Easter!

Gentle Readers,
Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ at this wonderful resurrection time of year. Everywhere people are talking about the Truth that He is Risen! Everywhere nature is singing the resurrection song as new life emerges from what was once dead. Seeds begin to germinate, trees shoot forth new leaves, animals bring forth their young, all of nature shows clearly He is Risen!
Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: After being seen by the Apostles and hundreds of the brethren He ascended far above all and gave sign gifts to His Apostles so that many miracles were done by their hands in an effort to call His people Israel to a national repentance for crucifying their Messiah with the promise:

Acts 3:19 Repent (Change your direction or change your mind) ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;

Acts 3:20 And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you :

Yes, they were promised that if they as a nation [as you are today in the world]would repent of rejecting and killing Him {All men everywhere are responsible } and would accept and believe on Him that God would send their Messiah again in their lifetimes, that Jesus Christ would return and the time of refreshing would come, the promised Kingdom of Heaven. But alas though many believed the nation refused to repent and by the end of the Book of Acts at Acts 28:28 Israel was set aside until the time of the end.

Christians everywhere continued to believe on the risen Savior but many lost sight of where Christ Jesus is today and just what our hope really is. Religious leaders quickly changed the hope from the coming of the Lord to a going to meet the Lord in a way that is foreign to Scripture. With something so important as the `blessed hope' of the Church we feel there is no better time of the year to look carefully at what God's Word teaches so that:

Eph 1:18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
Eph 1:19 And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Eph 1:20 Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places ,
Eph 1:21 Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: Eph 1:22 And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church,{the gathering of believers not a building or a denomination}

Eph 1:23 Which is his body, the fullness of him that falleth all in all.

Is the `blessed hope' of the Church to be found in 1 Thessalonians 4, or in Matthew 24, or in some other part of Scripture? It is impossible to answer these questions until we have decided the preliminary question as to which church is in view. Hope cannot stand alone and unrelated. We must hope for SOMETHING or SOMEONE, and, if it is to be fulfilled, the hope must have a scriptural basis. Whatever our calling, whether that of the Body, the Bride, or the Kingdom, we can all say that `we look for the Savior', but when we come to examine the calling of those represented by the pronoun `we' it becomes necessary to `try the things that differ'.

If Israel became Loammi (`Not My People', Hos. 1:9) at Acts 28, and if a new church then came into being under the new terms of the administration of the Mystery (Eph. 3:1-13), it is reasonable to expect a difference in the hope to be entertained by this new company. It is not, however, the apparent reasonableness of an argument but `What saith the Scripture?' that demands the believer's assent. We therefore ask your earnest attention to the evidence from God's Word.