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One of the more debated events in history is the death and resurrection of Jesus. You can find books and web sites devoted to proving that it did happen, that it didn’t happen, and every variation inbetween.

For Christians, the truth of the resurrection is rather important and worth some serious study.

Answering the question, Can Any scientist today accept that Jesus was resurrected is the ministry of Scibel. The article begins from this assumption:

No one can be certain of all the details of any past event, but here is how it could have happened if all the four accounts are accurate from the viewpoint of their respective sources.

The article is replete with diagrams like the one to the right and does an thorough job of detailing the resurrection from each account given in the bible. If you’ve always wondered how it all happened and why each gospel account seems different this article should help explain some of the reasons why.

From Delve Into Jesus is an article titled, Why did Jesus have to die? The question is an extremely valid one. If Jesus is God and could do all things, then why did he have to die? Here’s the article summary:

When we sin, God’s perfect justice requires that we pay the price. This price is too high for any man to pay for it would require perfect sacrifice, which we cannot do. Jesus Christ took our place and died on the cross to pay the debt because He loves us.

When you read the story of Easter (see yesterday’s post to read it if you’re not familiar with it), what most stands out to you?

The story of Jesus’ betrayal, death, and resurrection is of course packed with interesting and important elements. But what always jumps out at me is the fascinating array of characters who populate this Easter drama. It’s the people of Easter who make the story come alive—and who add to it the ring of authenticity that you wouldn’t get if it were just another moral fable.

Think about the heroes and villains of the Easter story, and you’ll see that this isn’t the black-and-white morality tale you might expect if it were a piece of comforting religious fiction. Instead, we see a cast of very human characters reacting to the presence of Jesus—the story’s only perfectly good character. Some of the “heroes” don’t behave quite as heroically as they should—think of Jesus’ disciples falling asleep in the Garden, or of Peter disowning Christ rather than risk being associated with him. And the villains aren’t exactly brilliant, cackling evil masterminds—think of weak-willed Pilate, guilt-wracked Judas, and the religious leaders terrified that Jesus’ message will erode their own power and influence.

One of the most vivid ways to get to know the characters of Easter is through The Twelve Voices of Easter, an online audio drama from Back to the Bible that lets each of the twelve characters of Easter speak for him or herself. If you’ve read the Easter so many times that it’s started to lose its punch, this is a great way to approach the events of Holy Week from a different angle—with six days left before Easter Sunday, you could listen to two “voices” per day and be done on the big day. Most of the famous Easter characters are present in the drama (Judas, Pilate, Mary Magdalene), but also some of Easter’s less-well-known players, like the centurion and Cleopas.

I fire up the Twelve Voices every year during Holy Week because they shed some extra light on the human hopes, fears, and motivations that run through Easter week. While the Easter story is primarily about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, it’s also the story of ordinary people tainted by sin. They’re everyday sinners like you and me—they’re not diabolically evil; but almost everyone in the Easter story is flawed and broken. Everyone here, hero or villain, needs the salvation Jesus offers. Their presence in the story reminds us that Jesus’ sacrificial death wasn’t carried out just to save humanity on an abstract, cosmic level: Jesus died for the everyday sinners right there around him. The cowardly disciples; the foolish mob; the scheming religious leaders. You and me.

One of my favorite pieces of music is Bach’s Mass in B minor. The mass flows with dynamic ascents and descents brimming with deep emotion. Every lofty analogy one can make about it is true; yet, it retains worshipfulness through its simplicity. To me, the yearning melodies and emotionalism of Bach’s work create a soundtrack to what we remember during the week of the Passion: those final days before Jesus’ crucifixion.

For the Christian, this week breeds mixed emotions. While we remember Jesus’ death we do so with full knowledge that on Sunday–on Easter, he arises. For the disciples who lived these events the experience was far different.

For them, the week trembled with excitement quickly followed by dread and then let-down. Finally, Jesus was being properly venerated. Finally, they would see their Rabbi get the adulation he deserved. And then in the midst of all that uplift, in the midst of all his previous cryptic sayings coalescing into sensibility, he is brutally killed.

He didn’t mean to take the earthly throne. He knew he was going to suffer death, and for these early followers of Christ it deeply affected their entire worldview.

Many desert him, others leave him, Peter denies him. From riding into the city exalted to hovering crucified. This is the Passion week.

We’ll be showing you resources around the gospel.com community related to the passion week, but maybe a good place to start would be by rereading each gospel account of the passion week:

Matthew’s account

Mark’s account

Luke’s account

John’s account

Easter is a holiday marked by irony and paradox. During Easter week, we celebrate life attained through death. We worship a mighty king who ruled over no earthly nation. We read about people who saw God-become-man with their own eyes, yet failed to recognize him.

Today is Palm Sunday, and the bitter irony of Easter is nowhere more evident than in this famous scene, described in all four of the Gospels:

The next day the great crowd that had come for the Feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,

“Hosanna!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Blessed is the King of Israel!”

Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it, as it is written,

“Do not be afraid, O Daughter of Zion;
see, your king is coming,
seated on a donkey’s colt.”

At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him.

Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. Many people, because they had heard that he had given this miraculous sign, went out to meet him. So the Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!”

The cruel irony is that within one week, the crowd that gladly welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem would be calling for his brutal death. Jesus was welcomed through the city gates like a king, but would soon be driven out of the same city, by many of the same people, to his death. The architect of their own salvation was staring them in the face, but when Jesus turned out to be a different sort of saviour than the people wanted (perhaps they hoped he would lead a violent revolution against their Roman oppressors), they turned their backs on him.

Is this just a quaint moral fable from Bible times? Can we, safely looking back with the benefit of thousands of years of hindsight, condemn the crowd for its fickleness? Not so fast. Jill Carattini, writing for the Slice of Infinity devotional, has some sobering words to consider this Palm Sunday:

It is this drama that is still religiously enacted. What I long to imagine was a fickle crowd—an illustration of the power of mobthink, or a sign of a hard-hearted people—only reminds me of my own vacillations with the Son of God. How easily our declarations that he is Lord become denials of his existence. How readily hands waving in praise and celebration become fists raised at the heavens in pain or hardship. Like a palm laid down and forgotten, the honor we bestow on Sunday can easily be abandoned by Wednesday.

It’s not enough to condemn those who welcomed, and then rejected, Jesus during Palm Sunday and the subsequent Easter week events. We must ask ourselves—this week, and next week, and every week—whether our own lives are marked by that same ficklness, that same waffling between devotion and rejection. And we must never cease giving thanks that Jesus’ love for each of us proves stronger than our faithlessness.

If you’re not sure who Jesus is, or why Easter is so important, learn more about Jesus’ life and his challenge to us today.

Due to the structure of the film, it’s no spoiler to tell you that Snow Angels is about relationships that end in violence; but this is no inspired-by-Montel over-the-top smackdown or overwrought Woody Allen melodrama. It’s a quiet, meditative examination of relationships and situations gone horribly wrong.

Interestingly, the story’s central character happens to be a Bible-believing, praying Christian—and so the question of faith became very explicit in a post-screening discussion following the film’s premiere.

PtP Managing Editor Greg Wright attended the premiere of the film with a private audience and the filmmakers in Seattle this week, and the first question from the moderator during the after-film discussion was: “So… should we be afraid of every born-again Christian?” The instant response from the audience: “Yes!”

David Gordon Green, the director, gave a very vague follow-up reply to the question. So when Greg interviewed him the next day, he started right out with that very same question. The full interview, and Green’s full response, can be found at Past the Popcorn.

posted by Greg Wright of Past the Popcorn

Each week, Past the Popcorn offers a thorough look at the latest round of films opening on big screens.

Last week, Past the Popcorn Managing Editor Greg Wright was none too kind to 10,000 B.C., calling it a less-than-fresh mashup of homages to better films. He concluded by pointing out that every recipe is made up of a list of ingredients, but not every dish is memorable or original.

This week, two reworkings of 1980s staples manage to do what 10,000 B.C. couldn’t. (more…)

We’ll close off this week’s focus on devotionals with a quick look at some good audio devotionals—daily devotionals that you can listen to via a podcast or online radio stream. Some of us find it easier to listen to Bible verses and devotionals read out loud, rather than reading them. If that describes you, see if one of these devotionals appeals:

• Just Thinking is a daily fifteen-minute message broadcast by Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. If your local radio station plays it, you can tune in there, or you can subscribe to the MP3 podcast feed. The RZIM ministry takes a fairly intellectual approach to faith and Christianity; in their own words, Just Thinking explores “issues such as life’s meaning, the credibility of the Christian message and the Bible, the weakness of modern intellectual movements, and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.”
• If fifteen minutes is a bit too much to fit into your daily schedule, you can go the short, inspirational route with the Bible Minute with Woodrow Kroll. It’s one of many programs by Back to the Bible, and aims to start off your day with a short but meaningful Bible reflection. Here’s a list of the different ways you can tune in.
• We’ve mentioned RBC Ministries’ popular Our Daily Bread devotional already this week. But it’s not the only audio devotional they’ve got—Daily Strength is another excellent choice. Each day you’ll hear a short reflection about issues that confront us in our daily lives. One nice touch is that each message closes with several life-application questions to get you thinking about how the words you’ve heard apply to your situation. As with the other devotionals here, you can get the audio in a variety of ways, but it’s probably easiest to just subscribe to the podcast feed.
• The Words of Hope daily devotional is another good short devotional—each short reflection is based around a particular Bible passage and closes with a prayer you can use to get your day started on the right foot. You can listen at their website or grab the podcast feed.
• Last but not least, if you prefer to spend your devotional time just reading the Bible (without any additional commentary or devotional), the Bible Gateway has several audio Bibles you can listen to. If you stop by the Bible Gateway each day to read a Bible passage (perhaps using one of the reading plans), check at the top of the passage you’re reading for the “audio” button. If there’s audio available for the Bible version you’re reading, you can listen to it right there on the Bible Gateway.

There are plenty more devotionals (in text, audio, and pretty much every format you can imagine) to discover if you explore around the Gospel.com community. Hopefully, at least one of the devotionals we’ve mentioned this week caught your eye. Have fun exploring all these devotionals, and we’ll see you next week as we look ahead to Easter!

Albeit lighter on Christian theology than some devotionals, Daily Wisdom strives to offer insightful advice for all people, whether they follow Christ or not. They publish a devotional the majority of days that you can have sent to your inbox or RSS reader.

The following excerpt from their author’s page does a perfect job of explaining their mission and direction:

DW is not a conventional “devotional” but a daily message with an evangelistic or apologetic emphasis. Since DW is meant to appeal to a not-necessarily-Christian audience, we avoid phrases like “we, as Christians…” and words like “sanctification” that only believers understand. We steer away from “Christianese” - cliches only Christians use - and references to Bible verses, etc. understood exclusively by Christians. That’s not to say we don’t quote Scripture, only that when we do, we quote the verse itself, avoiding phrases like, “In Matthew where Jesus talks about the narrow gate…” We prefer “Revelation chapter 3, verse 6 says…” to “In Revelation 3:6, God says…” Submissions must not assume the reader is familiar with Bible stories or books of the Bible.

Read the latest from Daily wisdom here. Or, if you’re interested, you can read their archives.

The site also publishes a quotation every day called 1liner. While not always written by theologians, they often have theological implications.

Mention the word devotional to me and I instantly think of Our Daily Bread. The church I grew up in had a stack of them readily available on a table in the narthex. Said table was littered with various devotionals and aging bulletins that my friends and I would idly paw through while we waited for our parents to cease talking with each other (they insisted on talking for, like, a million hours after church each week). So for the better part of my life I associated Our Daily Bread with tiresome waiting.

And that was about all I thought about Our Daily Bread until more than a decade later when I actually read the thing. I remember being surprised by the level of insight inherent in every page. I shouldn’t have been surprised, there has been a stable of prolific writers and thinkers that make up its contributor list.

Our Daily Bread focuses on walking you through a passage of the bible, giving you context and a solid teaching about it. You can almost think of it as a mini-sermon. Unlike some devotionals, Our Daily Bread is written to appeal to the widest available audience. While the teaching is good, it does lack rigorous depth, although it might introduce you to some new ways to read scripture.

Also, It’s been published since 1956! You can find archives going back to 1995 on the Our Daily Bread web site. Not to mention it’s now translated into almost 30 languages like the following:

• Our Daily Bread in Spanish website
• Our Daily Bread in Indonesian, Thai, Russia, and Chinese website
• Our Daily Bread in Japanese website
• Our Daily Bread in Korean website

You can read it for free online here.

This is a great story via Marko of the gospel.com community member Youth Specialities:

I’ve shared before how god worked in and through the middle school ministry at my church to change a community in africa. our kids set out to raise $3000 to build one house for a family of orphans. their goofy little variety show brought in $25,000 the first year. the money went to put in two clean-water wells. the next year, the church responded again with almost $35,000, and a health clinic was funded.

i shared this story at the national youth workers convention a couple times. and recently, i received this way-encouraging email from a middle school pastor, who agreed to let me post it here:

MarkO -

I’ve been meaning to send you a note for a while to say thanks. I’m a Jr. High minister and we were at the St. Louis Believe Conference last year. I had already heard your story about the impact the Jr. Highers at your church made in Africa and shared it with some of my students on Friday night, only to have you tell them all on Saturday. From that story, God sparked our own students to act.

Our story turned out much like yours. We got together and set an ambitious goal of $6,000 to build two wells in Africa (people, including our H.S. guy, later came to me and told me they thought there was no way we’d ever get close). We made “Just Add Water” our summer project and challenged our kids and their families to use their summers for something greater than themselves. Long story short, by the end of the summer we hit over $9,000. In the mean time, our church began a relationship with a ministry in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya and we were able to provide water (plus showers and toilets, which there are almost none of in the entire community of 100,000) for three schools in the slums of Nairobi.

…

Read the rest of the amazing story at ysmarko’s blog.