Aretherra || Loudboy || ELGardner 2022
This Great Commission, as the saints of all ages have consented to call it, constitutes the marching orders of his church for a day and to all eternity. It is a whole galaxy studded with many of the biggest stars in the firmament of Christian doctrine.
There are actually seven Calvary miracles, the greatest and most wonderful, of course, being the resurrection of Christ. The rending of the veil, occurring simultaneously with the death of Christ, must be associated with that death; and, looking more closely, it is plain that the veil, in practically all of its functions and even in its colors, was a most instructive type of Christ.
In 1 Corinthians 5:7, Paul affirmed that Christ is our passover; but, as in most analogies, there are points of likeness and unlikeness.
The respect of the human race for this word of Jesus Christ is revealed in the fact of their inscribing these words, “Asleep in Jesus,” upon millions of tombs in all ages since then.
God saves people, not by injecting righteousness into them (on the grounds of their faith and/or obedience), but by transferring them “into Christ,” identifying them “as Christ,” and making them, in fact, to be Christ.
Part 2 in “Worship” Blog Series
This marvelous peace is exactly the blessing which troubled man most needs and so incessantly seeks, even if his seeking is but an unfulfilled subconscious longing after it.
Christ bore our sins in his own body on the tree, thus accomplishing what no typical lamb ever achieved.
Seven is a perfect number because it is divisible only by itself and by unity; moreover the derivative, as in the accompanying diagram, reveals the most common pattern in nature.
God rested on Day Seven.
Thus Jesus rose “through his clothes” just as he rose through the tomb. The angel did not roll away the stone to let the Lord out but to let the witnesses in!
At first it seems those two events occurred simultaneously; but the next verse notes that it was “after his resurrection” that they actually came out of their graves and appeared in the city, thus the mention of the saints in Matthew 27:52 is for the purpose of revealing which graves were opened.
First, even the most ordinary of earthquakes would in this case, due to its timing, have been strongly suggestive of the supernatural; but this was far more and utterly different from any ordinary earthquake.
The angels have the nature of servants, or “ministers,” as stated here, and thus must ever be accounted inferior to Jesus our Lord; despite this, however, those shining creatures of the unseen world possess a magnificence beyond our imagination; and the service they give to God and their activities on behalf of the saints, so mysteriously mentioned here, are matters of surpassing interest and curiosity.
The veil has been torn in two. Do not let it come back. Take it away forever. Let it come no more between the face of the redeemed and that of the Redeemer!
This manifestation of God’s power should cause the soul to tremble! Only the ONE TRUE GOD AND CREATOR of the universe could step forth and lay his hand upon the established routine of the natural creation and bring to pass such a darkness as that which enveloped the world during three full hours of the crucifixion.
There are actually seven Calvary miracles, the greatest and most wonderful, of course, being the resurrection of Christ.
We are “in Christ,” having believed in him and having been baptized into the “one body,” Christ’s spiritual body. As a result of Christ’s redemptive work, we enjoy eternal life (presently, in the joys of Christian service, and ultimately, throughout all eternity).
The chief business of the cross was forgiveness, and Christ moved quickly to get on with it.
Christians are sometimes called “bondslaves” to Christ; but here their status is compared to that of children adopted by a loving father.
The sun’s light failed for a period of three hours, the most remarkable “portent” ever seen in the heavens by any generation.
Without the knowledge of God, man is but “a disease of the agglutinated dust.”