Can Roy Holladay of the United Church of God really be this stupid? He has written a letter to the ministry of UCG to help them prepare for their upcoming version of "Passover." He starts the letter off by writing about growing up as a youth and the dread he felt when he saw hay fields mown and raked ready for baling hay. It was hot and sweaty. He was covered by the prickly chaff blowing back at him from the hay baler. The bales of hay were wrapped in oily wire. It was nasty work, but some one had to to do it. He fully submitted himself to the task. The relief of the day was jumping in the local stream and washing all of that mess off.
We have all faced a
task or obligation that we did not look forward to doing, but that had
long-lasting benefits. Allow me to relate an example from my youth: I
grew up on a farm and over time helped bale many thousands of bales of
hay while riding on the back of an old punch and tie baler. In those
days, when you saw that a field of hay had been cut and raked, you knew
exactly what was soon coming.
Of course, the summer
season working temperature would be in the 90s Fahrenheit (32 Celsius),
the wires that held the bales together had a lot of sticky grease or
oil on them, the baler would kick up dust and debris from the hay and
field, and naturally, all of this would get into your eyes and down your
shirt.
Now, after baling the
hay, you had to load it on a truck and stack it in the barn loft. This
represented an all-day job. At night, you could not wait to take a bath.
Back then, the only problem was that we did not have indoor plumbing!
Consequently, the fastest way to clean up would be to jump in the nearby
creek or stream with a bar of soap. As you can imagine, a certain
amount of dread crept up when we could see a hay field being cut–we knew
what that meant for us.
Ok, I can identify with all of that since I grew up baling hay and straw for many years. However, he continues with this where he describes the dread Jesus felt before he knew he was being crucified:
Why mention this? Hold that thought for moment.
We will shortly be
observing the Passover, which pictures the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for
all humanity. Revelation 13:8 clearly states that Jesus (the Lamb of
God) was slain from the foundation of the world. Did God understand in
advance that it was conceivable for the angels and for humans to sin?
Yes, He did! He made room for this possibility in His plan from the very
beginning. Notice what Peter adds to our understanding about this in 1
Peter 1:18-20: “knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible
things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by
tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as
of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He indeed was foreordained
before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times
for you…”
-----
Jesus knew what Isaiah
52 and 53 stated: He was going to suffer. With full understanding of
what lay ahead in the coming hours, He naturally dreaded enduring that
agonizing pain and suffering. But even knowing this in advance, He fully
submitted Himself to God’s will. Even though He was not anxious to
undergo excruciating pain, He knew there was an eternal purpose for it.
As we read in Isaiah 53, verses 4 and 5: “Surely He has borne our griefs
[sickness] And carried our sorrows [pains]…But He was wounded for our
transgressions [for our sins], He was bruised for our iniquities; The
chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are
healed.”
According to Holladay, the dread that Jesus felt for his upcoming crucifixion could have lasted for millions of years.
From the beginning,
Jesus Christ knew that He would be tortured and executed by the very
humans that He created! From the beginning of the physical universe,
possibly many millions of years ago, Jesus (then The Word) knew full
well what lay ahead of Him and all that it meant.
Somehow Holladay's "hay dread" does not compare to the same dread Jesus had the day before he was crucified and he was sitting down to eat with his disciples.
