This year, Easter falls on 4 April. This day may mean nothing to you, if you are a non-Christian. The pity is, it is not even a public holiday  in India. Easter is always on a  Sunday year after year.  For us Christians, it is a great festival.  You need to know something about Easter as a matter of general knowledge.

On this day, Jesus Christ became alive after 3 days inside the grave. He breathed His last on the cross three days earlier;  that day is called ‘Good Friday’. Good Friday and Easter are one unit, one following the other. Resurrection  is a distinctive and second to none event. A dead man coming to life and  remembering everything of his previous life! Incredible  indeed.  Such second life hasn’t been  granted to  any human being in the  world till now.  If it has happened to some one, he cannot be an ordinary earthling like us but someone exclusive from some other world.  Jesus  is that  extraordinary man. He did not belong to the Earth. Actually, He is a Man-God.  He was fully Man and fully God.  As Man he died and as God, He rose from the dead.  Death could have no dominion over Him. 

You would  surely like to know why Lord Jesus died if He was destined to live again?  There is a strong logic behind it. At the beginning of time, God created Adam and Eve and placed them  in a beautiful habitat called, “Garden of Eden”. This couple had full freedom to do what they liked and live how they wished.  Their food was only fruits from all kinds of trees. God had announced one restriction that they should not eat the fruit of a particular tree. “If you eat it, you would die,” He had told them. They did eat that forbidden fruit tricked by Satan. They had become instantly unholy and sinners but they didn’t die. God had pended their death punishment.   The Creator didn’t want to execute them as per  His verdict.  He applied the same rule for  their future  descendants also who were billions in number because He had a tremendous love for the earthlings.  He wanted to save the human race  from annihilation at any cost; nor could God   condone  the death punishment.  It had to be gone through. He had thought of a via media. “Why not one holy  person die in place of  the billions of sinners?”  The trouble was, God could not find even one holy person in the entire world.  If anybody it was only  God himself. He only could die as a substitute. For that, He had to become a Man and  born of a woman as well.  That’s how one Mary, a virgin, conceived without a human father and gave birth to baby Jesus. There has been no virgin birth in the world history.  A virgin born Man is an unparalleled person, isn’t he and he was a holy being too? Such a Man  was qualified to be a proxy for the billions of condemned human beings.

So, God had carried out the  judgment proclaimed in garden of Eden by making Jesus die on the cross in our place.  Jesus is God in a different personality, that’s all.

Jesus  lived on the Earth for 33 ½ years and performed several miracles to prove His divinity.

Jesus’  death on the cross had a second purpose too.

When  God created Adam and Eve, His expectation was that these two and later  their off springs  should live on the Earth, enjoy everything  God had planted  in it, lead a good life and ascend  to  Heaven at a certain stage of their life. Probably Adam and Eve and their lineage  were not assigned to die at all and were  travel to Heaven in their original shape.  But by eating the forbidden fruit, they not only  invited physical death but also had  lost their place in Heaven.

For stepping into Heaven one has to be hundred percent holy. Heaven is not a place for sinners.   Although the human race had been exempted from the death  punishment , they continued to be sinners in God’s view. Adam and Eve were holy initially   and their children too would  have been holy.  But through disobedience the first couple  had become unholy and this sin had been mounted on their off springs too. In  the post-fall period,  Man could not make himself sinless and  holy  no matter however much he may try. God knew our total helplessness in this regard. Yet, God wanted  every earthling to come and live with Him in Heaven. Therefore, He made Jesus’  blood,  shed on the cross,  to   cleanse us all completely and make us fully  holy to  be able to enter into Heaven.  To enjoy this great  gift,  all one is required to do is, “To have full Faith and Trust   in Lord Jesus Christ and in His sacrifice on the Cross.”  It’s as simple as that. The resurrected Lord Jesus thus has made Himself  the lone  Salvation giver.

And here comes a bomb shell.  You cannot walk  into Heaven by any other method because no one could give you cent percent holiness except Lord Jesus nor could you lead a holy life yourself.  Such holiness will be bestowed upon you at the time of your earthly death.

Jesus is the only Way to Heaven and there is no  other. That’s the message of Easter.

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