He is God, He is man. Now people want to know, why did He come here? What's Christmas and Easter all about?

The fact is, we are a rebel planet. The One Who created the Earth laid down specific regulations for its caretakers. All those regulations have been broken repeatedly.

The Creator could either wipe everyone out and start over, as He did in the days of Noah, justly, by the way, or He could find a way to save at least some, through the process of forgiveness and redemption.

Someone could come and pay the price, the price of blood. Someone could die in your place, take the death that you deserved, bear the shame that you caused the Father.

This Someone would have to love you a whole lot. He'd have to be a perfect sacrifice, for the Father only accepts perfect sacrifices. And after He died, since He is perfect and God, God would have to find a way to raise Him from the dead, and defeat not only sin, but death.

It would have to be the very Son of God, Jesus Himself. This plan was thought out before the world began. God knew we would blow it. But God knew that if forgiveness were offered, some would accept it.

God has the very names of those accepting people recorded in Heaven. They are the ones who hear the good news of Jesus, are touched deeply by it, accept Him, are baptized, are filled with His Spirit.

It is good news, you know. You sinned and deserved to die and be judged forever. You do not deserve Heaven, none of you!

And Jesus did not deserve the Cross at Calvary. He died in your place because he loved you. Can you hear His voice today?

The Bible says that all are sinners and that sin produces death.

The Bible says that whoever calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved from sin and eternal death.

The Bible says that if we confess with our mouth and believe in our heart that Jesus has been raised from the dead, we will be saved.

The Bible says that he who believes and is baptized will be saved, but that he who does not believe will be damned.

Can you hear God's Voice calling you to Himself? That simply means, do you desire to know Him and live with Him forever?

If so, tell Him you agree with Him that you have done many bad things, and that you are sorry for those things.

Thank Him for the opportunity you now have to believe in this Jesus Who was crucified for your sins, but also raised for your salvation.

Ask Jesus to forgive you, cleanse you, save you.

He'll do it. And you'll never be the same.

If you want more information about coming to Jesus, , contact us.

6. Who is Jesus according to Albany Park Religionists?

Here are some other revelations about Jesus, taught by people in this very neighborhood. Strange things have been added to the record since the record first was published by God's men, the prophets and apostles, starting in the centuries before Jesus.

Now, if you believe in the living Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, He will give you His very Spirit, and that Spirit will tell you what is true and what is false.

The Bible says that he who believes in the Son of God has the "witness" or the "record" in himself! If you have the Son inside of you, you have life. If you do not have the Son of God, you do not have life.

So get in touch with this Jesus who now lives in you, if you have asked for His forgiveness, as you listen to these other ideas. You'll know immediately, as I do, that they are not God's ideas, but either men's or the Enemy's.

Idea 1: 600 years after Jesus, a man arose in the Middle East and claimed that God had given him a new revelation about the Son of God. In this new revelation, Jesus did not die on the cross. Obviously if He did not die on the cross, He did not rise from the dead.

The Bible says that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, you are still in your sins. We need a Savior who is willing to die, but able to be raised from death. That's the Savior we have!

But in that one teaching by this prophet of the 7th century, the entire Christian faith was shot down. For if Jesus did not die and is not raised, the world must remain in its sin before a Holy God, with no way to pay that debt.

Sin is an awful thing. And that religion formed around that prophet offers no way to overcome sin. No way to be saved except maybe if we try hard enough, maybe by chance this stern god of theirs will say, "All right, come on in." But only maybe. And only if you're one of them.

We say clearly to them today, Jesus is God the Son. The God of Heaven is a Father. He not only has a Son named Jesus, He has millions of adopted children who have been united to Jesus by faith, and fully accepted forever.

And we say to them, Our faith is not a "maybe" thing at all! This Jesus came into the world to save sinners by dying on a Roman cross. His mission was accomplished fully when three days later God raised His Son from the grave!

He's alive today, and He will save you today, if you let Him. He alone has been given the power to take away your sin.

Idea 2. In the 1820's, 1200 years after "Gabriel" appeared to the man in the Middle East, another "angel" appeared to a man here in the United States. Through a long complicated process of revelations, a long complicated understanding of who Jesus is evolved.

Yet if you ask these people today what they believe, their answers sound deceptively like those of the Christian Church. For example, they believe in the Father, the Son , and the Holy Ghost.

But they do not believe in a Trinity.

They believe that God and Jesus were separate physical people who lived on the earth. God was Jesus' father, and both men died.

Jesus is to them the literal Son of God and God's wife, begotten in pre-existent times. Jesus is to them the brother of Lucifer and all spirits. He is one of three separate gods, and the first one to receive a spirit body.

A very confusing Jesus, and a very powerless Jesus. Why powerless? Because in this religion, what Jesus did on the cross is not enough. You will only be saved if you are obedient to all the laws. That sounds like Moses, not Jesus. In Jesus, the real Jesus, we are saved by faith, and works follow.

In their religion, and most religions of the world, you are saved by trying real hard, and if you don't try hard enough, you don't make it. Very insecure faith.

The reason this religion is so confusing is because it has a different source of authority. They believe the Bible to be the Word of God only where it was translated correctly! And they decide where it is translated correctly. They also have another set of books that they believe are of equal value.

That problem of authority is the same in all three of these Albany Park religions, and in the church of Rome and the Orthodox church, also represented in our neighborhood. They all claim to believe the Bible... up to a point. But they have these other books, too.

Let's keep it simple, regarding authority: God founded His church on His Son and His Son's apostles. Those apostles passed on through their writings, the books we now call the Old and New Testaments, guided by the Holy Spirit, over these hundreds of years, all the Truth the church would ever need.

I have good news for you. No angel of God has come along and changed things. Paul said it: "Though we or an angel from Heaven preach any other Gospel than the one I have preached, let him be accursed." He not only said it, he said it twice! He knew that angels would be released to deceive the world's people. He knew they would promote another Gospel, which is not a Gospel at all.

It's bad news to believe your works are going to save you. You've all lived long enough to know you cannot keep God's laws. Don't be deceived! You need a Savior from sin who offers salvation freely, and motivates you from the inside to keep His Word. You need Christ and His Holy Spirit, not a religion that came from men and angels!

No other Book has been given from Heaven for us. God's Word the Bible is as secure today as it was when it first came from the mouth and the pen of the apostles. For the church to prosper, for this neighborhood to prosper, it needs to return to what the apostles said, and preach the same Jesus the apostles preached.