April - Grand Encampment of Knights Templar, USA

Prelate’sChapelbyRev. William D. HartmanRight Eminent Grand Prelateof theGrand EncampmentNo one can read the story of Jesus in the Gospels without being forcedto conclude that he believed that by dying he was doing somethingwhich could not have been achieved by living longer. There seemed topress upon him some inner compulsion which kept him steadily on theway to Jerusalem. We see this conviction expressed many times such as in Mark 9:12where Jesus says, “It is written of the Son of man that he must suffer many things.”Similarly in Matthew 20:28, “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but tominister and to give his life as a ransom for many.”Dr. Leslie Weatherhead clearly expresses an inescapable conclusion, “The wordsof Jesus about his suffering and death reveal that he willingly submitted himself tosome mighty task, costly to him beyond our imagining but effecting for all a deliverancebeyond our own power to achieve, and that in doing so, he knew himself to beutterly and completely one with God.”Our Lord, the “Great Captain of our salvation,” knew that we could not redeemourselves, that we could not pay the price for our sins, and that we could not escapethe hand of death. Only he could but only at the sacrifice of his own life. Andso he begins that final journey to Jerusalem, in the month of Nisan, to offer himselfup once and for all, “so that whoever believes in him should not perish but haveeverlasting life.”Let us take that journey with Him. Let us follow the procession into Jerusalemon Palm Sunday, watch as He cleanses the temple, share that Last Supper with himThursday night, stand at the foot of the cross on Friday, and with Charles Wesley, wecan lament, “O Love divine, what hast thou done! The immortal God hath died forme! The Father’s co-eternal Son bore all my sins upon the tree, th’immortal God forme hath died: My Lord, my Love, is crucified ... Pardon for all flows from his side ...Come, feel with me his blood applied, my Lord, my Love is crucified.” Yes, He was“crucified, dead, and buried.”“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they [the women] went to thetomb ... and they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they wentin, they did not find the body.” (Luke 24:1-3)6 april 2011