All that the old covenant was ever intended to do was to drive men to despair and then the despair to plead for mercy and grace from a kind and loving God... When an Old Testament person saw the Law for what it really was, a ministry of condemnation, a ministry of death, and when they were slain, as it were, and when they feared hell, and when they realized their sinfulness, and when the Law had done its work and they had a repentant heart and they came to God and pleaded for mercy and pleaded for grace and pleaded for forgiveness which they didn't deserve but which they pled for, and God in grace looked at them and forgave them, that work of transformation that occurred there was the Spirit of God's work. And He was applying the new covenant work of Christ retroactively to that penitent sinner. But it was the Spirit's work. Salvation any time whether in the Old Testament or the New Testament under the old covenant or the new covenant was, is, always will be the work of the Spirit who is none other than the Lord. And isn't it marvelous, the same God who wrote the Law is the same God who liberates the repentant sinner from the bondage of the Law?
John MacArthur

Christ’s Resurrection: Fact or Myth?

Christ’s Resurrection: Fact or Myth?

by Glen on 2001-04-15 00:05:40

Jesus again stood trial this past weekend. Agape Press
reports that the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hosted a
mock trial considering whether the resurrection of Jesus
was a literal event.

Religious liberty advocate Thomas Monaghan told the
jurists the testimony of those who saw Jesus after the
resurrection is the most compelling evidence for the risen
Lord. “Then they turn around and they die in coliseums,
they die on crosses, they die at the chopping block,
professing that faith,” Monaghan said. ACLU advocate Bruce
Fein argued against the literal resurrection, saying that
“the idea that Jesus died for all of our sins is more
central and … could have occurred without him being
resurrected.”

The fictitious assumption is that a lower court found
the veracity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ
unconvincing. Throughout the arguments, the judges
interrupted the advocates with questions of their own, such
as: Is not the resurrection the absolute core of the New
Testament?

Three organizations, The Ten Commandments Project,
Faith and Action and the National Clergy Council,
co-sponsored the Capitol Hill Easter season program on
April 6.

(Agape Press:

http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/4/92001e.asp)