Eric's Beijing Diary

I stopped by the church on my way back from the mountain last night to help Jessica proofread the new church history. There were a bunch of people coloring Easter eggs together, so I took this picture of Carol and her friend. Easter is a Christian day, of course, but it came to China from America, so the Easter eggs came along. I really do like the Easter celebration in China. Since Easter is not a Chinese holiday, and it has not caught on like Christmas, it is a very Christian time. It would be hard to beat Christmas for importance--none of it would be possible if Christ had not been born. But Paul said, "And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." This really is the ultimate question. Examining the facts from secular history, we know that there was this man named Jesus, who was born in Bethlehem and grew up in Nazareth. We know that he had some followers, and that his preaching angered the Jewish religious leaders. We know that he was crucified by the Romans, and that a few days later, his body disappeared.

So where do we go from there? We could continue to talk about history, but the fact is that most Christians do not come to faith in the Resurrection through history. They come to faith through what the Bible says about Him, although it is certainly important that nothing in history contradicts what the Bible says about him. But it his affect on history that makes this question so much easier and more obvious for those of us who live in the present century. Pick a city anywhere in the world. Pick a district in that city. Pick an office building in that district. Enter the elevator and pick a floor. Walk onto that floor and pick an office. Walk into that office and pick a desk. There will be a calendar on that desk governing all the affairs of the person who sits there, and the year will be a testimony to the reign of the one who is the center point of all of human history.

When I was a kid in Japan, all the coins had the year engraved on them. But it was not the year according to the Western calendar. It was the year of the reign of the emperor. The date imprinted on every coin honored the ruling sovereign. No matter where you are in the world, pull a coin out of your pocket an take a look at the year. Which king does that year pay homage to?

So how did He do this? How did this simple carpenter from the countryside of Judea get himself positioned as the center point of all of human history, and that after his death? The answer, of course, is the reason for Easter. Resurrection.