As I write this, I have just finished preaching the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to more than 430,000 people gathered in Meskel Square in the city center of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. I praise God for the thousands who repented of their sins and professed their faith in Jesus Christ during the two-day Encountering God outreach.

Sixty-five years ago, my father preached the same Gospel message of faith and repentance in Christ in this same Ethiopian capital. Since then, the world has changed, politics have changed, but the Gospel does not change. It’s the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.

In the book of Acts, we read how Philip shared the same Gospel message with an Ethiopian man he encountered while traveling from Jerusalem to Gaza. The Ethiopian, who had been reading from the Prophet Isaiah, asked Philip to explain the Scriptures to him.

“The place in the Scripture which he read was this: ‘He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so He opened not His mouth.In His humiliation His justice was taken away, and who will declare His generation? For His life is taken from the earth’” (Acts 8:32-33).

After Philip explained the Gospel, the Ethiopian put his faith in Jesus Christ. God saved him, and he asked to be baptized in a nearby pool of water. 

The hope the Ethiopian received is the same hope we celebrate at Easter. Through Christ’s resurrection, He conquered sin and the grave. He paid our sin debt by dying in our place, thus fulfilling the Biblical requirement—“For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). 

Thankfully, Christ defeated death! And because He’s alive, those who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ can rejoice that “the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). 

At Easter, we celebrate that God raised His Son from death to life to rescue us from an eternity separated from Him in a place the Bible calls hell. The Bible says: “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved”(John 3:17).

As Easter approaches, I’m truly grateful that the FOX News Channel and Trinity Broadcasting Network will televise on Easter Sunday a sermon that we taped several weeks ago from the Palisades Fire District in Southern California. While standing in the wasteland of charred rubble and gray ash, I preached a message titled “Easter from the Ashes.”

On Jan. 7, the Eaton and Palisades fires started in California, fueled by hurricane-force Santa Ana winds that propelled the flames for miles and miles. They burned nearly 38,000 acres and destroyed or damaged more than 18,000 structures. Sadly, 29 people perished in the flames.

Local residents who survived the inferno reported that their vehicles melted while the flames climbed hundreds of feet in the air as one house after another exploded into sheets of flying debris. “Hell on Earth” is how the heroic firefighters and first responders described what it was like to try to hold their ground against the overpowering flames.

Preaching among the ruins left by the Southern California wildfires made me think about how hopeless it must have seemed when the ground shook and the sky went dark in the middle of the day that Jesus Christ hung on the cross and declared, “It is finished,” and then breathed His last.

The fiery hell that people were describing in California pales in comparison to the real hell created for the devil and his angels. Hell is a place of eternal torment where the flames are never quenched and the stench of death is inextinguishable. 

God’s Word describes hell as eternal flames. A lake of fire. “A furnace of fire” with “wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:42). Hell is God’s judgment for people who reject His offer of redemption and salvation found only in Jesus Christ’s atoning death on the cross and victorious resurrection from the grave. 

The only way we can be spared God’s righteous and just punishment is through trusting in the sinless blood of Christ that was shed on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.

The Bible says: “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

Some 2,000 years ago in Israel, the religious leaders of that day—the scribes and the Pharisees—were jealous of Jesus. They arrested Him and had a mock trial where they conspired to find him guilty of blasphemy—even though He was innocent—so they could have Him crucified like a criminal.

Jesus was beaten beyond recognition, flogged with whips embedded with glass and metal that shredded His back. After being crucified on Calvary’s cross, Jesus’ body was placed in a tomb, and a stone was rolled over the opening to seal it shut.

Roman soldiers guarded the tomb so that no one could steal Jesus’ body, and the Pharisees went away rejoicing that their plan to execute the Son of God had been accomplished.

But on the third day—Easter morning—there was a mighty earthquake, and an angel descended from Heaven, and rolled away the stone, and Jesus stepped out of that tomb of death, alive!

The grave couldn’t hold Him. The religious leaders who couldn’t stand Him soon found out they couldn’t stop Him. Death couldn’t defeat Him. The Son of God arose triumphant, and today He is at the right hand of God the Father in Heaven. And the Bible promises that Jesus is coming back soon for the Bride of Christ, His Church. 

This Easter, let’s celebrate with grateful hearts the new life and eternal redemption that our Lord Jesus Christ alone makes possible. The Bible says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). ©2025 BGEA

Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version.  

Photo: Shealah Craighead / ©2025 BGEA