The Easter Season

WED., MAR. 26, 1986, 5:52 AM
FARM, STUDY

Hear, o son, for you are close to the culmination of the Easter season for this year. Hear as I teach you yet again concerning this remembrance… this celebration. The Lenten services have helped to stir this remembrance, during the time of late winter. Now the actual Easter week coincides nicely with the advent of Spring.

You thought about and commented on the fact that Easter has no specific date, but, instead, is tied to the fullness of the moon and the coming of Spring. There is a sense in which this links this most important remembrance of Me as Jesus with a pagan festival. Shouldn’t there be a specific date on which I arose? No, you see the tradition is that I arose on a Sunday, the day after the Sabbath, the first day of the week. Thus, if Easter is to be celebrated on a Sunday the date must vary. The association with the moon and the equinox is just a means of determining when. Easter shall be. I cannot make a very strong defense of this. Just accept it as one of the difficulties with time. Timelessness is much simpler. You shall see.

I promised to comment on the clash of interpretations of My death experience. The story which generally dominates is that the Jewish leaders became alarmed at My influence, paid Judas to identify Me (and yes, it does seem strange that a man dangerous enough to be crucified would not be easily recognizable), arrested Me in a surprise encounter, and then kept up the evil pressure so that I was convicted and quickly hung on a cross until death. I was the victim of evil forces. I was the quiet, suffering, unrecognized Messiah. The conclusion of this story is that you and ALL people in the ages since that time of crucifixion who have not accepted Me as the Messiah with absolute fullness are responsible for My death. I could have been saved, but you let Me die. The fundamental sin of humanity is denying My Lordship.

Hence, in this story Easter morn is the evidence that I could overcome what the world did to Me. I cried, “Father, why have you forsaken Me?” for I thought He had. But I overcame death, and continued My spiritual reign as an integral part of the Triune Godhead. Yet fundamentally, I had been overcome by the apathy and evil of those I came to redeem.

The other true story is that I was “in charge” from the time I decided to go to Jerusalem at that Passover time. My work on the earth, as the incarnated Jesus of Nazareth, was over. I had taught enough and done enough to establish the basis for Holy Scriptures. I, the Christ, the Holy Spirit, and Almighty God KNEW, in absolute omniscience, that it was time for sacrifice. And hence those who participated in the drama really could do no other. Judas could not have repented earlier. The people could not have been unwilling to be aroused. Pilate could not have set Me free or merely imprisoned Me. The drama was destined to be as it was, and I was fully aware of what I was doing, who was in charge, and what the result would be.

OK, which is it? Well, you know, certainly, that it is both. It is not some knowable amalgam, but the mystery of both. The personal application is: are you a saint or a sinner? Not some of each, but fully both. Do you have free will? Yes. Am I guiding you along a predestined path? Yes. One strong message of Easter, for you in rational Western culture, is that, yes, life is odd, meaning full of mystery. This is where pure science, as applied to humans and societies, clashes with Easter. Science can create or identify piece-meal knowledge. But true and full knowledge about life is mystery, and the closest you can come to it is in accepting the mystery of this Easter season, and learning from Me in this mysterious way.