{"id":1919,"date":"2022-08-26T08:04:20","date_gmt":"2022-08-26T12:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1919"},"modified":"2022-08-26T08:04:20","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T12:04:20","slug":"raised-from-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/26\/raised-from-the-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Raised from the Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Throughout the month of August,\u00a0we\u2019re taking a close look at 23 verses of the New Testament.\u00a0 They comprise Ephesians chapter one, which paints one of the Bible\u2019s most comprehensive pictures of what it means for ordinary people to be \u201cin Christ.\u201d \u00a0<\/em>
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Shortly before his death in January 1924, a feeble and incapacitated Vladimir Illich Lenin made it clear that he didn\u2019t want his departure to become a big deal.
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His fellow leaders of the Soviet Union, however, ignored his wishes.\u00a0 They decided he must be preserved for eternity.\u00a0
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After lying in state for three days, his body was subjected to what might best be described as mummification.\u00a0 His brain was removed and cut into thousands of thin slivers so that researchers could discover, if possible, the physiological source of his genius.\u00a0 The rest of his body was infused with various chemicals to preserve a lifelike appearance.\u00a0 Soviet scientists dreamed that one day they might even invent the technology to bring him back to life.\u00a0
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It\u2019s estimated that more than 60 million people have visited the special mausoleum next to the Kremlin that enshrines Lenin\u2019s body and gazed at him through his glass coffin.\u00a0 During the heyday of the USSR, his body was re-embalmed every other year, and a team of 200 preservation experts closely monitored the condition of his corpse.\u00a0 \u00a0
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Historian Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius points out that other communist leaders have also received this special treatment, including Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and the departed dictators of North Korea, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia.\u00a0 Since communism is ideologically atheistic, this gift of \u201ceternal life\u201d has been presented as the remarkable achievement of secular science.
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The public display of Lenin\u2019s body has unquestionably contributed to his cult of personality.\u00a0 Posters declare, \u201cEven now, Lenin is more alive than the living,\u201d and, \u201cLenin is always with us.\u201d\u00a0
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At Lenin\u2019s funeral, his successor Josef Stalin \u2013 whom Lenin, incidentally, couldn\u2019t stand \u2013 did everything he could to wrap himself in the Dear Leader\u2019s memory.\u00a0 Sounding very much like a priest, Stalin solemnly recited the stated desires of their fallen founder to sustain the purity of the movement\u2019s ideals and to guard the unity of the Party.\u00a0 \u201cWe vow to thee, Comrade Lenin,\u201d he concluded, \u201cthat without sparing our strength we shall honorably fulfill this, thy commandment.\u201d
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Who said you can\u2019t have a worship service without God?\u00a0 \u00a0
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The Soviet Union may have gone on record that there\u2019s no such thing as eternal life, but they couldn\u2019t imagine going forward without the \u201cpresence\u201d of their beloved leader.\u00a0
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Paul couldn\u2019t have imagined that, either.\u00a0 But things are different for Christians.\u00a0 Our leader is spiritually<\/em> present, even while his body is absent.\u00a0 That\u2019s at the heart of verses 19 and 20: \u201c\u2026and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power\u00a0is the same as the mighty strength\u00a0he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead\u00a0and seated him at his right hand\u00a0in the heavenly realms.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>
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Everyone in Russia knows where to find Lenin\u2019s mausoleum.\u00a0 Interestingly, no one knows with certainty where Jesus was crucified and buried.
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A key reason is that Jesus\u2019 tomb turned out to be empty<\/em> on the Sunday after his execution.\u00a0 One of the oft-overlooked evidences that the resurrection really took place is that Jesus\u2019 tomb never became, like so many other burial plots of famous religious figures, a place where pilgrims came to lay flowers and offer prayers.\u00a0 The earliest disciples quite literally lost track of the location of Jesus\u2019 tomb \u2013 for the simple reason that they knew Jesus wasn\u2019t there.\u00a0 Because of the resurrection, the \u201caction,\u201d so to speak, has forever shifted to any place where someone chooses to call on Jesus\u2019 name.
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Have you ever wondered how neat it might have been to be a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth?\u00a0
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But you are<\/em> in fact a contemporary of Jesus.\u00a0 He is alive amongst us right now. \u00a0
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When Paul wrote to the Ephesians about the resurrection, he wasn\u2019t merely sighing that a handful of earnest people shared warm feelings about a Galilean preacher who had died about 20 years earlier.\u00a0 He was saying that the world was actually different<\/em> because of the empty tomb.
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More than a decade ago, our family was watching TV late on a Saturday night in our Indianapolis home.\u00a0 Suddenly we heard a muffled boom, and our entire house shook.\u00a0 Every window rattled. \u00a0Our senses seemed to tell us two things: something very big had just happened, and it had happened far away.\u00a0 The next morning we learned about the spectacular explosion that had rocked a neighborhood 25 miles from our house.\u00a0
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The resurrection was like an explosion that reverberated across the Mediterranean, and that ultimately sent shock waves around the entire world.\u00a0 Something had happened \u2013 something that people thought might take place at the end of history, but which had suddenly happened to one special person in the very midst of history.\u00a0
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And now the word was going around that the cosmos itself was somehow different \u2013 that a new way of belonging to God had opened up, and that Death would no longer hold sway over the lives of Jesus\u2019 followers.\u00a0
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Here\u2019s the best news:
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Instead of standing in line at a mausoleum to ponder the past, you can encounter the very Someone who now rules both the present and the future.\u00a0

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout the month of August,\u00a0we\u2019re taking a close look at 23 verses of the New Testament.\u00a0 They comprise Ephesians chapter one, which paints one of the Bible\u2019s most comprehensive pictures of what it means for ordinary people to be \u201cin Christ.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Shortly before his death in January 1924, a feeble and incapacitated Vladimir Illich Lenin made it clear that he… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1920,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[480,207],"class_list":["post-1919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ephesians","tag-resurrection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1921,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919\/revisions\/1921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}