Easter newsletter editorial

Have you ever googled “Easter” before, or google image searched “Easter” before? If you have, what did you notice? If you haven’t take a moment to now. What do the results you are now seeing say about our society?

In the unquestionable single most selfless act in all of the history of the universe, modern culture has turned Easter into a focus of self. One of the top google responses in my search was how to turn Easter into a 10 day holiday with using only 3 days of annual leave… so while holidays are great, someone died, the Messiah, so we can enjoy them.  

Around the time of Jesus’ death a Roman historian of Jewish descent Flavius Josephus was employed by three Roman Emperors Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. Josephus tells of Jesus Christ famously in an Arabic manuscript later cited by historian Schlomo Pines of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1972:

“At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and [he] was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive. Accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.” (10th Century Arabic Text)

We don’t even need the Bible to show us that no one can sensibly deny that Jesus Christ was born, did unexplainable miracles and was crucified. And if Jesus Christ was a fantasy why would people be willing to die instead of deny Jesus Christ is the resurrected Messiah like “Voice of the Martyrs” https://vom.com.au/ who tell of the ever present persecutions Christians face today. Even Jesus’ disciples were all martyred because of their preaching the good news of salvation through Christ alone as John Foxe’s Book of the Martyrs tells https://www.exclassics.com/foxe/foxe4.htm and DC Talk’s “Jesus Freaks” tells of modern martyrs.    

Staggeringly the only of the twelve disciples not to be martyred was John, however not through a want of trying… John miraculously was unharmed when authorities dropped him into a giant cauldron of boiling oil!

A rational thinker would ask, when faced with their own mortality, why do people not save themselves by denying Christ to their executioners? It is because Christians understand that there is more than life we experience now, there is an afterlife. We don’t worship Jesus on a cross, we don’t worship dead Jesus in a tomb or in hell, we worship the living Saviour, Jesus Christ, who has provided us with his Holy Spirit and is interceding for us even now with God.

Easter school and church services are not times for a funeral for a dead Jesus, we celebrate joyously in worship the thunderous victory that Jesus Christ achieved on the cross, over all death, His resurrection to life, and that Jesus still and forever will live! To this end our Primary School will have a special Easter Service on Friday and our Middle School will participate at Easter Fest. In 1 Corinthians 15:55 the Bible says: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”. I say it too, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”! If you have never accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour before, don’t let this Easter pass you by without making your peace with Jesus, get along to any of the church services, talk with me or any of our staff and we will be more than happy to pray with you for salvation together.   

Blessings,

Michael Tooler

Principal Sattler Christian College