For the next generation – and for this one.

The controversy begun by the remarks of Australian rugby player Israel Folau, supported by England’s number 8, Billy Vunipola, has caused a stir far beyond the game of rugby. Izzy Folau simply quoted the Bible in warning that those who practice homosexuality go to hell.

Biblical teaching says “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, that is detestable” (Lev 18:22). And the Apostle Paul states explicitly, “Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 6:9-10).

According to Paul’s teaching, practising homosexuals should be treated in the same way as drunkards, swindlers, slanderers in our society and not given preferential treatment or be allowed to promote their activities.

These rugby players are simply stating the obvious. It’s a bit like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Everyone was simply copying everyone else in praising the Emperor’s non-existent clothes. It took an innocent child to state the truth: “The Emperor is naked!”.

The New Normal

Billy Vunipola is quite right in saying that “man was made for woman to procreate”.¹ Two men practising anal intercourse cannot create life any more than two lesbian women pleasuring each other can create a human baby. But our teachers are told to tell the children that these are normal relationships and that gay parents having children through adoption, surrogacy or artificial insemination creates ‘normal’ families.

We all know that the ‘new normal’ being taught to our children in state schools is a blatant lie! There is a mass of sound academic research to show that the only type of family that consistently produces good results for children is the happy, faithful, heterosexual married couple. But we have a Parliament that has passed a law forcing teachers to indoctrinate four-year-olds with the idea that it is quite normal for some children to have two mummies or two daddies, and that all forms of family are equal.

We all know that the ‘new normal’ being taught to our children in state schools is a blatant lie!

Slippery Slope

This is a reversal of truth, an utter lie that can only lead to the destruction of society. It is social engineering: trying to mould the minds of children to accept LGBTQ+ values before they are able to think for themselves. It was Prime Minister David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May who started us down this slippery slope, forcing the legalisation of gay ‘marriage’ through Parliament with the support of the Labour Party, against the wishes of more than a hundred Conservative MPs.

This virtually pronounced the death knell of the Conservative Party as the party of the family, and the party that works to conserve our heritage of biblically-based values - the Judeo-Christian foundation stones of Western civilisation.

It produced the Parliament that we have today consisting of 650 individuals who cannot agree on anything to give clear guidance for the future of the nation. The plain fact is that when they passed the Same-Sex Marriage Bill, Parliament brought judgment upon itself. It is, in effect, a Parliament doomed to fail, and no doubt that is how it will be known by future historians.

A Soulless Nation

Yes, of course we need to get out of the European Union, which is the most secular humanist political institution in the world. But leaving the EU will not solve our national problems or redeem our Parliament.

Indeed, this whole Parliament needs to be swept away and replaced by a new reforming group of politicians, not only with high moral principles but with an understanding of the Judeo-Christian spiritual convictions that have been at the heart of our Parliamentary system for hundreds of years and formed the bedrock of the British character that was admired by the world. We need a political revolution - and maybe, if we have to participate in the EU elections, we might just get one, as the result is likely to further shatter and divide our political parties.

Of course we need to get out of the European Union, but leaving will not solve our national problems or redeem our Parliament.

Meanwhile, the whole world is viewing Britain with amazement! They simply cannot understand what is happening in our Westminster Parliament, which for centuries has been renowned as a model of democratic government. Even those who were not great friends of Britain admired our stability and reliability. Today that has been shattered – maybe irretrievably; certainly it will not be easily retrieved.

Winston Churchill, reminding the nation of the great Christian heritage underlying the British Commonwealth of Nations, rightly warned that “A nation without a conscience is a nation without a soul, and a nation without a soul is a nation that cannot live.”²

The Message of Good Friday

This is where the message of today, Good Friday, offers the only hope for our nation. On this day nearly 2,000 years ago, God carried out an act of divine intervention into human history by allowing his own Son to commit his life into the hands of violent, hate-filled, sinful human beings. He willingly sacrificed his own life to make possible a new relationship with God the Father, Creator of the universe.

Through faith in Jesus we all have the opportunity, not only of forgiveness of our sins, but of actually entering into a new relationship with God that transforms our sinful human nature.

This is the good news that Christians have to proclaim to the world: that God has done something for us that we could not do for ourselves, in overcoming our self-centred propensity to love the world and indulge in everything that is evil and corrupt, rather than things that bring health and happiness and put the welfare of others ahead of ourselves.

Hope for Britain

As any sociologist will tell you, all forms of social change tend to go to extremes: the pendulum swings too far one way and then the backlash begins. The rugby players who have dared to tell the truth, bringing on themselves the wrath of the secular humanist establishment, may be a little sign that the backlash has begun.

There are many other signs that young people are open to the truth: they are fed up with the mess that the older generations have created and they are looking for a new way. Last week Charles Gardner reported on evangelism happening in schools in Doncaster – and since then we have heard other reports from elsewhere in the country of hundreds of young people giving their lives to Christ.

There are many signs that young people are open to the truth.

There is a group of Christian rap artists, singers and dancers based in Manchester who are touring northern towns and cities and seeing hundreds of young people respond to the Gospel. Next month there is a great Christian gathering planned in Trafalgar Square on Pentecost Sunday, when thousands of young people are expected to fill the Square and demonstrate their faith in Jesus.

For those who have eyes to see and an understanding of the times, these may be little signs of the turning of the tide. The message of this Good Friday, that Jesus is the hope of the world, is our only hope for a turning point in the history of Britain. This is certainly something to which we should be directing our prayers!

References

1 The Times, 13 April 2019.

2 Sandys, J, 2015. God and Churchill. London: SPCK, p182.

Do the biblical accounts of the Passion and the Resurrection agree?

Simon Pease reviews ‘Three Days and Three Nights that Changed the World’ by David Serle and Peter Sammons (2018, Christian Publications International).

Three Days and Three Nights that Changed the World (abbreviated here to ‘Three Days and Three Nights’) is a robust defence of the reliability of the Gospel accounts and their agreement concerning the timing of Jesus’ crucifixion, contrasted with Christianity’s traditional ‘Good Friday’ narrative. Jesus stated that he would be buried for “three days and three nights” which, counting back from his resurrection appearance early Sunday morning, either places his crucifixion on Thursday or possibly Wednesday.

The authors are convinced of the case for Thursday and make a strong argument, presenting compelling evidence against Wednesday on various grounds. For example, if Wednesday was the day, Jesus’ six-mile journey from Jericho to Bethany would have taken place on the Sabbath, violating its regulations. Whilst a Thursday crucifixion does not produce a literal 72-hour period, biblical examples are provided to show how a partial day counted as a day in Jewish thought.

Contradictory Accounts?

John’s Gospel appears to contradict the synoptic accounts; he presents Jesus’ crucifixion as taking place before the Jewish religious establishment celebrated Passover, whilst Jesus and his disciples ate the Passover meal the previous day. However, extensive research uncovers a fascinating reason for this.

The Judean religious leaders adjusted their calendar following the Babylonian exile, whilst other groups such as the Galileans, Zealots, Essenes and Samaritans retained the one established by Moses. This cultural insight highlights some of the rivalries and tensions described in the New Testament.

Here is a robust defence of the reliability of the Gospel accounts and their agreement concerning the timing of Jesus’ crucifixion.

Perhaps most importantly regarding the Thursday crucifixion is how it fits symbolically with the historical calendar of Jewish worship according to the prescribed format of Leviticus 23. Passover was followed immediately by the Festival of Unleavened Bread, of which the first day was a day of rest, or ‘High Sabbath’. Therefore, immediately after Jesus’ crucifixion on the Thursday (Passover), there would have been a special Sabbath on the Friday (Festival of Unleavened Bread), followed by a normal Sabbath on Saturday, with Jesus’ resurrection on the Sunday (the celebration of First Fruits, Lev 23:9-14).

More than a Detective Story

However, the book is much more than just a detective story. It celebrates the wonderful truth of the resurrection and includes a fascinating chapter on Jonah - the one miraculous sign Jesus offered the Pharisees. Several Bible quotations are used to demonstrate that Jonah actually died and was resurrected.

The New Testament writers emphasised strongly not just the importance of Messiah’s death (literally on the day of Passover), but also the symbolic significance of First Fruits - as the very first harvesting of the religious year – as resurrection day. Jesus is the ‘first fruits’ of those raised from the dead: the promise of the resurrection to come.

First Fruits vs. Easter

Three Days and Three Nights usefully includes a summary of Peter Sammons’ ‘The Jesus Pattern’ (which is effectively a prequel), which explores all seven ‘moedim’ (Levitical festivals) as they relate to Jesus and their spiritual significance for believers.

Born-again believers are ‘First Fruits people’ rather than ‘Easter people’. The authors attack institutional Christianity’s choice of a feast day based on pagan fertility rites, especially since the decisions for dating Easter and ‘Good Friday’ were motivated by a profound hatred of the Jews. The historical evidence for this is clearly presented.

By contrast, Scripture indicates that the New Testament Church at the very least kept the Jewish Passover and used all the Levitical festivals as an important part of their teaching about Jesus – a model Christians could learn from.

Born-again believers are ‘First Fruits people’ rather than ‘Easter people’.

Removing the Veils

Three Days and Three Nights is crafted carefully to help readers make sense of a technical subject by providing several diagrams, the most of impressive of which is a fold-out chart tracking all the events of the ‘Passion week’. As well as providing a handy reference point throughout, this shows how the events of the religious calendar relate specifically to Jesus. For example, the Passover lamb was carefully examined for blemish at exactly the same time as Jesus underwent extensive cross-examination regarding his Messianic credentials and sinlessness.

The appendices include Scripture references and a suggested timeline of the events between Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, specifically to repudiate attacks on the authenticity of the biblical narrative.

Ultimately, Three Days and Three Nights provides an important testimony concerning the reliability of the biblical account, at a time when many believers are rediscovering the Jewish context of Scripture. The book makes an important prophetic point: just as the scriptures affirm that Jewish recognition of Messiah has been veiled until his imminent return, so too did Christianity once lose sight of Messiah’s Jewishness and God’s faithfulness towards the Jews. However, the Lord will finally remove both these veils and accomplish his purpose of ‘one new man’ in Christ. Three Days and Three Nights makes a contribution to the unfolding of this plan.

‘Three Days and Three Nights that Changed the World’ (202pp, paperback) is available on Amazon for £16. Find out more about the book and accompanying resources on the Christian Publications International website.

Will we watch with him?

This week can we too watch with him, for one brief hour, in this his time of victory through life laid down (John 12:24-25; Rom 12:1)? Let us join these beautiful, ancient olive trees, who once watched their Lord and Maker, so hard-pressed, give all for us: that we might lay down our lives too, for him, much fruit to bear, and by his death, receive new life in him.

GETH-SEMANE – garden of the olive oil press

O Garden, Garden, Gan Gat-Semenah, was this sight just for you, to keep?
Your Lord in such dire straits, alone, His friends asleep?

Did you watch with Him one brief hour, while He did seek to flee
From His afearéd choice. “Avi, my Father, take this dread cup away from Me!
Yet not My will, O Lord of Mine, but Yours be done”.

O Garden, full of Tears, and witnessing such awe-some things,
Oil so hard-pressed, now poured out, Your Master held by satan’s rings.
Trees that He planted, olive-healing for His blinded sheep,
You witness such deep pain and agony, His death-door openings.

Was ever garden formed for this, to wait like Miriam for her heaven's sword?
Mirror of Gan Eden, broken, yet through great love, to be restored?
Ancient trees, all-giving, and like Father, watching in His perfect time
For Jesus - come to weep His life full out, to give in all-surrender, and
In suffering now, His learned obedience, laid down His will before His Lord.

We, too, do need this breaking, willingly, no sentient feeling
Only - our will surrendered too with heavy tears before the King.
Our hiding place, security, is found alone in Him. Cross-bound, alone;
And broken, willingly, like Him we too may learn obedience through
Our suffering - “Thy will be done”. Ourselves now to this Love unknown,
Embraced and held, in our reflecting all-surrender, we must bring.

This garden will again be new, restored to pristine beauty now,
And man, like olive trees that watched the victory of their Lord, will bow
The knee to Him. His sweat, like blood - expression of His love
Out-poured in prayer, His life laid down - will bear the promised fruit.
And we, brought back to Eden, fruit of His fruit, no longer sleeping-mute,
Will give Him all our thanks and praise, for death and life hard-won by Him,
And yes, for His long-suffering, our very life in Him, and to complete our vow.

Gan Gat-Semenah, Good Friday

Clifford Denton offers some reflections on Good Friday.

This weekend we will celebrate the most important event of all history, an event only to be equalled by the Lord Jesus' return to bring the Kingdom of God fully in. It is more important than the created universe (Luke 21:33). As deep as was the Flood to drown a sinful world, deeper still is the love of God who sent his own Son into the world to redeem from sin all who would believe.

The sky darkened, the earth shook, the curtain in the Temple was torn from top to bottom and many saintly people rose from their graves as Jesus defeated the power of sin and death on that eventful day (Matt 27:45-56).

What Abraham Looked Forward to!

2,000 years before, Jesus' sacrifice had been foreshadowed when God said to Abraham, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you" (Gen 22:2).

God had already, in the most dramatic way of cutting a covenant (Genesis 15), made a promise that depended only on his own faithfulness, that Abraham's offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and dwell in the land promised to them by God. Isaac was the son of promise through whom this line would come in the physical sense, yet God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son on a mountain in the Moriah range.

Just at the point of Abraham's making the sacrifice, an angel intervened and Isaac was spared. A ram was sacrificed instead (Gen 22:13). Under Abraham's knife was not just Isaac but all who would descend from his physical line. The ram was the substitute. The ram died and all the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were able to live. The principle of substitution began.

Abraham looked forward in faith to see how God would fulfil his covenant responsibility, spending his life living in tents but waiting "for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God" (Heb 11:8-10).

When God provided a ram for sacrifice instead of Abraham's son Isaac, the principle of substitution began.

The Passover Sacrifice

The covenant pathway was never easy for Abraham's descendants, as Joseph found when he was taken captive to Egypt, followed by the entire family of Israel (Gen 37-50). 430 years later, when the nation of Israel had grown whilst in captivity, Moses was chosen to lead Israel out of Egypt.

On the night chosen by God, henceforward to be celebrated annually as Passover, one of the prescribed Feasts of Israel, God judged the sins of Egypt but preserved the Israelites who through faith, family by family, each sacrificed a lamb and painted their door-posts with its blood (Ex 12).

This principle of faith was to be engraved into the consciousness of all Israelites. They were soon to be taught what was right and wrong in God's eyes through the Covenant at Sinai, to know the path of forgiveness through the sacrifices of the Tabernacle and Temple ministries, though still to have no permanent remedy for sin (Heb 9:1-10).

A Temple on Mount Moriah

The City of Jerusalem was founded by King David when, about 1,000 years after Abraham, Israel had settled in their Land (2 Sam 5:6-10). Since then, Jerusalem has been the chief city in the world for God to centre his purposes. David longed for a Temple so that the ministry of the Tabernacle from the wilderness years could have a permanent centre.

He purchased the land on the same mountain range where Abraham had taken his son Isaac. This was the place where the angel of death was commanded by God not to destroy Jerusalem on account of David's sin in taking an unlawful census (2 Sam 24:16-17). David's son Solomon built the Temple on the threshing floor of Ornan (Araunah) on Mount Moriah (2 Chron 3:1). The worship and sacrifice centre of Israel was completed.

1,000 years after Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac on Mount Moriah, King David purchased land in the same area for the building of God's Temple.

It was destroyed at the Babylonian captivity in 536 BC, rebuilt by Zerubbabel on return from captivity, 70 years later, and modified by Herod into a more ornate structure. Central to the life and hopes of Israel for all these long years was the covenant with Abraham, the Feasts (including Passover) and the substitutional sacrifice for sin through the blood of the lamb.

Jesus the Messiah

Though there was an expectation for a coming Messiah to Israel, it was beyond human intellect to put all the prophecies together to see clearly how God would fulfil his promise to Abraham. A king from the line of David was eagerly awaited, with most Jews expecting a saviour to come in glory and raise an army against the occupying Romans of Jesus' day. Without the revelation such as Peter had at Caesarea Philippi (Matt 16:13), they did not understand that Isaiah pointed clearly to a suffering Saviour (Isa 53), accurately fulfilled by Jesus on the Cross.

He entered this world as God's only Son, echoing the experience of Abraham and Isaac so long ago. He grew up in the Jewish tradition, totally representing the nation, and ministered for three and a half years in fulfilment of all the scriptures pointing to Messiah. Then, riding on a donkey as a man of peace, with a clear climax to his ministry soon to occur, he descended the Mount of Olives and crossed the Kidron Valley to the City of Jerusalem.

With great expectation palm branches paved the way for the coming King of the Jews – as some recognised him to be. Yet only he knew how the rest of the scriptures would be fulfilled. He was, with the crown of thorns, the ram in the thicket that replaced Isaac, the saviour of Israel through substitutionary sacrifice. He came to be the Passover lamb that for all those years had pointed to him.

With the crown of thorns, Jesus was the ram in the thicket that replaced Isaac, the substitutionary sacrifice, the Passover lamb.

Perfect Sacrifice

He shared the traditional evening Passover meal with his disciples ensuring that they would remember that this was now to be shared as a memorial to him. The next day at the time of the Temple Sacrifice - one sacrifice for all the people - he willingly died on the Cross to release all who would accept his sacrifice for their sin – one Lamb for the entire family of faith.

The night before, in all Jewish homes there had been a service of remembrance of the first Passover and the atoning blood of the lamb. All history right up to that night prepared the way for the intercessory prayer from the Cross of the dying Saviour – "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34) and his victorious cry of "it is finished" (John 19:30) that still echoes to us across the centuries. No-one knows the exact spot where it took place but this too was on the range of hills named Moriah.

Today

All over the world the Jews still celebrate Passover in the traditional way, ending the seder with "next year in Jerusalem". There is an ongoing desire for God to complete the promises made to Abraham. Those with eyes opened by the Spirit of God see how all the prophecies and the types and shadows of Israel's history were fulfilled in Jesus. It was far more than a release from the captivity of the Egyptians, the Babylonians or the Romans that he came to accomplish – it was freedom from the chains of sin that ensnare us all.

Those with eyes opened by the Spirit of God see how all the types and shadows of Israel's history are fulfilled in Jesus.

The Gospel went to the Gentile world and the Christian Church increased in numbers, fulfilling the promise to Abraham that his seed would be as countless as the stars in the sky and sand on the seashore. Grafted into believing Israel we too celebrate Passover whenever we take communion. It is unfortunate that Christians renamed Passover as Easter and moved the date slightly so that Easter always falls on a Sunday. Nevertheless, on Good Friday, as it is called, Christians around the world will be celebrating the Lord's death on the Cross once more.

Remember the history of it all as you pass around the bread and the wine reading Paul's injunction:

For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which he was betrayed took bread; and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "Take, eat; this is my body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same manner he also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes. (1 Cor 11:23-26)