AN EASTER SPECIAL MESSAGE
"Asserting The 'Narrow' Truths Underlying Christ's Resurrection"
(1 Corinthians 15:1-19, 20-28)

Need: "On Easter, people around the world are uplifted by focusing on the idea of the renewal of life out of death! Shouldn't Easter Sunday then be a rallying point for all of us to put aside our doctrinal differences and unite on belief in this u pbeat idea?!"
  1. According to the Bible, Christ's resurrection is a main ingredient in the "narrow" Gospel to believe to have the ONLY true eternal life:
    1. In 1 Corinthians 15:1-2, Paul announced that he was about to repeat the Gospel that gave eternal life to those who believed it.
    2. In repeating that Gospel, he showed that Christ's resurrection is an essential doctrine to be believed for eternal life, 1 Cor. 15:3-11:
      1. First, the Gospel includes Christ's death for sins, 1 Cor. 15:3.
      2. Second, the Gospel includes Christ's being buried, 1 Cor. 15:4a.
      3. Third, the Gospel includes Christ's resurrection, 1 Cor. 15:4b.
      4. Fourth, Christ's resurrection was validated by eyewitness reports that Jesus was seen alive after His death, 1 Cor. 15:5-6.
    3. Paul also taught this to be the ONLY true Gospel, Gal. 1:8-9.
    4. Thus, the Southern California cult that recently advertised eternal life through suicide to join an alleged spacecraft supposedly waiting out beyond the Hale-Bopp comet to transfer their souls to a distant planet to live eternally in alien bodies was thus a tragically ERRANT cult!
  2. In fact, by viewing what LED to Christ's rising, we note that only the VERY "narrow minded" can even rightly declare this Gospel:
    1. The Bible teaches that Christ became the "firstfruits," or the prototype of the resurrections for all the righteous, 15:20 with 24-26:
    2. Since His resurrection is the prototype, one is bound to accept very narrow beliefs that MANY in AND outside of Christendom DENY:
      1. While saying that Christ's rising is the prototype for resurrection, unlike many today, Paul meant ALL mortality is ABNORMAL:
        1. Paul noted that Christ's rising was the firstfruits in contrast to WHAT mortality began with Adam's sin, 1 Cor. 15:20-22.
        2. Since death is an "enemy" acc. to 1 Cor. 15:26, and Gen. 1:31a says ALL God's creation was very GOOD, then mortality had to have been TOTALLY absent when God created in Gen. 1!
        3. Thus, in being the "firstfruits," Jesus countered ALL mortality as His resurrection would finally destroy ALL of it, 15:20-26.
      2. Yet, adopting the idea that ADAM'S sin caused ALL of mortality counters many beliefs both in and outside of Christendom:
        1. It counters Liberal Theology's belief that Adam was a fictitious person, not making man a real sinner as it presumes that Gen. 1 and 2 are 2 errant accounts of a single original creation myth.
        2. It counters Mormon belief that Jesus was sired by sinful Adam, a belief that undermines Christ's sinlessness and adequacy as our Atonement, Journ. of Dis., p. 50 in Kirban's Mormonism, p. 40.
        3. It counters reincarnation, for it shows death to be foreign to creation as an enemy to be conquered by Christ's resurrection, not (reincarnation's idea) that death is part of a natural order!
        4. It counters the belief in many Christendom circles that God used evolution to create: theistic evolutionists assume that mortality existed before Adam so that evolution's survival of the fittest principle could function throughout creation's "days" of Gen. 1.
      3. Thus, accepting Christ's rising as a "firstfruits" to conquer the Adamic sin's unnatural effect of death leaves us "narrow-minded":
        1. Versus Liberalism, it makes us view Gen. 1-2 as inerrant, and recording but one creation in both chapters (See "Conclusion").
        2. Versus Mormonism, it makes one view Jesus not as sired by Adam, but as God's new creation in Mary's womb, Lk. 1:34-35.
        3. Versus Reincarnation, it leaves us affirming that man has but one life, and after that an accounting to give for what he has done with accepting Christ's salvation for eternal life, Heb. 9:27-28!
        4. Versus theistic evolution, it makes one hold to pure Creationism. (See the "Conclusion" notes on the reverse side.)
Application: Since we have no middle road to take, (1) to defend the TRUE Gospel offering TRUE eternal life, we must choose to promote the VERY "narrow-minded" belief that ONLY by faith in Christ's death and resurrection which overco mes ALL mortality can one truly have tangible eternal life! (2) This Easter, will YOU also go the "narrow-minded" route to trust and defend this Gospel?!

Lesson: We have a clear choice to make this Easter Sunday: we must EITHER promote the "narrow" Gospel that eternal life comes ONLY by faith in Christ's atonement for sin begun in Adam, the CAUSE of ALL mortality, OR side with "broad-minded" parties that mortality is part of the original natural order and be more compatible with and possibly slowly slide toward salvation -by-suicide cults in California, toward Mormonism, toward belief in reincarnation, toward evolutionism and toward Liberal Theology that denies the inerrancy of Genesis 1 and 2!