1 Peter 1:3

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead ~ 1 Peter 1:3


Some thirty years before this writing, Peter had preached his first sermon on the Resurrection, and immediately a multitude of people who were assembled on the Day of Pentecost made a decisive decision to be baptized. At that time, about 3,000 people were added to the group who followed “The Way” of Jesus Christ. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ had remained the preaching point of Peter, in spite of the persecutions, and opposition he had undergone in all those years. The Resurrection of Jesus has gone through its own investigation in these latter years, some thinking it was a hallucination that hundreds shared and believed. This has been discounted, for it is proven impossible for hundreds of people to have a shared hallucination. It is a verified reality that Christ did indeed rise from the dead. This is what our Christian faith is based upon. If Jesus died and remained in the grave, he would be just another man that claimed deity without owning it. But the fact that He did rise from death to life is what we base our promise of an eternal life upon. It is because Jesus rose from the dead that we know eternity is a promise for us as well. This is the new hope we have. We do not live today and when we die, that is it, all done, vanished from this earth and memory forever. No, the promise of eternity is ours, forever! God, through Jesus Christ has loosed the pains of death! This is what makes us Easter people! Christmas people have only the promise of hope, as Easter people we have the fulfillment of hope. There is no life without Jesus Christ, there is no eternity without the Resurrection! Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!!

Pastor Julia

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