EASTER GREETINGS

Once again as with the last 2011 years, the Christian world mourns the passion and death of Jesus Christ, beloved Son of the One True God this Holy week. We recall that Jesus perspired blood as he contemplated what He had to go through very soon in the garden of Gethsemane to fulfill the will of the Father to redeem mankind from the consequences of original sin and all sins great and small and in between that ever occurred since man came into being and until man is no more.

 As he pondered what He was about to go through, betrayal, suffering, torture and death by crucifixion, Jesus asked God the Father if He could let “this cup pass”. What exactly was Jesus asking for? Was He afraid of the physical pain and death? Or, was He feeling that He would not be able to bear the weight of all the sins of mankind, past and present? From our human point of view, what we can see is that any man would want to avoid being tortured & crucified. Jesus was not an old man. He was a young man of 33, healthy and robust. Imagine being tied to a pillar and whipped with nails and hooks that rip through your flesh. The scourging at the pillar is but the first step to Mt. Calvary. A heavily bleeding Jesus, wearing a crown made of thorns, must carry a heavy wooden cross through the streets of Jerusalem to Mr. Calvary, where he will be crucified on it.

Imagine being nailed to a wooden cross with six inch nails through your hands and feet. Why should Jesus go through all these physical suffering and torture and even death when He has done nothing wrong? Maybe what Jesus was afraid he could not bear was the cleansing of all the sins of mankind through Him. Maybe that was too much to bear even for Jesus. Imagine the sins of Hitler who caused the death of 50 million people, including 6 million innocent Jews. Jesus had to answer to God the Father for the sins of Hitler. Jesus had to answer to God the Father for sins of the Japanese when they raped, plundered and killed a million Chinese women and civilians in Nanjing, and 20 million Chinese when they invaded China. The Japanese have not apologized to the Chinese for all of their brutality but Jesus has died for the Japanese. The bond between God and man was broken by Adam and Eve when they were tempted by the serpent Lucifer and ate of the forbidden fruit which gave them the knowledge of good and evil.

But the Gospel is that He has risen! On the third day after His death on the cross, Jesus resurrected claiming victory for all mankind over death. For those who have no faith and believe that our existence terminates with death, I refer you to the testimony of people who have died and returned to life. Many people have died and returned to life. They remember what happened to them after they died. There are books written by these people. “Life after death” is one book. I forgot who the author was. I read that about 15 years ago. There is a TV show called “I survived death and came back” something like that. People who died and returned to life testify to what happened to them after they died. They all talk about being conscious that they had left their bodies and looking at their dead bodies, feeling warm and feeling a lot of love, seeing a very bright light, going through a tunnel and meeting relatives who have died, and meeting Jesus Himself. A saw a doctor who died of a heart attack testify that when he died at the hospital he saw his body and then he was met by two “sentient” beings, one of whom was his father who had died two months before. As Jesus promised, through Him, death becomes the beginning of life eternal.

 Lawrence Bautista Yang is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and has been in law practice for thirty years. He specializes in bankruptcy, business and civil litigation and has handled more than four thousand successful bankruptcy cases in California. He speaks Mandarin and Fujien and looks forward to discussing your case with you personally. Please call (626) 284-1142 for an appointment at 1000 S Fremont Ave Bldg A-1 Suite 1125 Unit 58 Alhambra, CA 91803.