May I gripe a little?

There is just so much Christian silliness around.

I heard David Jeremiah in a sermon on YouTube—you know, big church in California, 10,000 on Sunday mornings. He was talking about how Jesus, at His Second Coming, will bring all the dead back to earth and set up His kingdom here.

Back to earth?! And all of these people will be reunited with their dead bodies?

Can you imagine some poor soul saying, “O God—after the joy of heaven, I’ve been shoved back into my old dead body and I’m back in Oklahoma!”

And it’s not just rich TV preachers pushing this stuff. Respected scholar N. T. Wright says much the same thing.

Where do they get such a strange, unlikely scenario?

Where else? The Book of Revelation.

We’ve got this script for a Star Wars movie tacked on to the end of our Bible.

Preachers, it’s a problem.

I know most of you feel like you have to defend Revelation and all its flights of fancy.

Yes, it’s in the Bible.

It’s historically important. But—

It is theological hokum.

Worse than that, it’s dead weight on the Gospel. If you mix this nonsense with the teachings of Jesus, it pulls the Gospel down with it.

Stop defending it.

Stop conflating the Jesus who told us to love our enemies with a Jesus who cuts off the heads of His enemies with a sword.

Revelation has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus or the future history of God’s creation.

It’s time to be honest—both to God and about God.

Give people Jesus.

More about this on Sunday.

I believe Jesus is Lord. He was crucified and raised from the dead—His body transformed and the tomb empty.

I believe Jesus was right about God—and He is the only one who was right in all of ancient history.

No one else knew that God IS unconditional love.

I believe all of this.

I have good reason to believe all of this.

Everything I believe is supported by the actual experience of God.

But I do not believe anything we know is not true.

John Polkinghorne is a smart guy. He is a physicist who became an Anglican priest.

He says when we die, we cease to exist until the General Resurrection, when God “remembers us” back into existence.

Say what?!!

We know that when we die, we move immediately into God’s realm.

This is what people experience in NDEs.

N. T. Wright, author of The Resurrection of the Son of God, is considered a great scholar.

He says when we die, we enter a kind of sleep until we are raised from the dead at the (yet again) General Resurrection.

At that time, he says, Jesus will bring all of the dead from heaven back to earth to be reunited with their bodies—

And to live here—on earth. Here? On earth? Forever?!!

It appears Jesus is going to set up shop in Jerusalem and rule as potentate from there.

WE KNOW BETTER!

Everyone who has an NDE tells us heaven is our home. When we at last lay this old body down, we will never need it again.

Some scholars just don’t know beans.

It looks like the attempt at an American oligarchy will fail, and the leader of the movement will end up in disrepute.

More people are seeing that hatred and revenge lead to chaos.

And more people are turning against that chaos.

It may be that the world needed to see this once again—that the effort to destroy others always ends in self-destruction.

Always—eventually.

That’s because hatred and revenge are opposed to the fundamental power that sustains creation.

That power is love.

More specifically, that power is God’s love.

The great discovery of my (to-be-published) book, Discovering God, is that God has made all things from Himself.

Not my idea alone.

It is echoed in many NDEs and other kinds of encounters with God.

And in scripture.

Paul said, “In Him [God] we live and move and have our being.”

That means we are all, ultimately, one with God—and one with each other.

We are truly the human “family,” rooted in God.

So, revenge against the neighbor is finally revenge against the self—and against God.

“That which you do to the least of these, you do to me,” said Jesus.

What more people are beginning to see is that hatred and revenge do not work.

Indeed, it cannot work.

I will be saying in my sermon on Sunday that Jesus calls us to reject revenge.

But what about those Bible passages that tell us God is vengeful?

Join me Sunday, online or in person, at 11:00 a.m.

Online address below. Click on “video.”

There is a lie which most people believe: that the burden of proof lies with Christians concerning their faith.

That just is not true.

The burden lies with those who do not believe.

They must fight the overwhelming evidence that Jesus is Lord, and He is raised from the dead.

Yes—I said evidence.

Take the resurrection.

Take that Shroud rolled up in a box in Turin, Italy.

Most people think it is controversial. Maybe real. Maybe not.

Sorry. The argument is over. Some 200 scientific tests point to authenticity. New X-ray testing places it at the time of Jesus.

And if it is real, Jesus is risen. If the Shroud is the real thing, Jesus is who Christians claim Him to be.

And are you aware that Jesus continues to appear to people—in NDEs—in other kinds of experiences?

Think about that.

Heidi Barr was a Jewish teen from a staunchly atheistic family. She was thrown from a horse, hit her head, and “died” for a short time.

Who did she see? Who was there to greet and love her?

Yes, Jesus.

Jesus is all over the place in religious experiences.

And when people see Him, He is always that person of power and authority—the one we call Lord.

You can believe what you want. But I want the truth.

And the truth is Jesus, crucified and risen.

Are you in for some pure fun? Come to our concert this Saturday, April 26.

A Night on Broadway.

The offering is for Eastside Ministries. Show at 6:00. Supper at 7:00.

Let our great singers lift your heart with songs you love.

(NOTE: I do not mention Holy Thursday here because this comes out in the paper on Friday.)

Good Friday service is tonight (for those getting this on Friday) at 6:30 PM. (Light supper before it at 6:00.) This is the hardest service I do each year. The effort is to let the scriptural story of the trial and death of Jesus come to life for people.

I have the help of our great choir, directed by Mr. Blake Glass. This year, we also have a guest cellist. (Yes, I love me some good cello!)

Truth is, I think the big attendance should be at Good Friday as well as Easter.

As our choir will sing, “Without His Cross, There Is No Crown.”

Good Friday is the heart of Easter. Easter is the answer to the suffering of Good Friday.

And that suffering is all for us. Yet most Christians pay no attention to Good Friday and simply jump over it to Easter.

(Our Easter service is at 11:00 AM.)

But those willing to relive Good Friday can better feel the power of Easter.

We see through scripture the degradation of Jesus—the mockery, the beating, the crowning with thorns.

John shows us that Pilate was playing politics. He was afraid of the crowd on one side and Rome on the other.

He thought he could get off the hook by hauling the brutalized Jesus out for the religious leaders to see.

There He was, covered in blood from head to toe.

“Crucify him! Crucify him!” they shouted.

Hope was gone.

We know the feeling.

It’s over. It’s over.

And then—suddenly—it’s not.

It’s Easter.

It’s joy.

And life goes on.

Always—and forever.

And I’m inviting you to two great services: Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Make sure I meet you.