EASTER MESSAGE 2004

 The Jews are mourning their incessant losses from Hitler II 'final solution' advocates, a new type of religious variant, bent on the destruction of their people, no less than that abhorrent tyrant, if for different reasons.

The Gentiles mourn, and many are afraid, because their trains are to become coffins, their buildings morgues, their airliners assassination plots, because of the vainglory of those who seek for a religious dictatorship in the name of false gods.

The vast decline of faith in Jesus Christ as the coming King, and Judge (as foretold in II Peter 2:1ff., II Thessalonians 2:4ff.), is met by a corresponding vast decline in peace, so that the very name of 'peace' becomes for many like a dream when it is past.

There is however no decline in His preparations for return as shown in Answers to Questions Ch. 5 and SMR Ch. 8. Indeed, they proceed apace, while men's hearts failing them for fear (as foretold in Luke 21:26), and iniquity abounding (Matthew 24:12), match the proliferation of false prophets and false christs (Matthew 24:11,24), one of the natural symptoms of anti-realism, which pervades the globe like mist over an airport. Thus Israel is back as predicted for the end of the Age (Luke 21:24, Ezekiel 36ff., cf. cf. It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls, Ch. 10, SMR Appendix A) and what a burdensome STONE is Jerusalem for the nations which try to determine its destiny, ignoring the word of God, as foretold in Zechariah 12, Ezekiel 36ff.. All this concurs in one.

Hence the world is misted in confusion. That of course makes it hard for aeroplanes to take off or land. It is bad for business; and when so much of the business is bad in nature, this has its points.

The world in its secular enthusiasms and humanistic fantasies, always ready to believe ANYTHING however lunatic

(Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Chs. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming Chs.   4,   5, Spiritual Refreshings Chs. 13, 16, Repent or Perish Ch. 5, News 80),

which contravenes the truth, so long as God can be excluded, finds it is included in the results of its culpable clairvoyances.

It finds that reality cannot be charmed away by vacuous philosophies or inane words, be they philosophic, political or religiously martial, the new 21st century line so like the old one of Islam and Romanism, not to say Communism, and covered with the blood of sinners, that never atones: for all but One have sinned. The works of Revelation 6 are being fulfilled to the last letter, and there is far worse to come (Revelation 8). The atonement of God's gift to man has already been completed to the last letter (Romans 5:1, 3:23ff., Hebrews 9-10), and now man makes his futile, final sallies of furious emptiness, like a car lurching from its earlier acceleration, gaining speed as it descends to the final fling over the cliff into the ocean, to be dashed upon the rock (Matthew 21:44).

The salvation of God remains what it ALWAYS has been (Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17, TMR Chs. 2  -  3), and it will not budge. Christ was bludgeoned, but the word does not move. Christ was resurrected and the world finds Him inconvenient, as it continues to see how far the elastic can be stretched before it breaks.  Naturally enough, it is fraying already. The time is nearly up for His return.

It is therefore time to reflect on the magnitude of His primary intervention. First He intervened in the creation of history in our sort of time at all:  He worked and it was creation. Then He intervened in the solution to our misuse of our type of freedom, and He died, and rose with death in tatters, unable to be enforced by the most potent coupling of political power and religious zeal you could wish, with Jerusalem and Rome in tandem, Pilate and Caiaphas and Co.. He was not available to be kept in a Lenin's tomb, but vacated the place and taught His disciples, leaving the Gospel to do the talking and His word by His Spirit, until the world, tried as He was tried, but this with justice, faces its final assizes, the judgment.

Here is your death, in effect He declared, Behold the man! Here is your salvation! He is not here, but He is risen, come and see! Have you seen ?

HERE is the only place for man left, in the man whom God has provided by sending, transmitting, His only begotten Son, the Word of eternity, the living word of God (Micah 5:1-3, John 1:1, Philippians 2, John 8:58, 17:1-3, Isaiah 48:16, 28:16, 11:1-11). There is only one God and it is He; the others are barren monstrosities worthy only of divine contempt (Psalm 82, Ezekiel 28:9). None on earth or in heaven is like Him (Psalm 89:6).

It is in this same Jesus Christ alone that atonement for sin is to be found, not in the murder of children. It is in this same Jesus Christ that safety is to be found, not in nuclear armaments or chanting wild frenzies, as in mass intoxicated riots. It is in this same Bible that God has spoken to man, available in its message for several millenia, never changing in its diagnosis and solution: it is there that truth is to be found. It is in Christ that it is available. Written for reading, living for redemption, alive forever, the word of God in its saving power  is to be found in repentance (Luke 13:1-3) and redemption in the same place, Calvary, now as before (Romans 3:23-27). It was predicted from the first, it applies to the last (Galatians 6:14, Revelation 14:6)

If you do not want it, and do not repent of this, then you are a spiritual foundling, destined to be a spiritual orphan. Christ however said this: I will not leave you orphans! (John 14:18).  If you want God, He is available; if you do not, judgment is available (John 3:17-19,36). It is time to call on the name of the Lord as in Acts 2 and 16, and to receive Him as in John 1:12, yes to believe as in Romans 10:9 that it is God who is competent, not man, God who has declared Himself, not man who contrives his cultural concoctions for his safety.  Even a gaoler was set free (Acts 16), just as jihad murderers and bible assailants can be set free, yes and so may be freed all the other sinners who labour on the earth, without the peace of the God of creation, or the hope from the God of redemption. They will be if they receive Him who alone has the words of eternal life, and thus live forever.

Happy Easter! It is time to ensure that this is not all that is happy.

Our love in Christ, and in His service by faith,  

Robert E. Donaldson,

for World Wide Web Witness Inc.