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Every Day Bible

If Jesus were still dead…

tomb-image…the Bible wouldn’t be the best-selling book in all of history.

…our hillsides wouldn’t be dotted with cemeteries lined with crosses.

…the university would not exist.

…our hospital emergency rooms wouldn’t be identified by a red cross.

…your weak or elderly family members would be discarded and disposed of as unproductive members of society.

…Sunday would be just another workday.

…education would be a privilege of the rich and elite.

…calendars wouldn’t call this the year 2016 A.D., anno domini, in the year of our Lord.

…orphanages and foster care systems wouldn’t exist.

…Da Vinci would never have painted, Shakespeare would never have written, Michelangelo would never have carved, and Beethoven would never have composed.

…death would be the end.

The life, death, burial, and resurrection didn’t just change his fate. It is an understatement to say that he changed the world. Praise God that we serve not the God of the dead, but the God of the living!

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Every Day Bible

The Resurrection of Jesus

The message of the resurrection is that this world matters! That the injustices and pains of this present world must now be addressed with the news that healing, justice, and love have won…If Easter means Jesus Christ is only raised in a spiritual sense–then it is only about me, and finding a new dimension in my personal spiritual life. But if Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead, Christianity becomes good news for the whole world–news which warms our hearts precisely because it isn’t just about warming hearts. Easter means that in a world where injustice, violence, and degradation are endemic, God is not prepared to tolerate such things–and that we will work and plan, with all the energy of God, to implement victory of Jesus over them all. Take away Easter and Karl Marx was probably right to accuse Christianity of ignoring problems of the material world. Take it away and Freud was probably right to say Christianity is wish-fulfillment. Take it away and Nietzsche probably was right to say it was for wimps. — N.T. Wright