FROM THE CHURCH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 20, 12 April 1950, Page 5

FROM THE CHURCH

Whakatane St. John’s Methodist

Text: And with great power gave the Apostles their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. (Acts 4.33). Is simply a record of the spirit in which Christianity as a religion faced a hostile world; said the Rev C. Jenkin, in St. John’s Methodist Church on Sunday night. Continuing it may be asked, ‘‘why did the first apostles singe out that particular truth for such emphasis? “You have only to look into the experience through which they had passed to discover it,” the Rev Jenkin continued. “Somehow the Crucifixion had altered things for them. Truth seemed important to make any headway; love looked like the weakest thing in the whole world. It is perfectly true that the Cross scattered this little company of disciples. It scattered them because it scattered their belief. Their faith was in pieces. Do you wonder that they fled. Is it not what yre all want to do when life really breaks down for us in any fundamental way, v/hen our hearts are broken and our hopes lie in the dust? “If there had been the Cross and nothing after it Christianity would have died out.

“That word lasted only for three days. Then out of the darkness came a light. It was borne in upon them gradually that Jesus had risen from the dead. At first they refused to believe it; they regarded it as the idle tale of overwrought hearts. There is no scepticism in the world like the scepticism of the heart, which has tasted the poison in life’s cup. “It needed a tremendous weight of evidence and assurance to convince these men. When that evidence was given they were sure of their ground. “Can you not see that the thing which had changed their world must necessarily be the supreme thing in their message to others? “They knew that Jesus was alive. “There has never been a generation which stood in deeper need of this truth of the Resurrection than the one in which we live. Because the death and Resurrection of Jesus are the events in history round which there gathers firstly all the tragedy and then all the triumph of sacrifice in all the centuries.

“The Cross is not the last word. Every true Cross is succeeded by a Resurrection in which what seemed to be poured out in sacrifice comes back with power,” Mr Jenkin said.

The message; He is not here; He is risen, sends back over the whole world a message of uplift. Life holds the keys of victory. Love has the power to accomplish its ends.

This faith we need to hold as a personal thing. The three days of darkness have to be lived through in human life. There is an answer in the universe to human hearts. Not death, but life, is the final reality. That is the Faith of Resurrection. This is the victory, which overcometh the world, even our Faith.