WE CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT RESURRECTION
GOSPEL OF MARK
16:5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 16:6 But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 16:7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you."
In the Gospel of John, Jesus says himself, not against the popular Easter customs on any continents, but from true divine love that: “ I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will still live, even if he dies. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die. ”
Mankind have dreamed about immortality and invincibility since ages, we tried to deify our ancestors, our heroes and our mighty emperors, thinking that they or they legacy might save us. However, ancestors vanished, heroes died, empires disappeared, sufferings, sickness, war and death stayed on Earth generation after generation.
Thus, it must be conclusive to all, as an outcome of the known human history, according to the Gospels, we have to acknowledge that we can not save ourselves, we need a Savior to save us from urselves, from our sins and from the curse of this world, which is very visible if we take a glimpse at the course humanity has taken for long millennia, since the FLOOD hit, and even before the Great Deluge.
In the opposite focus, we can take at look at the Easter Event, and it is just amazing how many things could occur within only a week called holy, ending on Easter Sunday. Perhaps it is an extended week of eight days, but it is still the Holy Week.
First of all, there was the Palm Sunday when Jesus entered Jerusalem as a King, called the son of David, which was a traditional title of God’s Messiah.
On the same day he cleansed the temple, flogged the money-changers and expelled the merchants from the church-yard as it can be found in the Gospel of Matthew:
“ Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. ‘It is written,’ he said to them, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’ "
Then, in the upper room they all gathered for the last supper on the Maundy Thursday, when the Lord instituted the Holy Supper. Later at night on the Mount of Olives he was betrayed by Judas, as well as he was captured by the soldiers who took him to the house of the high priest.
What a night ! It lasted till the rooster cried, making Peter remember his boasting and his Master’s rebuking. Then came the Good Friday, as it culminated in Jesus’ sufferings on the Cross, in his death and then the burial into the cave grave owned by Joseph of Arimathea, near the Golgotha.
Finally the dawn of Sunday brought the light and the victory of the resurrection as it is written in the Gospel of Matthew:
“Suddenly Jesus met them. “Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers that they should to go into Galilee; there they will see me.”
Easter is an ancient festivity. It must have been existed even before the age of Moses by whom the Pesach or Passover was ordered as a commandment to be kept forever as a remembrance that Israel left the slavery of Egypt behind, because God delivered them.
The feast was reestablished and restructured to become the festive frame around the symbol of the lamb of God, as the blood of the lamb on the door posts was the sign of mercy between God and the people.
As it is written in the book of Exodus:
For the LORD will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when he sees (the blood of the lamb) on the lintel, and on the two door posts, the LORD will pass over the door, and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to strike you. ”
In Christianity this image is a foretelling story how the Christ like a lamb will be sacrificed for all humanity to win the ultimate battle against evil and death.
As it is written in the book of Prophet Isaiah in his famous chapter 53: “ As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he didn’t open his mouth. (…) My righteous servant will justify many by the knowledge of himself; and he will bear their iniquities. ”
The life is resurrected in Jesus Christ gaining full victory over death for the always greater glory of God to whom may praise and gratitude be, for ever by the Holy Spirit, as we need resurrection so much desperately.
As the night is followed by the day, and the winter by the spring, so the sorrow must be followed by joy, the grief by comfort, war by peace, horrible death by the renewing of life. Similarly, the victory in Christ must make an end to our repeating defeats versus the evil forces in this world and in our hearts.
As we need our daily bread for the mere survival, so we need resurrection, because the earthly bread nurtures only our earthly body for the death, but by resurrection we will gain the eternal life, which is not perishing in a hurricane or buried by an avalanche, or falls down like an airplane, or might be blown up by a malevolent grenade.
The eternal life with the LORD can not be destroyed or touched by the dark, because it is fully immortal, as it was promised in the Book of Isaiah, chapter six that “Things which an eye didn’t see, and an ear didn’t hear, which didn’t enter into the heart of man, these God has prepared for those who love him.”
May our graceful Lord grant us living Faith in order to be born again by the water and the Spirit, so to be admitted into the Kingdom of God already in this life, then, when the time comes, in Heaven, AMEN.
GOSPEL OF MARK
16:5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 16:6 But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 16:7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you."
In the Gospel of John, Jesus says himself, not against the popular Easter customs on any continents, but from true divine love that: “ I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will still live, even if he dies. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die. ”
Mankind have dreamed about immortality and invincibility since ages, we tried to deify our ancestors, our heroes and our mighty emperors, thinking that they or they legacy might save us. However, ancestors vanished, heroes died, empires disappeared, sufferings, sickness, war and death stayed on Earth generation after generation.
Thus, it must be conclusive to all, as an outcome of the known human history, according to the Gospels, we have to acknowledge that we can not save ourselves, we need a Savior to save us from urselves, from our sins and from the curse of this world, which is very visible if we take a glimpse at the course humanity has taken for long millennia, since the FLOOD hit, and even before the Great Deluge.
In the opposite focus, we can take at look at the Easter Event, and it is just amazing how many things could occur within only a week called holy, ending on Easter Sunday. Perhaps it is an extended week of eight days, but it is still the Holy Week.
First of all, there was the Palm Sunday when Jesus entered Jerusalem as a King, called the son of David, which was a traditional title of God’s Messiah.
On the same day he cleansed the temple, flogged the money-changers and expelled the merchants from the church-yard as it can be found in the Gospel of Matthew:
“ Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. ‘It is written,’ he said to them, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’ "
Then, in the upper room they all gathered for the last supper on the Maundy Thursday, when the Lord instituted the Holy Supper. Later at night on the Mount of Olives he was betrayed by Judas, as well as he was captured by the soldiers who took him to the house of the high priest.
What a night ! It lasted till the rooster cried, making Peter remember his boasting and his Master’s rebuking. Then came the Good Friday, as it culminated in Jesus’ sufferings on the Cross, in his death and then the burial into the cave grave owned by Joseph of Arimathea, near the Golgotha.
Finally the dawn of Sunday brought the light and the victory of the resurrection as it is written in the Gospel of Matthew:
“Suddenly Jesus met them. “Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers that they should to go into Galilee; there they will see me.”
Easter is an ancient festivity. It must have been existed even before the age of Moses by whom the Pesach or Passover was ordered as a commandment to be kept forever as a remembrance that Israel left the slavery of Egypt behind, because God delivered them.
The feast was reestablished and restructured to become the festive frame around the symbol of the lamb of God, as the blood of the lamb on the door posts was the sign of mercy between God and the people.
As it is written in the book of Exodus:
For the LORD will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when he sees (the blood of the lamb) on the lintel, and on the two door posts, the LORD will pass over the door, and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to strike you. ”
In Christianity this image is a foretelling story how the Christ like a lamb will be sacrificed for all humanity to win the ultimate battle against evil and death.
As it is written in the book of Prophet Isaiah in his famous chapter 53: “ As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he didn’t open his mouth. (…) My righteous servant will justify many by the knowledge of himself; and he will bear their iniquities. ”
The life is resurrected in Jesus Christ gaining full victory over death for the always greater glory of God to whom may praise and gratitude be, for ever by the Holy Spirit, as we need resurrection so much desperately.
As the night is followed by the day, and the winter by the spring, so the sorrow must be followed by joy, the grief by comfort, war by peace, horrible death by the renewing of life. Similarly, the victory in Christ must make an end to our repeating defeats versus the evil forces in this world and in our hearts.
As we need our daily bread for the mere survival, so we need resurrection, because the earthly bread nurtures only our earthly body for the death, but by resurrection we will gain the eternal life, which is not perishing in a hurricane or buried by an avalanche, or falls down like an airplane, or might be blown up by a malevolent grenade.
The eternal life with the LORD can not be destroyed or touched by the dark, because it is fully immortal, as it was promised in the Book of Isaiah, chapter six that “Things which an eye didn’t see, and an ear didn’t hear, which didn’t enter into the heart of man, these God has prepared for those who love him.”
May our graceful Lord grant us living Faith in order to be born again by the water and the Spirit, so to be admitted into the Kingdom of God already in this life, then, when the time comes, in Heaven, AMEN.
