Do you still not understand him?

Author Series – Blair-Caldwell African-American Research Library

April 7, 2014 Time: 6-8 pm

An Evening of Poetry, Music, Story-Telling, and Refreshments

Featuring: Orville Springs, Author of Remember When, the Autobiography of the Poet

8          Going

5          Maybe

379      Invited

Matthew 22:14 (King James Version)

¹⁴ For many are called, but few are chosen.

God is here. God Himself, and in the highest. He enters the scene, as I may express it, when darkness covers all the land. That was His acceptance of the offer of the Lamb who said, “Lo, I come.” And such offer being accepted, God would show no mercy. If Jesus is made sin for us, it is unrelieved, unmitigated judgment He must have to sustain. The darkness was the expression of this. God was accepting the offer, and dealing with the Victim accordingly, abating nothing of the demands of righteous.

And then, when the offer has been fulfilled, and the sacrifice rendered, and Jesus has given up His life, when the blood of the Victim has flowed, and all is finished, God by another figure, owns the accomplishment of everything, the fullness of the atonement, and the perfection of the reconciliation. The veil of the temple is rent from the top to the bottom. He sits on the throne, that judges aright, and weighs all claims and their answers, sin and its judgment, peace and its price and its purchase, gives out that wondrous witness of the deep, ineffable satisfaction that He took in the deed that was then perfected in “the place that is called Calvary.”

What a part for the blessed God Himself to take in this great crisis, this greatest of all solemnities, when everything was taking its place for eternity.

And further still. Angels are here also, and heaven, earth, and hall’ sin, also, and death, yea, and the world too.

Angels are here, witnessing these things, and learning new wonders. Christ is seen of them.

Heaven, earth, and hell are here, waiting on this moment; rocks and graves, the earthquake, and the darkness of the sky, bespeaking this.

Sin and death are disposed of, set aside and overthrown; the rent veil and the empty sepulcher publishing these mysteries.

The world learns its judgment in the sealed stone being rolled away, and the keepers of it forced to take the sentence of death in themselves.

Surely we may call this the Great Crisis – the most solemn moment in the history of God’s dealings with His creatures. Wondrous assemblage of actors and of actings; God and Jesus, man and Satan, angels, heaven, earth and hell, sin and death, and the world, all occupy their place, whether of shame or of defeat, and the world, all occupy their place, whether of shame or of judgment, or virtues and of triumphs, of manifestations and of glory. This is the record of each of the evangelists in several way, or according to his own method, under the Spirit. Our speculations can find no place. We have but to take up the lessons which they teach us, lessons for the ascertained and well-understood eternity.

And as I have thus looked a little carefully at the cross, so would I a little further at the empty sepulcher. 

Victorious death, or resurrection from the dead, is the great secret. It was intimated in the very first promise: for the word to the serpent in Genesis 3 told of the death of Christ, and then of His victory; that is, of His victory by dying.