Yulia and Sergei Skripal
We heard the good news this morning that Yulia Skripal has now been discharged from hospital. Yulia, a Russian citizen, is in England to visit her father Sergei Skripal who is an ex Russian spy but has been living in Salisbury since 2010.
Sergei was a military intelligence officer in Russia but was tried and convicted of passing intelligence information to the UK. Given a 13 year jail sentence, Sergei was released in 2010 as part of a prisoner exchange arrangement between Russia and America.
It is reported that Yulia has often made the journey from her home in Moscow to the UK in order to visit her father. However, on the latest occasion it would appear that she was caught up in a murder attempt that we presume was directed at her father. Whoever carried out this attempted murder used a military grade nerve agent – Novichok – that is known to have been devised and manufactured in Russia, which is why the Russian state is suspected of involvement.
Yulia is not the only person innocently caught up in the affair. British investigators have identified more than 130 people who may have come into contact with the nerve agent.
There was widespread belief that the Skripals would not survive this poisoning attempt, so the news that Yulia had been released from hospital and that her father is making good progress is great news indeed.
Jesus Came Back from Death
Recovering from a death situation doesn’t happen very often, but it is just a couple of weeks since Easter, when many people celebrated the greatest recovery of all time – Jesus Christ rising from the dead after having been executed on a wooden cross.
Almost everyone thought it was finished for Jesus, when soldiers of one of the most brutal and ruthless empires carried out the execution with military precision. Jesus was buried in a tomb which was closed and sealed with a huge stone to prevent any outside interference. And just to make sure, the authorities set a guard to watch and deter any would be grave robbers.
The guard was there for three days because Jesus had intimated before His death that he would rise to life again after this time. Jesus didn’t need any medical help to fulfil his promise, though there were reports of angels being seen around the tomb.
Jesus rose again and was seen by hundreds of witnesses. His immediate disciples were so convinced that they dedicated the rest of their lives telling people about it and were even willing to be executed rather than change their stories.
As for Jesus, He was taken up into heaven and He is still there today, not as someone who is dead but as a living person.
The bible tells us that what happened to Jesus has major implications for the rest of us.
We make think God is remote – a kind of cosmic blur – but that is because any connection we could have with Him has been broken because of our wrong behaviour. Because Jesus died, He is able to re-establish that relationship for us if we surrender our lives over to Him.
That’s another case of dead people finding new life but this time in a spiritual sense and on a vast scale. If you are not included, then you need to enquire about it as soon as possible.
