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-   -   And now, a reflection (https://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=88777)

Dr. Ernest C. Ville, D.C.S. 03-29-2013 01:24 PM

And now, a reflection
 
Brothers and sisters,

It is at this time of the year that we must reflect on just how totally awesome our Lord & Savior is. Now we are all familiar with the Bible's account of Jesus being taken, "tried", sentenced and death. And we all know that He temporarily died for a bit over 24 hours, and returned to rule over the dead. This is child's-play.

However, have you ever put yourself in His shoes? Bear with me here: I know that you're not the Son of an All-Powerful God so you can't imagine the situation, but let me guide you.

You've always existed. Time has no meaning for you. 5 minutes might as well be 5 centuries.

You're omniscient: you know everything that has ever happened, ever will happen. You know what everyone is thinking. You've seen every single moment of every single day since you created the concept of a "day".

You're all-powerful: you've created the Earth and everything in it. Including the hoards of people calling for your death. But you rest assured, knowing that you've also created a place called Hell, wherein these sinners will burn for all eternity. You've lovingly created both the kitten and the hyena. You've carefully designed the very cell-structure of cancer, HIV and the common cold.

Your dad (who is also sort of your brother, in the Alabama sense) tells you you have to go through the dying process for some reason. Somehow this will allow a tiny minority of all humanity to avoid going to the Hell that you've designed to be a place of eternal torture. Your dad wants you to experience death in the same way that every single living thing you've created has experienced. For some reason this is a big deal.

You cry to dad: "Daddy, I don't wanna". Daddy said you have to. So you are crucified. You are strung up on the cross along with some common criminals and spend all day Friday dying like some regular human being, or something. At the end of the day, once the crowds are gone, some soldier decides to speed things along and stabs you (say, Friday at 6pm).

You die. And go to Hell, the place you designed, presumably to see how things are going down there. This is the place that the vast majority of all humans will spend eternity. And you're there until, say, Sunday at 6am. A grand total of 36 hours. Enough to experience some of it, anyways.

Sunday you get sick of Hell and say "hey you know what, it's been real, Imma go check out earth again". So you rise from the dead, just like you knew you would back there on Friday.

Bam, all of humanity now has a chance to live forever in Heaven, instead of Hell. Woo.

Isn't that terrific? Can you just imagine the difficulty it must have been for God? I mean, temporary death for less than two days? Spent in a place that He had designed? What a sacrifice!

I don't know that *I* could do this. Could you?

Paragon of virtue 03-29-2013 02:31 PM

Re: And now, a reflection
 
For the sake of everyone you would hope that we would do what Jesus did. He laid down His life for us, but the important thing is that He was able to take his life back up again. None of us could have done that. Our deaths would have been permanent and we'd still be in Hell to this day. I think of Hell/Hades as sort of a holding pen until the "Great White Throne Judgement" that formally sentences the damned to "The Lake of Fire" that most consider "Hell" a place that's even now being prepared for Satan and his crew. Then there is "Hell" being separated from God and a lot of people are experiencing this even now here on Earth.


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