Word of the day, 5th April 2015
resurrection /ˌrɛzəˈrɛkʃən/
I couldn’t really choose any other word for this Easter day.
The English word dates from about the 12th century, and was specifically linked to this event: “the name of a Church festival commemorating Christ’s rising from death“.
It comes directly from Church Latin resurrectionem, “a rising again from the dead,” noun of action from the past participle stem of Latin resurgere “rise again, appear again“.
The more generalised sense of “revival” did not come about until the 1640s.
Although Christians remember the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ every Sunday (it is the reason we meet on Sundays), Easter day is one on which this is most especially emphasised, because it is linked to the Jewish Passover.
Easter day is (usually) the Sunday after Passover, which is when Jesus was crucified.
In fact, in many languages, instead of Easter, the name of this day is directly linked to Passover, or to Christ’s resurrection.
For example, in French the name is Pâques (Passover is Pâque). In Chinese it is called 复活节 / 復活節 (Fùhuó jié), which literally means “revive” (Fùhuó) “festival” (jié) = “festival of revival or resurrection.”
(Thanks to my friend, Selina, for this information.)
The Bible tells us that three days after Jesus was crucified at Passover, He was raised from the dead, and was seen by many witnesses – as many as 500 at one time!
There are four accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection given to us by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and then the rest of the New Testament is founded on this as a true, reliable, historic fact.
It also claims, as Jesus also did, that history recorded in the first part of the Bible (the Old Testament) pointed to this event (e.g. Luke 24:27)
Not only this, but the Bible tells us that at the “end of time“, everyone will be raised (resurrected), either to eternal life, or to eternal condemnation (“death”) (John 5:29).
The Good News (Gospel) about Jesus Christ, is that by trusting in what He has done for us, by dying for us, on that final day we will be raised to life and can know that now.
Jesus Himself said: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26).
Do you believe this?
Photograph of the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem by Phillip Benshmuel, used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.