Ray on Monday - JESUS IN THE CRITIC’S TOMB

 Ever since the angel said ‘He (Jesus) is risen’ critics have sprung up to say it didn’t happen, couldn’t happen, wouldn’t happen or shouldn’t happen. Among the first were the group who arranged for Christ’s crucifixion. They are the ‘Hysterical Critics’. All they had to do was arrange daily tours to the sealed tomb to prove their point. If on the other hand the claim was the body snatchers had done their work, a trial would have won their day.

Since that first century we could call the next group of doubters the ‘Historical Critics’. As they look back on this event and put it into their perception of events from that era they come to two views. One view is Jesus didn’t exist. The other is He did exist but one way or another He died and His bones are still in the tomb.

Strange how these critics, with their inevitable sense of superior insights, call into question the character, veracity and suffering of those who agreed with the angel’s declaration. Remember, the apostles and others had no vested interest in promoting an untruth. Their conviction that Jesus had risen and ascended to glory, as Scripture foretold, landed them into all shades of strife. Disowned by family, ostracised by their nation, persecuted by foe and friend and ultimately ‘enjoying’ a horrible death must say something.

What do you think it says? They were deluded? All of them, all the time, under all types of testing? They knew the truth, experienced the wonder, and were willing to stand true to the facts!

As you read history and the numerous, sceptical critics comments about Christ Jesus and the empty tomb, one thing stands out! All want to put Him back in the tomb. He is less confronting there. The trouble comes when He keeps breaking out from their prison. Truth seekers still meet Him in the course of their search and rise up, sometimes at great personal cost, to prove the critics wrong.

“He is risen” is the testimony of history.
“He is risen” is the declaration of faith.
“He is risen” is the verdict of research.
“He is risen” is the challenge to critics.

Ray (convinced He is risen) Hawkins

Ray on Monday - GOLGOTHA

Question:
What does some outlaw bike group’s emblem, a pirate’s flag and Hitler’s elite army group have in common?

Answer. A skull!

This portrayal of death reveals a morbid fascination by many around the world. What are they trying to say? Death doesn’t frighten? It’s their destiny? They are in league with death’s partner, the Devil?

Are such people aware of the fact they are wearing a symbol mentioned in John 19:1?

‘Carrying his own cross, he (Jesus) went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha).’ Reading that you could almost imagine Nature belonging to the Death’s Head league.

On Golgotha death vented its fury on the Lord of Life. If rocks could smile I think the hill on which the cross was erected would have smirked. It would have seemed to onlookers that death had won. Golgotha had notched up another victim.

When the cross was driven into the top of Golgotha it was a death blow, not of the Nazarene, but of the skull. It symbolized Christ’s crushing of sin, judgement and death three days later. People have searched for the actual ‘place of the skull’. To my knowledge no place with any certainty has been found. Time, armies and development have eradicated the features. Another symbolic feature of defeat!

Golgotha is seeking a return to prominence today, pushed by the world, the flesh and the devil. The craving for power over the Lord of Life knows no abating. Its tactics are more than a mere tattoo. It includes opposition to the cross, or a sidelining of its importance. Groups exist with a determination to destroy the message of Calvary. On the 29th March this year, I read a report where the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia wants all Churches destroyed in the Arabian Peninsula. (I believe he would undoubtedly desire beyond there also.)

Bible believing disciples of Christ understand the ultimate destruction of the skull. In personal experience and at a future historical time the words of 1 Corinthians 15:54-57 are borne out.
Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our symbol is the cross and a stone door rolled away from the tomb. Our message is about new life in Jesus Christ in time and for eternity. So we celebrate Easter because in Christ Jesus we have cast away the emblems of the skull. Now we live in the power of the cross!

Ray (delivered from the skull) Hawkins
Ray is giving away a copy of his new 31 Day devotional book, Captured by Calvary, on the International Christian Fiction Wrters blog. CLICK HERE and scroll to The Centrefold of the Gospel post last Tuesday, March 27th. The draw will be this Thursday evening AESTime. To enter please remember you need to leave a comment on the blog.

It’s Time to Offend!

What is needed within the Church arena is a good dose of spiritual vitamin ‘C’. That is ‘C’ for the Cross. Paul put it bluntly to the Corinthians, ‘The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God…For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.’ (1 Corinthians 1:18, 21.) The Greek word used for ‘foolishness’ is folly (moria from which we get moron.)

If the preaching of the cross unleashes God’s convicting, converting power what does it say about the decline in Church growth and the powerlessness of preaching and worship? The cross is inseparable from Jesus Christ. Whenever the follower of the Lord seeks to divorce the one from the other, the blessing of the Lord is strangled. Within the Western Church we are breeding a generation of well meaning ‘do-gooders’ keen on ‘spirituality’ (however defined) but not bearing the cross, denying self and following Jesus.

The preaching of the cross was not only foolish in the Church’s beginning, it was foolish. The Greek word used means ‘scandal’. Why? Because Jesus was crucified as a blasphemer and political threat to Caesar! For us God endured all the worst that Humanity and the Powers of Darkness could do. The resurrection of Jesus crushed sin and death’s hold over humanity.

By the silence from the pulpit about the cross what is really being conveyed to the World? The preacher and that congregation are ashamed of the Lord Jesus as the crucified and risen One. Why then should the non-Christian be interested in becoming a disciple? Also, Jesus warned would-be disciples about being ashamed of Him. ‘If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.’ (Mark 8:38.)

The preaching of the cross has never been popular yet it has ever been the power of God to transform individuals, families and society. The Lord never called His servants to be popular but to be faithful in lifestyle and proclaiming the Gospel. Whenever the Church has taken its eyes off the Cross, it has sunk into the morass of ritualism and insipid moralizing. Renewal begins with a rediscovery of Romans 1:16, ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jews, then for the Gentiles.’

May we be grabbed by the implications of the Apostle Paul’s love affair with Christ and the cross: “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Galatians 6:14.

Ray (unashamed of the cross) Hawkins.
26/3/2012.