This Do, In Remembrance of Whom?

Dear SS( Sincere seeker): 

Today is our national memorial day, Whom are we trying to remember? Those who have sacrificed their lives for us, for our country, right? But do we know all their names? Perhaps no. Maybe we don't pay attention to them at all, we just enjoy to have a Memorial long weekend?

Memorial Day 2017: 'Freedom Is Not Bought Cheaply'

In the article to the above link, JERRY NEWCOMBE said 

"This Memorial Day, we should, if nothing else, thank the Lord for those who laid their lives on the line for us. We enjoy the freedom we enjoy because they shed their blood for us — reminiscent of the freedom the Christian enjoys because the Savior shed His blood for us at Calvary." 

 Let's have a loud "Amen" to what he said.

   
As I reflect on our recent discussions about " This Do, in remembrance of Me" inscribed in the communion table in the front podium of the church of last concert we attended. Indeed this ancient English style of this inscription greatly puzzled you. However, if you check 1 Cor.11:23-25 then obviously, It means the same as" (Do this (ye), in remembrance of Me." So this is what Jesus asked His disciples to do in remembrance of Him, on the night He was going to be betrayed by Judas.

King James version
1 Cor. 11:23  For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread:

24 And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.25 After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, this cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.

As I shared with you before, it is very odd and strange to celebrate and remember Jesus' death all the time and not celebrate His birthday( His birthday seems not so important, only once a year in Christmas season not to mention that some Christians don't celebrate at all.Though we definitely should remember Jesus' death since He has died for all mankind.)

There are at least 2 reasons I can think of:

1. Because of Jesus' resurrection, therefore we do His memorial often since He died for all our sins and has brought our salvation( so we can drink the cup of eternal salvation instead of the cup of God's wrath.)

 2.Jesus didn't command Christians to celebrate His earthly birthday, because He is God the Son, He pre-existed in eternity past as Trinity God. ( I AM Who I AM) Jesus' preexistence is totally different and unique in human history. And Christians are looking forward to His 2nd coming soon.  ( click  the link below for more about Jesus' pre-existence)

Did Jesus Exist in the Beginning?

Furthermore, because of His resurrection, the most shameful symbol of Cross has become the most glorious symbol, do you realize that??

Let us think a little bit deeper!

The French are famous for their guillotine which executed their King Louis XVI and his queen, other aristocrats ...etc. around French Revolution time back in 1793 AD. I am surprised to find that the French only abolished guillotines after capital punishment was abolished in 1981.( last execution in France was 1977)

So, can you imagine, King Louis XVI's descendants have put out many replicas of guillotines in front of their houses, inside their houses, or on top of their roof in memorial of the beheaded ancestor King Louis XVI?  Of course not, unless they are out of their minds, right? ( note: further readings have horrified me to realize that the French were so fascinated by the guillotine executions that they became public entertainments and children's toys later on. Nevertheless, there is still no way that King Louis XVI's descendants would use the replicas of guillotines around their houses,around their necks...etc. in memory of King Louis XVI.)

I am saying the above crazy stuff to illustrate how odd and irrational that the shameful terrible symbol of unfair execution of Jesus has been put everywhere in churches, on the rooftops of churches, or even as necklaces...etc. And the memorial of Jesus' death which took away the Cup of God's wrath and give us the Cup of eternal salvation, is done Sunday after Sundays.( Some churches do it every week and Catholics can have Mass everyday I think. some churches do the Communion every month）

The only reason, Christians are doing this often is because Jesus asked His disciples to do so and also because of Jesus' resurrection and triumph over death, that the cross and symbols of His body and blood have become a celebration instead.( of course, also it is the time to repent to not bring shame to God's name) Christians are definitely looking forward to Jesus' 2nd coming soon. Recently, Communist China are so against the crosses that they want to remove them from churches' rooftops and demolish them; in ISIS' craziness, they have executed many Christians on crosses again.( They all demonstrate so much hatred towards the cross.)

I am trying to say originally the "cross" should be the worst kind of symbol but because Jesus has risen from death and has accomplished God's plan of redeeming the mankind through the crucifixion, so the cross has become a glorious symbol now.

 If Jesus died and never rose again, if Jesus hasn't offered us the cup of eternal salvation to drink, then the cross should remain the worst kind of symbol, but since Jesus has risen from death, He has overcome the power of death forever, the cross has become a triumphant symbol of God's sacrificial love. ( This is the same logic behind " Good " Friday, all because of Jesus' resurrection.)

• Why Good Friday Is Called "Good"?

 I am trying to ask you to look at this odd practice of Christians to realize Jesus' resurrection has to be true, otherwise, perhaps His disciples would remember Him as long as they lived, but then Jesus' movement ( Messiah's movement or even if you like to think it as a political movement) would die out, nobody would remember Jesus any more, just as many false messiahs died and their followers dispersed and those movements disappeared from Jewish history pretty soon.

On the contrary, Jesus is still living today and when we repent and accept Him as our Savior, we still can experience the indwelling Holy Spirit, that made the cross and communions meaningful even today.

Do you realize that without Jesus' resurrection, there won't be any Christianity at all? And His resurrection is unique and the many reliable eyewitnesses had sacrificed their precious lives to testify Jesus really is God! The persecutions of early Christians had testified their firm belief in a living God, not man made or man promoted god.

In one word, Jesus is God the Son and is our resurrected Savior who has eternal life Himself; only He can guarantee our eternal life, since He has overcome death and thus has demonstrated His resurrected power. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, the Life, only through Him we can have eternal life.

p.s. Christians don't worship the cross at all.( They are not supposed to worship even angels, let alone the cross.) The cross shouldn't become an idol at all. The cross only serves to remind us the unfathomable love of God because God the Son, Jesus has died for us on the cross. He has paid for all our sins on it. So the cross serves to remind us to be thankful to God's great sacrificial love and reminds us to repent and not doing things to bring shame to God's name...etc.

( Click the link below to find more about King James version English style)

WHAT IS TRUTH: King James Version: Elizabethan English?

 ( ...compare the language used around 1611 from Shakespeare's plays and from Chaucer's " Canterbury Tales" and found out its style is not the spoken English at that time.

In fact, it can even be said that the English of the King James Version is not the English of the 17th century, nor of any century. It is an English that is unique, for it is Biblical English-an English formed by the Hebrew and Greek of the Bible. It is Biblical English because the translators were more interested in being faithful to the originals than in making their translation in the street language of the day, as do translators today...)

Can You Reprogram Your Nervous systems and Brains?

The Octopus Outsmarts Darwin Again

...In a paper published in the journal, "Cell," Tel Aviv University researchers Joshua Rosenthal and Eli Eisenberg report that unlike almost all other animals, cephalopods routinely bypass the instructions in their DNA and 

In biology class, you probably learned that ribonucleic acid, or RNA, transcribes and carries the information coded in deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, to protein-factories in the cells. These proteins, built based on instructions from the DNA, are what make up our bodies. But what if we could edit the messages in our RNA to change the kind of protein produced? As it happens, that's what cephalopods do — on a scale unknown anywhere else in the animal kingdom, and specifically in one area of their bodies: their nervous systems and brains.

The Tel Aviv researchers found "tens of thousands" of such RNA recoding sites in cephalopods, allowing a creature like the octopus to essentially reprogram itself, adding "new riffs to its basic genetic blueprint." In other words, these invertebrates don't care that they didn't inherit the smart genes. They make themselves smart, anyway.

Of course, an animal can't be the author of its own intelligence, and this is not a process anyone believes cephalopods perform consciously. Rather, it is a marvelous piece of "adaptive programming" built-in to their biology.

Darwinists have tried to spin this feat as "a special kind of evolution." But the folks at Evolution News cut through this nonsense and identify RNA editing for what it is: "non-evolution."

"Neo-Darwinism did not make cephalopods what they are," they write. "These highly intelligent and well-adapted animals edited their own genomes, so what possible need do they have for…blind, random, unguided" evolution?

This is also an emerging field of research, which means it's possible, in theory, that other organisms make extensive use of RNA editing, and we're just not aware of it, yet.

If, as one popular science website puts it, other creatures can "defy" the "central dogma" of genetics, the implications for Darwin's "tree of life," and his entire theory, are dire.

But if cephalopods and the complex information processing that makes them so unique are in fact the result of a Programmer — of a Designer — the waters of biology become far less inky.

Originally posted at breakpoint.org.

Rational Faith is Reason Plus Revelation & " The Language of God"

Collins: Why this scientist believes in God

 By Dr. Francis Collins
 Special to CNN April 6, 2007

Editor's note: Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the Human Genome Project. His most recent book is "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief."

ROCKVILLE, Maryland (CNN) -- I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views.

As the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language6, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan.

I did not always embrace these perspectives. As a graduate student in physical chemistry in the 1970s, I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers.

I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as "What is the meaning of life?" "Why am I here?" "Why does mathematics work, anyway?" "If the universe had a beginning, who created it?" "Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?" "Why do humans have a moral sense?" "What happens after we die?" (Watch Francis Collins discuss how he came to believe in God )

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist's assertion that "I know there is no God" emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative."

But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Ultimately, a leap of faith is required.

For me, that leap came in my 27th year, after a search to learn more about God's character led me to the person of Jesus Christ. Here was a person with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus.

So, some have asked, doesn't your brain explode? Can you both pursue an understanding of how life works using the tools of genetics and molecular biology, and worship a creator God? Aren't evolution and faith in God incompatible? Can a scientist believe in miracles like the resurrection?

Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

But why couldn't this be God's plan for creation? True, this is incompatible with an ultra-literal interpretation of Genesis, but long before Darwin, there were many thoughtful interpreters like St. Augustine, who found it impossible to be exactly sure what the meaning of that amazing creation story was supposed to be. So attaching oneself to such literal interpretations in the face of compelling scientific evidence pointing to the ancient age of Earth and the relatedness of living things by evolution seems neither wise nor necessary for the believer.

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

What is your take on this commentary? E-mail us

The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer. This is part of an occasional series of commentaries on CNN.com that offers a broad range of perspectives, thoughts and points of view.
Your responses

CNN.com asked readers for their thoughts on this commentary. We received a lot of excellent responses. Below you will find a small selection of those e-mails, some of which have been edited for length and spelling.

Lorri Carlson, Prescott, Arizona
I am greatly encouraged to read about Dr. Francis Collins' intellectual and spiritual perspective. It is positively refreshing. A thinking person who recognizes the complementary relationship of faith in Jesus Christ and science! Thank you so much for making this article available.

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James Lampert, Fountain Valley, California
The best case of all for the existence of a supreme being is in the very laws of physics: the fact that physics HAS laws, and that those laws are knowable, internally consistent, and elegant.

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