After Jesus Christ was crucified, his body lay in the tomb of an admirer, who had been a member of the Great Sanhedrin. That political and religious body who had put him on trial and turned him over to the Roman Procurator, Pontius Pilate. Members of that group then asked that a guard be placed at the tomb, because Christ had told them he would rise from the dead.
No one had ever been resurrected. Christ raised Lazurus from an apparent death, but he was not resurrected. Resurrection happens when a person dies, his spirit leaves his body, and then the body of flesh and bones, and its spirit are rejoined, with the body never more to be subject to death.
C. S. Lewis, a Christian Writer (The Chronicles of Narnia) of his day (1898-1963) had an interesting way of explaining things. Another writer said of him: “The mere Christianity of C. S. Lewis is not a philosophy or even a theology that may be considered, argued, and put away on a shelf (kind of like our debate about being a Christian nation).
When someone says that America isn’t a Christian nation, I understand. It’s just that I believe they don’t know history. American principles are based on the Christian religion and on the Bible. No, that’s just history.
“Be sure when you step,
“I too have made a wee-little book . . . which I call the ‘Philosophy of Jesus.’ It is made by cutting the texts out of the book (the Bible), and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time and subject. A more beautiful morsel of ethics I have never seen. It is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its Author never said or saw. They have compounded from heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which . . .were He to return on earth would not recognize one feature.” (As quoted in Founding Fathers—Uncommon Heroes, 2003, page 178, by yours truly.)
“Music is a part of our history. It is an expression of who we are and the times we’ve known, our highs, our lows, and so much that we love. Take away American music from the American story and you take away a good part of the soul of the story.