Chag sameach Yom haBikkurim kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and may I begin by following in the Greek Eastern Orthodox tradition by declaring, like their priests do, CHRISTOS ANESTI! - MESSIAH IS RISEN! To which their congregation, responds in unison: HE IS RISEN INDEED! Why don't we start today's convocation by making that confession of faith?

Messiah is risen!
He is risen indeed!

I am always happy when the Creation Calendar and the orthodox Christian calendar coincide on important historical dates. Today, being the Day of Firstfruits (Yom haBikkurim) or Resurrection Day also happens to be 'Easter', and whilst we deplore the pagan elements of Easter (including, and especially, Ishtar/Astarte, the heathen goddess after whom Easter is named), we can at least join with fellow believers at the same time in proclaiming the resurrection that is so dear to us all. Why is the opportunity for this sharing so important? Because we absolutely endorse John Irving's uncompromising statement that the resurrection "is the main event; if you don't believe in the resurrection, you're not a believer" [1]. If that is true, then those who believe in the resurrection are believers, and we want to embrace all believers in the essentials of our faith. We want unity whenever and wherever we can find it.

For those of us who have lost loved ones in death - parents, spouses, children, close family, and friends - you learn a harsh lesson in irreversibility. That's especially true when you're small. My own father lost a brother, I think to tuberculosis, when they were all young. I know it affected him deeply. Indeed, it was the only thing that he ever spoke of with any real sadness.

My mother lost her first husband when she was young and had big dreams for the future - he was killed in the Second World War only weeks after they were married. When she herself died, I found her journal from that time period and the words of her broken-heartedness and the emptiness of her life were heart-wrenching. She described her journey on board a ship at the end of that terrible conflict as she headed out to the Far East to forget her sorrows and start all over again. She hid her pain in her many friends, and partying, and the things that people who don't know Yah'shua (Jesus) do when when death has an appointment with them through the loss of someone that matters so terribly much to them.

My father's death was my first encounter with that horrible reality. As he lay in his coffin in the crematorium, and as I struggled to sing a cheerful hymn he had chosen, but could not, the horrible, horrible reality of death just overwhelmed me. I stood paralysed, unable to sing a word. I hadn't expected this feeling of such utter finality. Worse, I knew he was not a believer, and in those days I did not have quite the same depth of hope as I do today. It's in moments like these that you realise how real or fake your faith and theology are. The good news was that my son Joshua was born the day after, even though I was abroad in England tending to the funeral arrangements and comforting my mother and could not be there to witness it. My wife and I agreed that our newborn son should have the middle name 'Keith', after my father, to bless my mother in her sorrows and to affirm the continuity and honour of his name.

You don't really face down the doctrine of the resurrection until someone like your father dies. Yahweh has shown me visions of the dead many times over the years, including my mother. I have my own testimonies to supplment my absolute faith in the resurrection of Messiah, testimonies which upset those who do mistaken theology and believe we have no existence after death - the advocates of soul-sleeping like the Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, many Messianics, and others like them.

One thing that my study of biblical history has taught me is that the ancients absolutely believed in consciousness after death, even the Sadducees whom we have actually misread. Though they denied the resurrection, they did not, in fact, deny the existence of malakim (angels) or spirits. Indeed it was so common for people to have experiences of their recent dead making an appearance to them, albeit it briefly and usually only once, in order to assure them that all was well, that consciousness after death was taken for granted, as it was in my youth. I heard many stories from my mother and from relatives of their recent deceased making appearances to them that to me it was all very natural too.

So one of the first things I tested as a new believer - the first piece of in-depth theology I did after my conversion in 1977 - was to examine the biblical teaching. The Armstrongites, who like the Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in consciousness after death, but believe Yahweh will recreate them from scratch at the resurrection, were the first people to try to persuade me of their doctrine, but they didn't realise I had had an out-of-body experience of my own when I was a boy. And as they say, experience beats theory any day. Nevertheless, my first in-depth study was on the soul and early on I learned, as a budding theologian, to be very careful with biblical interpretation. You cannot read the Bible as you would a science or a mathematics text book because it doesn't work that way, a mistake that is almost universally made by 21st century Christians and Messianics. The language, philosophy and religion of the ancients was very different from our own.

I grew up in an Anglican environment in which the prevailing belief was that we were conscious after death as spirits and that that was what our hope for the future was founded on. That there is some sort of satanic conspiracy going on to fool us into believing that we are conscious after death when we aren't is no more believable to me than the world has been, and is being, deceived by a monstrous conspiracy to condition it to believe that it is round rather than flat. Until recent times, atheists were almost non-existent and they're still only a small minority of the total (though growing). Satan has better things to do like convincing us that it doesn't matter how we live and that having emunah (faith) in Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) is optional or pointless. In a world where conspiracies, both real and imagined, are the 'talk of the town', we have to choose wisely which conspiracies we believe in and which we don't.

The good news about the physical resurrection is that even physical death can be reversed. If there has been a great conspiracy by the enemy over the millennia it is to convince us, not that we are immortal spirits (which I don't intend to get into today) but that there's something bad about the physical creation (Gnosticism) and that therefore the Being who created it is somehow 'bad' Himself, and that therefore the last thing anyone who is disembodied could ever possibly want is to get back their physical bodies some time in the future. The Adversary has created entire religious systems around these lies, the reason why Christianity alone is different from all the rest. Let that sink in. This physical 'stuff' is so important, in fact, that Elohim (God) not only incarnated into it as the baby Yah'shua (Jesus) but decided to remain in it permanently as the resurrected Messiah and to declare that as the GOOD NEWS which we are to proclaim to the world! The dead are coming back again and they're coming back physically.

About 40 years ago, on my way home to the UK from seeing my publisher in South Africa, I took the opportunity to make my first visit to the Holy Land and dropped into Israel on an El Al flight to Tel Aviv. There, in Jerusalem, I visited the highly ornate and definitely over-decorated Church of the Holy Sepulchre, regarded a 'must' for every pilgrim and Christian tourist. Perhaps some of you have visited it too. Here, they said, was where the Saviour was executed. There, pointing to a marble slab, the tourish guide declared, is where His dead body lay. And even though the site of the church almost certainly wasn't where Yah'shua (Jesus) was historically crucified and died, it was sufficiently close to the authentic location as to evoke all kinds of feelings in me personally. If it didn't all happen at that spot, then definitely nearby. And that was good enough for me. Just being in the general area where atonement for the sins of man was made was exciting enough and knowing that within three days afterwards, an historical event took place that had cosmic significance: the Son of Man rose from the dead on the third day of the Passover Season - the Day of Firstfruits or Yom haBikkurim - and lives forever more, the firstfruits of the resurrection. He stands in the presence of Elohim (God) the Father interceeding for you and me.

Our Elohim (God) is no absentee Landlord who stays clear of the physical realm. He proved, by incarnating as Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), that He is the Elohim (God) of history who actually entered history and redeemed it too. Ours is a hands-on Elohim (God), very much involved with us and with our particular concerns, and actually became one of us!

We believe in the Elohim (God) of the Israelite patriarchs and nevi'im (prophets), who made concrete promises in the past and then fulfilled them in and through Yah'shua (Jesus). We believe that the spirit that drove the ancients in the Tanakh (Old Testament) is the same spirit that saw the realisation of their hopes in the days of the special witnesses of the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) and we believe that that spirit is the same one which we may, and do, enjoy today.

Thus with Job, we can not only ask the question, "If mortals die, will they live again?" but we can answer it as he did later on in the same book, leaving us with no uncertainty if we trust his testimony, saying:

"I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that in the end He will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see Elohim (God);
I myself will see Him
with my own eyes - I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!" (Job 19:25-27, NIV).

And we can likewise believe the navi (prophet) Daniel who testified, using the poetic imagery of his day of death being like a long sleep from the perspective of those on earth:

"Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth (or 'land of the dust') shall awake, some to æonian (age-long) chayim (life), and some to shame and æonian (age-long) contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever" (Dan.12:2-3, NRSV adapted).

It may come as a surprise for some of you to learn that the dominant paradigm or model for understanding Yah'shua's (Jesus') resurrection amongst Bible scholars and the mainline churches today is fundamentally wrong. (I have already mentioned what was still believed about life-after-death in the British Anglican-folk culture of the 1950's and 1960's that I grew up in). It isn't at all what the earliest Christians/Messianics believed but is the product of liberal post-enlightenment thinking. And it certainly isn't what Job believed, and remember many believe his is probably the oldest book in the Bible, even older than what Moses wrote. That's not to say that there weren't different opinions about the resurrection even in Yah'shua's (Jesus) day amongst the religious classes and the ordinary people of Judea, or indeed that different views didn't pop up even in the first centuries of Christian history, because they did. But what I am most definitely saying is that the first talmidim (disciples) had a simple unified doctrine which apostles like Peter, John and Paul expounded on in complete agreement.

The way we view things affects everything and it certainly impacts our Christianity. It affects our hope for the future and the way we live out our lives in the present. Therefore we must get key theological ideas like the resurrection absolutely right. And though I have obviously talked a lot about this central doctrine of the emunah (faith) over the years - it's the third item in the 'essentials' that I call the DDR Doctrine - the Deity, Death and Resurrection of the Son of Elohim (God) - I thought this year we would tackle this in a completely new way, as I have been doing other topics of late, to provide some contrast and to better equip you for evangelism. We're going to examine the counterfeit doctrine of the resurrection, the false one taught by most scholars and the mainline churches, so that you can see how the emet (truth) that is misrepresented may be countered and repelled.

There are essentially six false claims that are made by these people which may sound 'reasonable' but which are deadly spiritual traps:

• 1. That the Old Testament context provides only a fuzzy setting, in which 'resurrection' could mean a variety of different things;
• 2. That the earliest Christian writer, Paul, did not believe in bodily resurrection, but held a more 'spiritual' (non-physical) view;
• 3. That the earliest Christians believed not in Yah'shua's (Jesus') bodily resurrection , but (rather) in His 'exaltation', 'ascension' and 'glorification', in His 'going to heaven' in some kind of special capacity, and that they came to use resurrection language initially to denote that belief and only subsequently to speak of an empty tomb or of 'seeing' the risen Yah'shua (Jesus);
• 4. That the resurrection stories in the gospels are late inventions designed to bolster up this second-stage belief;
• 5. That such 'seeings' of Yah'shua (Jesus) as may have taken place are best understood in terms of Paul's conversion experience, which itself is to be explained as a 'religious' experience, internal to the subject (i.e. existential) rather than involving the physical seeing any external reality, and that the early Christians underwent some kind of fantasy or hallucination; and
• 6. That whatever happened to Yah'shua's (Jesus') body (opinions differ as to whether it was even burried in the first place), it was not 'resuscitated, and was certainly not 'raised from the dead' in the sense that the gospel stories, read at face value, seem to require. [2]

If you believe in any of those liberal pseudo-scholastic propositions, know that you have been lied to. I don't have the time to be polite and patient with you, at least not today in this Yom haBikkurim setting. The first Christians/Messianics, as is known from the overwhelming historical evidence, staked everything on the Resurrection being literally true, so much so that the apostle Paul told the Corinthian believers:

"And if Messiah has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your emunah (faith)" (1 Cor.15:14, NIV).

You either believe this and are a Bible-believing Christian, or you don't and you're not. That's the brutal reality. And if you don't, and want help examining the evidence, I'd be happy to point you in the right direction so that you can do your own research. At the end of the printed version of this sermon you'll find a list of books I recommend - two for the layman (Sir Norman Anderson & Lee Strobel), one very deep scholar (N.T.Wright), and one inbetween (Philip Yancey).

Now when you're looking at the dead body of a loved one, as I did with my mother not so many years ago - most of you here were there and remember that occasion - you want to know if the resurrection really happened or not so that you don't go and stake your faith on a fantasy. If you don't believe in the resurrection, let alone life-after-death, then you are forced to view the talmidim (disciples) in the Scriptures in one of two ways:

• 1. As gullible simpletons with a weakness for ghost stories; or
• 2. As shrewd conspirators who made up the story of the resurrection to get their new religion going.

The accounts in the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) say otherwise. From what I read, they seemed highly sceptical about a risen Yah'shua (Jesus) or, like Thomas, downright unbelieving. None of them believed what the women reported back from the empty tomb. To them it was nonsense, a load of codswallop. Amazingly, you might think, even after Yah'shua (Jesus) appeared to them:

"When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some doubted" (Matt.28:17, NIV).

Whaat? Some doubted even when He was standing there in front of them all? You've got to be kidding! But, no, these were apostles, and some of them still doubted, even after having been witnesses to what had happened to Lazarus earlier. How stubborn can you get? Typical Judeans. So, no, the 'gullible simpleton' explanation seems rather far-fetched, don't you think?

But what if this was a grand conspiracy? Cover-ups only work if all the participants maintain a unified front of assurance and competence, and that the talmidim (disciples) most definitely failed to do. That's one reason I don't believe the flat-earth conspiracy nonsense because it depends on so many millions of people over many generations maintaining a unified front, something that has never happened in human history with anything. The same is true of the resurrection story which is why there has been such a shift in consensus amongst theologians in my lifetime, even amongst the liberals, nearly all of whom are now saying - including agnostics and atheists - that the Scriptures are authentic accounts, not faked after the event. That's a huge change, unthinkable 40 - even 30 - years ago!

No, these were not bold conspirators like the Clintons and Rothschilds of this world! These were terrified talmidim (disciples), cringing behind bolted doors, terrified that what happened to their Master might at any moment happen to them. They were too scared to even attend His funeral and left it to a couple of women to take care of the preparations for burial...unless you want to blame the women as the masterminds who hijacked the dead body and started the religion off!

No one in the first century would have believed in a new religion started by a couple of Judean women anyway. Judaism was by then highly misogynous - female witnesses weren't even acceptable in the rabbis' courts. No one would have believed reports centering around women, just as the male apostles didn't at first. And since the gospels had been written several decades after the events, the conspirators would have had plenty of time to rewrite the story to make it more believable. Instead, they recorded the plain facts, even the sometimes 'contradictory' stories of the witnesses. Were there two white-clad messengers at the tomb or just one? Why did Mary mistake Yah'shua (Jesus) for a gardener? Was she alone or with Salome and Mary II? The accounts as we are given them are what you would expect of genuine witnesses as any lawyer will tell you. People remember different things. No two witnesses are exactly alike because that is what human beings are like. Strong emotions cloud and distort memories because we remember what's the most important to us. If a Grand Conspiracy was the explanation, then the conspirators did a bad job in presenting four different accounts - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - with lots of variant reports when they could have sat down and agreed on one. The only conspiracy was that of the authorities who tried to suppress the story of the resurrection as best they could by circulating stories full of lies even though the accounts of the witnesses were riddled with contradictions.

Books have been written on the evidence for the resurrection and we don't have time to go into that sort of detail today but I have left a list for the serious enquirer. So I will just quickly mention two other pieces of evidence which strike me as remarkable.

Firstly, Yahweh set the whole thing up so that the only eye-witnesses to the resurrection were some pagan Roman soldiers! When the earth quaked and a malak (angel) appeared, bright as lightning, they shook and became as dead men. Why is that significant? As Philp Yancey noted, aside from the obvious, the resurrection actually constituted an act of civil disobedience since it involved breaking Pilate's seal and striking down the official guards. In this case, triumphing over the civil authority meant active resistance! Later that same afternoon the soldiers who had seen proof of the resurrection with their own eyes agreed to change their story to a lie and parroted the falsehood of the cohenim (priests) that the talmidim (disciples) had stolen the body during the night while they were asleep (Mt.28:13) even though a guard caught falling asleep on duty meant his certain execution. [3] These soldiers got away with it though, more evidence of a cover-up by the authorities.

It is not an easy thing for the atheistic mindset to believe in resurrection. Why, even the talmidim (disciples) initially had problems believing even when they could see Him in fromt of their very eyes. The empty tomb wasn't enough for them. They needed lots of encounters with Him! How many witnesses were there in the end? Quite a few:

• 1. Mary Magdalene (Jn.20:16; Mk.16:9);
• 2. The other women (Mt.28:9);
• 3. Peter (Lk.24:34; 1 Cor.15:5);
• 4. Two disciples on their way to Emmaus (Lk.24:15);
• 5. The 10 apostles without Thomas (Lk.24:36; Jn.20:19);
• 6. The apostles with Thomas (Jn.20:26);
• 7. 7 talmidim (disciples), among whom were Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, and John (Jn.21:1);
• 8. The 11 talmidim (disciples) on a mountain in Galilee (Mt.28:16), with which is probably identified
• 9. The appearance to over 500 brethren at once (1 Cor.15:6);
• 10. To James the brother of the Master (1 Cor.15:7);
• 11. The apostles on the occasion of the Ascension (Ac.1:4); and
• 12. To Paul (Ac.9:3, etc.).

That's a lot of witnesses! Furthermore, the allied conspiracy between the State (Rome) and Religion (Judaism) to suppress the evidence spectacularly failed, hard though it tried and hard though they have tried ever since. Lying, mocking, persecuting and murdering is basically what they have been doing now for 2,000 years because the emet (truth) will not die.

Philip Yancey sums up the matter well:

"In the six-week interlude between Resurrection and Ascension, Jesus (Yah'shua), if one may use such language, 'broke his own rules' about faith. He made His identity so obvious that no disciple could ever deny him again (and none did). In a word, Jesus (Yah'shua) overwhelmed the witnesses' faith: anyone who saw the resurrected Jesus (Yah'shua) lost the freedom of choice to believe or disbelieve. Jesus (Yah'shua) was now irrefutable. Even Jesus' (Yah'shua's) brother James, always a holdout, capitulated after one of the appearances - enough so that he became a leader of the church (messianic community) in Jerusalem and, according to Josephus, died as one of the early Christian martyrs" [4].

There can be no doubt, and for reasons which I now hope are obvious, why the resurrection is the epicentre of our emunah (faith). As C.H.Dodd explains it masterfully:

"[The Resurrection is] not a belief that grew up within the church (messianic community); it is the belief around which the church (messianic community) itself grew up, and the 'given' upon which its faith was based" [5].

That is why the resurrection is fundamental to everything we represent...and it is a very physical thing. As novelist John Updike put it in poetic words our scientific generation will easily understand:

"Make no mistake; if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall" [6].

It means, ultimately, that every single living soul will be raised from the dead and become immortal like Yah'shua (Jesus) [7], as Paul testified to the Corinthians and to Timothy:

"Messiah has indeed been raised from the dead, the bikkurim (firstfruits) of those who have fallen asleep (died). For since death came through a man (Adam), the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man (Yah'shua/Jesus). For as in Adam all [people] die, so in Messiah all [people] will be made alive" (1 Cor.15:20-22, NIV), "especially ... those who believe" (1 Tim.4:10, NIV).

Is the resurrection, as some accuse, merely an 'escapist myth'? Well, myth it is not, but what of the accusation that it is an 'escapist' attempt to not face the real world? I don't see that the two contradict each other. I believe in facing reality square-on - as a scientist I have been trained to - but I also believe we need an escape from hell which is a little different, is it not, from escaping from dealing with reality? As famous novelist J.R.R.Tolkien put it:

"Everything depends on that from which we are escaping. We view the flight of a deserter and the escape of a prisoner very differently. 'Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home?'" [8].

I want to escape death just as all of you do too, and we want all of our loved ones to escape it as well, but that doesn't mean we refuse to deal with reality, and it doesn't mean we refuse to live out our full lifespan down here, no matter the trials and tribulation. Paul understood this when he told the Philippians:

"For to me, to live is Messiah and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labour for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Messiah, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body" (Phil.1:21-24, NIV).

Or to remain with loved ones or whatever. And by the way, if Paul yearned to be with Yah'shua (Jesus) inbetween mortality and the resurrection, what he said would have made no sense had he been unconscious between the two states as the soul-sleepers maintain he is right now! He knew he would be conscious as a disembodied spirit so that he would be able to commune with Christ. If we are to be unconscious after death, it would be far better to remain here and be as productive for as long as possible, don't you think?! Then we could look forward to being with Messiah in the resurrection and still being together with the folks we love down here because we'll be back down here in immortal bodies later. You see how false doctrines like 'soul-sleeping' get knocked for six by simple passages of Scripture like this one?

We began this talk with the six lies taught in mainstream churches and by liberal theologians and I want to quickly end with them too, knowing as we do now the plain truth about the resurrection:

• 1. There is nothing 'fuzzy' in what the Tanakh (Old Testament teaches about the resurrection. It may not say a lot, or go into the kind of depth that the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) do, but Job and Daniel make it clear that the resurrection is physical and solid and that there will be a division between the righteous and the wicked;
• 2. The apostle Paul most definitely believed in the physical, material resurrection, and on the one occasion which he calls it 'spirital', he is not referring to a disembodied spirit but to the fact that the resurrection is spiritual in quality and is not carnal or fallen like the current physical body (1 Cor.15:44) - that's an important distinction;
• 3. The earliest Christians/Messianics totally believed in a physical resurrection and Yah'shua (Jesus) made sure they did by amongst other things inviting Thomas to touch Him and said to him, "Stop doubting and believe!" (John 20:27, NIV) That was the moment the apostle realised that the Saviour was Deity - that He was Elohim (God)! And he worshipped Him (v.28);
• 4. The resurrection stories could not have been later inventions, the work of a conspiracy - the only conspiracy was that of the State and false institutionalised Religion trying to shut the whole business down in its infancy to protect their positions of power, wealth and influence;
• 5. All attempts to 'spiritualise' the resurrection as 'visions' or fantasies are themselves fantasy and have no bearing in reality; and finally
• 6. We are to read the Bible accounts at face value and literally because the whole thing took place in physical time and space as it was intended to.

Don't believe the lies of the Jehovah's Witnesses and others who teach that Yah'shua (Jesus) simply put on the appearance of a physically resurrected body so as not to freak out the talmidim (disciples) into thinking He was a ghost. He did not practice a deception by quietly laying aside His 'pretend body' later in order to 'resume' being a 'spirit'. That above all else is what makes the Jehovah's Witnesses a dangerous cult because without the central truth of the physical rising, in an immortal and perfected state, we have no hope and our preaching and witnessing is in vain.

Don't believe in the lies of the annihilationists and soul-sleepers (like the Jehovah's Witnesses) who claim there is no consciousness after death and that the wicked will be exterminated. They have redefined the word 'resurrection' to include thaumaturgies - those brought back to life in a mortal state like the daughter of Jairus or the son of the widow of Nain - and translations like Elijah who was caught away in a chariot, the death process having been temporarily suspended. Elijah, though physically alive today, is still mortal and unresurrected but unable to die yet.

They have invented this doctrine, in part, to twist those scriptures that speak of all humanity being resurrected physically to face the judgment. They know that if all the resurrected are immortal that it would then be impossible to annihilate them. If, as Paul says, "Messiah has indeed been raised from the dead, the bikkurim (firstfruits) of those who have fallen asleep (died)" (1 Cor.15:20, NIV), then the widow's son whom Elisha raised and the daughter of Jairus whom Yah'shua (Jesus) raised were not 'resurrected' because then they would have been immortal and could not have died. Yah'shua (Jesus) is the firstfruits or bikkurim of the resurrection which means that no-one before Him had ever been resurrected, including these children, and that means that not all 'raisings' are resurrections but may be thaumaturgies. I know of people in my time who have been raised from the dead but none of them are resurrected. Brother Gabriel, who is here today, met two such people who had died and been brought back to life when he was in Jerusalem many years ago. Such persons, after they have been raised, are mortal still and will die like everyone else, in their case a second time.

It means that of those who are resurrected - which, as we have seen, is everyone - the wicked must either be tortured in eternity or eventually saved after a long and painful spiritual purging. The doctrine of annihilationism is immediately disqualified. The resurrection is central but we have also got to get our resurrection doctrine right! When we testify of the resurrection, we must be clear what we are talking about, namely the inseparable connection of spirit and body in an immortal state no longer subject to physical pain, injury, illness or death. That is true resurrection! Everything else, that is godly at least [9], is either resuscitation (thaumaturgy) or a temporary suspension (even if for many centuries) of the dying process (translation).

The world is a tough place to live in and if we focus on all the evil in it we shall be sucked down into despair. That is the unfortunate state of the Old Creation which must linger on a while until all that Yahweh intends has been accomplished. But we can look at the world in another way - a positive way. If I take today - the first Messsianic Yom haBikkurim as the starting point, the Day of Resurrection - if I take it as the beginning line, the one incontrovertible fact about how Elohim (God) treats those whom He loves, then human history becomes the contradiction and Resurrection Day becomes a preview of ultimate reality, which is Yahweh's world of New Creation, the Eternal World that intersects this impermanent world which we, as believers in the Resurrection, as little 'stargates', open up and pass through here. Hope then flows like lava beneath the crust of daily life, showing the world what is to come and inviting the people in the old world to become a part of the new world now.

This, surely, explains the change in the perspective of the talmidim (disciples) as they stayed behind locked doors discussing the still-to-them incomprehensible events of the first Messianic Yom haBikkurim - the fulfillment of the Day of Firstfruits revealed to Moses so long ago. In one sense nothing had changed - Rome still occupied the Promised Land, the religious authorities were still hunting down the apostles, death and evil reigned outside. Gradually, however, the shock of recognition of what had actually happened gave way to a long slow undertow of simcha (joy). If Yahweh could do that then ... He can do anything! And we can be a part of that 'anything'.

This was the story of Messiah's Resurrection and it is the ongoing story of our resurrection life. This is what we live for, this is what we look forward to, and this is what we want to invite others to become a part of. This is no mere abstract 'theory' for us anymore than it was some abstract 'theory' for the first talmidim (disciples) - this is what transformed them, this is what energised them, this is what turned them from fearful mice into bold lions willing even to lay down their lives because they knew what awaited the faithful on the other side of mortality. They knew because the Saviour was risen, over 500 had witnessed it, many of whom were still alive, when the apostles were writing their letters. And the Messiah had promised them that they too would be raised on the last day.

So I declare to you, and to the world:

Messiah is risen!

He is risen indeed!

May Yahweh bless you until we gather for the 6th day of Chag haMatzah and for the final High Sabbath in three and four days' time, respectively, which the seventh and last day of Chag haMatzah! Shalom b'Yah'shua [10] to you all!

Endnotes

[1] John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meaney
[2] N.T.Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (SPCK, London: 2003), p.7
[3] Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, Grand Rpids, Michigan: 1995), pp.213-214
[4] Yancey, Ibid., p.216
[5] C.H.Dodd, The Founder of Christianity (Macmillan, London: 1970), p.163
[6] John Updike, 'Seven Stanzas at Easter', in Collected Poems 1953-1993 (Alfred A. Knopf, NY: 1993), p.20
[7] See the Universal Salvation website
[8] J.R.R.Tolkien, 'On Fairy Tales', quoted in Robert McAfee Brown, Persuade Us to Rejoice (Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky: 1992), p.145
[9] There are additionally occult practices, as in Voodoo, that bring corpses back to life but these bodies are not inhabited by the spirits of their original human occupants but by demons
[10] The peace of Yah'shua (Jesus)

Acknowledgements

[1] J.R.Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, London: 1909), The Resurrection, pp.cxxiii-cxxviii
[2] N.T.Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (SPCK, London: 2003)
[3] Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, Grand Rpids, Michigan: 1995), Resurrection: A Morning Beyond Belief, pp.209-220

Recommended Reading

[1] Sir Norman Anderson, Jesus Christ: The Witness of History (Inter-Varsity press, Leicester, England: 1985)
[2] Lee Strobel, The case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan: 1998)
[3] Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan: 1995)
[4] N.T.Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (SPCK, London: 2003)