Soap Box

Every spring, as the earth renews itself we celebrate what is arguably, the most important day in the Christian faith, Easter, or Resurrection Day as it is sometimes referred to by believers.

As with most holidays, it is surrounded with the trappings of secular tradition, the Easter Bunny, egg hunts, retail sales, parties, etc.� which tend to bring a certain spirit of fun and lightheartedness to the season, all of which can be wholesome and harmless - up to a point � but then it can distract us from what the day really commemorates and the solemn but glorious event we are actually celebrating at Easter time.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of a virgin, divine embodiment of God and man, walked this earth for thirty plus years, performed incredible miracles and brought forth God's new covenant with mankind, a covenant of heart and conscience, a covenant where the emphasis is love, compassion and forgiveness, a covenant of believing and faith.

This Jesus was nailed on a wooden cross in Jerusalem by the occupying Roman army, but at the behest of the Pharisees Sadducees and Sanhedrin - religious leaders of the day - who saw Him as a threat to their authority and their comfortable way of life.

I am neither clergy nor theologian, have no credentials of higher learning or academic acclaim and what I write on this subject is as much from my heart as my brain, conclusions I have reached after my personal reading of God's word and listening to preachers and bible scholars I respect and agree with.

It is strictly a layman's opinion of why Jesus Christ was crucified, the times and causes surrounding it and the miraculous event that took place after, which fulfilled Scripture thousands of years old and forever marked Christianity as the only faith with a savior who rose from the dead.

In my youth I always wondered why Israel was called God's chosen people.

And what were they chosen for?

Had I have but examined the scripture I could have found the answer because it tells us that salvation comes to the world through the Jews, through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Israel) and Jacob�s twelve sons, The Patriarchs, through the prophets of God, whose words are recorded in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible - which Christians call the Old Testament - and through Moses and the Ten Commandments, written by God on the stone tablets and handed down to Moses in the desert.

Let's skip a few thousand years of Jewish history and go to Jerusalem in the time of Jesus.

There was a magnificent Jewish Temple on Temple Mount but Israel was occupied by Rome who tolerated the Jewish religion, which was ruled and regulated by an elite council of Jews who called themselves the Sanhedrin.

They were the unquestioned ruling body, which enjoyed tremendous privilege, prestige and authority. They had the power to excommunicate, which was about the worst thing that could happen to a Jewish believer of that day.

And they lived by the letter of the Mosaic Law, tithing down to the herbs in their gardens and carrying out all the written laws and traditions of the Jewish faith with much pomp and circumstance, the most important and respected men in the Jewish religion.

But while they lived to the letter of the law, they violated the spirit of the law, putting widows and orphans on the street for profit simply because the Holy Scriptures did not specifically forbid it.

Although Scripture did forbid it the Commandment from Leviticus of, �love your neighbor as yourself," but they evidently chose to ignore it.

Suddenly, in their midst, there was a young man who walked among the ordinary people, who had no permanent home, claimed no place in the hierarchy of the religion, but who went around the countryside preaching a new path to God, and not just a new path, but the only path.

And this young man performed miracle after miracle after miracle. It was said that He had walked on water and it was a well-witnessed fact that He had called a man named Lazarus out of a tomb after he had been dead for several days.

He even had the audacity to come and chase those doing commerce at the Temple away, turning over the moneychanger�s tables causing all kinds of turmoil because He said they were defiling "His Father's House."

He was known as a Galilean and many claimed that he was the promised Messiah, but anybody who had searched the scriptures knew that no prophet came from Galilee, the scripture aid that the Messiah would come from the City of David, Bethlehem.

And right here, at least in my opinion, the Jewish religious leaders of the day made a fatal mistake. They didn't dig deep enough to find out that, though Jesus had lived many years in Nazareth of the Galilee region, He had actually been born in Bethlehem.

Did they even want to know? Did they care, or were they so afraid of losing their comfortable lives and their places of authority that they didn't actually want to find out anything to validate Jesus' claim that He was the Son of God?

So they went to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate and asked to have this man executed for His blasphemous words, His outrageous claims and His threat to the status quo.

Pilate could find no reason to execute Him but the Jewish leaders persisted and whipped up the crowds until Pilate finally gave the order to crucify Him.

So Jesus was crucified, taken down from the cross and laid in a new tomb in a garden and after three days - as He had predicted - He rose from the dead and was seen by around 500 people before He ascended to heaven and God.

As Jesus died on the cross He said, "It is finished.�

The promised new covenant between God and man had been established, sealed in blood and made freely available to all who would believe.

I have often felt that the hardest thing for us to understand about the salvation of Jesus Christ is its simplicity. You can't buy it, you can't earn it, you can only accept the fact, as John 3:16 so beautifully states that God loves us so much that He was willing to let His only Son die on a cross to open a path to salvation.

The Bible says that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.

Under the old covenant it was done through animal sacrifice, over and over again.

Under the new covenant, it was done by Jesus Christ on the cross, once and for all times.

IT IS FINISHED!!!

HE IS RISEN!!!

From Hazel, Charlie Jr., myself and all the folks at the CDB we send you wishes for a wonderful Easter and a blessed Passover.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem 

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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