e-Review archives
Bishop's Commentaries 2011
 

The Challenge of Easter

An e-Review commentary by Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker | Mar. 7, 2011 NOTE: A headshot of Whitaker is available at http://www.flumc.info/photo_gallery2.shtml. The proclamation of the Word of God is more important on Easter Sunday than on any other Sunday of the year, but what message will the people hear? This is a question that ought not be asked. The Easter message of the New Testament is the main message of the New Testament, and its meaning is unmistakable: God the Father raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit. Yet the question has to be asked since much of the Protestant biblical scholarship and theology of the 19th and 20th centuries totally inverted the Easter message of the New Testament. full story

The Message Of The Cross

An e-Review commentary by Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker | Mar. 18, 2011 The apostle Paul told the Christians in Corinth, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). This is a startling statement. Paul is asserting that the central message that he had proclaimed to the Corinthians when he had been with them was a message about the cross of Christ. He could not be stating that this was his only message because the message of the cross is possible only in the context of Easter and Pentecost, of the message of the resurrection of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. full story