Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn was the greatest writer of the twentieth century.  He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970 for his novel, The Gulag Archipelago.  It told the horrifying story of the Soviet Union’s punishment of dissenters in prison camps during the rule of Stalin.

Solzhenitsyn survived eight years inside.  In 1974 the Soviet Union stripped him of his citizenship and expelled him from the country.  In looking back and reflecting on all his sufferings, the acclaimed writer said, “Men did not remember God, that’s why all this happened.”

Solzhenitsyn knew.  He was a Christian.  In the darkest days of his imprisonment he remembered God.

Not remembering has been the big problem throughout the history of mankind.  God is there.  But men forget.  And when men forget God, evil things begin to happen.

It’s Easter.  It’s a very good time to begin remembering.

The Bible says, “God loved the world so much that he sent his only begotten son.” (John 3:16)  That was a kind and generous thing to do.  But the Bible also reports, “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him.  He came to his own, and those who were his own did not receive him.” (John 1:10-11)

They had forgotten.  And so, not recognizing him, they killed him by the cruelest form of death man has yet devised.

But on the third day Jesus rose from the dead.

Maybe you think the story of Christ’s resurrection is merely myth.  Maybe you shove it into the dusty category of something only religious people take seriously.  Maybe you don’t even care.  Maybe you have forgotten God.

Two billion people around the world have not forgotten.  And Easter Sunday they will constitute the greatest gathering of people who have ever come together as families or friends or in churches large and small, in every nation on earth, to remember and to worship.  

What do they know that you don’t?  These two billion. One third of the earth’s population.

The fact is that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a perfectly authenticated and provable event.  It is more certain than any other event from ancient times.  Get this straight: It really happened.

If you wish to doubt it or to argue against it, or if you choose to ignore it, it is because you have not ever carefully explored the evidence.  It’s as simple as that.  If you do you will be convinced.   Many doubters have.

The Bible says, “To as many as received him, who believed in his name, to them he gave the power to become the sons of God.” (John 1:12)  A “son,” in this use of the term, is one who inherits eternal life.  Not every son acts like a son of God. 

But compared to the sons, people who forget God soon fall in the darkness and contribute to the evil that is in the world.  And no, I am not saying that Christians never do wrong or wicked things.  They do.  But most of us are better persons than we would be had we not believed.

What I am saying is that the resurrection of Jesus is the one point of light that can lead mankind up from the sorrows, out of the suffering.

Maybe it is time for you to check it out and then to join the worshipers on Easter, and start the process of remembering God in your life.  Start to make the world a happier place.  Friend, the tomb is empty.   Count on it.

Dr. Rick Perrin is Chairman of the Board of World Reformed Fellowship and senior pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Cherry Hill NJ.  He writes a weekly blog called ReTHINK which may be accessed at www.rethinkingnews.wordpress.com. He may be contacted directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..