sabbath and, in the year AD 29, which was almost certainly the year Jesus died, the first day of the Passover was a Thursday, with the Wednesday being the eve of the Passover.

This fits all the evidence better than all the other theories. So if he died at 3 o’clock on the Wednesday and he rose between 6 p.m. and midnight on the Saturday, every bit of the Gospel evidence fits.

The 12 Apostles and the Resurrection

When Jesus Christ chose the twelve apostles, their role was to confirm by their words and their lives the reality of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

After the arrest, trial, and death of Jesus Christ, these men initially fled in fear. They were devastated by His death because death seems so cruel and final.

They must felt terrible when they saw their Lord, whom they had left everything to follow, being crucified on the cross.

One of the twelve apostles known as Matthew records that immediately after Jesus had died, the tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep in death were raised to life.

And coming out of the tombs after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many people (see Matthew 27:52-53). He also gives an account of the guarded tomb and the report by the soldiers that the body was stolen:

When they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying, “Tell them, ‘His disciples came at night and stole Him away while we slept.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and make you secure.” So they took the money and did as they were instructed; and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day (Matthew 28:12-15).

The divine side of Christ’s death, however, is also brought out in Mark, for Jesus was sure from the very beginning that he had come to die. He predicted his death, and his resurrection, more than once.

Following the resurrection. He records Jesus’ return to Galilee and his meeting with the 11 disciples and more than 500 at one time (see 1 Corinthians 15:5).

Luke a doctor by profession from Antioch, Syria and the only Gentile writer in the Bible had a keen interest in researching the events surrounding the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

He describes that, after Jesus had physically risen from the dead, three women who were friends of the disciples went to the tomb early Sunday morning to anoint His body with spices.

When they arrived at the tomb, they were shocked to find the stone rolled aside and the tomb empty. It was only the linen cloths in which Jesus’ body had been wrapped that lay empty in the tomb. The two angels told them:

Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen! Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee, saying, ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again (see Luke 24:1–25).

The Bible tells us that, until then, they still hadn’t understood the Scripture that He must rise again from dead (see Psalm 16:10). “And they remembered His words. Then they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.”

In John’s intimate account, Peter and John decided to go and see for themselves where Jesus was buried. Indeed, they too were also surprised that Jesus was not in the tomb.

As Peter and John returned home, Mary was still standing at the tomb crying, and as she was weeping, she stooped down and looked into the tomb. Suddenly, the angels asked her why she was crying, and she replied that it was because they had taken away her Lord and she didn’t know where they put Him.

She decided to leave but saw someone standing there. Thinking it was the gardener, she asked Him where He had put the body of Jesus. The man then called Mary by her name. At that moment, she realized that she was not talking to the gardener but to her risen Lord.

Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him, “Rabboni!” (which is to say, Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.”

Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that He had spoken these things to her. (John 20:16–18)

That Sunday evening, the disciples were meeting in secrecy behind closed doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus appeared to them.

As He appeared to them, He said, “‘Peace be with you.’ When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord” (John 20:19–20).

Soon after Christ had appeared to His disciples, they told Thomas, who was absent, that the Lord had appeared to them. Thomas refused to believe them, saying he needed to see and touch Christ’s wounds and His side before he could believe such a report (see John 20:25).

He did not want to accept their account on the basis of faith only.

The faith of Thomas, much like the disciples’, was gone so he could not believe by mere faith alone. The time of three special years of personally walking with the Messiah had come to an end. Jesus was dead, so were the dreams that were once filled with hope and purpose.

So unless he could put his hands into Jesus’ side where he had watched the spear being thrust into the breast of his Master, he could not believe. He wanted concrete evidence.

Eight days later, the disciples were again in the same room, and this time Thomas was present. And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!”

Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”

And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:26–28).

We tend to think of Jesus doing nothing between his death and resurrection, being just unconscious, inactive in the tomb. But it says only his body was dead. His spirit was very much alive. He went to the world of the dead and started preaching as recorded by Peter in his first letter:

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water (1 Peter 3:18-19).

Death Is Not Final

To the Christian, death is not final. A believer simply falls asleep in Jesus and wakes up instantly in the presence of God. But those who die without the Lord Jesus Christ are referred to as “the dead.”

Someday the dead will stand before the Great White Throne of God and be judged according to the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.

They will then be cast into the lake of fire. “This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14-15).

Some say that when Christians die, they sleep in the grave until Jesus returns and raised the dead. However, Paul said, “To live is Christ and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21).  To sleep in the grave would not be gain!

Paul knew that physical death would allow him to “depart and be with Christ,” which, he said, is very much better (Philippians 1:23).

We will be fully conscious one minute after we have died. We will know who we are, we will have our memory. It is only our body that dies, not our spirit. Death separates body and spirit. Later, spirit and body will be reunited in the resurrection.

When Paul talks about putting off our earthly tent, he says to be “absent from the body” is “to be at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:1-9).

In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, he refers to those who have died in Christ as having “fallen asleep in Jesus” because this is what death is to the believer- falling asleep and waking up in the presence of our Lord.

Because Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life, the Christian will not see death. This truth caused Jesus to proclaim,

I am Myself the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in (adheres to, trusts in, and relies on) Me, although he may die, yet he shall live; And whoever continues to live and believes in (has faith in, cleaves to, and relies on) Me shall never actually die at all (John 11:25-26).

Death is conquered! The Tomb is Empty! Jesus becomes the Giver of Life (John 20:21-23). This is the Good News that Paul preaches to us. “It is this Good News that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you—unless, of course you believed something that was never true in the first place” (see 1 Corinthians 15:1-2).

Jesus Christ is the divine, eternal Son of God, who became a member of the human race by virgin birth. He led a sinless life, died on the cross as a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of humanity, was buried and rose again in bodily form from the grave on the third day.

He ascended into heaven, whence He will return to earth in person; to judge the living and the dead. Everyone who repents of sin and trusts in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ receives forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life.

During this weekend, Christians around the world will be celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For the Jews, they will be celebrating Passover, which commemorates Israel’s escape from Egypt when the blood of a lamb was painted on their door frames and saved their firstborn sons from death.

The most striking fact about the Israelites’ crossing of the Red Sea is that it happened on the third day after the Passover lamb was killed.

This event foreshadowed Jesus’ work on the cross. As the spotless Lamb of God, His blood would be spilled in order to save us from the penalty of death brought by sin. At His last supper, Luke records that Jesus revealed Himself as the fulfillment of that event.

Jesus died at 3.00 p.m., the very time when thousands of Passover lambs were being slaughtered. So Christ is called ‘our Passover lamb’, the one who has been sacrificed for us so that the angel of death would pass over those who trust in Him.

He rose from the dead on the third day and his resurrection liberates us from death, just as the Hebrews were liberated from slavery on the third day after the Passover. And you probably know that the Feasts of Passover, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits dramatically and poignantly foreshadow the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

The good news of Christianity is that God loves us and did not leave us in the mess that we make of our own lives. He came to earth, in the person of His Son Jesus to die instead of us (2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:13). This is what theologians call the self-substitution of God.

The Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clasern wrote:

The central theme of our faith is the sacrifice of himself by our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of our sins…The deeper our appreciation of our need the greater will be our love for the Lord Jesus and, therefore, the more fervent our desire to serve Him.

In the words of the Apostle Peter, “He personally bore our sins in His own body on the tree (as on an altar and offered Himself on it), that we might die (cease to exist) to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed (1 Peter 2:24 AMP).

What is Self-Substitution?

In his book, Miracle on the River Kwai Ernest Gordon tells the true story of a group of POWs working on the Burma Railway during World War II. At the end of each day, the tools were collected from the work party. On one occasion a Japanese guard shouted that a shovel was missing and demanded to know which man had taken it.

He began to rant and rave, working himself up into a paranoid fury and ordered whoever was guilty to step forward. No one moved. “All die! All die! He shrieked, cocking and aiming his rifle at the prisoners. At that moment one man stepped forward and the guard clubbed him to death with his rifle while he stood silently to attention. When they returned to the camp, the tools were counted again and no shovel was missing. That one man had gone forward as a substitute to save others.

In the same way, Jesus came as our substitute. He endured crucifixion for us. Cicero described crucifixion as ‘the most cruel and hideous of tortures’. Jesus was stripped and tied to a whipping post. He was flogged with four of five thongs of leather interwoven with sharp jagged bone and lead.

Eusebuis, the third century church historian, described Roman flogging in these terms: the sufferer’s veins were laid bare, and…..the very muscles, sinews and bowels of the victim were open to exposure’.

He was then taken to the Praetorium where a crown of thorns was thrust onto His head. He was mocked by a battalion of 600 men and hit about the face and head. Jesus was well aware of the shame and public humiliation that He would experience on the cross.

In fact, one of the primary objectives of crucifixion was to shame the person. As the person hung on the cross, spectators walked by, made derogatory remarks, and sometimes even did obscene things which I will not describe.

In a prophetic vision, Isaiah glimpsed the suffering of Jesus seven centuries before they actually took place:

I gave My back to the smiters and My cheeks to those who plucked off the hair; I hid not My face from shame and spitting (Isaiah 50:6).

He was then forced to carry a heavy cross on His bleeding shoulders until he collapsed, and Simon of Cyrene was press-ganged into carrying it for Him.

When they reached the site of the crucifixion, He was again stripped naked. He was laid on the cross, and six-inch nails were driven into His forearms, just above the wrist. His knees were twisted sideways so that the ankles could be nailed between the tibia and the Achilles’ tendon. He was lifted up on the cross which was then dropped into a socket in the ground.

There He was left to hang in intense heat and unbearable thirst, exposed to the ridicule of the crowd. He hang there in unthinkable pain for six hours while His life slowly drained away. When His disciples saw Him die, they learned to despair of themselves and of everything on which they had previously based their hope.

The Deepest Wound

Now we come to the deepest wound of all-rejection. Jesus endured a double rejection: first by men and then by God Himself. Isaiah clearly portrayed the rejection of Jesus by His fellow countrymen:

He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him ( Isaiah 53:3).

The worst part of His suffering was not the physical trauma or torture and crucifixion or even the emotional pain of being rejected by the world and deserted by His friends, but the spiritual agony of being cut off from His Father for us-as He carried our sins.

He should have been able to live several hours longer on the cross, but He died of a broken heart. John records how one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden gush of blood and water. Incidentally, this extraordinary symptom indicates a raptured pericardium, a ‘broken heart’. What broke His heart? The ultimate rejection.

Now from the sixth hour (midday) there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour (three o’clock in the afternoon). And about the ninth hour (three o’clock) Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?—that is, My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me (leaving Me helpless, forsaking and failing Me in My need)? And some of the bystanders, when they heard it, said, This Man is calling for Elijah! And one of them immediately ran and took a sponge, soaked it with vinegar (a sour wine), and put it on a reed (staff), and was about to give it to Him to drink. But the others said, Wait! Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him from death. And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and gave up His spirit (Matthew 27:45-51 AMP).

This passage gives such a clear picture of the humanity of Jesus as He suffered intense pain and agony. Just think of that awful darkness. Think of the loneliness, the sense of being absolutely abandoned, first by man, then by God. You and I may have experienced some measure of rejection, but never has it been in that measure.

For the first time in the history of the universe, the Son of God prayed but the Father did not answer Him. God averted His eyes from His Son. God stopped His ears at His cry. Why? Because at that time, Jesus was identified with our sin.

The attitude of God the Father toward Jesus had to be the attitude of God’s holiness toward our sin–the refusal of fellowship, a complete and absolute rejection. Jesus did not endure that for His own sake, but instead to make His soul a sin offering for us. And then, look at the consequence, which was so dramatic and so immediate:

And at once the curtain of the sanctuary of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; the earth shook and the rocks were split (Matthew 27:51).

What does that mean? Simply that the barrier between God and man had been removed. The way was opened for man to come to God without shame, guilt or fear. When Jesus bore our sins and suffered our rejection, He opened the way for our acceptance so that we might gain status as God’s sons and daughters.

Jesus took our rejection so that we might experience His acceptance. That is the meaning of the torn curtain. We now have direct access to God. “For it is through Him that we both whether far off or near now have an introduction (access) by one Holy Spirit to the Father so that we are able to approach Him” (Ephesians 2:18 AMP).

Life’s Purpose is Knowing God

For those who are willing to enter into this type of covenant commitment to God, the reward is great. It is beautifully expressed by the words that Jesus addressed to the Father in John 17:3:

And this is eternal life: it means to know (to perceive, recognize, become acquainted with, and understand) You, the only true and real God, and likewise to know Him, Jesus as the Christ (the Anointed One, the Messiah), Whom You have sent.

Here, indeed, is the ultimate purpose of all life-to know the one true God. Out of this knowledge, there comes eternal life, divine life, the life of God Himself, shared with the believer.

However, knowledge of this kind is not merely theology or doctrine. It is not knowing about God. It is actually knowing God Himself-knowing Him directly and intimately; knowing Him as a Person. It is a person-to-person relationship. It is a spiritual union.

So many of us come from broken or dysfunctional families, we still carry deep wounds from childhood-wounds that resulted from neglect, rejection, or abuse. These experiences make it difficult for us to see God as a loving, warm and intimate Father, and they can be difficult to overcome.

But God says, My precious one, I love you. I do not reject you. I have always loved you. Jesus was wounded for you and me. Your suffering grieves Him deeply. He does not condemn you, but loves you with a profound and everlasting love than you have ever experienced before.

Dr. Karl Barth was one of the most brilliant and complex intellectuals of the twentieth century.  He wrote volume after massive volume on the meaning of life and faith. During his lecture tour, theologian Karl Barth visited the University of Chicago in 1962.

After his lecture, during the Q & A time, a student asked Barth if he could summarize his whole life’s work in theology in a sentence.  Barth allegedly said:

Yes, I can. In the words of a song I learned at my mother’s knee: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

I agree with Karl Barth. Why then do we often act as if we are trying to earn God’s love? Why do humans have such trouble accepting this love?

Power over Death

We have a Savior who has the power over death. He holds the keys of death and hell. When Christ was down here, He gave us a specimen of what He could do. Before His personal resurrection, He raised three people from the dead, Jairus’ daughter, the widow’s son, and Lazarus of Bethany that we might know that He is the Resurrection and Life.

Whoever believes in Him, although he may die, yet shall he/she live; and whoever continues to live and believes in Him shall never actually die at all (see John 11:25-26). How dark and gloomy this world would be if we had no hope in the resurrection. Paul says:

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.  For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

Yes, there is a glorious day before us in the future. Such hope never disappoints or deludes or shames us, for God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us. While we were yet in weakness and powerless to help ourselves, at the fitting time Christ died for (in behalf of) the ungodly. 

Now it is an extraordinary thing for one to give his life even for an upright man, though perhaps for a noble and lovable and generous benefactor someone might even dare to die. But God shows and clearly proves and demonstrates His own love for us by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ (the Messiah) died for us (Romans 5:5-8 AMP). Not only does God love the “pure and the holy”, He also loves the ungodly.

We get salvation for the past and peace for the present, but there is glory for the future in store. I cannot convince you enough that God loves you. The truth is, He would not have died for you if He had not loved you.

God sent Jesus to die for the sins of the whole world. If you belong to this world, then you have a part in this love that has been exhibited in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ has provided our salvation through His death on the Cross and resurrection. This cross, with its foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18) and weakness, its humiliation and shame, is the everlasting sign of the victory that Christ has won by mighty weapons that are spiritual, not carnal (2 Corinthians 10:4).

All we need is to do to respond and accept His undeserved gift of salvation. He said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no-one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Is your heart so hard that you can brace yourself against His love and spurn and despise it? You can do it, but it will be at your own peril.

Wishing You a Happy Resurrection!

We must give eleven gazillion dollars to Israel because ‘they are God’s Chosen People’ and ‘those who bless you I will bless’” is a refrain Christians have been told their entire lives. There is no single theological issue that is the cause of greater confusion among Christians than what the status of Israel is in the New Covenant. Christians are in the New Covenant. Most Christians understand this. But the confusion begins when we consider the Old Covenant. What was the point of the Old Covenant?

When God made a Covenant with Abraham and then developed it further with his descendants under Moses, what was the purpose of it? How is the New Covenant made in Jesus’s blood so radically different?

These are questions that were sorted out throughout the New Testament. And despite much of the New Testament dealing with this issue, and millennia of Christian tradition extrapolating from it, confusion reigns today.

There is a whole panoply of false notions many Christians have unfortunately been taught to believe. For many Christians today, the Old Covenant was “the way you got saved before Jesus.” Despite a host of examples of non-Jews getting saved in the Old Testament (Jethro, Naaman, the whole city of Nineveh in Jonah, Nebuchadnezzar, etc.) many who think of it that way believe that only Jews in the Old Testament were saved. They think the special regulations that Israel was under in the Old Covenant—laws of clean and unclean, food regulations, sacrifices, etc.—were what you had to keep in order to go to heaven.

Because we don’t read and study the Old Testament, we fall prey to totally false notions like these. Because we don’t know the Old Testament, we have a hard time understanding the New Testament and what is new about the New Covenant. Because ignorance of the scriptures abounds, even from those called to teach it, we are in a very similar situation to the church at the time of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.

It was at this point in the history of the apostolic period that the false teaching of Judaizing began to take off. Satan had done his best to attack the church through external persecution, through the killing of Christians, but these efforts failed—the church continued to grow. So instead, he took a much more insidious tactic. He began to attack the church from the inside. False apostles went to the churches and taught that in order to truly be saved, one must come under the rule of the Old Covenant—you must be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses. In the Jerusalem Council, Paul and Peter successfully made the case to the rest of the apostles that, no, the Gentiles—the non-Jewish believers—were just as much a part of the faith as Jews were. Peter had witnessed the Holy Spirit come upon the Roman centurion Cornelius and his household in the exact same manner He came upon the apostles at Pentecost.

Paul had just preached to the Gentiles in Asia Minor and masses of them came to the faith. James and the rest of the apostles had concluded that the prohibitions on occult practices such as eating food sacrificed to demons, eating blood and animals strangled so as to retain their blood, and sexually immoral practices that are found in Leviticus 17-18 had always been binding on Jew and Gentile alike, and remain in force.

The Gentiles in the Old Covenant era were under a covenant with God, too—the Noahic Covenant. And so this determination by the apostles was that this part of Leviticus was a universal feature of God’s moral law, binding to all mankind in the Covenant He made with Noah. The rest, laws regarding food, clean and unclean, what clothing you could wear, and requirements to keep the liturgical calendar and feasts, were not binding upon Christians. The reign of the Old Covenant had come to an end with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

For us today, we are in a similar position as the church in Acts. In many cases, we are in a much worse place. We, generally speaking, don’t have any idea what the Old Covenant was about or what the Old Covenant was for. The best way to explain it is to look at the Nazirite Vow (Number 6:1-21). Samson, Samuel, and Paul later in this book, take Nazirite vows. A Nazirite was a special holy warrior who took on special restrictions during the time of his vow. He wouldn’t drink wine or eat grapes, could not touch anything dead, and could not cut his hair. But when his warfare was over, he cut his hair, made an offering, and resumed normal life. This is the Old Covenant that Israel was under in a microcosm.

God had set apart Abraham with circumcision, and later the children of Israel with the laws of Moses with special regulations on clean and unclean, what they could and could not eat, even the clothes they could wear. The reason He did this is not because keeping these laws saved them, but because they were the people He chose to be His priests who led the nations of the world to Him. That is why they were under all these special regulations. And Jesus, the true Israel, came and kept this law perfectly, and kept the point of this law perfectly: going to the cross to die so the world could be saved. He did what Israel could not and would not do. And once His warfare was complete, the Nazirite cut his hair, so to speak. The Old Covenant had been fulfilled by Jesus Himself.

This is the point that the Book of Hebrews makes: you don’t need a priestly people because a new High Priest, not in the order of Aaron but of Melchizedek, the Gentile, was serving as High Priest and this High Priest would never die. The world is now in something like a redeemed Noahic covenant. All of mankind has access to God directly through Jesus.

So this is why it is so abominable to assert that Gentiles need to become Jews in order to be saved. The Jews thought they were the only saved people in the world, which was always false, but this error crept into the church subverting it. You must not go back to the Old Covenant which at that time was quickly passing away.

Understanding this is crucial in our day for several reasons. First, we don’t really get what the law is. God has revealed His eternal standards for righteousness in His Law. Modern antinomians—people who say there really is no law at all—will say that in the New Covenant, we are under grace not the law and so everything that God says is righteous and just in the Old Testament just gets thrown out.

Similarly, unbelieving mockers like to attack Christians who don’t understand their Bibles as well as they should saying “Why are you saying homosexuality is a sin? Don’t you know that right next to all the passages about homosexuality being a sin is stuff about not eating pork and shellfish and not wearing clothing with two kinds of fabric? You eat bacon so you can’t say anything bad about Drag Queen Story Hour.” But James and the Jerusalem Council answered this objection. They took out their highlighter to Leviticus and said “These are the special regulations that God put upon the priestly people” and with another color, they highlighted chapters 17 and 18 and said, “these are the laws for all of mankind for all time.” They answered these stupid objections 2000 years ago for us.

The second reason we need to understand this is because many Christians are very confused about the status of Jews today. You have many popular teachers on TV who will tell you “Yes, Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through Me,’ but the Jews are God’s chosen people so they can somehow be saved apart from Jesus.” That is entirely untrue. And in fact, it is a species of what the Judaizers taught, just in the other direction. Being Jewish does not save you. Having the Torah does not save you. Only Jesus saves you.

But many Christians today do not understand this, and so we are easily manipulated by all sorts of false teachings. We misunderstand the promise to Abraham and His Seed, that “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you, and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:3) Paul makes very clear in Galatians that the Seed of Abraham is Christ, not those who reject Him (Galatians 3:16). Instead of being manipulated into wanting billions of dollars to flow to a foreign country, Christians should be concerned with Christ and His people being blessed.

Hebrews, written just before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple tells us very clearly what the status of the Old Covenant is: In that, He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away (Hebrews 8:13). The very locus of the Old Covenant, its absolute center and beating heart was the temple in Jerusalem. And when that temple fell, the Old Covenant was finished forever. There is no more Old Covenant left. All the promises God made to His people are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29).

That is the great purpose of the New Covenant that all the nations belong to Jesus and they must fear God and glorify Him. Jesus has accomplished what Israel could not, He completed her warfare and now sits on the throne of David forever. We must have the same perspective as the apostles: that the world is Christ’s and we must announce the victory of Christ’s kingdom everywhere.

We must search out the scriptures deeply. We must recover the knowledge of the scriptures that we have lost. To not see the Old Testament as some kind of historical appendix to the New Testament that you can read only if you are interested, but rather to see it as one complete book that is unified. The Old Testament shows us God’s eternal purposes for the world not just one nation. It shows us the priestly people awaiting the King and High Priest who would finally do what they could not. It shows us a God who always wanted all the nations, who from the very call of Abraham had declared that all the families of the world will be blessed through you and your Seed. That Seed of Abraham has come and that Seed reigns over the entire world right now. That the world belongs to Him and you play a role in the conquest of His Kingdom.

Copyright 2024 Pastor Andrew Isker

Daniel Kolenda in his book Live Before You Die tells the story of an American soldier in the Vietnam War who was about to step on an anti-personnel landmine that was hidden from his sight. His comrade across the battlefield, who could see the impending disaster from his vantage point, stood up from behind his protective barricade and shouted a life-saving warning to his friend. At that moment the brave young man received a gunshot wound that ended his life.

A couple of years later, at an honorary memorial service in the United States, the soldier whose life had been saved from the landmine had a chance to meet the wife and son of his deceased friend. The son, who was only seven years old, had never gotten a chance to really know his father. The soldier could tell that this boy’s heart was broken, so he knelt down next to him and put his hand on the child’s shoulder. “I want you to know,” the soldier said, “your father saved my life.” The little boy looked up at him with tears streaming down his cheeks. “Sir,” he said, “were you worth it?”

Another minister who disguised himself under the name of George tells in his book about God’s Underground the following incident:

A Russian Army captain came to a minister in Hungary and asked to see him alone. The young captain was very brash and very conscious of his role as a conqueror. When he had been led to a small conference room and the door was closed, he nodded towards the cross that hung on the wall. ‘You know that thing is a lie,’ he said to the minister. ‘It’s just a piece of trickery you ministers use to delude the poor people to make it easier for the rich to keep them ignorant. Come on now, we alone. Admit to me that you never really believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God!’  The minister smiled. ‘But, my poor young man, of course, I believe it. It is true.’

I won’t have you play these tricks on me! Cried the captain. ‘This is serious. Don’t laugh at me!’ He drew out his revolver and held it close to the body of the minister.’ Unless you admit to me that it is a lie, I will fire!’ ‘I cannot admit that, for it is not true. Our Lord is really and only the Son of God,’ said the minister. The captain flung his revolver on the floor and embraced the man of God. Tears sprang to his eyes. ‘It is true!’ he cried. ‘It is true. I believe so, too, but I could not be sure men would die for this belief until I found it out for myself. Oh, thank you! You have strengthened my faith. Now I too can die for Christ. You have shown me how.’

When the Russians occupied Romania, two armed Russian soldiers entered a church with guns in their hands. They said, ‘We don’t believe in your faith. Those who do not abandon it immediately will be shot at once! Those who abandon your faith move to the right!’ Some moved to the right and were then ordered to leave the church and go home. They fled for their lives just like the disciples did when Jesus was arrested on the night of His crucifixion. When the Russians were alone with the remaining Christians, they embraced them and confessed, ‘We too are Christians, but we wished to have fellowship only with those who consider the truth worth dying for.’

The Cost of Discipleship

When Jesus Christ chose the twelve apostles, their role was to confirm by their words and their lives the reality of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. After the arrest, trial, and death of Jesus Christ, these men initially fled in fear. They were devastated by His death because death seemed so cruel and final. They must felt terrible when they saw their Lord, whom they had left everything to follow, being crucified on the cross.

Historical records of the first century clearly prove that every one of the disciples apart from the Apostle John later faced a martyr’s death without denying their faith in Jesus Christ as their Saviour. The only reason why these men were transformed from defeated cowards to courageous men of God within a few days of the death of the Saviour was their personal intimate knowledge and experience of the facts surrounding the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Non-believers, atheists, agnostics, etc… have suggested that the disciples, during the decades following His death, simply invented their accounts of Jesus. But these apostles were continually threatened and pressured to deny their Lord during their ministry; especially as they faced torture and martyrdom. However, none of these men who spent time with Jesus chose to save their lives by denying their faith in Him. Each of the apostles was called upon to pay the ultimate price to prove their faith in Jesus, affirming with their life’s blood that Jesus was the true Messiah, the Son of the Living God and the only hope of salvation for sinful humanity.

Most of the information about the deaths of the apostles is derived from early church traditions. The Church historian Schumacher researched the lives of the apostles and recounted the history of their martyrdoms.

Andrew died on an X-shaped cross in Patras of Achaia, Bartholomew (Nathaniel was flayed alive in Armenia, James (brother of John) was beheaded by Herod Agrippa in Jerusalem, James (son of Cleopas and Mary) was stoned, Jude (Thaddeus), the half brother of Jesus was shot with arrows in Armenia.

Matthew was slain by the sword in Parthia, Mark died in Alexandria, Egypt, after being dragged by horses through the streets until he was dead. Peter was crucified upside down in Rome because he told his tormentors that he felt unworthy to die in the same way that His Master and Lord Jesus Christ had died.

Stephen the first Christian martyr was stoned to death after preaching one of the longest sermons in the Book of Acts. James the Just and half-brother of Jesus was captured and taken to the very pinnacle of where the devil took Jesus in Matthew chapter 4.

He was told to blaspheme Christ, or be thrown off! James the Just replied: “I see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of glory!’’ So they threw them off. But the fall didn’t kill him, so they started to stone him. As he lay there, with his bones broken and the stones being thrown at him, he said, Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they do.” Finally someone, out of sheer mercy, got a big wooden club and clubbed his head, and he died.

John was the only one of the 12 apostles left after the others had already suffered a martyr’s death. He became a political prisoner on the island of Patmos because of his exclusive devotion to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus which was taken as treason by the Roman authorities. He subsequently faced martyrdom when he was boiled in a huge basin of boiling oil but was miraculously delivered to become the only apostle of the 12 to die a natural and peaceful death.

The Early Christians

We also know that thousands of the early Christians and those of later ages suffered violent death, mutilation, burning and other processes that marred and destroyed their physical bodies. Nero persecuted Christians by daubing them with pitch and burning them alive as torches for his nightly garden parties or sewing them in the skins of wild animals to be hunted by dogs and lions.

One notable Christian who was martyred in about 155 under Antonius Pius was Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna and once a student of the apostle John. Forced into the stadium, Polycarp was asked by the Roman proconsul to swear by the genius of the emperor and to curse Christ. He replied,

Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?

Before the day was over, he was burned at the stake. Like all martyrs before him and the multitudes after him, he had been transformed by the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

All this happened because His message and His physical resurrection transformed His early followers, who did not pick up the sword to defend themselves even during the brutal persecutions, but rather went about spreading His love and the need for repentance and forgiveness of sins to all regardless of their race, sex, ethnicity, poverty, or wealth.

They did so because they believed with all their heart, soul and mind the Words of Jesus: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). This echoed the conviction of Peter’s words spoken to his fellow Jews:

And there is salvation in and through no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by and in which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

There have been countless people who have been transformed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These followers have produced revolutionary changes-socially, politically, economically, and culturally.

As someone has said, Christianity is not a religion; but a revolution against the kingdom of darkness.” And as George Sarton has said, “The birth of Christianity changed forever the face of the Western world.” Despite widespread persecutions, Christ’s transformed followers, especially during the first few centuries, effected that change because Christ’s life and teachings challenged almost everything for which the Roman world had stood. The Christians rejected the pagan gods of the Greeks and Romans.

These gods, said the second-century Christian apologist Aristides, were man-made and thus not gods at all; moreover, they were given to all of the weaknesses and sins common to mankind. Some of the gods, according to Roman mythology, committed adultery, murder, sodomy, and theft; others were envious, greedy, and passionate; still others had physical impediments; some had even died.

But Christians said Aristides, worship and honour God who is neither male nor female, whom “the heavens do not contain…but the heavens and all things visible and invisible are contained in Him. This had already been confirmed by Paul’s famous sermon at Athens on Mars Hill.  The Bible tells us while Paul was waiting for Silas and Timothy at Athens, his spirit was grieved and roused to anger as he saw that the city was full of idols.

So, Paul began to preach to them about Jesus Christ, a man who had recently been crucified in Jerusalem. He drew their attention to a natural debate before he could engage them about the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. These Epicurean and Stoic philosophers thought that Paul was trying to be an announcer of foreign deities because he preached Jesus and the resurrection (see Acts 17:18).

Paul concludes that God overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now commands all men everywhere to repent. In the past God permitted all nations to walk in their ways, but He did not leave them without any evidence of Himself and His goodness. He sent rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying their hearts with nourishment and happiness.

However, the appointed time has come when He expects and charges all men everywhere to repent and turn from their ignorance, idolatry, and superstition because He has appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by a Man Jesus Christ, whom He has proved to everyone who this is by raising Him from the dead (see Acts 17:19-31).

Death Is Not Final

To the Christian, death is not final. A believer simply falls asleep in Jesus and wakes up instantly in the presence of God. But those who die without the Lord Jesus Christ are referred to as “the dead.” Someday the dead will stand before the Great White Throne of God and be judged according to the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.

They will then be cast into the lake of fire. “This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14-15). Some say that when Christians die, they sleep in the grave until Jesus returns and raises the dead. However, Paul said, “To live is Christ and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21).  To sleep in the grave would not be gain! Paul knew that physical death would allow him to “depart and be with Christ,” which, he said, is very much better (Philippians 1:23).

We will be fully conscious one minute after we have died. We will know who we are, we will have our memory. It is only our body that dies, not our spirit. Death separates body and spirit. Later, spirit and body will be reunited in the resurrection. When Paul talks about putting off our earthly tent, he says to be “absent from the body” is “to be at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:1-9).

In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, he refers to those who have died in Christ as having “fallen asleep in Jesus” because this is what death is to the believer- falling asleep and waking up in the presence of our Lord.

Because Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life, the Christian will not see death. This truth caused Jesus to proclaim,

I am Myself the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in (adheres to, trusts in, and relies on) Me, although he may die, yet he shall live; And whoever continues to live and believes in (has faith in, cleaves to, and relies on) Me shall never actually die at all (John 11:25-26).

Death is conquered! The Tomb is Empty! Jesus becomes the Giver of Life (John 20:21-23). This is the Good News that Paul preaches to us. “It is this Good News that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you—unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place” (see 1 Corinthians 15:1-2).

Jesus Christ is the divine, eternal Son of God, who became a member of the human race by virgin birth. He led a sinless life, died on the cross as a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of humanity, was buried and rose again in bodily form from the grave on the third day.

He ascended into heaven, whence He will return to earth in person; to judge the living and the dead. Everyone who repents of sin and trusts in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ receives forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life.

As we make New Year resolutions, I want to call your attention to a text that you will find in Genesis chapter 7:1 “Then the Lord said to Noah, “Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation.”

Many people have questioned whether the flood was a real event and whether it literally covered the whole earth. The text in Genesis 6-7 does not indicate whether the Flood went right around the globe or just covered the then-known world. The Bible’s focus is not so much on the material side of this story as on the moral side. Why did it happen? The answer is astonishing: It happened because God regretted that he had made human beings. It broke His heart!

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination and intention of all human thinking was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved at heart (Genesis 6:5-6).

This is one of the saddest verses in the Bible. It communicates God’s feelings so clearly. God is a Person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may. What had happened to cause such a crisis in God’s emotions? We are told that between two and three hundred angels, in the area of Mount Hermon, sent to look after God’s people fell in love with women, seducing them and impregnating them. The offspring were a horrible hybrid, somewhere between men and angels – beings not in God’s order.

The Bible tells us that when this began to happen, God’s Spirit was grieved and this led to His resolve to wipe out the human race, but He preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven other persons, and also set a definite lifespan of man for which is not more than 120 years. Men lived 500 years and more back then, and they had time to mature in their sins. For 120 years, the exact span of man, God strove with that generation to repent but they ridiculed the idea that He was going to destroy the world.

Noah was Faithful in Building the Ark

So God told Noah to manage one of the earliest recorded projects in the Bible–the building of the ark. It was 510 feet long (155.4480meters), 85 feet wide (25.90800 meters), and 51 feet (15.54480 meters) high. He may not have completed it to budget, but he certainly had to finish it by a specified time–before the flood.

It must have met his performance criteria, as it successfully accommodated a pair of all the animals, and no doubt some his relatives might have said, “What are you going to do with the old homestead?” Noah says, “I don’t need it. The storm is coming…the day of grace is closing and worldly wealth is of no value, and that the ark is the only place of safety. All these things that we value now will soon be destroyed. They only run for a time, not for eternity.”

The people must have thought Noah had lost his mind. And in the same way, people in the last days will ignore the prophetic warnings. Every time Noah drove a nail into the ark it was a warning to them. Even the carpenters who helped build the ark might have made fun of him, they were like lots of people today that help build a church, and perhaps give money for its support, but will never enter it themselves.

Well, things went on as usual. Every sound of the hammer echoed, “I believe in God.” If they had repented as they did at Nineveh, I believe God would have heard their cry and they would have been spared. But there was no cry for mercy.

People might have said, “This old Noah says the world is coming to an end in 120 years, and it’s 20 years since he started the story, but nothing has happened!” Someone has said that Noah must have been deaf, or he could not have stood the jeers and sneers of his countrymen. He could not get a man to believe him except his own family. Some of the old men could have passed away saying, “Noah is wrong…. Poor Noah…so easily deceived, brainwashed and manipulated!”

I don’t think any of us would have had the grace to preach for 120 years without a convert. But Noah was faithful; he just toiled on, believing the Word of God. The first thing that could have alarmed people was when they rose one morning and lo and behold the heavens are filled with fowls of the air. They are flying into the ark, two by two. They come from the desert; from the mountains; and from all parts of the world and they are all going into the ark.

And they looked down on the earth, and with great alarm and surprise, they see little insects creeping up two by two, coming from all parts of the world. Then behold! There come the cattle and other beasts two by two. It must have been a very strange sight. The neighbors might have inquired, “What does this mean?” They run to their wise men who have told them that there is no sign of a coming storm, and ask them why it is that those birds, animals and creeping things go towards the ark, as if guided by some unseen Hand.

Scoffers Will Come in the Last Days

“Well,” the wise men would have said, “we cannot explain it, but give yourselves no trouble. “What has made these creeping insects and these wild beasts of the forest go into the ark, we do not know. We cannot understand it; it is very strange. But there is no sign of anything going to happen. The stars are bright, and the sun shines as bright as ever it did.

Everything moves on, as it has been moving for all time past. You are hearing the children playing in the street. You can hear the voice of the bride and bridegroom in the land, and all is merry as ever…..God is not going to destroy the world. Business was never better than it is now in this “New World Order Global village.” Do you think that if God was going to destroy the world, He would let us go on prosperously as He has? There is no sign of coming storm.

Noah might have preached for the last time by saying: “The door is going to be shut. Come in. God is going to destroy the world. Look at the animals, how they have entered the ark.” The communication has come to them direct from heaven.” But the people only mocked and scoffed.  The apostle Peter reminds us:

To begin with, you must know and understand this, that scoffers (mockers) will come in the last days with scoffing, people who walk after their own fleshly desires and say, where is the promise of His coming? For since the forefathers fell asleep, all things have continued exactly as they did from the beginning of creation.

For they willfully overlook and forget this fact, that the heavens came into existence long ago by the word of God, and the earth also which was formed out of water and by means of water, Through which the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the present heavens and earth have been stored up (reserved) for fire, being kept until the Day of Judgment and destruction of the ungodly people. Nevertheless, do not let this one fact escape you, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord does not delay and is not tardy or slow about what He promises, according to some people’s conception of slowness, but He is long-suffering (extraordinarily patient) toward you, not desiring that any should perish, but that all should turn to repentance (2 Peter 3:3-9 AMP).

If you are a scoffer who is reading this, remember you can laugh at the Bible, you can scoff at your mother’s God, you can laugh at ministers and Christians and call them false prophets (of course some are), but the hour is coming when one promise in the Bible will be worth more to you than the whole world to you. You can imagine that 24 hours after the rain began to fall; Noah’s ark was worth more than the entire world.

When The Door was Shut…There was no Hope

Did you ever notice when the 120 years were up, God gave the world seven days of grace? If there had been a cry during these seven days, I believe it would have been heard. But unfortunately, there was none. At long last…the last day had come, the last hour, the last minute, and the last second! God Almighty came down and shut the door of that ark. No angel, no man, but God Himself shut that door. There must have been a lot of wailing and screaming going up when God shut the door of the Ark; “Noah, Noah, Noah! Let us in.”

They left their homes and came to the ark and pounded on the ark. Hear them cry, “Noah! Let us in. Noah! Have mercy on us, “I am your nephew.” I am your niece.” “I am your uncle.” And Noah might have replied saying, “I would like to let you in, but God has shut the door. I cannot open it!

When the door was shut, there was no hope. Their cry for mercy was too late. Their day of grace was closed. Their last hour had come and God had pleaded with them and invited them to come in, but they mocked at the invitation. They scoffed and ridiculed the idea of a water deluge. Now it was too late. Jesus said,

When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open for us,’ and He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know you, where you are from… (Luke 13:25).

Men say “I don’t believe in all these stories of the flood. Whether you believe it or not, Christ connected His return to this world with Noah’s flood. Remember, in Noah’s day, two sins were predominant: excessive violence and sexual perversion. The Bible also tells us, “The earth was depraved and putrid in God’s sight, and the land was filled with violence (desecration, infringement, outrage, assault, and lust for power) (Genesis 6:11).

Jesus said the climate of the time prior to His return would be similar to the climate during Noah’s day. “For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all.” (Matthew 24:38). We could paraphrase that statement by saying it was business as usual.

God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign…No More Water But Fire Next Time

The writing is on the wall for anyone who will pay attention. Yet Jesus said it would largely be business as usual. The good news is God gave Noah the rainbow sign that no more water, but unfortunately it will be the fire next time. Since even the heavens will be on fire, and then what will property, stocks, bonds, titles, honour and position in society be worth?  The time is coming again when God will deal in judgment with the world. It may be a little while because we don’t know when, but it is sure to come. For Peter says:

The day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will vanish (pass away) with a thunderous crash, and the material elements of the universe will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up…..But we look for new heavens and a new earth according to His promise, in which righteousness (uprightness, freedom from sin, and right standing with God) is to abide (2 Peter 3:10-13).

Although the timing of this end of the age is in God’s hands, from a human standpoint it appears we are standing on the threshold of the final battle. The pieces of the puzzle are all in place. As the sands of time slip through the hourglass of eternity, we are all moving closer to an appointment with destiny.

The question is, “How much time is left for each of us?” The text we’ve selected has a special application to both natural and spiritual parents and their children. The command of the Scripture was given to Noah not only for his safety but that of his household. The home was established long before the church.

A Day of Grace and Mercy

So another question that would be put to each natural or spiritual father and mother is this: Are your children in the ark of God? We shouldn’t rest day or night until you get our children in. I believe our children have many more temptations than we had. There is so much evil in the world that our sons and daughters find it easier to believe in the devil than in God. Noah heard from the Lord about the destruction that was coming, so he built an ark and saved his family. The writer of Hebrews says he did this by faith:

By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith (Hebrews 11:7).

The good news is, this is a day of grace. It is a day of mercy. You will find if you read your Bible diligently, that God always precedes judgment with mercy and grace. Grace is a forerunner of judgement. He called those people in the days of Noah in love. They would have been saved if they had repented in those 120 years. When Christ came to plead with the people in Jerusalem, it was their day of grace; but they mocked and laughed at Him. He then said,

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! (Matthew 23:37).

Forty years afterwards, thousands of people begged that their lives might be spared, and eleven hundred thousand perished in that city. Today God is holding up His justice because of His mercy and because a Savoir died.

It is only by grace that we are saved, and that is why Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord (see Genesis 6:8). No one was ever saved in any other way other than by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Each person is saved by looking to the cross; everyone receives some degree of God’s grace, even the most sinful man or woman.

It was A. W. Tozer who wrote, “Don’t imagine that when the Day of Judgment comes God will turn off His mercy.” Paul said it was the riches of God’s goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering that leads us to repentance (see Romans 2:4).

And the apostle Peter reminds us, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

Therefore, it’s now a loving call “Come with all your household into the ark (Genesis 7:1).

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He also has planted eternity in men’s hearts and minds [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy], yet so that men cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11 AMP)

I don’t usually make New Year resolutions because I try live each day or season for what it brings, but with an eternal perspective in everything I do.

The Book of James states:

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that. (James 4:13-15)

You may be the best businessman in your community or have the best job or career. You may grow the best crops and produce the finest animals. But if you don’t have a personal intimate relationship with Jesus Christ and you don’t strive to live for Jesus in every area of your life, then you are not living with an eternal perspective.

When it’s all be said and done, all our treasures will mean nothing. And there is only one thing that will stand the test of time: The love of Christ in our hearts.

For the love of Christ controls and urges and impels us, because we are of the opinion and conviction that [if] One died for all, then all died; And He died for all, so that all those who live might live no longer to and for themselves, but to and for Him Who died and was raised again for their sake. (2 Corinthians 5:14-15)

I read the story of an evangelist who visited a rich man one day on his neighbouring farm. The man had spent most of his life building the house of his dreams. He had lived in it a mere three months and was sitting on the front veranda, totally wasted away from a terminal disease, the evangelist said to the rich man, What a beautiful house,” Tears filled the rich man’s eyes. Yes, evangelist, he responded, “but for what?” Three weeks later he died.

Jesus made this clear in His parable of the rich fool by pointing out that a man’s life does not consist in and is not derived from possessing overflowing abundance or that which is over and above his needs. The man thought that he would pull down his storehouses and build larger ones, and there he would store or hoard all his grain, produce, and his goods.

And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many good things laid up, [enough] for many years. Take your ease; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself merrily. But God said to him, You fool!

This very night they [the messengers of God] will demand your soul of you; and all the things that you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is with the one who continues to lay up and hoard possessions for himself but doesn’t have a rich relationship with God.” [this is how he fares]. (See Luke 12:16-21 AMP)

What about you? Is what you are living for worth Christ dying for? What motivates you in business, job, ministry, or career? Do you do your best to live for truth? For what do you wish to be remembered for? What if the offer money or success sidetracks you from your true calling?

Remember the more we aim at personal success, the less secure we become. We are threatened continually by the possibility that someone else will succeed more than us. That is why Solomon observed that most people are motivated to success because they envy their neighbors. But this, too, is meaningless like chasing the wind (Ecclesiastes 4:4).

You can easily achieve what appears to be a success and yet somehow become frustrated. Derek Prince wrote that he once heard a talk by the president of a well-known evangelical college. The majority of parents who send their children to that college are professing Christians. But the President had this to say:

I make it a point to ask each of my students, ‘When your parents sent you to this college, what did they tell you was the most important thing in your future? Was it to become a faithful servant of Jesus Christ? “Up to this point,’’ the president continued, “none of my students has ever answered yes.

If your son or daughter were to be enrolled in that college, how would he or she answer? If you are a father or mother you need to ask yourself questions like these:

• What kind of example have I been setting for my family?
• Am I giving my children eternal purposes and eternal standards to live by?
• Am I inculcating eternal values that will direct them into lives of service and obedience for Jesus Christ?
• Am I mainly concerned with worldly success-a career, material comfort, financial independence, and status in the community?
• Or am I compromising my standards and commitments for the sake of material prosperity and worldly success?
  

A Remarkable Interview

One of the greatest public servants in the history of England was William Gladstone (1809-1898) who served as prime minister four times during the latter half of the 19^th century. It is reported that Gladstone was a committed Christian and he also taught a Sunday school class throughout his adult life. In fact, his aim early in his life was to become an Anglican clergyman, but after his graduation from Oxford, his father encouraged him to enter politics.

Shortly before he died, Gladstone gave a speech in which he told about being visited by an ambitious young man who sought his advice about life. The young man told the elder statesman that he had admired him more than anyone living at that time and wanted to seek his advice regarding his career.

 ‘‘What do you hope to do when you graduate from college? Gladstone asked. The young man replied, I hope to attend law school, sir, just as you did.’’

‘‘That’s a noble goal,’’ said Gladstone, ‘‘Then what?’’

‘‘I hope to practice law and make a good name for myself defending the poor and outcasts of society, just as you did.’’

‘‘That’s a noble purpose,’’ replied Gladstone. ‘‘Then what’’

‘‘Well, sir, I hope one day to stand for Parliament and become a servant of the people, even as you did.’’

‘‘That too is a noble hope. What then?’’ asked Gladstone.

‘‘I would hope to be able to serve in the Parliament with great distinction, evidencing integrity and a concern for justice—even as you did.’’

‘‘What then?’’ asked Gladstone

‘‘I would hope to serve the government as prime minister with the same vigour, dedication, vision, and integrity as you did.’’

‘‘And what then? Asked Gladstone.

‘‘I would hope to retire with honours and write my memoirs—even as you are presently doing—so that others could learn from my mistakes and triumphs.’’

‘‘All of that is very noble,’’ said Gladstone, ‘‘and then what?’’

The young man thought for a moment. ‘‘Well, sir, I suppose I will then die.’’

‘‘That’s correct,’’ said Gladstone. ‘‘And then what?’’

The man looked puzzled. ‘‘Well, sir,’’ he answered hesitantly, ‘‘I have never given that any thought.’’

‘‘Young man,’’ Gladstone responded, ‘‘the only advice I have for you is to go home, read your Bible, and think about eternity.’’

It is easy to be deceived by the temporary benefits of wealth, popularity, status, and achievement, and to be blind to the long-range benefits of God’s kingdom.

C. T. Studd’s Testimony

C. T. Studd (1860–1931)

The missionary, famous British athlete, and founder of the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade, C. T. Studd was saved in 1878 at the age of eighteen when a visiting preacher at their home caught him on his way to play cricket.

“Are you a Christian?” he asked. Studd’s answer was not convincing enough, so the guest pressed the point and Studd tells what happened as he acknowledged God’s gift of eternal life received through faith in Jesus Christ:

I got down on my knees and I did say ‘thank You’ to God. And right then and there joy and peace came into my soul. I knew then what it was to be ‘born again’ and the Bible which had been so dry to me before became everything.

In 1884 after his brother George was taken seriously ill, Studd was confronted by the question, “What is all this fame and flattery worth… when a man comes to face eternity?” As a result of his experience, he said,

I know that cricket would not last, and honour would not last, and nothing in this world would last, but it was worthwhile living for the world to come. C. T. Studd gave up all his achievements in this life for Christ’s sake. He was challenged to his commitment by an article written by an atheist. That article, in part, says:

If I firmly believed, as millions say they do, that the knowledge and practice of religion in this life influences destiny in another, then religion would mean to me everything. I would cast away earthly enjoyments as dross, earthly cares as follies, and earthly thoughts and feelings as vanity.

Religion would be my first waking thought and my last image before sleep sank me into unconsciousness. I should labour in its cause alone. I would take thought for the morrow of eternity alone. I would esteem one soul gained for heaven worth a life of suffering.

Earthly consequences would never stay my hand, or seal my lips. Earth, its joys and its griefs, would occupy no moment of my thoughts. I would strive to look upon eternity alone, and on the immortal souls around me, soon to be everlastingly happy or everlastingly miserable.

I would go forth to the world and preach to it in season and out of season, and my text would be: “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN IF HE GAINS THE WHOLE WORLD AND LOSE HIS OWN SOUL.

Still further, and what was better than all, Studd set himself to work for Jesus Christ, and, he says,

I began to try and persuade my friends to read the Gospel, and to speak to them individually about their souls. I cannot tell you what joy it gave me to bring the first soul to the Lord Jesus Christ. I have tasted almost all the pleasures that this world can give…but those pleasures were as nothing compared to the joy that the saving of that one soul gave me.

Studd continues to be best remembered by this poem, Only One Life ‘ Twill Soon Be Past Only What’s done for Christ will last.

There is a higher level of wealth than material success. The writer of Hebrews tells us, “Moses considered the contempt and abuse and shame [borne for] the Christ (the Messiah Who was to come) to be greater wealth than all the treasures of Egypt, for he looked forward and away to the reward (recompense).” (Hebrews 11:26 AMP)

True wealth is having an eternal perspective in everything we do. When we strive to love, know and serve our Creator and our fellow men with our gifts and talents; it helps us look beyond the world’s value system to see the eternal values of God’s kingdom.

None of us determines the date of our birth or our death, but we determine what we do between those dates.  We need to live each year as if it were our last because as someone correctly said, “what we do in life echoes in eternity.” Happy New Year!

Photo courtesy: Heavens Call

Isaiah prophesied that a king would come who would reign like no other. Details of his reign are given: his birth; his ministry in ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’; his lineage, from the line of Jesse; his anointing to do God’s work. Anyone who doubts the validity of Christ’s claim to kingship needs to look back to the accuracy of Isaiah’s predictions.

For to us a Child is born, to us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from the [latter] time forth, even forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this (Isaiah 9:6-7).

Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign: Behold, the young woman who is unmarried and a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (God with us) Isaiah 7:14).

In scripture we find the word “Mashiah” which means “anointed one”. The term was applied to the High Priest (Leviticus 4:23); the King (2 Sam 1:14) and also prophets of God (Psalms 105:15). It speaks of these men being set apart by God for God, and with the power of God helping them. However, at a later date we find Daniel predicting that after the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem which was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, a period of time would pass after which the Messiah (meaning Anointed one) would come (Daniel 9:25).

In this prophecy he uses the word “Messiah” as a title. This caused the Jews to speak freely of the one to come as The ‘Messiah’. Scripture reveals that the one to come will be the supreme Anointed One. He will be the one who fulfills the offices of prophet, priest and king, which were only shadows that pointed to Him.

Biblical prophecy (including Messianic prophecy) is unique amongst all the religious books of the world. It covers a vast period of time and includes all the nations involved in the history of Israel. The prophecies reveal God as the only God of history.

He is the Master of all events and can work through both good and bad to bring about His purposes. One example of this perfect mastery of all events is seen in Micah’s prophecy foretelling the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. Micah went on to say that the King is going to come from the little village of Bethlehem:

But you, Bethlehem Ephratah, you are little to be among the clans of Judah; yet out of you shall One come forth for Me Who is to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth (origins) have been from of old, from ancient days (eternity) (Micah 5:2).

Beth means ‘house’ and lehem means ‘bread’, so the name literally means ‘house of bread’. It was this little village that supplied corn to Jerusalem, as well as lambs for sacrifice. The above prophecy refers to Christ is seen from Matthew 2:1

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men astrologers from the east came to Jerusalem, asking, Where is He Who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the east at its rising and have come to worship Him.

When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Herod conferred with Jewish hierarchy about their prophecies to ascertain Bethlehem from Micah 5:2.  The Jews and wise men would have been familiar with Daniel’s prophecy (9:25-26) and known the timing was upon them for the Messiah.

That it Might be Fulfilled

Matthew refers to the Old Testament more than any of the other Gospels. One of his favorite sayings is ‘that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophets’. This is seen in particular in Matthew’s birth narrative.

He takes a long time explaining why Jesus was born in Bethlehem–because the prophets had predicted that Bethlehem of Judaea would be the birthplace of the king. During the time of the Roman Empire, several special taxations were ordered. Under the rule of Caesar Augustus one of these taxations was levied for years before the birth of Jesus. The Jewish people protested against this order, yet were overruled. However this delayed the enforcement of this taxation order for four years, bringing us to the time of Jesus’ birth.

Under the order Joseph and Mary were required to be present in Bethlehem (Luke 2:1-7) and so prophecy was fulfilled. Mary and Joseph later returned to Nazareth, thus fulfilling Messianic prophecy that stated the Messiah would be called a Nazarene (Matthew 2:23).

Yet this would be crucially important for Jews wondering if this was the Messiah God had promised long ago. “Behold, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel—which, when translated, means, God with us (Matthew 1:23).

Matthew is keen for readers to understand that the prophets spoke of the birth to a virgin, the slaughter of the innocents, the flight into Egypt and the return to Galilee. The phrase ‘that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophets’ occurs 13 times in the story of Jesus’ birth, where Matthew quotes Micah, Hosea, Jeremiah and Isaiah.

From the very beginning, Matthew focuses his readers’ attention on Christ’s ancestry in the royal line of David, describing how his birth fulfils prophecy and has the marks of God’s involvement, heralded by archangels and welcomed by an angelic choir. While Luke includes the shepherds, it is Matthew who records the worship of the child by wise men from the east.

The Wise Men

Most people are familiar with the Wise Men who followed a star to Bethlehem. Whilst they have been commonly regarded as Gentiles, it is more likely that they were descendants of the Jews who had been left behind in Babylon after the Exile.

So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen, from David to the Babylonian exile (deportation) fourteen generations, from the Babylonian exile to the Christ fourteen generations (Matthew 1:17).

They had remembered the prophecy of Balaam that a star would arise out of Israel to be the King of the Nations. I see Him, but not now; I behold Him, but He is not near. A Star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel and shall crush all the corners of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth…. (Numbers 24:17).  So when the wise men or astrologers from the east saw His star in the east they followed it. Their presence in Matthew’s birth account says much about the importance of Christ’s incarnation.

It is interesting that there will be signs in the sky because the sky responds to significant events on earth. This doesn’t mean that when Wise Men followed the star, it proves astrology is all right. Astrology believes that the position of the stars influences a baby at the moment of birth, but at Bethlehem, it was the position of the baby that influenced the stars!

The Beloved Physician Luke

Luke was a doctor by profession – the apostle Paul refers to him as ‘the beloved physician’ when writing to the Colossian church. Because of his medical background, he was able to bring his considerable skill as a writer and physician to search out diligently and follow all things closely and traced accurately the course from the highest to minutest detail and record what actually took place, even when it was outside medical knowledge or ability.

The birth of Jesus, for example, is told from Mary’s angle. She made her life available to Jesus Christ and she was willing to trust God’s plan for her life. Here was a young girl around 13-14 years old, who is approached by an angel, and he tells her that she is found grace with God and she will become pregnant and will birth to a Messiah she will call His name Jesus (see Luke 1:30-32).

Here again, Matthew’s birth narrative says:

And her promised husband Joseph, being a just and upright man and not willing to expose her publicly and to shame and disgrace her, decided to repudiate and dismiss (divorce) her quietly and secretly. But as he was thinking this over, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, descendant of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of (from, out of) the Holy Spirit. She will bear a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus (the Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua), which means Savior, for He will save His people from their sins that is, prevent them from failing and missing the true end and scope of life, which is God (Matthew 1:19-21).

In first-century society, this would be a total disgrace! That’s why Joseph had decided to divorce her quietly and secretly. And yet, Mary basically says, Here am I. Do with me as you please.” Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord; let it be done according to what you have said (Luke 1:38).

Many times, we wonder what the will of God is for our lives. Let me suggest that you simply say, “Lord, I am willing to obey, even though I don’t completely understand what it is that You’re asking me to do.” That is what Mary did. She didn’t fully understand what the angel Gabriel was telling her, but she obeyed just the same. She took a leap of faith. This is the attitude God looks for in His servants: childlike faith and obedience.

Luke also gives further details of the virgin birth, Jesus’ circumcision, and mentions the swaddling clothes or diapers – all the kind of things a doctor would be interested in. Some doctors are sceptical about anything which is outside the natural, physical realm, but God used a doctor to report the supernatural!

Medicine had been developing for 400 years and doctors received careful training. Luke needed to be observant, analytical and careful in his records – skills which he also uses in giving intimate details of the conception and delivery of Jesus Christ.

And this will be a sign for you by which you will recognize Him: you will find (after searching) a Baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger (Luke 2:12-13).

Luke also records the involvement of the shepherds in witnessing and broadcasting news of the birth of Jesus. He records that Mary and Joseph brought pigeons to the temple for sacrifice at the birth of Jesus. This was the cheapest possible sacrifice allowed under Levitical law (see Leviticus 12:1-4).

And when the time for their purification the mother’s purification and the Baby’s dedication came according to the Law of Moses, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord—As it is written in the Law of the Lord, Every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be set apart and dedicated and called holy to the Lord (Luke 2:22-23; see also Exodus 13: 1-2, 12; Numbers 8:17).

The greatest miracle that has ever taken place happened when our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, left His throne in glory and choose to born in a cave in Bethlehem. He could have been born in the most elegant palace on this planet, but instead He was born in a stable in Bethlehem which was cold and damp.

He could have had aristocratic parents who boasted of their status. He could have heard the finest clothes from the most exclusive shops. But He had none of that. Instead, Jesus chose to humble Himself and became poor that through His poverty we might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9).

Our Savior did not come as a Monarch draped in gold and silk, but as baby wrapped in swaddling clothes.  He went from the glory of God to a stable filled with animals. Someone has said that history swings on the hinge of the door of a stable in Bethlehem. Jesus took His place in a manger so that we might have a home in Heaven.

As you enjoy your Christmas today with your loved ones, take time to contemplate what Christmas is really about. It was the day Christ Jesus came into the world to bring us salvation, the most wonderful gift anyone could ever have-and it’s completely free!

For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He even gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life.

For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge (to reject, to condemn, to pass sentence on) the world, but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him (John 3:16-17 AMP).

The most wonderful and most powerful miracle opened the way for the miracle of rebirth –when you are “born again” When you are “born again”- your whole life changes because, just as Jesus came into the world, he comes into our hearts. He came not to condemn us, but to save us from eternal damnation.

Have a wonderful and blessed Christmas!

God created a special sinless blood in a very special and involved manner. 800 years before Christ, the Old Testament prophet Isaiah predicted that: Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign: Behold, the young woman who is unmarried and a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (God with us) (Isaiah 7:14 AMP).

In the Old Testament, the rules provided for a Jewish lady after giving birth to a son or a daughter was:

When the days of her purifying are completed, whether for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring a lamb a year old for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering to the door of the Tent of Meeting to the priest; and he shall offer it before the Lord and make atonement for her, and she shall be cleansed from the flow of her blood. This is the law for her who has borne a male or a female child (Leviticus 12:6-7).

Did Mary observe this law as required in the Old Testament? The Gospel of Luke tells us that she fulfilled this law:

Then it was time for their purification offering, as required by the law of Moses after the birth of a child; so his parents took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. The law of the Lord says, “If a woman’s first child is a boy, he must be dedicated to the LORD.”So they offered the sacrifice required in the law of the Lord—“either a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons” (Luke 2:22-24).

The Blood of Jesus Christ saved Mary just as it saves all those who put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The medical profession tells us that the mother’s blood does not pass the placenta, therefore had Mary’s sinful blood flowed in Jesus’ veins there would be no salvation. She is described as a chosen human vessel to incubate God’s Son and bring Him into the world.

Jesus, Himself prophetically tells us that: Sacrifices and offerings You have not desired, but instead You have made ready a body for Me…… Behold, here I am, coming to do Your will, O God—to fulfil what is written of Me in the volume of the Book (Hebrews 10:5-7).

The life principle which flowed in the veins of this Child was sinless blood; it was human blood as the life of heaven is not blood but the spirit; His DNA was made up of earthly chromosomes from his earthly mother and perfectly created chromosomes from His heavenly Father. Therefore our Lord Jesus Christ was fully human and yet fully divine.

Throughout His life, He showed us both sides of His deity. The human side of Him was subject to temptation, remember temptation is not sin. For we do not have a High Priest Who is unable to understand and sympathize and have a shared feeling with our weaknesses and infirmities and liability to the assaults of temptation, but One Who has been tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sinning (Hebrew 4:15). The Bible also tells us he learned obedience through His sufferings:

In the days of His flesh Jesus offered up definite, special petitions for that which He not only wanted but needed and supplications with strong crying and tears to Him Who was always able to save Him out from death, and He was heard because of His reverence toward God His godly fear, His piety, in that He shrank from the horrors of separation from the bright presence of the Father. Although He was a Son, He learned active, special obedience through what He suffered (Hebrews 5:7-8 AMP).

Jesus’ Family Misunderstood and Doubted Him

When Jesus was young, Joseph and Mary must have given Him similar treatment to that which they gave to their six or more children. Probably when Mary called the children for dinner, she called their names-Yeshua, James, Simon, Joses, Jude, Judas, and Salome to come for dinner.

The Bible tells us when Jesus grew, He became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him. His parents went to Jerusalem every year to the Passover Feast. When Jesus was twelve years old, they attended the festival as usual. After the celebration was over, they went home to Nazareth, but Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents didn’t miss him at first, because they assumed he was among the other travellers.

But when he didn’t show up that evening, they started looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they couldn’t find him, they went back to Jerusalem to search for him there. Three days later they finally discovered him in the Temple, sitting among the religious teachers, listening to them and asking questions. All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. His parents didn’t know what to think. “Son,” his mother said to him, “why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been frantic, searching for you everywhere (Luke 2:45-52).

Now when his parents were looking for Him, He didn’t even offer an apology. When a Jewish boy reaches 12 years of age he is able to perform a “Bar Mitzvah.” From that time on he is considered a man. At this age, he becomes responsible for his own choices or behaviour. He’s reached an age of accountability.

Up to the age of 12, the parents are punished when a boy does something wrong, but from then on he is responsible for his own choices and for keeping God’s commandments. This sheds further light on the reply Jesus made when Mary found him in the temple. He actually said: But why did you need to search?” He asked. “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they didn’t understand what He meant.

Amazingly when they returned to Nazareth, he was obedient to them. And his mother stored all these things in her heart. The story reveals that Yeshua knew who He really was, even at the age of 12, but Mary had never told Him who He was. In fact, the Bible doesn’t record Jesus calling Mary “mother.” It seems that Jesus almost dissociated Himself from His mother until the cross.

An example was when a wedding was held at Cana in Galilee. Jesus was there with Mary and His disciples. They ran out of wine and Mary went to Jesus and said: They have no more wine.”Jesus said to her, Dear woman, what is that to you and to Me? What do we have in common? Leave it to Me. My time (hour to act) has not yet come (John 2: 3-4 AMP).

At another time, Jesus is speaking at a public meeting when He is told His mother and brethren were outside, apparently wishing to talk to Him. But He replied: Who is My mother, and who are My brothers? And stretching out His hand toward [not only the twelve disciples but all His adherents, He said, Here are My mother and My brothers. For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother! (Mathew 12-46-50)

One time Jesus entered a house, and the crowds began to gather again. Soon He and his disciples couldn’t even find time to eat. When His family heard what was happening, they tried to Him away saying, “He is out of His mind” (Mark 3: 20).

As Jesus was teaching about the unclean spirits as recorded in the Gospel of Luke chapter 11, a certain woman in the crowd took the opportunity to express her thanks to Mary who brought Jesus into the world. She raised her voice and said to Him, Blessed (happy and to be envied) is the womb that bore You and the breasts that You sucked! But He said, Blessed (happy and to be envied) rather are those who hear the Word of God and obey and practice it! (Luke 11:27).

When a person moves into a born-again relationship with Jesus, fellow believers (including relatives) often become closer to them than to non-born-again relatives. The Bible tells us that His immediate family didn’t know what to make of Him because they did not believe in Him either:

After this, Jesus traveled around Galilee. He wanted to stay out of Judea, where the Jewish leaders were plotting his death. But soon it was time for the Jewish Festival of Shelters, and Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, where your followers can see your miracles! You can’t become famous if you hide like this! If you can do such wonderful things, show yourself to the world!” For even his brothers didn’t believe in him. Jesus replied, “Now is not the right time for me to go, but you can go anytime. The world can’t hate you, but it does hate me because I accuse it of doing evil. You go on. I’m not going to this festival, because my time has not yet come.” After saying these things, Jesus remained in Galilee (John 7:1-9).

Imagine living with someone for 30 years and they suddenly go around saying they are the Messiah who the prophets wrote about, what would you think of that person if his identity is not revealed to you? It can’t be easy and we shouldn’t blame them. After all, even His disciples, some of whom were possibly His cousins deserted Him on the eve of the Crucifixion. When the real clash came with the powers of darkness, we saw every one of the disciples fail in that hour-in spite of all their surrenders, their vows, and their devotion to their Master.

When Jesus was dying on the cross and shedding His blood on the cross for His mother Mary and others who will put their faith and trust in Him, He saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing near, said to His mother, Dear woman, See, here is your son! Then He said to the disciple, See, here is your mother! And from that hour, the disciple took her into his keeping, (own home) (John 19:26-27).

As Jesus’ earthly brothers didn’t believe in Him, He handed Mary His mother over to John his beloved disciple. But despite this unbelief and disdain, two of His brothers James and Jude became one of the writers of the New Testament.

It is recorded that when Jesus died on the cross, his brother James was so deeply upset and full of regret about what he had said about Him and how he had teased Him that he said he would never eat food again. He would have fasted until he died, except that three days later Jesus appeared to His disciples and James personally. From that moment on, James called himself a bond slave of Jesus Christ.

Mary Was Chosen by God

Apart from Mary being mentioned as one of those who were at the prayer meeting before the Day of Pentecost; that is the last we hear of Mary in the Gospels. You never hear her name again. She prophesied that all generations would call her blessed but not “virgin” Mary because she had other children with Joseph after Jesus. He was the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. And his sisters live right here among us. They were deeply offended and refused to believe in him (see Mark 6:3).

Mary was chosen by God as the woman who would bring Yeshua into the world to fulfill His divine mission of salvation for all humanity. The angel said to her that she would become pregnant after the Holy Spirit came upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her like a shining crowd; and so the holy (pure, sinless) Thing (Offspring) which shall be born of you will be called the Son of God (Luke 1:30-33). Mary believed these words and acknowledged her role when she cried out with a loud cry, and then exclaimed:

My soul magnifies and extols the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He has looked upon the low station and humiliation of His handmaiden. For behold, from now on all generations of all ages will call me blessed and declare me happy and to be envied! For He Who is almighty has done great things for me—and holy is His name to be venerated in His purity, majesty and glory!

And His mercy (His compassion and kindness toward the miserable and afflicted) is on those who fear Him with godly reverence, from generation to generation and age to age. He has shown strength and made might with His arm; He has scattered the proud and haughty in and by the imagination and purpose and designs of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of low degree.

He has filled and satisfied the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty-handed without a gift. He has laid hold on His servant Israel to help him, to espouse his cause, in remembrance of His mercy, even as He promised to our forefathers, to Abraham and to his descendants forever (Luke 1:44-55 AMP).

In her book Treasures in Dark Places, Leanna Cinquanta shares a powerful, haunting story of an encounter she had with Jesus Christ. It’s worth recounting here because she came face to face with the suffering Messiah so clearly revealed to us in the prophecy of the suffering servant described in Isaiah 53:

Face-to-Face A new year had begun—1986. March arrived, attended by melting snow and warmer breezes after six months of Minnesota deep freeze. Cocky as ever, I aimed to enjoy another summer of mischief and pushing limits. But my plans were about to be invaded. The downstairs of our bi-level apartment behind the airplane shop consisted of kitchen, living room and Mom and Dad’s bedroom.

Upstairs were two rooms. Mom’s sewing machine and my art materials occupied one. The other, situated nearest the stairwell, served as my bedroom. In my room a narrow walkway separated my bed from a cot where my friends slept when they stayed overnight. The night of March 27 began like every other.

After an uneventful day at school, I had pitched my backpack on the couch, grabbed a cookie and made a beeline for the barn to ride my horse. After supper, I burned through my homework then studied horsemanship books till bedtime. Around five o’clock in the morning I awoke. Premature rays of light filtering through the window sufficed to reveal slightly more than shadows in the room. Teenagers love to sleep late, but the responsibility of feeding the horses had molded into me a habit of rising at 7 a.m. Nevertheless, 5 a.m. was too early.

Turning over on my back, I stared indignantly at the ceiling. Sleep had departed for good. Two long hours of tossing and turning lay ahead. Prone to the typical teenaged negativism when life didn’t cater to my wishes, I breathed a swear word and muttered, “This sucks. Why did I wake up so early?” “THERE’S SOMEONE IN THE GUEST BED.”

A voice had spoken out of the darkness! An audible voice! “Who is in my room?” A man’s voice? Oh my gosh! Someone had gotten into my room! Terror shrieked through my bones, immobilizing me, freezing my heart. No, I was not dreaming! A moment earlier I might have still been drowsy, but now I was fully and widely awake. I flipped over onto my stomach, and my saucer-wide eyes strained into the blackness—the far corner of the room from whence the voice emanated. No figure. No movement.

But it was so dark, anyone could be there. Anything. Would someone—or something—emerge from the shadows? I waited, fists knotted with the blankets, my heart not daring to beat. When nothing moved or appeared, the words I had heard began to register. . . . The voice had informed me, “There’s someone in the guest bed.” Almost too frightened to look, I found my eyes turning toward the bed barely a foot removed from mine. What I saw injected a shot of adrenaline. Before I could think, I was cowering back against the wall ready to scream.

There was a hump under the blankets! My heart jackhammered in my throat. A thousand terrors tumbled over themselves as I realized again . . . This is not a dream! This is real! Questions swirled. Who is in my room? How did a strange person sneak into our house? Did we forget to lock the door? What might this person do to me? The figure lay motionless, as if asleep. What is it? I thought. Human? Not human? I had on occasion watched a scary movie, and now visions of monsters crawling out from under people’s beds rushed at me in dreadful imagery.

Raw terror sucked my skin corpselike and clammy. A scream pushed up into my throat, obliging release. I had to do something. I could not remain passively sitting here on this bed. Eyes riveted on the mysterious sleeping figure, I began to creep over the front end of my bed toward the door of the room. The bedsprings squeaked. I froze, eyes riveted on the hump in the guest bed. No movement. I placed one foot on the floor, then the other. Gingerly I stood. The floorboards creaked. I froze again, certain that whatever was in the bed would come roaring to life.

Step by step I inched my way across the room to the light switch. I stood there with my hand on the switch. If I turned the light on, the sleeper would awake. That possibility was too scary. I didn’t turn on the light. The logical action I suppose would have been to go downstairs and rouse my parents. Instead, after standing there for a long, tense moment, I found myself slinking back to my bed. Taking great care to make no sound, I climbed back over the front of the bed and pulled the covers up so I could pretend to be sleeping.

There I cowered, waiting and watching. The figure moved. Swallowing another urge to scream, I stayed still. He sat up on the side of the bed. There my fear ended. The person was Jesus! Artists picture Jesus as a stately Caucasian blond or brunette, head and shoulders above the rabble, with blue eyes, a spotless white robe and a halo over His head. That is not how I saw Him. Being of Jewish descent, He was average in stature with black hair and olive skin. But I could not tell whether He was handsome or homely because of the state in which I saw Him.

Right before my eyes, I saw Jesus in His time of suffering. His face was bloody and bruised and His eyes blackened from repeated beatings. Blood caked His hair and trickled from wounds on His head. His clothes were tattered and blood-soaked. According to history, Jesus was beaten 39 times with a bone-laced whip. This instrument of torture had shredded not only the garment, but also His flesh.

With vehemence far eclipsing my former terror, now a revelation exploded through my being, igniting every sinew and synapse. Truth like an injection shot into my soul. Questions were obliterated and three grand and indisputable facts blazed neon-bright in my vision:

GOD EXISTS.

JESUS IS REAL.

THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD.

In that moment I knew that were I the only person in the world, He would have suffered this for me. He endured this for every person, no matter how good or bad. This knowledge exceeded a mental persuasion.

A surgical implantation had been sutured into my soul, a laser operation straight from the supernatural realm. Usually, if you do wrong and hurt someone, the person is angry with you. But in the bruised and scarred face of Jesus, there was no condemnation, no anger, but pure forgiveness and compassion. I could endure only a brief look in His face. My mind swooned.

Every muscle felt like water. I am . . . in the presence of God. God in the form of a man . . . and He has suffered terribly to purchase my freedom! The reality of it swirled in my mind and my body went limp. I fell on my face on my bed, weeping. The intensity of that moment is unexplainable and beyond words.

My tears arose not so much from anguish as from awe and reverence, the single possible response for a mortal when found in the presence of the Holy One. But they were also tears of grief that such divine beauty had to be so marred for my pardon. Then something happened that drove the experience still deeper. He touched me.

He reached out His hand and laid it on my right shoulder. “My child, don’t cry.” His voice was gentle but strong. My arms trembled as they lifted my torso from the bed. It’s too much for me, I thought. I cannot look into His eyes again. But I knew I must. Like magnets, they drew me. He had more to show me, more to impart.

In His countenance, so tortured and yet so selfless, I beheld a love that no human can imagine. But enthroned upon that love, a still higher revelation now pierced my soul. His sufferings’ accomplishments exceeded personal pardon. A victorious light shone from His battered face, an aura of triumph and glory, the persona of One who has conquered all and now reigns supreme. The suffering He had endured constituted the price to rescue the world.

I was witnessing the battle scars necessary to break the power of evil. In a communication superseding words, buoyed up with a joyous lilt like the song of angels, I heard Him declare, I’ve broken the power of darkness. The citizens can be set free forever. Then His love was flowing into me, washing over me, waves of splendour engulfing my soul.

Placing my left hand on His while it rested on my shoulder, I felt the hole, where His wrist had been nailed to the cross. This is not a dream! My mind swooned again with the repeating fact. This is real. I am not asleep. This is real. I am face-to-face with God! Awe and reverence once more overcame me. I gazed upon the One who had suffered for our freedom, the One who conquered death.

For love, He had subjected Himself to this unfathomable suffering—love for me, to ransom my life. I gazed into the eyes of a being who embodied self-sacrificing beauty, a being for whom no word but one could suffice. . . . He was . . . holy. The weight of it overpowered me. Unable to contain or bear up under the glory of His presence and the dreadfulness of His pain, I again fell facedown on my bed weeping.

Golden rays kissed my tousled locks. Daylight! As if ejected off my mattress, I found myself on my feet. Knees shaking, I stood between the two beds. The whole encounter rushed back before my eyes. Mottled bright spots of sun beaming through tree branches outside the window illumined the guest bed.

It was neat and perfectly made. It bore no visible sign of the presence who had lain there a few hours earlier. But for me, the bed was now sacred. I feared to touch it. Something was different. Something had changed. For a long, strange moment I stood gawking about the room, not daring to move a muscle. Against the wall stood my dresser, deep chestnut-varnished oak with great round mirror above.

There were my three Breyer horses, the only childhood treasures I had managed to confiscate the night we had picked up and left Arizona. My half-finished mural of a great black steed still leaped over the mirror and the paintbrushes lay atop a nearby stool, awaiting my next bout of artistic inspiration. “I am alive.” I dared to draw a tremorous breath. “And this is my room. I am on Planet Earth.”

But I felt so other, so strange, like a worm that goes to sleep in its cocoon and wakes up a butterfly. Like my operating system had been rebuilt and reprogrammed. With these thoughts another terror crept over me. Had I undergone a physical transformation? Had I become something or someone else?

The image of Alice in Wonderland drifted into my mind, and I impulsively touched my body, examined my hands, my arms. “Flesh. Alive. Me.” I dared another breath. But what about my face? With terrified eyes I stared across the room at the mirror. A few paces would reveal the dread answer. My legs trembled. What would I see in the mirror? Had I metamorphosed into another person, or—creature? Sick with fear I summoned enough courage to step in front of the mirror. Whew! I still looked like me.

But I didn’t feel like me. I felt sparkly inside, a crystal vase from the dishwasher squeaky clean. I must have eaten breakfast because if I hadn’t my parents would have inquired as to my manner of illness, but I could not tell whether I ate cereal or pancakes or eggs. During those few minutes downstairs I learned, to my further awe, that today was Good Friday. I had seen Him on the very day when followers of Jesus commemorate His death. Throughout my uneasy time in the presence of normal humans, I kept checking my body and worrying. I felt like a light bulb, as if the brightness

brightness within was glowing through my skin. Surely others could see it. What if my parents exclaimed, “You look different!” What would I answer? If I had attempted to speak I would have stammered. The world reeled. I feared to walk, certain my steps would resemble a plastered wino. I have to get away! my mind cried. Let me find a place alone, secluded, and attempt to process this.

Withdrawing to my room, I opened my paint cans, climbed on my stool and dabbled at the mural. Downstairs, Mom had the radio on, as was her habit while cooking. She usually played a Christian station, which I had trained myself to ignore. But now my paintbrush froze in midstroke when Petra’s “The Coloring Song” wafted through the air and into my ears. The lyrics vividly described how the blood had flowed down the face of Jesus, God’s own Son. “The only one that can give us life,”

He shed His blood to make my sins white as snow. A jolt like electricity buckled my knees and I toppled from the stool. The words of the song paralleled what I had seen, and the reality of it hit me with the force of a tsunami—God is real. Jesus is real. He is fearsomely and wonderfully real, and I saw Him face-to-face.

I had been allowed to witness Him in the throes of the greatest act of love ever performed in the history of the cosmos, the act that defies nature, and confounds reason—the cross.

When I read this in Leanna’s book, I believed this to be a genuine and real appearance of Jesus Christ, who is alive and still reveals Himself. The same Jesus who appeared to Leanna in tattered glory in her bedroom on a cold Minnesota morning in 1986 desires to reveal Himself to you and me in a deeper, more intimate and more remarkable way.

Jesus visits us not to harm us but to reveal the depth of His indescribable love. The question is: Will you allow Him to reveal Himself to you?

Back in 1921, a missionary couple named David and Svea Flood went with their two-year-old son from Sweden to the heart of Africa—to what was then called the Belgian Congo. They met up with another young Scandinavian couple, the Ericksons, and the four of them sought God for direction. In those days of much tenderness and devotion and sacrifice, they felt led of the Lord to go out from the main mission station and take the gospel to a remote area.

This was a huge step of faith. At the village of N’dolera they were rebuffed by the chief, who would not let them enter his town for fear of alienating the local gods. The two couples opted to go half a mile up the slope and build their own mud huts.

They prayed for a spiritual breakthrough, but there was none. The only contact with the villagers was a young boy, who was allowed to sell them chickens and eggs twice a week. Svea Flood—a tiny woman of only four feet, eight inches tall—decided that if this was the only African she could talk to, she would try to lead the boy to Jesus. And in fact, she succeeded.

But there were no other encouragements. Meanwhile, malaria continued to strike one member of the little band after another. In time the Ericksons decided they had had enough suffering and left to return to the central mission station. David and Svea Flood remained near N’dolera to go on alone.

Then, of all things, Svea found herself pregnant in the middle of the primitive wilderness. When the time came for her to give birth, the village chief softened enough to allow a midwife to help her. A little girl was born, whom they named Aina.

The delivery, however, was exhausting, and Svea Flood was already weak from bouts of malaria. The birth process was a heavy blow to her stamina. She lasted only another seventeen days.

Inside David Flood, something snapped in that moment. He dug a crude grave, buried his twenty-seven-year-old wife, and then took his children back down the mountain to the mission station. Giving his newborn daughter to the Ericksons, he snarled, “I’m going back to Sweden. I’ve lost my wife, and I obviously can’t take care of this baby. God has ruined my life.” With that, he headed for the port, rejecting not only his calling, but God himself.

Within eight months both the Ericksons were stricken with a mysterious malady and died within days of each other. The baby was then turned over to some American missionaries, who adjusted her Swedish name to “Aggie” and eventually brought her back to the United States at age three.

This family loved the little girl and was afraid that if they tried to return to Africa, some legal obstacle might separate her from them. So they decided to stay in their home country and switch from missionary work to pastoral ministry. And that is how Aggie grew up in South Dakota. As a young woman, she attended North Central Bible college in Minneapolis. There she met and married a young man named Dewey Hurst.

Years passed. The Hursts enjoyed a fruitful ministry. Aggie gave birth first to a daughter, then a son. In time her husband became president of a Christian college in the Seattle area, and Aggie was intrigued to find so much Scandinavian heritage there.

One day a Swedish religious magazine appeared in her mailbox. She had no idea who had sent it, and of course, she couldn’t read the words. But as she turned the pages, all of a sudden a photo stopped her cold. There in a primitive setting was a grave with a white cross-and on the cross were the words SVEA FLOOD.

Aggie jumped in her car and went straight to a college faculty member who, she knew, could translate the article. “What does this say?” she demanded.

The instructor summarized the story: It was about missionaries who had come to N’dolera long ago…the birth of a white baby…the death of the young mother…the one little African boy who had been led to Christ…and how, after the whites had all left, the boy had grown up and finally persuaded the chief to let him build a school in the village. The article said that gradually he won all his students to Christ…the children led their parents to Christ…even the chief had become a Christian. Today there were six hundred Christian believers in that one village…

All because of the sacrifice of David and Svea Flood.

For the Hursts’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, the college presented them with the gift of a vacation to Sweden. There Aggie sought to find her real father. An old man now, David Flood had remarried, fathered four more children, and generally dissipated his life with alcohol. He had recently suffered a stroke. Still bitter, he had one rule in his family: “Never mention the name of God-because God took everything from me.”

After an emotional reunion with her half brothers and half sister, Aggie brought up the subject of seeing her father. The others hesitated. “You can talk to him,” they replied, “even though he’s very ill now. But you need to know that whenever he hears the name of God, he flies into a rage.”

Aggie was not to be deterred. She walked into the squalid apartment, with liquor bottles everywhere, and approached the seventy-three-year-old man lying in a rumpled bed.

“Papa?” she said tentatively.

He turned and began to cry. “Aina,” he said, “I never meant to give you away.”

“It’s all right Papa,” she replied, taking him gently in her arms. “God took care of me.”

The man instantly stiffened. The tears stopped.

“God forgot all of us. Our lives have been like this because of Him.” He turned his face back to the wall.

Aggie stroked his face and then continued, undaunted.

“Papa, I’ve got a little story to tell you, and it’s a true one. You didn’t go to Africa in vain. Mama didn’t die in vain. The little boy you won to the Lord grew up to win that whole village to Jesus Christ. The one seed you planted just kept growing and growing. Today there are six hundred African people serving the Lord because you were faithful to the call of God in your life…

“Papa, Jesus loves you. He has never hated you.”

The old man turned back to look into his daughter’s eyes. His body relaxed. He began to talk. And by the end of the afternoon, he had come back to the God he had resented for so many decades.

Over the next few days, father and daughter enjoyed warm moments together. Aggie and her husband soon had to return to America—and within a few weeks, David Flood had gone into eternity.

A few years later, the Hursts were attending a high-level evangelism conference in London, England, where a report was given from the nation of Zaire (the former Belgian Congo). The superintendent of the national church, representing some 110,000 baptized believers, spoke eloquently of the gospel’s spread in his nation. Aggie could not help going to ask him afterward if he had ever heard of David and Svea Flood.

“Yes, madam,” the man replied in French, his words then being translated into English. “It was Svea Flood who led me to Jesus Christ. I was the boy who brought food to your parents before you were born. In fact, to this day your mother’s grave and her memory are honored by all of us.”

He embraced her in a long, sobbing hug. Then he continued, “You must come to Africa to see, because your mother is the most famous person in our history.”

In time that is exactly what Aggie Hurst and her husband did. They were welcomed by cheering throngs of villagers. She even met the man who had been hired by her father many years before to carry her back down the mountain in a hammock-cradle.

The most dramatic moment, of course, was when the pastor escorted Aggie to see her mother’s white cross for herself. She knelt in the soil to pray and give thanks. Later that day, in the church, the pastor read from John 12:24: “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” He then followed with Psalm 126:5: “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.”

This is an excerpt from Aggie Hurst, Aggie: The Inspiring Story of A Girl Without A Country Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1986.