Posted on 04/20/2014 7:07:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Much of the world will be celebrating Easter this week. Unfortunately, in the West, secular humanism has relegated the Christian Easter to mere “Easter bunnies” and “Easter eggs.”
That degeneration can be closely linked to Western society’s replacement of “thinking” with “feeling.” We have replaced the thermostat with the thermometer. We have given up on rigorous intellectual debate of facts and irrefutable truth and replaced it with “that’s fine if that’s how you feel about it.”
Perhaps the trend is no clearer than when the media—and consequently, the man on the street—expresses an opinion on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In the past, people either accepted or rejected Christ’s resurrection as a fact of history. But in today’s post-modern culture—where most of the “thinking” takes place between the nose and the chin—people are apt to say, “Jesus rose from the dead? So what?”
That attitude perpetuates apathy about the most important event in human history, which in turn causes people to miss out on the greatest news they could ever personally experience—news that brought about Western civilization itself.
For the thinking person, Christ’s resurrection is the best news ever because the evidence for it is overwhelming:
1. It was recorded by four independent accounts, which accurately reported many small details, such as the number of angels at the tomb, the number of women who went to the tomb, the time of their arrival, and the overall sequence of events. All the accounts are easily harmonized.
2. The removal of the tombstone and the presence of the grave cloth proved that Jesus’ body was no longer in the tomb. In the culture of that day, and with such a dense population, it would have been impossible to hide a body if it were stolen. The authorities could have easily produced it.
3. After Jesus’ resurrection, He appeared to not just a few women in the garden, but to a wide variety of people, including a group of 500. Surely 500 people could not have suffered a hallucination at the same time.
4. The resurrection changed things in dramatic ways, such as the change in the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday. But the greatest evidence of all might be how it changed the disciples and instilled in them a willingness to die a martyr’s death. Surely they would not have been willing to die a decade or two later for a lie or hallucination.
As English educator and historian Thomas Arnold once said: “I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort . . . than the great sign which God hath given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead.”
Morison, Gilbert West, J.N.D. Anderson, among others)—some of whom had originally set out to disprove the resurrection.
Sir Edward Clark, another English jurist, once wrote: “As a lawyer I have made a prolonged study of the evidences of the first Easter day. To me the evidence is conclusive and over and over again in the high court, I secured the verdict on evidence not nearly as compelling…”
That’s why the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the greatest news of all—it is indeed great news, not just a great story. It is the ultimate truth, not just an opportunity to eat chocolate bunnies.
And because it is true, every human on the face of the earth must respond to it one way or another. Our individual eternal future, and the future of civilization, depends on it.
Early histories of America, as well as the words of its Founders and early leaders, bear this out.
"Ideas have consequences"(Weaver).
The ideas of 1776 came out of a set of ideas consistent with liberty.
We tend to forget, or have never considered, that other world views existed then, as now.
Unless today's citizens rediscover the ideas of liberty existing in what Jefferson called "the American mind" of 1776, we risk going back to the "Old World" ideas which preceded the "Miracle of America."
There are those who call themselves "progressives," when, in fact, their ideas are regressive and enslaving, and as old as the history of civilization.
Would suggest to any who wish an authentic history of the ideas underlying American's founding a visit to this web site, at which Richard Frothingham's outstanding 1872 "History of the Rise of the Republic of the United States" can be read on line.
This 600+-page history traces the ideas which gave birth to the American founding. Throughout, Richard Frothingham, the historian, develops the idea that it is "the Christian idea of man" which allowed the philosophy underlying the Declaration of Independence and Constitution to become a reality--an idea which recognizes the individual and the Source of his/her "Creator"-endowed life, liberty and law.
Is there any wonder that the enemies of freedom, the so-called "progressives," do not promote such authentic histories of America? Their philosophy puts something called "the state," or "global interests" as being superior to individuals and requires a political elitist group to decide what role individuals are to play.
In other words, they must turn the Founders' ideas upside-down in order to achieve a common mediocrity for individuals and power for themselves.
He has risen indeed. :)
I apparently, if not evidently, have been aware of and witnessing of my faith for years. I am a crude and vulgar man, deeply flawed and sinful. I never tell people I am a basically good person. I know I am not. People who tell me that they are, well, history and experience has informed me otherwise.
Anyway, this is old but it has not changed in the years since I wrote it.
Loving Death 12 November, 2009
The events of Fort Hood gave me pause again. Where did this come from and where does it lead?
A long time ago, a certain high ranking angel took issue with his Creator. Enamored of his own beauty, power and intelligence, confident that he was in the right, the creature challenged his Creator in a deadly game of ultimate high stakes poker.
Heretofore, Death was unknown; a negating of the Life power of the eternal Creator, the power of Death became the agency through which the rebellious creature enslaved all of creation. The creature became Death in opposition to his Creator’s eternal essence: Life.
In all of his guises, in all of his deceptions, in all of his manipulations the rebel creature who challenged his Creator, usurping the Creator’s authority, built for himself a multi-faceted forgery of the Creator. The rebel is worshipped even today in a multitude of religions and disciplines, ever-tightening his death grip fastened on the Creator’s creation, ever shifting and transforming, a malevolent, ever-mutating black virus infecting the spirit of men. Calling, tempting, inducing and seducing, the rebel is still the master of his usurped dominion. The vanities and conceits of men deny the master of Death even as they seek their own justification and edification. Men are willingly serving out the death sentence of their own existence, spewing forth a non-ending stream of baseless, hollow beliefs and humanistic declarations.
Man loves Death. Because man loves Death, man loves the author of Death and hates the author of Life.
All -isms lead to Death, are nourished in Death, propagated again and again, eulogized in rebellion, glorified, sanctified and memorialized over and over. The spirit in man is first deceived, then recruited, and finally fully debased and immersed in the familiar pathology of all diseased spirits; angst, hopelessness, hardness, perversion, hatred, envy, greed, strife, insanity, murder and suicide.
The assault of the rebel is clever; flattering, prideful, arrogant and even falsely humble as need be. He is the master dealer, rigging the game, paying out just enough to keep the players playing and losing at his table. He picks the winners and the losers, while doing all he can to ensure neither is aware of the pre-destined goal of the game. Even so, a few wake up as if from a deep spiritual anesthesia, as if from a life-long coma, they regain awareness and vision. Yet, even these few do not then escape the ongoing assaults of the rebel; they merely whet the rebel’s appetite, motivating an even subtler campaign of deception.
How many times did Eve say ‘No thanks, before she said ‘Okay’? We only know that she did.
How many times did Adam say ‘No thanks’ before Adam took from Eve and ate also? We only know that he did.
How many times did Judas contend with his temptations, his unwillingness to accept his master’s mission? We don’t know anymore than that he did succumb, and the rebel entered him.
Of course, to the sophisticated, these questions are invalidated in that each present accounts long rejected by enlightened modern man in the aggregate. The tale of Adam and Eve is dismissed as just another primitive creation account, rejecting how the rebel established himself as Death and usurping to himself, dominion over all creation, at least for the time being.
The tale of a Savior, to undo what the rebel had done and to be anointed as the Most Righteous, to make a full restitution of ALL THINGS, a blameless and sinless man of suffering, by whose stripes we were healed, and by whose death and resurrection ended the dominion of Death and of the rebel was also anathema to a world that knew him not.
So, few are aware, among the teeming billions of Earth, at least for the time being, that Death is worshipped universally by man; but that few, a remnant of mankind, rejects Death and rejects the author of Death; these few watch and groan along with all creation, awaiting the sure and final defeat of Death.
As human celebrities, leaders, the lionized and iconized social and cultural agents of change, famous and infamous, march in solidarity to their destruction, man will perversely worship them and remain blind to their ultimate destination. The rebel’s shamans and priests will preside over their memorials, guiding man in obeisance to the prince of this world with soothing words and soft, enticing vagaries that induce continued slumber. The blind truly lead the blind and both fall into the ditch.
Does man truly love death?
Yes. All mankind does. Man’s love affair with Death, from the very beginning, has lasted across the millennia and will continue until Death’s author is defeated. Understand whom it is that you love. That man loves Death and loves the author of Death is, whether man accepts it or not, a fact.
The author of Life, the Way, the Truth and the Light, the One without whom NO man may know his Creator, is even now, standing at the door (He is patiently standing outside the human heart, which is to say the dwelling place of the spirit in man, that in the very beginning was spiritually and physically created in His own image), knocking, promising to surely enter, if invited to enter, and to sup (fellowship) with man, and man with Him.
The rebel knows his time is short. Even the demons of the rebel’s regime know the Creator and rightly tremble at the hearing of His Name.
Soon, all of God’s creation will rejoice, and every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus, the Lamb of God, the only begotten Son of God the Father, the Creator, the Word of God, through which everything that was created, was created, is Lord. Jesus said, ‘let the dead bury the dead’. So, let the living live with the living, the author of Life Everlasting, Jesus Christ, holder of the keys to Death and Life, the Alpha and the Omega, the I AM, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Watching and waiting…
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