But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.

— Mark 16:1-8, English Standard Version

Happy Easter to you all, my brothers. May peace, love, grace, and mercy be upon you, by the will of Our Lord and through the authority of His Son, Christ Jesus.

Normally I would just post up some Scripture on a Sunday and leave it at that. I do not usually feel that it is right to add to them or expand upon them, mostly because of my own ignorance. But today is special for us as Christians. Today is the day on which we understand exactly why it is that we believe what we do – that Christ is Lord, and that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the only way to know the Father, and the one real path to salvation from a world plainly gone absolutely insane.

Throughout the last two thousand years, we Christians have been persecuted, condemned, and destroyed for what we believe – because we accept a final authority that bows down before no man and cannot be restricted by Earthly agency. We accept no King before Christ, and while we do not seek to break the laws of men, we understand that those laws are secondary to, and at best a pale imitation of, the Laws of God.

Christians have built the greatest civilisations that the world has ever seen. We have brought the light of freedom and truth to distant shores around the globe that had never known or understood anything like the Gospels before. We have freed slaves, healed the sick, cared for the weak and elderly, written magnificent works of timeless literature, composed music that elevates the soul and spirit, and built monuments to the everlasting glory of God.

And yet, we are hated and reviled for what we believe.

Today is the day that confirms that all we believe is true.

Without the Resurrection, everything that we as Christians believe in is a monstrous lie. The entire edifice of Christianity comes crashing down if this one integral part of our belief system is not true.

Yet it is true nonetheless. If it were not true, then all of the achievements of all of the Christians in all of the centuries from then until now, were and are derived from lies.

Truth cannot come from lies, and lies cannot come from truth. Men can certainly take core truths and add lies to them – witness what various churches have been doing to the Word for centuries. (Catholic “indulgences”, for example.) That is the great fault and flaw of men; we can convince ourselves into believing all sorts of lies.

But a lie cannot by itself be logically derived from a truth, and a truth cannot by itself be logically derived from a lie.

That sort of nonsense is simply not possible. As it is written:

A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

— Matthew 7:18-20, English Standard Version

This is simply another way of putting a logical “truth table”, and those are not terribly difficult to figure out.

So if what we believe is false, then all that we achieve in the name of our beliefs must also be false.

But it is not. The simplest and most clear evidence that we have of this is the influence and power of the Holy Spirit, and what it does to men.

The healing power of the Holy Spirit is undeniable. No man, no matter how sceptical or world-weary, can say with a straight face that nothing happens when he is touched by it. The touch of that Spirit changes a man, immediately and profoundly, and yet outwardly and in most respects inwardly he remains the same.

Even so, the Spirit works to transform him from within, slowly but surely. As it is written:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

— Galatians 5:22-24, English Standard Version

Are these things also lies? Do those who deny Christ Jesus, also deny that men who have become Christians, have changed profoundly in the process? If so, then they themselves deal in lies, because there is simply no way to deny what is plainly apparent before our own eyes.

Those of us who become Christians recognise that we are not good men. I certainly am not a good man, and I am an extremely poor example of what it means to be a Christian. My sins are many and considerable, and I still struggle mightily with that whole “love your neighbour as yourself” thing – although, if you were in my neighbourhood, with its endless noise and lack of hygiene and cows wandering freely on the streets and blasphemous pagan idols, you would likely have a hard time with that commandment too.

Not an excuse, I’m just sayin’.

Yet those who know me in real life have seen with their own eyes that I have changed.

Outwardly I’m still exactly the same – in some ways I’m even worse than I was, because I am far less tolerant of evil, heresy, blasphemy, idolatry, and the ugliness of sin than I ever was before, which apparently makes me something of a bore and a killjoy by the degraded standards of our “modern” world.

But inwardly, the fruits of the Spirit are there, and cannot be denied.

So I ask you again, my brothers: do we believe in a lie? If so, how is it possible that we have each received exactly what was promised to us, in exactly the manner foretold, and we are immeasurably better as a result?

How is it possible that good things can come from bad?

The answer is simple. They cannot. Good things can only come from that which is also good. And we have seen and experienced firsthand the goodness and glory of Christ Jesus, our Lord, King, and Captain.

If the fruits of the Holy Spirit are true, then that which gives those fruits must also be true. Since Jesus predicted and preached these things during His ministry, His prophecies and predictions must also have been true – and this is reinforced by the eyewitness accounts of His followers at the time, and in their actions subsequent to His death and resurrection.

For if the Resurrection was not true, then why did His followers, who fled before the forces of the Pharisees when they came to arrest Jesus, suddenly change in the course of just a few days from cowards and turncoats, into fearless men of unshakable faith, who went forth into the world and almost to a man died horrible deaths while preaching the Word?

And if the Resurrection was not true, then why is it that those who bend the knee before Christ and His Father therefore change in exactly the way that the Scriptures predicted?

To dismiss the Resurrection as mere myth and hearsay is to pile lie on top of lie, to the point where you can no longer keep anything straight anymore. To do so is literally to discard the scientific method in all of its rigour, which states plainly that a prediction must be tested against its results. If that prediction is rooted in previous logical truths, and the prediction itself is true, then it is not possible for the syllogisms and constructions upon which it is based, to be false.

All of this is simple logic. A ten-year-old child can figure these things out. I have been writing similar things for years before today.

In the end, though, it all comes down to faith.

And that is terrifying.

It seems so simple, to just accept what you are told and say the words, “I believe in God the Father of Jesus Christ, and I accept Christ’s offer of salvation”. But actually doing so is incredibly hard.

I should know. It took me 20 years to go from being an atheist to a Christian. And it was a very, very hard and painful road to get there.

This day teaches us that our faith is not in vain, that what was promised has been, and will be, delivered and paid in full. The oaths of the Lord are unbreakable, and He never forgets those who love Him and uphold His Laws.

Celebrate this day, my friends, for Death has no real power over us anymore. We may be Fallen, sinful, stupid, difficult, and even at times faithless – but as long as we repent of our sins with a sincere heart and are grateful for all that we are given, there is no force on this Earth that can own us.

Our Lord gave us His own beloved Son, watched in agony as we arrested, tortured, crucified, and killed Him, all while that Son took your sins, and mine, upon himself, and died for them – and then raised His Son up again, to prove to each and every one of us that the Word of the Lord is Truth.

In the face of that Truth, no lie can stand for long.

And in the end, all will bend the knee and proclaim, as you and I do, that Jesus is Lord.

Rejoice, brothers, for Christ is Risen!