The Message of the Prophets
Before baseball’s 1906 World Series, sportswriter Hugh Fullerton made an astute prediction. He said the Chicago Cubs, who were expected to win, would lose the first and third games and win the second. Oh, and it would rain on the fourth. He was right on each point. Then, in 1919, his analytical skills told him certain players were losing World Series games intentionally. Fullerton suspected they’d been bribed by gamblers. Popular opinion ridiculed him. Again, he was right.
Fullerton was no prophet—just a wise man who studied the evidence. Jeremiah was a real prophet whose prophecies always came true. Wearing an ox yoke, Jeremiah told Judah to surrender to the Babylonians and live (Jeremiah 27:2, 12). The false prophet Hananiah contradicted him and broke the yoke (28:2–4, 10). Jeremiah told him, “Listen, Hananiah! The LORD has not sent you,” and added, “This very year you are going to die” (vv. 15–16). Two months later, Hananiah was dead (v. 17).
The New Testament tells us, “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets . . . , but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2). Through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and through the Scriptures and guidance of the Holy Spirit, God’s truth still instructs us today.
Deeper Healing
On Easter Sunday 2020, the famous Christ the Redeemer statue that overlooks Rio de Janeiro in Brazil was illuminated in a way that appeared to clothe Jesus in the attire of a physician. The poignant portrayal of Christ as a doctor was in tribute to the many front-line healthcare workers battling the coronavirus pandemic. The imagery brings to life the common description of Jesus as our Great Physician (Mark 2:17).
Jesus did, in fact, heal many people of their physical afflictions during His earthly ministry: blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46–52), a leper (Luke 5:12–16), and a paralytic (Matthew 9:1–8), to name a few. His care for the health of those following Him was also demonstrated in providing for their hunger by multiplying a simple meal to feed the masses (John 6:1–13). Each of these miracles reveal both Jesus’ mighty power and His genuine love for people.
He was also concerned with an even more devastating problem than any of the physical ailments He cured. His greatest act of healing came through His death and resurrection, as foretold by the prophet Isaiah. It is “by [Jesus’] wounds we are healed” of our worst affliction: our separation from God as a result of our sins (Isaiah 53:5). Though Jesus doesn’t heal us of all our health challenges, we can always trust the cure for our deepest need: the healing He brings to our relationship with God.
This Changes Everything
Jaroslav Pelikan, longtime Yale professor considered one of “his generation’s preeminent authorities on Christian history,” was renowned for his extensive academic career. He published more than thirty books and won the esteemed Kluge Prize as a lifetime award for his voluminous writing. One of his students, however, recounted what he considered his teacher’s most important words, spoken from his deathbed:…
Not So
“I wanted somehow to make it not so,” lamented the man, eulogizing a friend who died young. His words gave poignancy to humanity’s ageless heart-cry. Death stuns and scars us all. We ache to undo what can’t be undone.
The longing to “make it not so” might well describe how Jesus’ followers felt after His death. The Gospels say little about…
Sending Out an SOS
When the hut of a settler in a mountainous region of Alaska caught fire, the settler was left without adequate shelter and with few provisions in the coldest state in the United States—in the middle of a frigid winter. Three weeks later, an aircraft flew over and spied the large SOS the man had stamped out in the snow and darkened with soot, and he was finally rescued.
The psalmist David was certainly in dire straits. He was being pursued by jealous King Saul who sought to kill him. And so he fled to the city of Gath, where he pretended to be insane in order to preserve his life (see 1 Samuel 20–21). Out of those events emerged Psalm 34, where David cried out in prayer to God and found peace (vv. 4, 6). God heard his pleas and delivered him.
Are you in a desperate situation and crying out for help? Be assured that God still hears and responds to our desperate prayers today. As with David, He’s attentive to our distress calls and takes away our fears (v. 4)—and sometimes even saves us “out of [our] troubles” (v. 6).
Scripture invites us to “cast [our] cares on the
Running to Tell
The modern-day marathon is based on the story of a Greek messenger, Pheidippides. According to legend, in 490
Some 500 years later, two women also ran to deliver good news—the most pivotal news in all of history. When Mary and Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb where Jesus had been placed after His crucifixion, they found it empty. An angel told them that Jesus had “risen from the dead” and to “go quickly and tell his disciples” (Matthew 28:7). The women, “afraid yet filled with joy,” ran to tell the disciples what they’d discovered (v. 8).
May we have the same joyful exuberance at the resurrection of Jesus, and may it invigorate us to share the good news with others. We may not even need to “run” farther than next door to find someone who needs to know about our Savior. He won the battle against death so we might live victoriously with Him forever!
Grief Overturned
According to Jim and Jamie Dutcher, filmmakers known for their knowledge of wolves, when happy, wolves wag their tails and romp about. But after the death of a pack member, they grieve for weeks. They visit the place where the pack member died, showing grief by their drooping tails and mournful howls.
Grief is a powerful emotion that we’ve all experienced, particularly at the death of a loved one or a treasured hope. Mary Magdalene experienced it. She had belonged to Jesus’s supporters and traveled with Him and His disciples (Luke 8:1–3). But Jesus’s cruel death on a cross separated them now. The only thing left for Mary to do for Jesus was to finish anointing His body for burial—a task the Sabbath had interrupted. But imagine how Mary felt upon arriving at the tomb and finding not a lifeless, broken body but a living Savior! Though she hadn’t at first recognized the man standing before her, the sound of her name spoken by Him told her who He was—Jesus! Instantly, grief turned to joy. Mary now had joyful news to share: “I have seen the Lord!” (John 20:18).
Jesus entered our dark world to bring freedom and life. His resurrection is a celebration of the fact that He accomplished what He set out to do. Like Mary, we can celebrate Christ’s resurrection and share the good news that He is alive! Alleluia!
Live Wire
“I felt like I had touched a live wire,” said professor Holly Ordway, describing her reaction to John Donne’s majestic poem “Holy Sonnet 14.” There’s something happening in this poetry, she thought. I wonder what it is. Ordway recalls it as the moment her previously atheistic worldview allowed for the possibility of the supernatural. Eventually she would believe in the transforming reality of the resurrected Christ.
Touching a live wire—that must have been how Peter, James, and John felt on the day Jesus took them to a mountaintop, where they witnessed a dramatic transformation. Jesus’s “clothes became dazzling white” (Mark 9:3) and Elijah and Moses appeared—an event we know today as the Transfiguration.
Descending from the mountain, Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone what they’d seen until He’d risen (v. 9). But they didn’t even know what He meant by “rising from the dead” (v. 10).
The disciples’ understanding of Jesus was woefully incomplete, because they couldn’t conceive of a destiny that included His death and resurrection. But eventually their experiences with their resurrected Lord would utterly transform their lives. Late in his life, Peter described his encounter with Jesus’s Transfiguration as the time when the disciples were first “eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16).
As Professor Ordway and the disciples learned, when we encounter Jesus’s power we touch a “live wire.” There’s something happening here. The living Christ beckons us.
Impossible to Hold
Swimming with friends in the Gulf of Mexico, Caitlyn encountered a shark, which grabbed her legs and pulled at her body. To counter the attack, Caitlyn punched the shark in the nose. The predator unclenched its jaws and swam away in defeat. Although its bite caused multiple wounds, which required over 100 stitches, the shark was unable to keep Caitlyn in its grasp.
This story reminds me of the fact that Jesus delivered a blow to death, ending its power to intimidate and defeat His followers. According to Peter, “It was impossible for death to keep its hold on [Jesus]” (Acts 2:24).
Peter said these words to a crowd in Jerusalem. Perhaps many of them had been the ones yelling out, “Crucify him!” to condemn Jesus (Matthew 27:23). As a result, Roman soldiers fastened Him to a cross where He hung until they confirmed He was dead. Jesus’s body was carried to a tomb where it stayed for three days until God resurrected Him. After His resurrection, Peter and others spoke and ate with Him, and after forty days they watched Him ascend into heaven (v. 32).
Jesus’s life on earth ended amidst physical suffering and mental anguish, yet God’s power defeated the grave. Because of this, death—or any other struggle—lacks the ability to keep us in its grip forever. One day all believers will experience everlasting life and wholeness in God’s presence. Focusing on this future can help us find freedom today.
