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What does Easter have to do with me?

Gary Kelly

April 14, 2022

Jesus proclaimed "repent for the Kingdom of God is near," announcing the "Good News" of the "Promise of the Holy Spirit.” (Luke 4:43, Acts 1:1-5)

God resurrected this Y’shua, of which we all are witnesses: therefore since He has been raised to the right hand of God, and has taken the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, He poured this out which also you are seeing and hearing. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all those in far away places, whomever the Lord our God will call to Himself. (Acts 2:32-33,39)

“These are the messages I told you while I was still with you, that it is necessary for everything to be fulfilled that has been written about Me in the Torah (Teaching) of Moses and in the Prophets and the Psalms.” Then He opened their minds and they understood the Scriptures: and He said to them that “Thus it has been written that the Messiah would suffer (Isaiah 53:5) and be raised from the dead on the third day, and repentance would be preached in His name for forgiveness of sins for all the heathens. Beginning from Jerusalem you are witnesses of these things. Then behold, I, Myself, am sending My Father’s promise (John 16:7-16) upon you: but you must now stay in the city until you would be clothed in power from on high.” (Luke 12:44-48)

Paul defined exactly what the "Kingdom of God" was: "For the Kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit:" (Romans 14:17)

The “Promise” provides the opportunity to be “Born Again” (John 3:3-6), “begotten of God,” as a “children of God,” (John 1:12-13) not as we are “of the flesh,” but of the spirit “within you.” (Luke 17:20-21) as this alone allows for the "inspiration" and "understanding of the Almighty." (Job 32:8-10)

At that time Y’shua said, “I praise You, Father, Master of Heaven and Earth, because You hid these things from the wise and intelligent and You revealed them to babies: indeed, Father, because in this way it was well pleasing before You. Everything has been given to Me by My Father, and no one understands the Son except the Father, and no one understands the Father except the Son and to whomever the Son would wish to reveal.” (Matthew 11:25-27)

Pride and worldly intellect is an obstacle to the "Promise" because the “natural man does not take the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness to him and he is not able to know, because they are discerned spiritually.“ (Isaiah 29:14, 1 Corinthians 1:18-19, 2:14)

God does not look upon or consider our flesh or intellect (1 Samuel 16:7), as He only reveals Himself to our spirit. For we are created in His "image," a spirit, which is "clothed" with flesh as He revealed to Job and Solomon, and was the message Jesus proclaimed. (Job 10:11-13, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, John 16:12-13)

The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly. (Proverbs 20:27) God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. ...It is the spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. (John 4:24, 6:63, 7:37-39)

Paul emphasizes this point in his letters: In order that the God of our Lord Y’shua Messiah, the Father of glory, would have given you a spirit of wisdom and revelation for your knowledge of Him, that the eyes of your heart have been enlightened for you to have known what is the hope of His inheritance, the riches of His glory, of His inheritance for the saints... (Ephesians 1:17-18) "From Whom every family in the heavens and on the earth receives its name, so that He would give to you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened in power by His Spirit working in your inner man, to make the Messiah live in your hearts through faith, when you have been rooted and established in love, so that you would be able to seize, with all the consecrated ones, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of the Messiah that surpasses our knowledge, so that you would be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:15-19)

Paul confirms what was revealed by the writer of Ecclesiastes, that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." (Ecclesiastes 12:7, 1 Corinthians 15:50)

Peter also highlights the importance of what God considers: "But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price." (1 Peter 3:4)

And when He was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, He answered them and said, The kingdom of God comes not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17:20-21) 

Sir Lionel Luckhoo (1914-1997), was ambassador of Barbados and Guyana. Knighted by the Queen of England, he was listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the world's most successful criminal attorney. Sir Lionel Luckhoo, who spoke to presidents, kings, parliaments and the United Nations, stated: "The bones of Muhammad are in Medina, the bones of Confucius are in Shantung, the cremated bones of Buddha are in Nepal. Thousands pay pilgrimages to worship at their tombs which contain their bones. But in Jerusalem there is a cave cut into the rock. This is the tomb of Jesus. IT IS EMPTY! YES, EMPTY! BECAUSE HE IS RISEN! He died, physically and historically. He arose from the dead, and now sits at the right hand of God."

“He is Risen!” (Luke 24:5-6) What does Easter have to do with me? (Acts 4:12)

"He that has ears to hear, let him hear."

Gary Kelly's web site is EarsToHear.net and is the author of  “Lessons of the Holy Spirit: A Guide for Entering the Kingdom of God and Discover Why it Pleased God to Hide His Kingdom from the Wise”