Many of us can’t go, physically, to church on this Easter Sunday 2020. But we still could use a sermon. Let this teaching by Mark Rushdoony, from 2004, serve in that office.
It’s a fairly long sermon, so you don’t need a fairly long introduction from me. The point is made simply: “Christ’s resurrection insures our own (1 Corinthians 15: 12-27).” God has promised to make all things new–including us. But neither sin nor death will be found in the new heaven and new earth that He creates.
We won’t be floating around on the clouds, strumming harps. We will walk upon a new earth in our perfected, resurrected bodies, and Christ shall have dominion over all.
Do they really make you trample on the Bible before they let you be a teacher or administrator at a seminary? Or does it only seem that way?
The president of Union Theological Seminary–that’s one of the biggies–says you don’t have to believe Christ rose from the dead, to be a Christian. Erick Erickson quotes her: “For Christians for whom the physical resurrection becomes a sort of obsession, that seems to me to be a pretty wobbly faith. What if tomorrow someone found the body of Jesus in the tomb?” [They won’t.] “Would that mean that Christianity was a lie?” (https://townhall.com/columnists/erickerickson/2019/04/26/flatearth-christianity-n2545394).
Let’s see if St. Paul can field that question.
Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised. And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. (1 Corinthians 15: 12-17)
If Christ is not raised then, yes–the whole New Testament is a lie. And if there’s no New Testament, there’s no Christianity.
Unless this seminary half-wit thinks there’s such a thing as a Christless Christianity, in which salvation comes not from Jesus Christ, but from Science, the state, left-wing politics, and NPR, etc. And Jesus was just a nice guy who got crucified because he was a union man. Or something.
How do sins get forgiven? By voting for Democrats? Who forgives them? Hillary Clinton? And who gets to say what’s a sin and what’s not? The Bible, or some left-wing fat-head in a seminary?
This is why the flatline Protestant churches are dying the death. I can’t find it in my heart to waste tears on them. Those who know their Savior, who know His voice and follow Him, don’t need those churches. Nor those seminaries.
Can you imagine it? Hard enough to imagine knowing Jesus Christ as He walked in the flesh, hearing His voice, seeing what He did. Surely this was the Messiah–wasn’t He? Who else could do such things?
Try to imagine Mary Magdalene on Easter morning, the first of all to see the risen Christ. Of course she didn’t recognize Him at first: He was dead. But when He spoke her name, she knew Him.
When Mr. Toad brags about his intellectual attainments, we think it’s funny and we laugh, because it’s only Mr. Toad, a fictional character. But it’s not so funny when the real, live clever men at Oxford and other dives of “higher education” do the same.
Biblical Archaeology Magazine this month is advertising a book, Jesus and After, produced by the savants at University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “What lies at the bottom of the highly stratified Biblical texts from the First Century?” one asks.
Answers Stephen W. Durrant from the University of Oregon:
“The author has accomplished something rare in this outstanding book… Freed from such ‘stumbling blocks’ as the doctrines of blood atonement and bodily resurrection, the original Christian teaching shines forth with simplicity and directness.”
“For the preaching of the cross,” observed St. Paul, “is to them that perish foolishness” (I Corinthians 1:18).
So the doctrines of blood atonement and bodily resurrection are stumbling blocks? Stumbling blocks to what–getting your doctorate in “Religion”? Winning the approval of an unbelieving fallen world?
“Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead,” Paul continues, “how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain… If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (I Cor. 15:12-14, 19).
So these sophomoric twaddlers wish to go back to some supposed “original Christian teaching” that does not provide any cleansing from sins because it jettisons the blood atonement, and does not provide any hope of resurrection–what’s left? “Be nice”? “Sharing is caring”? What kind of shabby excuse for Christianity would that be?
Seest thou a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope of a fool than of him (Proverbs 26:12).
This is the kind of plop that gets taught at our seminaries, and this is why we have “clergy for choice” and “feminist clergy” and all the rest of the smorgasbord of crapola served up by left-wing pseudo-Christianity.
So there was this “early Christianity,” see, the original stuff that came without “such stumbling blocks as blood atonement and resurrection,” and it was only later that all that stoopid stuff got tacked onto it, Jesus was just a nice guy who taught nice things…
We have heard this before.
Jesus and After: The First 80 Years is another one of those books by another one of those Reputable Bible Scholars, just another face in the crowd on the false prophet express, that seeks to make Christianity palatable to atheists and abortion-loving, transgender-touting Democrats. In the words of the Editorial Review on amazon.com, here we are offered “a Christianity for modern grownups who don’t have to believe that God created the laws of physics only to capriciously suspend them; who don’t need to depend on ancient superstitions about sacrificing goats or people to ‘save’ or protect themselves.”
“And if Christ be not raised,” wrote St. Paul, “your faith is in vain; ye are yet in your sins.” (1 Corinthians 15:17)
Oh, but that’s one of those things that was added later! It isn’t scientific, dude!
And waddaya need atonement for, when there’s no such thing as sin?
I’m surprised they want to keep anything pertaining to Christianity, there’s so much they want to throw out.
But we are talking about people who look in the mirror when they pray.
It’s a long review, but it took time to refute so many errors–not honest mistakes, but an agenda-driven attack on the divinity of Jesus Christ by a Zionist film-maker, a Hollywood big shot, and a so-called “theologian” who’s a heretic. Other than that, it was swell.
I didn’t watch whatever Christian-bash they resorted to this year. I was too busy celebrating Our Lord’s resurrection from the dead.
