Easter 2016
Is there life after death? As Christians we believe there is and we base that belief on one of the best attested facts of history. The fact that Jesus Christ died and rose again.
The enemies of Jesus had heard rumours that He would rise from the dead and were determined to prevent his followers sneaking the body from the tomb and then spreading the lie that He had risen. So they sealed the tomb and had Roman soldiers posted at the site to prevent anyone getting near it.
On the Sunday morning the huge stone covering the entrance was rolled back revealing that the body had disappeared. There was no logical explanation. The enemies of Jesus simply had to produce the body and they would have ended the rumour that Jesus had risen from the dead, but they couldn’t.
Jesus was alive and He appeared to His followers, talked with them, ate with them and encouraged them to take His message of hope to the world. They were transformed from fearful, doubting, despairing men and women into courageous, bold proclaimers of this life changing message…
“Jesus sacrificed His life to save us from the power and consequences of our own wrong doing and rose from the grave to guarantee that all who turn from their unbelieving, self-centred ways and place their faith in Him would find forgiveness and acceptance with God and would live with Him forever in His eternal Kingdom.”
The Easter message is the most vital message for people today. Our greatest need as human beings is forgiveness.
We need to know in our inmost being that God has forgiven us from all the wrongs we have committed in the past and to know that we have been set free from that stuff forever. Free to grow and become who God always intended us to be, free to experience real change on the inside because until the past has been thoroughly dealt with it will always drag us back or drag us down.
This Easter could be a new beginning for those who see beyond the eggs and bunnies to the real message and encounter the One who conquered evil and death so that these ruinous forces will never again control and destroy our lives.