Why Did Jesus have to Die?

Posted Aug 28, 2019 by Adrian Ebens in Newsletters

 

 
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Dear Subscriber

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It has been a few months since our last newsletter and many things have taken place in that time. As I interact with many of you from around the world there is a growing sense of gratitude to our wonderful Father for the gift of His Son to show us His true character and to assure us of His forgiving love. 


One event that has really increased momentum in the message has been the book by Jay Schulberg called Acts of our Gentle God. I was introduced to this book by Christine Nelson from Florida. I read it during Passover this year and what a blessing it was to read. The book Agape released in December of 2017 has been a comprehensive attempt to present our Father exactly as Christ revealed Him when He came to earth. This volume takes some effort to process and digest. Many of its principles have been presented more simply in the book Acts of our Gentle God. The two books together make a powerful combination to open the willing heart to the glorious truth that our Father does not use violent force on His creature to rule His universe. 

Acts of our Gentle God and Identity Wars are my first "go to" books to share with others when the door is opened to tell of the wonderful Father we serve as revealed in His Son. 

In a few weeks I and my family will begin our tour across Australia and then on to South Africa for a number of meetings as well as Tabernacles in the Cape Town area. The theme burning in my soul is the love of God as manifested in the Cross. A number of us have been drawn to contemplate the Cross of Christ in our morning and evening sacrifice time. The book Desire of Ages is such a treasure for contemplation of our beloved Saviour. Just in time for this tour I have completed a new book called Cross Examined and Cross Encountered.  I invite you to study this little volume as it is a seed of thought for things to come in respect of why Jesus had to die for us.

For the vast majority of Christians there is the thought that Christ was indeed smitten of God and afflicted because of His stern justice. This sits in a very awkward position with the thought that God is appeased through death. This has in part been the cause of the retreat by Christianity from the true Sonship of Christ, for if Christ is God Himself then God would not be not appeased by the death of His Son for Christ is not actually His Son but His counterpart displaying the attributes of a Son that simply reveals self sacrificing love.

This is a difficult place to travel although I believe for many the motivation is sincere to avert the charge of child sacrifice and the idea of a deity that is appeased through death. For those of us who have taken refuge in the precious of the begotten Son in our reading of Scripture there is different framework that beckons us. A framework forged in the beautiful 1888 message and that being the arrangement of the two covenants across salvation history. 

In such a context the sacrificial system of the Old Testament calls us to re-examine our understanding. It is true God instituted the sacrificial system but at the same time He told Israel that He did not command them about sacrifices and offerings when they came out of Egypt. 

For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: Jeremiah 7:22  

How do we reconcile this statement. Did not God command Israel regarding all the rules and regulations regarding sacrifices? Is this not commanding them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices? Could these commandments be in the same context as God commanding Samuel to anoint Saul to be king? God never desired Israel to have a king but Israel desired it and thus God gave them one. 

In Psalms 40:6 we are told that God does not desire sacrifice and offering and He does not require burnt offering and sin offering. If this is the case then is the law of Moses truly a ministration of death to show the heart of man to himself as one that does desire sacrifices and offerings? In the booklet Cross Examined and Cross Encountered you are invited to consider the position of the Law of Moses in the plan of salvation. It is a glorious gift to man and yet at the same time if man had been more faithful to God none of it would have been required. Notice:

"If man had kept the law of God, as given to Adam after his fall, preserved by Noah, and observed by Abraham, there would have been no necessity for the ordinance of circumcision. And if the descendants of Abraham had kept the covenant, of which circumcision was a sign, they would never have been seduced into idolatry, nor would it have been necessary for them to suffer a life of bondage in Egypt; they would have kept God's law in mind, and there would have been no necessity for it to be proclaimed from Sinai or engraved upon the tables of stone. And had the people practiced the principles of the Ten Commandments, there would have been no need of the additional directions given to Moses.  {PP 364.2}  

The additional precepts given to Moses where on account of the apostasy of man and yet the principles in this Law speak to eternal principles which the hasty reader is eager to nail to the Cross in order to escape its blessings which the natural man deems as curses. Such is the blindness of Laodicea.

I am reminded of this statement that I read recently:

Satan wished to cause Jesus to presume upon the mercy of His Father and risk His life before the fulfillment of His mission. He had hoped that the plan of salvation would fail; but the plan was laid too deep to be overthrown or marred by Satan.  {EW 156.1}  

If the plan of salvation had been too deeply laid for Satan to overthrow it, does this not suggest that there are layers to our understanding of the Cross that are much deeper than we have imagined? I am inviting you to dig a little deeper on this question and consider the place of the Old Testament sacrifices in relation to the Cross of Christ while considering that the everlasting gospel has never changed. Christianity commenced as soon as man had sinned. This is the only way that the gospel can be everlasting. 

I pray our Father bless you and your family in abundance as you consider the Cross of Christ and its wonderful light reflecting the Father's love for us. 
 

Adrian Ebens
Maranatha Media 

Australia/South Africa Tour

Sept 14 Sabbath - Meetings in Port Macquarie/Telegraph Point Area
Sep 21 Sabbath - With friends in Melbourne
Sep 24 Tuesday - With Glenn and Suzanne Coopman
Sep 28 Sabbath - In Perth Area. Details to be announced

South Africa

Sep 30 - Oct 5 Empangeni - with Bester and Nina Snyman
Oct 6 - 8 Pretoria - with Philip Aspeling
Oct 9 - 12 in Cape Town. meetings with Morris Francis and Frikkie Van Rensburg
Oct 13 - 17 Oudtshoorn with Cedric van der Mescht
Oct 18-25 Tabernacles in Rawsonville
Oct 26 Sabbath in Durbanville
Oct 27-29 Visiting folk in Cape Area. 
Oct 30 Wednesday Fly back to Perth.

Audiobooks
For those short on time, we have put many of our books into audiobook format. You can download the mp3 files at http://maranathamedia.com/audiobooks or you can listen to them on Youtube

Books to share
Over the past few months thanks to your kind support we have printed:
2000 Acts of our Gentle God
2000 Divine Pattern of Life
500 Medicine for your Soul
500 Divine Pattern

Next month we will receive 
1000 Return of Elijah
2000 My beloved
2000 Original Love
2000 Wisdom of God. 

The books found on the website fatheroflove.info are designed for outreach into the community. If you need books to share with others please email us. All books are provided on an Agape basis. Give and it shall be given unto you. 

We are also delighted to announce that we will have 10000 copies of Acts of our Gentle God available from Talking Rock Sabbath Chapel for those wanting books to share with others.

We are also delighted to announce we have had 2000 Copies of Agape printed in Manilla, the Philippines and have a wonderful support person there to help distribute them. 


Return of Elijah
As mentioned above we are printing 1000 copies of Return of Elijah in a hard cover edition. This book has been significantly revised updated. It contains many important details that lay the foundations of the message we are sharing. It also outlines the process of how the book was received by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It is 464 pages in size and therefore a significant investment of time but it will give the reader a much clearer picture of the systematics of this message.

Planning Meetings in Talking Rock
In Late December this year I will be travelling to Talking Rock with Craig Jones to meet with the Talking Rock Team as well as Daniel Bernhardt to discuss expanding the canvasing work and public Evangelism and other lines of ministry into 2020 and beyond. We ask for your prayers at this time. I will also be conducting some meetings at Talking Rock. 

Translation
We are delighted to report that we have been able to expand translation projects into a number of new languages. We are thankful for the new books we have in Swahili, Arabic, Tagalog, Norwegian and Polish. We have just launched the website maranthamedia-kenya.com   which will be for material in Swahili. We have a number of new projects in Arabic that will soon be available. Special thanks to Pr Nabil Mansour for helping us with this. We have such a wonderful team of translators in several countries. We have so many projects in the pipleline that we can't list them all. We pray for you and thank God for your willingness to help us share the message with others.

Featured Booklets 


End_of_the%20Wicked.jpgThe End of the Wicked

Deyan Delchev, Adrian Ebens and Danutasn Brown

For those who believe in God it is almost universally reasoned that the only way to end sin is the stop the wicked dead in their tracks by bringing down a fiery stream fury from the heart of God to burn up the wicked and bring them to an end.

It is often thought that the wicked are not simply going to destroy themselves and that if God is a God of justice He will punish transgressors and reward them for their evil according to their deeds by directly putting them into flames and burning them alive Himself. Would a loving God do this to His children? Would you burn your wayward children alive in flames and watch them scream in agony?

Some people say that the only way to eradicate a cancer is to cut it out. The problem with this analogy is that you cut cancer out of a single person, the object is to save life not to destroy it. Some people say the wicked are like a dog with Rabies and the dog needs to be put to sleep. Do you then take the dog and slowly burn it on a fire for several days while it screams and howls in agony while the righteous cry – just a little more because you deserve it because of your wickedness? Is this really what is going to take place at the end?

“Those who reject the mercy so freely proffered, will yet be made to know the worth of that which they have despised. They will feel the agony which Christ endured upon the cross to purchase redemption for all who would receive it. And they will then realize what they have lost—eternal life and the immortal inheritance.” RH Sept. 4, 1883

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. Isa 53:4 


NaturalJustice.jpgNatural Justice and the Atonement

This booklet is a summary of much of the teachings we have been sharing over the past 12 months. The principles in this book change greatly our understanding of the atonement and magnify the love of God in the gift of His Son. It also directly addresses the command of God to slaughter men, women and babies in 1 Samuel 15:1-3. I encourage you to read this booklet and give it careful consideration.  
 


 

 

Pastors, Bible Workers, Translators, Editors and Canvassers

Maranatha Media is supporting Pastors, Bible workers and others in several countries. Thank you for helping us to help them. Maranatha Media does not employ people. We partner with those who love the message and simply do our best to help them do what God calls them to do in their field of labour.   
Thank you

We say thank you for all our supporters in various parts of the world that help us get the joyous news of the Third's Angel's message out to the world. We ask for your prayers as we continue to advance the light of truth. We are very excited about the things we are learning and pray that you also will be blessed on this journey into a deeper knowledge of the Father and the Son.



Blessings,
Adrian Ebens
Maranatha Media

  

   


                     
Please Download and Study these Booklets related to this Newsletter. 

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