Rejoice, for the tomb is empty!

[Divine Discontent]

[papau]

1. Christ is Risen, Truly, He is risen! Christ shall come again

Christ has Died, Christ has Risen, Christ shall come again.

[Divine Discontent]

2. blessings to You and Yours... eom

[papau]

37. And to You and Yours - Amen

[JanusAscending]

6. HE LIVES!

He lives, he lives , Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me, he talks with me, along life's narrow way. You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart!! Alleluiah, and Happy Easter one and all!O8) :loveya: DC

[papau]

38. Nice :-)

[FirstLight]

3. I am at church right now...

finishing the bulletins for the Easter Service...

Blessings to all of you, for today is a great day indeed!

My faith is somewhat eclectic, but I have found a very special Home here at my Lutheran Church, and I praise God for bringing us to this wonderful family of the Heart. AMEN

[Divine Discontent]

9. good for you! have a great day. I've done bulletins, I enjoyed it actually EOM

[UrbScotty]

4. Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!

Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!
Sons of men and angels say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia!

[Divine Discontent]

8. I love that hymn! thanks eom

[CreekDog]

13. A favorite hymn

Happy Easter to you. :pals:

[davidinalameda]

16. I've been humming that all day today

one of my favorites

[Pierogi_Pincher]

5. From an Eastern Orthodox Christian....

our Easter will not be celebrated until the end of April this year, but I do wish to convey to all who are partaking today in their joyous celebration,

"A Blessed Pascha!"

P_P

[knitter4democracy]

43. Me too!

We missed church this weekend due to a nasty virus we're all fighting, and it looks like we're going to miss the Annunciation feast as well. :(

We're in a Russian church. Which patriarch are you under?

[ORDagnabbit]

7. Osiris and Dioynus and others beat ya'll by a thousand years or so

http://www.pocm.info/

You'll discover the evidence, the scholarship, and the reasoning behind this eye opening understanding of western intellectual history.

You already know Christmas trees and Easter eggs were originally Pagan, and you probably know the seasonal timing of the two holidays is Pagan too. Mildly interesting. Not what you'll find here. What you'll discover at POCM is that ancient cultures around the Mediterranean shared standard ideas about Gods and their powers and place in the universe—and that Christianity simply adopted those ideas and applied them to Jesus. Ancient people knew godmen did miracles. The first Christians thought Jesus was a godman, so they told stories about Jesus doing miracles. They even had Him doing the same miracles as the other godmen.

The core of Christianity—the worship of a miracle working, walking, talking godman who brings salvation—was also the core of other ancient religions that began at least a thousand years before Jesus.

more at the link

[aquart]

12. You want to read Robert Eisler, too. "Orpheus the Fisher."

Especially what he has to say about the messianic fish meal.

[Divine Discontent]

21. God bless you! eom

[Sanctified]

42. You know that both Christmas and Easter take place close to Jewish holidays right?

Jesus was conceived during Hanukkah and died during Passover. And the miracles he was performing had been performed thousands of years earlier by other Jews, Christianity is firmly based in the traditions of Judaism afterall Jesus was born and died a Jew.

[pegleg]

46. All those other religions used the same general texts and prophecies

which were passed down from generations onward. And all were looking for a messiah to come along that fulfilled the prophecies and many individuals were thought to fill the bill. Christians feel that Jesus was the only one who measured up perfectly. But that is surely a matter of faith.

[aquart]

10. "He's Alive!" Dolly Parton

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNlykSNHzC4>

[roguevalley]

11. Happy Easter one and all.:)

[aquart]

22. Did you listen to it?

It's Easter as told from the perspective of Christ's disciples on the ground. Waiting to be arrested. Grief-stricken. Guilt-ridden.

She sang it on Johnny Carson one night and blew me away. I never heard it again till I found it on You Tube.

[Divine Discontent]

28. thanks for the Dolly link!!! :) eom

[ChazII]

31. Beautiful.

Thank you for sharing. I have passed it along to others.

[CreekDog]

14. Happy Easter Everybody

This is the reason for hope. :loveya:

[greyl]

15. Mourn for the victims of Salvationist Religion. nt

[Divine Discontent]

20. God bless you! eom

[nemo137]

17. Where, O Death, is your Victory?

Where, O Grave, is your Sting?

From a mostly secular Lutheran, a happy and blessed Easter to you and yours, with the requisite amounts of good food, music, and fellowship. Alleluia.

[SidDithers]

18. No, thank you...nt

Sid

[Divine Discontent]

29. God bless you! Thanks for coming into the Easter post in the Religion thread nonetheless! eom

[Deep13]

19. So if he's not dead, he really did not sacrifice himself for the sins of the world.

:shrug:

And how does torturing an innocent man to death make the rest of us any less guilty? And just what are these "sins" anyway?

[Divine Discontent]

27. hi!

first, thank you for coming into the Easter thread. My thoughts on your questions - although I am no scholar - first, he was dead, and He did suffer incredible suffering during the time just before his crucifixion and having the nails put into him to bleed to death by. He was sent by God to experience what it was like to be a man with all the thoughts a man has, and the sufferings, but with the spiritual strength to resist sinning. God gave us free will, and we use it clearly, there are people who walk around this planet with nary a hint of concern for the suffering of their fellow man, and call themselves Christian, and there are atheists who treat everyone they meet with utmost love - and vice versa. The difference in being a true Christian is realizing that we were separated from God by sin, and God wanted us to have an example to live by - a person to lead our lives by, and to praise for dying and having to experience going to wherever Satan exists in Hell (where he set the captives free who had died previously) so we don't have to, before He came back to Earth, and subsequently ascended into Heaven about a month later.

I believe we have a conscience given to us by God, and a spirit - it is amazing what we can sit and plan in detail in advance without moving or speaking. We have incredibly intricate bodies, and ability to love is something we are ALL given regardless of becoming Christian or not - God made us ALL in His image - so we all have the ability to be incredible servants to each other - thus my comment about what I've seen from some atheists personally.

I'm no scholar, as I said, but I thank you for asking your questions.

God bless you this Easter.

[GeorgeGist]

33. Circular critical thinking skills...

recycle ludicrous beliefs.

[Deep13]

44. response:

He did suffer incredible suffering during the time just before his crucifixion and having the nails put into him to bleed to death by.

The canonical gospels do not dwell on this. The whole cult of suffering thing seems to be a later invention. Frankly, the idea that there is any value is suffering is an extremely dangerous one.

He was sent by God to experience what it was like to be a man with all the thoughts a man has, and the sufferings, but with the spiritual strength to resist sinning.

So either he sent his "son" (I have not yet figured out in what way a spirit can be a father int he literal sense of the word) to be tortured to death. How screwed up is that? Is that supposed to be an admirable gesture? Besides, modern Christian theology teaches that JC is god. So that meant god sent himself. As an omniscient being, wouldn't god already know what it is like to do those things? What's "spiritual strength" anyway when there are no spirits. And how can one "sin" against a nonexistent god? Perhaps JC's lack of sin merely recognizes that fact: JC didn't sin because he knew sin didn't exist. The Gospel of Thomas suggests that.

God gave us free will, and we use it clearly,...

I doubt there is any free will, let alone free will of divine origin. We are the products of our environment. Everything we are physically and everything we think, feel and do leads us to the choices we make. Free will is an illusion which exists on an individual level, but looking at human behavior objectively makes it clear that it does not exist. Even if there is free will, there is no reason to suppose it is divine in origin.

...we were separated from God by sin....

What does that mean? If we are separated from god, it is because he is blaming us for his failures. If he made us, then he made our "sinful" nature too. He cannot make people with a propensity toward "sin" and then expect us to refrain from our nature. As a heavenly father, YHWH is pretty damn dysfunctional.

a person to lead our lives by,

Sorry, but I find his life lessons with a few exceptions to be vague at best and outright self-destructive at worst. I don't see anything particularly admirable in JC's death. Torturing and killing another person to save ones self is a monstrous evil and in this case there was no danger to escape from anyway.

As far as going to hell, where is that exactly? I submit that if it is not a real place in a real location, then it is not real. Why was it necessary to commit an act or torture and murder to free people from hell? Couldn't YHWH just free them? Anyway why should dead people care where they end up. All sensation, thought and perception ends at death. And do you have any evidence for any of this? One is post-death JC only mentioned in the latest of the four official gospels? One would think that would be an event at least as noteworthy as the water-to-wine thing. As with hell, where is heaven? We used to think it literally wa sin the sky and hell underground. Well, unless it has been sucked into a jet engine, there is no heaven in the sky.

I believe we have a conscience given to us by God, and a spirit

There is absolutely no reason to think so. Again, our ability to think and feel is entirely biological in origin. We are way beyond the point where these things remained mysterious and open for speculation. Morality (if that is what you mean by a conscience) is a basic function of human nature and has nothing to do with god. In fact, many religious teachings are in flat contradiction to innate morality.

- it is amazing what we can sit and plan in detail in advance without moving or speaking.

Yes it is. That ability to consider matters beyond here and now seems to be what sets us apart from other animals and even other primates. Among the thinks that this ability allows is the contemplation of the supernatural. In other words, our circumspection invented god, not the other way around.

We have incredibly intricate bodies,

Argument from design. Natural selection precludes a designer. We know for a fact that god had nothing to do with our evolution.

and ability to love is something we are ALL given regardless of becoming Christian or not

First, love is a mammalian instinct that promotes social cohesion and care for children. There's nothing special about it. The suggestion that it exists regardless of ones religiosity means that Christianity is irrelevant to it.

- God made us ALL in His image -

Again, natural selection precludes a designer. Whatever god may have made, his creations do not include humanity or anything living. And frankly, I find it insulting to told we are made in the image of a paranoid, bullying, sadistic, misogynistic bronze-age sky god. I think we are better than that.

so we all have the ability to be incredible servants to each other

How can you know that if the result is incredible, that is beyond belief? Anyway, we need to stop being servants and start being citizens.

[trotsky]

45. Suffering?

Typical crucifixion in Roman times took days, not hours. Victims usually died of dehydration or asphyxiation. Jesus' ~3 hour stint is NOTHING compared to most historical accounts of that kind of execution. He barely suffered at all in comparison.

Victims of cancer suffer longer and at least as intensely as Jesus would have, based on the gospel stories. God wanted to know what it's like to suffer as a human being, huh? He sure wimped out.

[ChazII]

23. Happy Easter to you and

thank you for this thread.

[Divine Discontent]

30. You're welcome, and blessed! I'm joyful to see many wonderful comments

and of course I pray over the couple that seem out of place, but we can at least pray for them!

HE'S ALIVE! (as Dolly sings in that great youtube clip)

[Zebedeo]

24. He's alive

He's alive, He's alive, He's alive, Hallelujah! Alive, forever, Amen!

[Hissyspit]

25. "Resurrection Misunderstood By Many, Scholars Say"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/21/AR2008032102685.html

Resurrection Misunderstood By Many, Scholars Say

By Rachel Zoll
Associated Press
Saturday, March 22, 2008; Page B11

On Easter Sunday, Christians will proclaim the message at the heart of their faith -- "He is risen" -- and will affirm the hope that God will raise all the dead at the end of time.

But this belief is deeply misunderstood, say scholars from varied faith traditions who have been trying to clear up the confusion in several recent books.

"We are troubled by the gap between the views on these things of the general public and the findings of contemporary scholarship," said Kevin Madigan and Jon Levenson, co-authors of the upcoming book "Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews."

The book traces the overlooked Jewish roots of the Christian belief in resurrection and builds on that history to challenge the idea that resurrection simply means life after death. To the authors, being raised up has a physical element, not just a spiritual one.

Levenson last year wrote a related book, "Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life." Meanwhile, N.T. Wright, a prominent New Testament scholar and author of the 2003 book "The Resurrection of the Son of God," has just published "Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church."

Debate about Jesus's Resurrection has focused on whether Jesus rose bodily from the dead after the Romans crucified him on Good Friday, or whether Resurrection was something abstract.

Wright's 2003 book was considered one of the most important recent arguments that Jesus was physically resurrected.

The three scholars also have been challenging the idea, part of Greek philosophy and popular now, that resurrection for Jews and the followers of Jesus is simply the survival of an individual's soul in the hereafter. The scholars say resurrection occurs for the whole person -- body and soul. For early Christians and some Jews, resurrection meant being given back one's body or possibly God creating a new similar body after death, Wright has said.

Madigan and Levenson, among other scholars, also emphasize that resurrection for humankind is a belief that Christians and Jews share. Christians generally find it difficult to imagine that a faith that doesn't believe in Jesus's Resurrection can believe in resurrection at all.

But "as the early church was developing, rabbis were making resurrection an article of normative belief," Madigan and Levenson said in e-mailed answers to questions from the Associated Press. "That is something many Jews do not know. Like many Christians, they are under the misimpression that resurrection is a uniquely Christian hope."

MORE

[KitSileya]

26. Indeed He is risen.

I managed to go to Midnight Mass this year, the first time in three years (in 2006 I was in Paris with friends, and in 2007 I was on crutches.) I didn't realize how much I'd missed it.

Deg være ære, Herre over dødens makt
Evig skal døden være Kristus underlagt.

(Quote from my favorite Easter hymn - always sung at the end of Easter Mass, and such a joy it is to sing.)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

32. From one of our anthems this morning:

RISE heart ; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delayes,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him mayst rise :
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long :
Or since all music is but three parts vied,
And multiplied ;
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.

Words by George Herbert (17th century English poet), music by Ralph Vaughan Williams from his "Five Mystical Songs" for baritone and choir

Let us go forth in peace, alleluia, alleluia
In the name of the risen Christ, alleluia, alleluia

[Divine Discontent]

39. "and make up our defects with His sweet art"

love that line!

[hifalutin]

41. And trust in His

redeeming blood and try His works to do.

Happy Easter!

[struggle4progress]

34. Now the green blade rises from the buried grain

Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain
Love lives again, that with the dead has been
Love is come again like wheat arising green

In the grave they laid Him, love by hatred slain
Thinking that He would never wake again
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen
Love is come again like wheat arising green

Forth He came at Easter, like the risen grain
He that for three days in the grave had lain
Raised from the dead, my living Lord is seen
Love is come again like wheat arising green

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain
Your touch can call us back to life again
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been
Love is come again like wheat arising green

<John Crum / "Noel Nouvelet">
http://www.roots-and-wings.com/roots_web.htm

[John Gauger]

35. What?

[Divine Discontent]

40. empty tomb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_tomb

Blessings!

[and-justice-for-all]

36. 'If' he did come back from the dead...

THAT WOULD MAKE HIM A ZOMBIE!!!AAAAHHHHH "Brains, Brains..."