What Do You Think Of The Cross?

Hey everyone. Well it's almost Wednesday here and I guess some place it is Wednesday. So it is time for my mid-week post, boost, thought. I am posting tonight because I will be at the local collage helping serve lunch to those who come into the Baptist Collegiate Ministry building. And tomorrow we are also having our last Wednesday Night Youth of the school year. So I thought I would get it out while I had a little free time.

This post and the next few I post I have gleaned from articles in Dr. Graham's magazine DECISION. I hope you enjoy my take on an article that Jerry Pierce wrote.

"When I survey the wondrous cross..." 

For 45 years, a 13 foot tall concrete and mortar cross has stood in an open, grassy flat in a city

Port Neches, Texas. For now the cross is still standing, despite aggressive legal threats from an atheist group charging that it violates constitutional church-state separation.

"At the cross, at the cross ...." 

In Edmond, Oklahoma the cross that had been apart of the city seal drew fire. Now where the cross was there has been a blank since 1995 - the year a federal appeals court ruled that a cross on the seal implied government sponsorship of a religion. 

"On the old rugged cross..." 

In California's Mojave Desert, a cross erected in honor of fallen war veterans was held in legal limbo for years until a private group bought the land surrounding it so that it could remain.

 

You don't see people up in arms over the Star of David symbol, or over the Crescent Moon used in Islam, or really other religious symbol.  So why is there so much animosity over so simple a thing as a cross? It is because the cross tends to remind people of their sin. After all Christ Jesus died on the cross for everyone's sin. 1 Peter 2:24 ~ and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. "People don't want to hear that they are sinners," said Billy Graham said in 2013 during the filming of

The Cross.

As the world becomes more and more like Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 13:13) or the days of Noah (Genesis 5-6) it is not surprising that the cross is so offense. In a time when evil dominates so much of the world people don't want to have the light of the cross shined on them and their deeds, John 1:5~ The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.  

“Now I’ve given to Jesus everything
Now I gladly own Him as my King
Now my raptured soul can only sing of Calvary”