SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/20/2024 7:40 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 “The Propagation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 28:15
Message of the verse: “15 And they took the
money and did as they had been instructed; and this story was widely spread
among the Jews, and is to this day.”
It is my desire to finish quoting the things that John
MacArthur has to say about this verse, and then perhaps have some comments that
I will make after that.
“Matthew’s account simply but forcefully shows that an
explanation but the actual bodily resurrection of Jesus contradicts the facts
and offends reason. The truth of the
resurrection is so absolute that even a lie against it helps prove it. Whether the testimony is from Jesus’ friends
or His enemies, the same conclusion is inevitable. Now other historical event is so thoroughly attested
by sound evidence as is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“Simon Greenleaf, famous nineteenth-century professor of
law at Harvard wrote, ‘All that Christianity asks of men…is, that they would be
consistent with themselves; that they would treat its evidences as they treat
the evidence of other things; and that they would try and judge its actors and
witnesses, as they deal with their fellow men, when testifying to human affairs
and actions, in human tribunals….The result…will be an undoubting conviction of
their integrity, ability and truth’ (Testimony
of the Evangelists, Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of
Justice [Grand Rapids; Baker, 1965; reprint], p.46).
Paul declared, ‘If you confess with your mouth Jesus as
Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be
saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with
the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation’ (Rom. 10:9-10). Salvation is equal to eternal life, to
deliverance from sin, and to godly hope.
Salvation determines a persons destiny in the presence of God in the
glories of heaven forever. And salvation
belongs only to those who believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and who
confess Him as Lord and Savior.
“The hymnist Robert Lowry wrote the following beautiful
lines that are sung in the popular Easter hymn ‘Christ Arose’:
Death
cannot keep his prey,
Jesus, My Savior!
He
tore the bars away,
Jesus, my Lord!
Up from
the grave He arose,
With a mighty triumph o’er His Foes;
He
arose a victor from the dark domain,
And He lives forever with His saints to
reign.
He
arose! He arose!
Hallelujah! Christ arose!’”
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most important
truth in Christianity and I have had the great honor of writing about it for a
number of days. Without the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the grave there would be no Christianity at all. The Christians hope (noun) is the
resurrection of Jesus Christ for just as Christ rose from the dead the
Christian’s hope is that he will rise from the dead, unless we are alive at the
rapture of the Church, which my hope is that that will be soon and very soon.
10/20/2024 8:06 AM
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