Letter to the Editor

To the Editor:

“Resurrection Power”

(Why Jesus Died)

I saw a cartoon the other day, a good one. It was a picture of some monkeys in a cage looking out through the bars at some people who had come to look at them. The human beings were on one end of the cage, and the monkeys were on the other end.

One of the older monkeys turned to another monkey and said, “I wonder if we really are descended from them?”

And there were looks of distress on the faces of all the monkeys! I don’t blame them, my beloved.

May I say to you that man thinks he has it all together and may also think this moral influence theory is a religion that will save him.

But do you realize that God saved the Old Testament saints by the death of Christ long before He came to Bethlehem?

Somebody says, “But they didn’t know anything about it.”

Yes, they did. They knew something.

You recognize that the law of gravitation was in operation long before an apple fell on Newton’s head.

God had made it work long before man found out it was even in existence.

And did you know, my beloved, that God was saving man in the Old Testament by the death of Christ?

Oh, maybe they did not know as much as you know, but they knew enough.

Abel knew enough to bring a little lamb for a bloody sacrifice. Noah knew enough to bring a sacrifice. Abraham knew enough to get a ram out of a thicket. Samuel and David and Elijah brought sacrifices to God, and they understood that the blood of those little animals was not taking their sin but was pointing to the One who in the future would die and pay the penalty for their sins.

In the New Testament when John opens his account of the Gospel, he goes back farther in the past than any other, and he says, speaking of the Lord Jesus, that He is the light of the world and the light shines in darkness and the darkness did not apprehend it, comprehend it, or was it able to take it down.

You see, there are x-rays beyond the visible spectrum which we cannot see.

And back in the Old Testament, Christ was the light, and those men may not have seen much, but they saw enough to bring a sacrifice that pointed to Christ, and they recognized that they were sinners who needed to have the penalty paid before they could come into God’s presence.

My beloved, the Scripture does not teach different theories of the atonement. The Bible teaches that Christ died a penal, vicarious, substitutionary death, that it was absolutely essential for Him to die or there would have been no salvation.

Acts 4:12; Luke 9:22; I Peter 1:18-19; II Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 1:4; Galatians 3:13

Pastor Greg Odell

Alexandria