Paschal A Posteriori

The First Passover

The two things which must be regarded as historically secure when we talk about the first Easter are the emptiness of the tomb and the meetings with the risen Jesus.

N. T. Wright

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village, where He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a home. He didn’t go to college. He never visited a big city. He never traveled two-hundred miles from the place where He was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself. He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While He was dying his executioners gambled for his garments, the only property He had on earth. When He was dead. He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today He is the central figure of the human race. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one solitary life.

G. Curtis Jones, 1000 Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1986), 196–197.

Satan’s Waterloo From an old clipping, here is the way the news of the victory at Waterloo arrived in England. There were no telegrams or telephones in those days, of course, but everyone knew that Wellington was facing Napoleon in a great battle, and that the future of England was in great uncertainty. A sailing ship semaphored (signaled with coded flags) the news to the signalman on top of Winchester Cathedral. He signaled to another man on a hill, and thus news of the battle was relayed by semaphore from station to station to London and all across the land. When the ship came in, the signalman on board semaphored the first word: Wellington. The next word was defeated, and then the fog came down and the ship could not be seen. “Wellington Defeated” went across England, and there was great gloom all over the countryside. After two or three hours, the fog lifted, and the signal came again: Wellington Defeated the Enemy. Then all England rejoiced. There was that day, when they put the body of the Lord in the tomb, that the message appeared to be Christ Defeated.… But three days later, the fog lifted

Robert J. Morgan, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000), 252.