Have a Great Easter Sunday!!

Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.

Here is the story behind the song of Christ the Lord is Risen Today.

John and Charles Wesley found themselves without favor of many fellow Anglican ministers who did not care for their fiery evangelistic preaching. Many pulpits were closed to them.

A friend from his Oxford days, George Whitefield,(22), having the same trouble, began preaching in the open air at Blackheath, and Charles, too, got a vision for reaching multitudes. He made his first attempt in the outskirts of London. "Franklyn, a farmer, invited me to preach in his field," he wrote. "I did so to about 500. I returned to the house rejoicing." Soon he was preaching to thousands. "My load was gone, and all my doubts and scruples. God shone upon my path and I knew this was all concerning me."

A man named Joseph Williams heard Charles in Bristol: " I found him standing on a table table-board, in a erect posture...surrounded by, I guess, more than a thousand people, some of them fashionable persons, but most of the lower rank of mankind. He prayed with uncommon fervency... He then preached about half an hour in such a manor as I have scarce ever heard any man preach... I think I never heard any man labor so earnestly to convince his hearers that they were all by natural in a sinful undone state; that their was a possibility 0f their salvation through faith with Christ... All this he backed up with many text of scripture which he explained and illustrated and then by a variety of the most forcibly motives arguments, he did invite, quicken and labor, if it were possible, to compel all, and every one of his hearers to believe in Christ for salvation." Charles Wesly still preaches in much the same way, through his ageless hymns that are sung around the world each week. Perhaps his most exuberant anthem he simply calls "Hymn for Easter Day", published in 1739. It originally consisted of eleven stanzas. The "Alleluias" were added later, but appropriately, for this hymn no one gets tired of singing......

Christ, the Lord, is risen today, Alleluia!

Sons of men and angels say, Alleluia!

Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!

Sing, ye heavens, and earth, reply, Alleluia!

May Resurrection day be enjoyed with your friends and family as we celebrate our risen Savior the Lord Jesus Christ!!!!

Have a great Easter Sunday!!!

~He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. ~

Matthew 28:6

MORGAN