Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto
the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son,
whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds; who
being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and
upholding all things by the word of His power, when He has by Himself purged
our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high. (Hebrews 1:1-3)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. The same was in
the beginning with God. All things were
made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.... The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,
(and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,)
full of grace and truth. (
Look where we will in Holy Scripture and Tradition, and we will only find that our Savior is God come in the flesh. Throughout
the history of the Church, her enemy, the devil, has tried to attack
either that our Savior was God or that He was a man.
Attacks
on the humanity of Christ take several forms of saying that His human
nature was somehow buried within the all-powerful Divine nature and was
not fully functional. What sense, then, does it make for Him to say “Not my will, but Thine be done?”
Attacks
on His divinity take forms of saying that His God-hood is somehow a
poetic expression of His leading the way for us to God, or saying that
He was somehow a creature like the angels. Such mental shilly-shallying ignores the Lord’s own words about Himself recorded in the Gospel.
Since the available record will not support such falsehood, the devil’s next focus of attack is the record. Thus,
we have within recent times audacious attempts to deny our Lord’s very
existence, masquerading as “Quests for the Historical Jesus” which are
quests for anything but history or Jesus.
It
remains our duty as His people to keep both of the startling realities
about the Author of our salvation clear in our own minds and clear in
our message about Him to the world. Thank God that Holy
Tradition remains to help keep our integrity as Christians, down to
even the smallest particular; for example, we declare His being when we
sign ourselves with the sign of His instrument of salvation, the
precious and life-giving Cross, proclaiming with our very hand that He
is one of the Holy Trinity and is possessed of both divine and human
natures. And, as the passages above show, as some like to have it said, it’s right there in the
Bible.
DOUBLE YOUR CONTRIBUTION
THROUGH OUR MATCHING GRANT!
Now through Palm Sunday, April 28
Help us build our new Parish Hall,
and move to our historic Chapel Campus!
(Want to contribute to our General Fund?
Please scroll down ~ Thank you!)
From 'St John of Shanghai and San Francisco, Zealous Builder of Churches'
Everywhere he went he either oversaw the building of churches or supported the same with his attention and prayers... He wrote about the godly work of building churches:
"In building churches here on earth, we create for ourselves eternal habitations in heaven."
ALL DONATIONS TO OUR
BUILDING FUND
Are DOUBLED, up to $38,000
Now through Palm Sunday, April 28