Now! They had to do it now! The administration couldn’t waste time.
Laws?
THERE’S NO TIME TO FOLLOW LAWS! This hero is dying! He’s too sick, he must be released NOW!
Negotiating with terrorists? We’re not negotiating with terrorists, we don’t even have time to think about what that means, we have to release him now! He’s a hero! He’s an American patriot. (more…)
What do you do with an empty tomb?
On Friday, a man had been put in there. On Sunday, it was empty. Why?
Was it that he had merely been badly wounded but didn’t die? Was it that his body had been removed by his followers?
The tomb was empty or it wasn’t. If it wasn’t empty or if Jesus didn’t raise from the dead, than Christianity is pointless. But if that tomb was empty, then the gospel is true and that reality is more important than anything else in your life.
What do you do with this reality if it’s true? Do you just put it off to the side? Do you say that you accept it without actually believing it or caring?
If Jesus Christ rose from the dead on Easter morning, and you actually believed it to be true, how would that impact how you lived?
It shows that God loves us enough to take the penalty for our sin. It shows that our sins were bad enough to warrant such a serious penalty. It affirms the truth of the scripture which foretells and points to Jesus, while recording his teachings, ministry, death, and resurrection. It shows that Jesus is more than just a good moral teacher. It gives purpose to our lives, and that purpose is to know this God. It gives us hope for the future because Jesus died and rose and the same power that raised him can raise you.
It’s easy to believe that Jesus lived, but there’s no reason to worship him if he didn’t raise from the dead. What hope do we have in our own resurrection otherwise?
What do YOU do with the empty tomb? You can disregard the issue if the you don’t believe he rose. But if you don’t know, it’s a question worth exploring. Not at some distant point in the future, but right now. Because if you don’t know, maybe you’ll discover you believe it’s true. If you do believe it, is it impacting your life?
jrb
Originally posted April 6, 2012
Statistically, we know that the vast majority of Americans believe in some form of a higher power. There are relatively few who are atheists. Since people do believe that there is something, and since it’s so easy to think of the majority of Americans as Christians, many simply attach themselves to Christianity.
But what does it mean? Christianity?
For so many, we call ourselves Christians but then never pray, or read the Bible, or go to church, or experience fellowship with other believers, or show any actual desire to have a relationship with Jesus. Without these, how can a person be Christian?
Going back to football season, I had paid attention to the alleged sexual assault committed by Florida State star quarterback Jameis Winston. Something always seemed off about the case.
Today, the New York Times has an investigative piece by Walt Bogdanich which explains the situation and the chain of events.
I realize that we are innocent until proven guilty. I’m not saying that I’m so certain that Winston is absolutely guilty. But this article confirms the gut feeling I had from everything else I’ve ever read about this alleged crime: That the university and the city police department did very little to get to the bottom of this case when the allegations were originally made.
Here are a few noteworthy pieces of information pertaining to the initial investigation: (more…)
I had heard reviews that the movie “God’s Not Dead” was bad (like really bad). For the first 90 minutes, seeing some of the absurd elements of the plot, I was torn between blurting out “Oh come on!” or laughing because it was so bad. I think having a movie about doubt and Christians confronting atheists could have been done well. But there was no depth to the characters. The Christians were unrealistically pious. In showing the lives of the secular characters, they were too heavy-handed in contrasting how messed up they were to how the Christian characters were depicted. (more…)
