Of all holidays, Easter is the one that
celebrates a single event that transformed the world forever. There
are many religions with different founders, prophets, and teachers going back
thousands of years, but only one of them has a founder who professed to be the
messiah – the son of God who could save mankind.
Jesus was born in a Jewish family and lived and walked among the
people of Israel. Every year, Jesus's parents took his family to
Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. On one such occasion,
when he was twelve, Jesus got separated from his parents and made his way to
the temple, where he sat with the esteemed teachers – listening, asking
questions, and teaching. According to Luke 2:47, "[e]veryone
who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his
answers." Later, when his adult ministry began, Jesus drew
thousands upon thousands who flocked to hear him.
No one else in human history made the claims Jesus did to be able
to deal with every last problem of the human heart. One primary
reason the Bible is a perennial bestseller is that it's the most complete
owner's manual to the most complex creation of all – the human
species. Nowhere else can one find as succinct yet comprehensive an
explanation of what God's love is all about than in the Bible's Psalms and
Jesus's teaching through parables.
Another unique quality about Jesus is that he welcomed people whom
no other religious leader would be caught dead with – society's rejects,
reviled tax collectors, and prostitutes. By caring for outcasts
and the disenfranchised, Jesus showed a radical level and standard of mercy and
love never seen before. Once, when Jesus was having dinner with a
Jewish Pharisee, a woman convicted by her own sin came to Jesus to wash his
feet with her tears and hair and then apply expensive perfume. His
host was aghast at the immoral woman's presence, but Jesus responded that God's
work is to forgive sinners, and that those who are forgiven much can then love
much.
Utterly unique in other ways, Jesus
performed many miracles, healing the sick, blind, crippled, and deaf – the news
of which traveled throughout the land, prompting many more to seek him
out. And he healed them all. Jesus also confronted
evil head on and drove demonic spirits out of people dangerously possessed and
abandoned by society.
His work did not stop with miraculous healing.
Because God himself became flesh in the person of Jesus to save
people through their own faith, he went on to demonstrate his love and power in
an ultimate way that could not be missed or denied: bringing the dead back to
life. One such resurrection miracle was that of Lazarus, who was
irrefutably dead and entombed for four days. Upon Jesus's command,
Lazarus got up and walked out of the tomb – that people would know beyond a
shadow of a doubt who Jesus was.
All other religions require works to achieve enlightenment and
salvation. Christianity turns that on its head: faith in Christ and all
his teachings transforms the heart, from which good works naturally
follow. In saying, "My yoke is easy and my burden is
light," Jesus presents an ingeniously compelling appeal that even the most
hardened cynic can't easily refuse.
Skeptics of the Bible's truth and the reality of Jesus need
understand that there's actually much more reliable historical evidence for his
life, teachings, miracles, death, and resurrection than there is evidence for
any other historical figure of ancient times.
Consider that no one doubts the authenticity of the life and acts
of Alexander the Great. Yet there are only two original biographical
accounts of his life, which were written by Arrian and Plutarch some four
hundred years after Alexander died. The manuscripts of Virgil and
Horace, both of whom lived within a generation of Christ, were written
more than four centuries after their deaths, yet no one doubts that they lived
and authored poetic masterpieces. Looking at the big picture, there
are about 1,000 times as many manuscripts preserving the New Testament (about
25,000) than other classical ancient works with the exception of Homer,
whose Iliad is backed by 1,800 manuscripts (but still less
than one tenth of the New Testament number).
We know the historical Jesus mainly through four different
accounts known as the Gospels – Matthew, Luke, Mark, and John – all written
within a generation or two of Jesus's life. Matthew and John provide
eyewitness accounts from their years of walking with Jesus as disciples. Mark
also had eyewitness experience. Luke, the doctor, learned about
Jesus from his friend Paul, the apostle who wrote most of the letters of the
New Testament.
Easter is the commemoration of the single event that transformed
the world forever – the resurrection of Jesus after his death on the
cross. That God would send his Son to die as a sacrifice for the sin
of all who would believe in Him is an unbelievable gift – beyond most people's
comprehension. That a resurrection and a joyous eternal life await
believers is beyond anything anyone could imagine. That is the
promise and essence of Easter.
Scott Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute in
Seattle. Reach him at scottp@discovery.org.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/04/the_day_that_transformed_the_world_forever.html