Between Justice and Mercy and Related Essays

This book explores God's love, how it is different from other kinds of love, and walks the reader through how that defines and constrains him. Of all character traits, justice and mercy require God to submit himself for justice on our behalf. God is both the judge and the convicted defendant in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who stands representing all mankind. He is the link between justice and mercy, without which we would be separated from God forever. Because Jesus is the Son of God, he has the power to die and take up his life again.

I describe the events of the Last Passover described extensively detail day by day every move Jesus made from the time he came to Lazarus's house in Bethany, on a Thursday to dusk Saturday one week later when he was raised. I explain why Palm Sunday is on a Saturday, the demise of the fig tree on Sunday, the Last Supper on Tuesday evening, and Jesus's death on the cross Wednesday, with extensive detail and Scriptural reference. I debunk the notion that Jesus's crucifixion was on Good Friday which does not allow for "three days in the grave," as Jesus said.

I show how Jesus's ministry, the First Passover in Exodus, and the ancient Jewish wedding tradition explain the events from his baptism in the Jordan to his death in Jerusalem. I show how the Last Supper was not a Passover meal, that the bread was really the bride-price of his broken body, and that the wine represents his blood on the chuppah cloth which proves our purity. Jesus dies on April 3 AD 30 and I show why I think so.

There are three parts to an anciet Jewish wedding ceremony, the shiddukhin, the erusin, and the nissuin. The erusin was the Last Supper. The nissuin is the great wedding feast yet to come.

The related essays address basic Christian apologetics: How We Became the Bride of Christ, Dating the Last Passover, Eternal or Timeless, The Mathematics of God, The Astronomy of God, and Our Spiritual Anatomy.

I worked in medicine as a pediatrician for 36 years. For the last twenty years, my wife and I worked in medical missions in various world locations, and most recently we have done that and more in Haiti. Though I have a number of skills and talents completely unrelated to writing, I enjoy it probably the most. I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and my Savior at around age four. My wife, too, has been a Christian since around that age, and we just entered our fourth decade of marriage. I majored in Chemistry in undergrad and have a strong science base. I study apologetics intensively because I want to know truth and why I believe what I do. Coupled with my love for Christ and my God, I write as an expression of what I hear him speaking to my heart.