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PART BY REV. W. B. GODBEY, A.M. Author of “Commentary on the New Testament, Volumes I, II, III, IV, V, and VI;” “Spiritual Gifts and Graces,” “Holy Land,” “Victory,” Holiness or Hell,” “Christian Perfection,” “Sanctification,” “Baptism,” “Woman Preacher,” and “Footprints of Jesus.” PURSUANT to the clamor of the holiness people from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Gulf to the Lakes, after long procrastination, feeling my incompetency, finally, five years ago, yielding to their importunity, I entered upon the arduous work of expounding the New Testament Scriptures exegetically for the common people, who desire to know the precious Word of the Lord and communicate it to others, hoping and praying the inspiration of the blessed Holy Spirit, Author of the everlasting Gospel, on our feeble efforts to expound His precious truth; not writing critically for the preachers, but lucidly, experimentally, and practically, sanguinely hoping that the rank and file of God’s sincere, humble, holy people, who, like the inspired Twelve, have no opportunities for collegiate learning, may study these books by the help of the Lord, go out and preach the gospel to the dying millions, not only in the home lands, but especially to those who sit in heathen darkness beyond the sea.

Deprecating the responsibility of writing up our Savior’s ministry, and assured that full salvation has steam-power enough to run up stream, I began at the end of the Book, to go back to the beginning, expounding the Apocalypse, that wonderful book of New Testament prophecy, first of all, constituting Volume 1 in the series. Volume 2, comprising Hebrews, Peter, James, John, and Jude, those wonderful books, so pregnant with perfection, fire, life, love and lightning, then followed. Now, reaching those beautiful, profound, and magnificent writings of the Apostle Paul, Volume 3, expounding Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, First and Second Thessalonians, First and Second Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, including the Pastoral Epistles and the thrilling prophecies of Paul, setting forth the return of Jesus to this world, to translate His saints, set up His kingdom, and reign in glory, — themes whose absorbing and inspiring interest will ever prove an Archimedean lever, to lift the saints into higher communion, sweeter fellowship, and broader experiences. Then those wonderful Corinthian Epistles, expounding the gifts and graces of the Holy Ghost, till the sanctified intellect grows dizzy in contemplating the transcendent possibilities attainable by the citizens of the kingdom, even in this transitory life, and Galatians, elucidating the plan of salvation, as evolved out of the Abrahamic covenant, with a beauty, symmetry, force, and perspicuity unutterably charming and superlatively edifying, constitute Volume 4; while the Acts of the Apostles, that wonderful history of the advent and mighty works of the Holy Comforter, and that wonderful book of Romans, Paul’s Imperial Epistle, so wonderful for its symmetry, profundity, altitude, latitude, and longitude, containing an epitome of the whole Bible, constitute Volume 5. These five books I wrote between my tours in the Holy Land in 1895 and 1899. Though during the last tour I actually dictated the Commentary on the Gospels stenographically to an amanuensis, after my return, January 3d, in the quietude of the rural home, I have dictated Volume 6 to the amanuenses, beginning with the New Testament Gospels, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, following the Greek Harmony, and expounding every word in the order in which they occur, — some things being written by the four, others by three and two, and a considerable quantity Of the precious Word by only one. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, writing historically, run much together; John, who wrote spiritually and experimentally, for the edification of the Church, generally going alone. As Volume 6 traverses thirty months of our Savior’s ministry, we only have six left for Volume 7, which concludes the series.

I am sure the first two and a half years of our Lord’s ministry are infinitely and even climacterically interesting and edifying to all the lovers of Jesus and His Word. Yet the valedictory period of His mission on earth, including the conspiracy of His enemies, His arrest, arraignment, condemnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and glorious ascension, constitute a series of themes, tragical and thrilling events, in point of historic interest eclipsing all the transcendent achievements of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, and Bonaparte; and the depths and heights, lengths and breadths of immortal truth, flashing out from His heroic deportment in the presence of His enemies, His imperturbable calmness and superhuman serenity when all others were tossed by the tempest and borne away on the wing of the tornado, and the unfathomable depth of that love which moved Him to die for His enemies, are destined to furnish inexhaustible soul pabulum, and hold all sincere lovers of truth, true righteousness, holiness, and heaven spell-bound, lost in unutterable bewilderment, while contemplating the tragical scenes of Calvary, the heavenly sunburst on the sepulcher, the profound mysteries of the ensuing forty days, and the ineffable glory which rolled in billows of light and beauty over Mt. Olivet, while multitudes, with mortal eyes, gazed upon the ineffable glory of His transfigured person, as He moved up the azure firmament, entering pavilions of snowy-white clouds, disappearing in the zenith of the bright Oriental firmament, while angels, robed in the splendor of snowy white, dropped down in His track, and with uplifted hands and eloquent lips, assured the electrified multitude that “this same Jesus, whom they have seen ascend, is coming back in like manner;” i .e ., going up amid clouds and accompanied by angels, so He will ride down amid thronging myriads of unfallen angels, and clouds whose effulgence will illumine the world, and call His saints to meet Him in the air. While the themes of the preceding; six volumes have been interesting and edifying beyond the possibility of mortal language to portray, certainly the valedictory ministry of our Lord will climax them all. So if this volume does not interest and edify the reader, it will be the fault of the writer and not of the theme.

CHAPTER - THE TEN LEPERS Luke 17:11-19. “And it came to pass, while He was journeying to Jerusalem, and He was going through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.” These two countries lie side by side. I traveled that same route from the, Sea of Galilee, through Samaria and Judea, to Jerusalem. “And He, coming into a certain village, ten leprous men met Him, who stood far away; and they lifted up their voice saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” The lepers are still in that country. I saw them, and contributed a little to their temporal support. The city of Sychem — or Shechem, O.T.; and Sychar, N.T. — and now called Nablus, contains a leprous quarter. These lepers stood a long way off and called to Him; for two reasons doubtless: (a) Their loathsome and embarrassing condition; and (b) Their faith in Jesus to heal them even at that distance. “And seeing them, He said, Going, show yourselves to the priests. And while they were going, they were cleansed.” a. No leper was allowed to show himself to the priest till he had already been cleansed ( Leviticus 14), as neither the priest nor any human being had the power to cleanse a leper. The matter was understood by everybody that the cleansing of a leper could only come about by the miraculous intervention of the Almighty. b. A great popular mistake is entertained with reference to the contagion of leprosy. It is neither contagious nor epidemic, as you see in that case the priest, whose office brings him in constant contact with it, would have no chance whatever to escape the contagion. c. The separation of the lepers from the people, instituted in the days of Moses and perpetuated to the present, is simply because of its awful loathsomeness. d. How strikingly is the Scripture corroborated in that country in every respect, customs remaining unchanged from the patriarchal ages, so the traveler sees his Bible verified when he looks out on all sides, even the leprosy, in separate quarters, to be seen now as in the days of Christ! e. We never read about the healing of the leper, but always his “cleansing,” that word being used indicative of the dismal and awful impurity characteristic of leprosy, which is the very synonym of loathsome, living death, its poor victim living on like well people, and dying all the time — a finger dropping off, then another and another, till the hand drops off at the wrist, and finally the arm at the elbow, and then at the shoulder, all this time the decaying flesh emitting a most intolerable carrion odor. Hence the O.T. requirement of seclusion, which is perpetuated to the present day, the lepers themselves, conscious of their obnoxious repellency, preferring seclusion all the time. f . The solution of the whole problem is, that leprosy is the most vivid symbol of sin in all the world; and consequently always incurable by all human remedies. Therefore in all ages it was always understood that none but God could cleanse the leper. g . While leprosy is not contagious, it is intensely hereditary, being a blood trouble, and always transmitted from sire to son through the generations indefinitely, and in that respect most vividly emblematizing inbred sin. h. Of course, the leprous eruptions and running sores typify actual sins, which are the unhappy fruits of original sin, just as the awful cancerous sores of the leper all originate from contaminated blood. i . Leprous infants are bright, beautiful, and sprightly, exhibiting not a solitary symptom of the disease which, erelong, is sure to develop somewhere on the body, and cling to them through life, unless miraculously healed. In a similar manner, the infantile rattlesnake has no poison in his bite, the narcotic glands having not yet sufficiently developed to concentrate the poisonous virus from his blood and transmit it to another.

Yet the poison is there, and as the snake grows, it becomes transmissible by his bite. j. In a similar manner, the virus of inbred sin in the blood of humanity is transmissible indefinitely, like the infant leper, originally bright and fair, but in due time the occult virus making its appearance and intensifying to the end. k. The outward manifestations of the devouring leprosy symbolize evil habits, whose natural tendency is to accumulate impetuosity and dimension, culminating in hopeless ruin. l . Study the Oriental leprosy in all its phases, from its latency in the blood of the beautiful infant, its gradual and progressive development in the organism till it traverses the whole body, transforming it into a fetid, loathsome, living death, and how vividly does it symbolize sin, transmitted in the blood, but unseen in the beautiful, innocent babe, but sure ill due time to develop, making its manifestation on some part of the organism, and if not taken away by Omnipotent grace, spreading on indefinitely, culminating in irremediable ruin! “And one of them, seeing that he was healed, turned back, with a great voice glorifying God, and fell on his face at His feet, giving thanks to Him; and he was a Samaritan.” Here we see a case where sheer misery had triumphed over all the inveterate race prejudices which for ages had alienated the Jews and Samaritans, so that there was no intercommunication; and thus these poor lepers, both Jews and Samaritans, amid their awful sufferings and forlorn alienation from society, forgetting race antipathies, are all living together. “And Jesus responding, said, Were not the ten cleansed? Where are the nine? They were not found returning to give glory to God, except this foreigner.” When the Israelites were carried into captivity by Shalmaneser, B.C. 721, a few poor people were left in the country, who in after years proved insufficient to so occupy it as to prevent the wild beasts, especially the lions, from multiplying among them to their serious detriment. Consequently, Esarhaddon, the Chaldean monarch, sent to that country inhabitants from some of the heathen nations of the great North, who, with the few surviving Hebrews, eventually became the Samaritan nation, having predominantly the foreign, heathen blood, so that here, Jesus calls them “a foreign nation;” i .e ., not Jews, but heathens. “And He said to him, Arising, go; thy faith hath saved thee.” Here our Savior, as constantly and uniformly in His preaching, recognizes faith as the human condition of salvation, a truth so prominent in the Scripture that the most superficial Bible reader can not fail incessantly to recognize it. We see here salvation affirmed of this Samaritan, who returned to give glory to Jesus, our Lord remaining reticent in reference to the other nine, involving the conclusion that they did not get saved, but only healed. Hence you see it is quite an ill omen of salvation for people not to confess it to the honor and glory of God.

CHAPTER - JESUS AT THE FESTIVAL OF TABERNACLES John 7:11-16. “Therefore the Jews continued to seek Him at the feast, and say, Where is He? And there was much murmuring concerning Him among the multitude; some said that He is good; others said, No, but He deceiveth the multitude.” V. 13. “No one, indeed, spoke openly concerning Him, on account of the fear of the Jews. And the festival already being midway, Jesus came up into the temple, and was teaching. Then the Jews were astonished, saying, How does this One know letters, having never been taught? And Jesus responded to them, and said, My teaching is not Mine, but of Him that sent Me.” Jesus began His ministry, according to the prophecies, by coming into the temple and purifying it, casting out the buyers and sellers. Remaining but a few days after the Passover in Judea, He returned to Galilee, His native land, where He remained, preaching, healing the sick, and casting out demons, till the next Passover, which He also attended, returning to Galilee very soon after its adjournment. Remaining in Galilee the ensuing year, He did not go up to Jerusalem to the next Passover, which was the third in His ministry, evidently because the multitude, going from the cities around the Galilean Sea, were determined to crown Him King; consequently remaining in Galilee six months longer, with two little exceptions — the one when he went into Syria to Caesarea-Philippi, and the other when He went into Phenicia, the land of Tyre and Sidon. Now the Feast of Tabernacles, coming off in September, has rolled round. Having declined to go in the crowd, with His brothers and friends, in time for the opening, He goes on later, accompanied by His apostles, preaching and working miracles in Samaria as He passed along, arriving in Jerusalem about Wednesday, the festival, commemorative of Israel’s wilderness peregrinations, having opened on Sunday, and, as it says here, went immediately into the temple and began to teach. The critics even deny that He was ever in the temple proper, that being reserved for the priests alone; but this word “temple” was really applied to the Holy Campus, which is said to contain thirty-five acres, having very many elegant buildings on it at that time, and quite a number now, in several of which — e .g ., Solomon’s Porch and the Treasury — He taught the people; but as the vast multitudes during the festivals occupied the open air, it is more than likely that the most of His preaching in the temple was out on the pavement of that vast area, and overcanopied by naught save the blue, arching skies. During this eighteen months’ absence from Jerusalem and Judea, constant reports were coming from His fields of labor in Galilee, thrilling the people with wonder, curiosity, and amazement, all revolving in their minds what kind of a man can He be. Meanwhile, the high priests and Pharisees are most cunningly maneuvering to break the force of these thrilling reports and prejudice the people against Him, frequently sending their sharpest critics all the way to Galilee to hound Him wherever He went, hanging with diabolical chicanery on His lips, watching and criticizing every word, twisting and perverting all His utterances, laboring night and day to catch up something which they can pervert and magnify into an accusation against Him, so, if possible, to have Him arrested and turned over to the Sanhedrin or the proconsul. They charge Him with deceiving the multitude. How? Why, impressing them that He is the Messiah, when they claim that He is not. By the statement that He had never been taught, is simply meant that He had never gone to school to a rabbi that they knew of, there being no common schools in that day.

During this long interval of His absence from the South, the scribes and Pharisees have done their utmost to obliterate His influence in Jerusalem and Judea. Now, thirty months of His ministry having passed away, and not perhaps more than one month, all told, spent in the metropolis, but nearly all of His time having been appropriated in Galilee, an obscure country compared with Jerusalem and Judea, after the vociferous clamors of the clergy all this time, telling the people that He would never come back there, and if He did they would arrest Him, His sudden and bold appearing and preaching amid the vast multitudes on the Temple Campus produces a tremendous sensation, raising popular inquiry, and exciting curiosity to the very acme, and at the same time arousing all the clergy and official laity to unite against Him, determined if possible to so implicate Him as to secure His arrest, feeling chagrined before the multitude, who had so often heard them boasting that He would never come back, and certifying that if He did they would arrest Him and put Him to death, as they claimed that He richly deserved, as a false prophet.

VOLITION THE SALIENT FACT John 7:17,18. “If any one may wish to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether I speak from God or from Myself. He that speaketh from himself, seeketh his own glory; he that seeketh the glory of Him that sent Him, the same is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.” In this passage, where the E.V. says, “If any one will do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine,” the great salient point is actually omitted, using “will” as an auxiliary to “do;” whereas it is the leading verb on which the infinite “to do” depends, the original being thele , and should read, “If any one may will to do His will;” not simply to be willing or to wish to do His will, or to resolve to do His will, but actually to put forth the volition to do His will, which, in the Divine estimation, is actually doing it; because, “while man looks on the outside, God looks on the heart.” Hence, with God, the volition to do a thing is actually doing it. When you resolve to commit a crime, you are guilty of committing it, though mechanically kept from it by uncontrollable circumstances. Now, you see from this statement of our Lord, that the secret of human ignorance in reference to God’s Word and will is in the heart, rather than the understanding. Our Churches abound in people who say they can not understand sanctification.

They are under the delusion of the devil, who is side-tracking them on intellectual lines, simply to keep them from getting it. Sanctification, like regeneration, is an experience which no one can understand till he gets it.

The way out off this difficulty is simply to resolve, “I will have it or die,” and become an indefatigable seeker at the altar and everywhere else. In that case, you are sure to get it, and equally sure to understand it. Here, Jesus condemns the man who speaks of himself and seeks his own glory, thus putting all selfishness under eternal interdict. Sam Jones well says, “Hell is nothing but selfishness on fire.” Man is a dependency, independency invariably alienating him from God and superinducing eternal ruin.

APOSTASY OF THE JEWISH CHURCH John 7:19-23. “Did not Moses give you the law? and no one of you keeps the law.” Do you not see the utter collapse and failure of their religion, as neither priest nor people kept the law? Can we keep it?

Certainly, by the grace of God in Christ. “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” ( Romans 13:10) Hence, you see, all who have perfect love do, by the grace of God, keep and fulfill the law; not literally, but spiritually. “Why do you seek to kill Me? The multitude responded, Thou hast a demon; who seeks to kill thee?” Though the high priests and Pharisees had threatened to kill Him if He ever came back to Jerusalem, the respondent from the crowd did not know it. “Jesus responded, and said to them, One work I did, and you are all amazed.” That was the work of healing the invalid at the pool, which He did eighteen months previously, when last at Jerusalem. “Moses gave you circumcision: not that it is of Moses, but of the fathers; and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath.” God instituted circumcision in the days of Abraham, long before Moses was born. Jesus had healed the invalid of thirty-eight years on the Sabbath-day, while attending the second Passover of His ministry. The penalty under the law for violating the Sabbath being death by stoning, consequently they are constantly maneuvering to arrest and bring Him before the Sanhedrin, and try Him for Sabbath-breaking.

Here He utterly nullifies the allegation by the fact that they circumcise a man on the Sabbath. “If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath, in order that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you mad at Me because I made a man entirely well on the Sabbath?” Thus He turns the argument against them, breaking their heads with their own club.

RIGHTEOUS JUDGMENT John 7:24-31. “Judge not according to sight.” The verb here is in the perpetual present, setting forth human proneness to judge people from the outward appearance. “But judge righteous judgment.” The verb in this clause is in the aorist tense, which means an instantaneous action and a permanent state following, involving the conclusion that instead of these helter-skelter judgments from the outside, we are to deliberately investigate, ascertain the truth, adopt it, and stick to it permanently. “Then certain ones of the Jerusalemites were saying, Is not this the One whom they are seeking to kill? And, behold, He speaks boldly, and they say nothing to Him.” These people in Jerusalem knew well that the high priests, scribes, and Pharisees had determined and boasted, during His long absence in Galilee, that if He ever came back there, they would kill Him. “Whether have the rulers truly found out that He is the Christ.” There was a prevalent, popular dogma that when Christ came, the wise rabbis and the Sanhedrin would be the first to find it out and tell the people. Now, as these Jerusalemites had heard them say that if He ever came back there they would have Him arrested and put to death, at the same time predicting that He would never come, alleging that He could do wonders off in Galilee among the ignorant people, but they dared Him to come to Jerusalem; and now that He is here, boldly and powerfully preaching to the multitudes, attending the Festival of Tabernacles, on the Temple Campus, and they do not molest Him; therefore they conclude that their great men must in some way have found out that He is the Christ, and consequently are just letting Him alone. “But we know this One, whence He is; but when Christ may come, no one knows whence He is.” There was a popular dogma that when Christ comes on tile earth, He will suddenly appear to the people, and no one will know anything about His origin, the prophecies of His conception and birth being mystified, so they did not understand them. “Then Jesus cried out, teaching in the temple, and saying, You know Me, and you know whence I am. But I did not come of Myself, but the One having sent Me is true, whom you know not.” He had been born at Bethlehem, only seven miles south of Jerusalem, and lived thirty years at Nazareth, only one hundred and fifty miles north of Jerusalem. Of course, He was well known to the Jewish nation, being a native of their country. But while they knew Him personally, though they claimed to be the most godly people in the world, He here frankly informs them that they do not know Him. “I know Him, because I am with Him, and He has sent Me.” Jesus here uses the present tense, only applicable to His Divinity, which was omnipresent, His humanity at that time being confined to this world. We frequently hear silly twaddle nowadays in reference to the impracticability of His presence on earth and in heaven during the millennium. All this is answered by His own proclamation, stating that while in Jerusalem, He was present with the Father. “Then they were seeking to arrest Him, and no One laid his hand on Him, because His hour had not yet come.” Jesus was immortal till His work was done, and so are His true followers. Therefore let us fear neither sickness nor death. We shall live till we finish our work. Then heaven will be infinitely preferable. “And many of the multitude believed on Him, and continued to say, When Christ may come, will He do more miracles than those which this Man doeth?” N.B. — Myriads of people were then at Jerusalem who had witnessed His mighty works in Galilee.

THE CHIEF PRIESTS AND PHARISEES SEND OFFICERS TO ARREST HIM John 7:32-34. “The Pharisees heard the multitude murmuring these things concerning Him, the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers that they may arrest Him.” His powerful preaching during the tabernacle festival is winning many converts, so they are believing on Him on all sides, and there is a great stir among the people; the thousands from Galilee and elsewhere, who had heard Him preach and witnessed His miracles, clamoring among all the people, so there is a great commotion, and everybody talking about the wonderful Prophet of Galilee. So here, at their great camp-meeting, He is more magnetic than all the high priests, theologians, rabbis, and Pharisaical magnates combined. Consequently, they get awfully mad, and resolve to carry on their threat, as the people are already twitting them with cowardice. So they cut the matter short, and send officers to arrest and bring Him at once to the Sanhedrin, assembled in the Judgment Hall of Caiaphas on Mount Zion.

THE DISPERSION OF THE GREEKS John 7:33-36. “Then Jesus said, Yet a little while I am with you, and I go to Him that sent Me. You shall seek Me, and shall not find Me, and where I am you are not able to come. Then the Jews said to one another, Whither is He about to go, that we shall not find Him? Whether is He about to go into the dispersion of the Greeks, and to teach the Greeks? What is this word which He said, Ye shall seek and not find Me, and where I am you are not able to come?” During the Alexandrian conquests, the Greeks conquered the whole world, and became the rulers of all nations, thus establishing their beautiful, concise, definite, vivid, perspicuous, and in every way wonderful language in every nation under heaven, preparatory for the preaching of Jesus and His apostles and the evangelization of the globe. The Jews, the most enterprising people in the world, had gone away on mercantile expeditions, and settled in all the important cities of the world, — a glorious preparation for the evangelization of all nations, the Jews constituting the nucleus of the gospel Church, and becoming the heralds of the living Word to the ends of the earth. Now the meaning of this passage is, they propound the question whether Jesus, forsaking the homelands, will go away into the Jewish settlements of the Gentile cities, and preach to the Jews in their world-wide dispersion among all nations.

RIVERS OF LIVING WATER FLOWING OUT OF THE HEART John 7:37-39. “And on the last great day of the festival, Jesus stood, and continued to cry out, saying, If any one may thirst, let him come and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture said, Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water. And He spoke this concerning the Spirit which those believing on Him were about to receive; for He was not yet; because Jesus was not yet glorified.” This is really the grand, salient proclamation of all the preaching of our Savior recorded by John on the present occasion.

The Scripture here referred to is Ezekiel 47:1-12, where we have that glorious description of the holy waters, flowing out from the right hand of the altar eastward, and down into the Dead Sea, transforming the wilderness of Judea into blooming gardens and fruitful fields, sanctifying and redeeming the poisonous waters of the Dead Sea, filling them with multitudes of the most valuable fishes, revivifying the whole surrounding country, dotting the shores of that desolate sea with thriving villages and populous cities, clothing the whole surrounding country with fruits and flowers, perennial verdure, and transforming all that vast, desolate region into an earthly paradise, thus symbolizing the wonderful potency of Spiritfilled people to transform the darkest jungles of our city slums and the gloomy wastes of heathen lands into holiness camp-meetings and millennial harbingers. The E.V., unfortunately, mars this wonderful passage by the translation, “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water,” using a word entirely too physical in its signification to harmonize with this superlatively spiritual passage. The word is koilia , which means “belly, stomach, heart, chest,” etc. Now you see the word we want here is “heart.”

How beautiful the passage, “Out of his heart [i.e., his interior, spiritual being] shall flow rivers of living water!” This is one of the finest passages in all the Bible, transcendently profound, sublime, thrillingly edifying, lucidly expository of the glorious, positive side of experimental sanctification, progressing indefinitely, through time and eternity — first, ankle-deep, putting us where we walk with God incessantly, going only where Jesus goes; then wading in to the knees, reaching an experience of great proficiency in kneeology, though ever so ignorant of theology, where we learn the grand secret of conquering on our knees; passing another interim of recognition and appreciation, we wade in up to the loins — i .e ., get where we vote our whole precinct for the Lord Jesus Christ, in everything keeping our eye on God, all temporal interests and emoluments left in oblivion; passing another interval of progress, we wade in over our heads; as now the waters have risen to a swimming depth, the specific gravity of the human body being less than that of water, we have nothing to do but lie supine, with limbs relaxed, facing the blue dome of the beautiful celestial temple, and float ad libitum with the current of God’s providence and grace, perfectly secure in the triple leadership of His Word, Spirit, and providence, respectively guiding the intellect, heart, and body.

GLORIFICATION OF JESUS John 7:39. “And He spoke this concerning the Spirit which those who believe on Him were about to receive; for he was not yet [given]; because Jesus was not yet glorified.” The Holy Ghost has been in the world in all ages, illuminating, convicting, regenerating, and sanctifying the people. Of course, He could not comfort the people in the administration of the complete, historic work of Christ till it had been consummated, by His vicarious atonement, resurrection, ascension, and intercession. While He was, in a sense, a Comforter of the O.T. saints, they only enjoyed the consolation of the prophecies setting forth the stupendous work of Christ in the world’s redemption. After the verification of all these wonderful prophecies relative to the stupendous work of the Son, Executive of human redemption from the fall, there was an immeasurable augmentation of the consolatory facilities, in the illumination of the spiritual understanding, in order to the reception and appropriation of the vicarious atonement in all of its grand, inexhaustible, and universal realities, comprehensive of every human being, from Adam down to the latest posterity. Thus the human side necessary to the reception of heavenly consolation was actually centuplicated by the glorious work of Christ, the confirmation of which was the glorification of Jesus. Many have risen claiming to be Christ — e .g ., Theudas, Simon Magnus, Marchochab, etc.; and Mohammed even claimed to be greater than Christ, — the trouble with them and all others consisting in the failure of the resurrection. Hence the glorification of Jesus and His ascension to the Father were the indispensable confirmations of His Christhood. Therefore the Holy Ghost must have all of these indisputable historic facts with which to satisfy and comfort the illuminated and sanctified intellect. Consequently this momentous history must actually transpire before the Holy Spirit could use these thrilling realities in the consolation of the saints. Of course, you all see clearly from this Scripture that this climacteric experience of heavenly rivers flowing out of the heart was actually received when the Holy Ghost fell on them at Pentecost.

Hence the glorification of Jesus certainly preceded the descension of the Comforter on that notable occasion. We certainly could not conclude that our Lord was glorified long before Pentecost, as evidently these events are closely identified in the order of consecution, the one being the antecedent and the other the consequent. I find the word edoxasthe , for the glorification of Jesus, is in the passive voice and aorist tense, peculiarly signifying an instantaneous and complete action, which evidently took place when He flew up from Mt. Olivet. This work of glorification, wrought by the Holy Ghost, eliminates all ponderous matter out of the organism, simultaneously spiritualizing the body and rendering it imponderable.

IGNORANCE OF THE JEWS John 7:40-44. “Then some of the multitude, hearing these words, continued to say, Truly this One is the Prophet.” This is a phrase in O.T. often applied to the Messiah. “Others continued to say, He is the Christ.” I trow, the latter were Galileans, who had so frequently heard Him preach and witnessed His mighty works. “Others continued to say, Whether does Christ come out of Galilee?” Doubtless these were Jerusalemites, who looked with a degree of contempt on the Galileans, whose opportunities of light and culture had been quite inferior to those of Southern Palestine. “Does not the Scripture say that Christ cometh of the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” Do you not see the gross and inexcusable ignorance here manifested? Bethlehem being only seven miles distant, and Jesus actually having been born there, according to the prophecies they now quote against Him, being shamefully ignorant of the fact that He was not born up in Galilee, as they claim, but in Bethlehem, and though constantly stigmatized as a Galilean, He was really a Bethlehemite. “Therefore there was a division in the crowd with reference to Him.” It seems that none there present knew the facts of His having been born in Bethlehem, all thinking that He was really a Galilean, some claiming His Christhood, notwithstanding the ostracism brought to bear against Galilee, and others rejecting him altogether on that account. Why did not He or some of His apostles speak out, and tell them that He was born in Bethlehem of Judea? It would have done no good, because they had a caviling spirit, and would have lighted on something else. “And some of them wished to arrest Him, but no one laid hands on Him.” They could not touch Him till His work was done.

REPORT OF THE OFFICERS SENT TO ARREST HIM John 7:45-49. “Then the officers came to the chief priests and Pharisees, and they said to them, Why did you not lead Him along? The officers responded, Never did a man speak as this Man is speaking.” The Sanhedrin were in session in the Hall of Caiaphas on Mount Zion, in the west end of the city, while Jesus was preaching on the Temple Campus in the east end. These officers came for the express purpose of arresting and leading Him away to the Sanhedrin for trial. You see their excuse is utterly silly, no plausibility in it whatever. The simple solution of the matter was, they could not put their hands on Him; an unseen Power simply disqualifying them to touch Him. When they did their utmost, they signally failed to lay a solitary hand on His person. Hence, after much delay and endeavor to arrest Him, they are forced to give up in despair, and go back without Him. He was intangible and immortal till His work was done — a grand consolation, substantially true in case of His faithful followers.

HUMAN LEADERSHIP “The Pharisees responded to them, Whether are you also deceived?” They now turn the tantalizing reproach on the officers, doing their utmost to intimidate everybody from following Him. “Whether has any one of the rulers of the Pharisees believed on Him? But this rabble, not knowing the law, are accursed.” Here you see they pertinaciously condemn everybody who does not follow their leaders. This has always been the case with fallen Churches. Nothing but the full sanctification of the Holy Ghost ever does save people from human leadership, which is all wrong, as no really godly person wants to lead; but all such do their utmost, by instruction, exhortation, and prayer, to prevail on the people to follow Jesus only.

Human leadership is a trick of the devil, by which he has populated hell with millions; as the leader, getting out of kilter by Satanic maneuver or human intrigue, he and all his followers will plunge headlong into hell.

God’s leaders don’t want any following; but all do their utmost to get the people to follow the Lord. You are in awful danger of perdition when following a human leader, as none are infallible, and the best are liable to make mistakes which would prove fatal. I have been presiding elder and pastor frequently, yet I never wanted any human following.

NICODEMUS VINDICATES HIM John 7:50-52. “Nicodemus says to them, being one of them, Whether does our law condemn a man until it may first have a hearing with him, and know what he doeth? They responded, and said to him, Whether are you also from Galilee? Search and see that no prophet riseth from Galilee.” You see here they are ringing charges of reproach on Galilee, because most remote from Jerusalem, the center of light and knowledge, the home of the hierarchy, the seat of the rabbinical colleges, and the glory of Israel.

Consequently they look down with contempt on the poor, ignorant Galileans, and think they have made a point, because the prophecies do not specify a great prophet in that age rising out of Galilee, whereas it was not at all applicable to Jesus, who had simply used it as an evangelistic field.

Nicodemus never survived that memorable nocturnal sermon which Jesus preached to him, more than two years ago, on the new birth. As he was an influential member of the Sanhedrin, which was solid against Jesus, how beautiful to see him, true to his convictions, standing alone, and thus daring to vindicate Him! It is a significant fact that Jesus was actually mobbed, being denied a fair trial according to Jewish law, as you here see from the testimony of Nicodemus, which, like the English and American Magna Charta, guaranteed to every accused person a fair trial, bringing the witnesses face to face, and giving them a chance to “implead one another.”

It is equally true in reference to Roman law, as testified by Festus in case of Paul, that every man under accusation had a right to bring the witnesses face to face, prove the guilt or innocence of the accused, and thus bring about a true verdict of acquittal or condemnation in harmony with right and equity. Jonah, one of the first Hebrew prophets, called of God to preach to the Ninevites, was a Galilean, despite all this howl against Jesus on the allegation of no prophet rising from Galilee.

CHAPTER - THE ADULTEROUS WOMAN John 8:1-11. I merely insert this caption through courtesy to the English reader; but will be excused from the exposition, as this item is entirely absent from the original, having been interpolated in post-apostolic times, as John, in whose gospel it appears in the E.V., is the last writer, and he never wrote it. There is no doubt but it was added by some of the clergy after the Constantinean apostasy as an apology for sin.

THE LIGHT OF LIFE John 8:12-16. “Then, Jesus again spoke to them, saying, I am the Light of the world; the one following Me can not walk in darkness, but shall have the Light of life.” The subjunctive mode is here very consolatory, assuring us that no one following Jesus can walk in darkness, but that all such will have the Light of life. The world is full of deluded people, walking in the false light of spiritual death. Dead bodies frequently, in dense darkness, emit a phosphorescent light, which only serves to bewilder and delude. If you do not have the life of the Holy Ghost in your heart, you are walking in Satan’s counterfeit light of spiritual death, whose phosphorescent glare can only illumine the way to hell. Cold Churches have no light but this illusory ignis-fatuus of the devil, only serving to delude its carnal votaries, till their feet finally slip and they take the awful plunge. As true light of every species emanates from fire, so without the fire of the Holy Ghost in your heart, you will not have the “Light of life.” “Then the Pharisees said to Him, Thou art witnessing concerning Thyself; Thy testimony is not true.” This is a stratagem on the part of the Pharisees to turn His own utterances against Him. “Jesus responded, and said to them, If I testify concerning Myself My testimony is true, because I know whence I came and whither I go. You do not know whence I come and whither I go. You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. And if I judge, My judgment is true, because I am not alone, but I and He who sent Me.” In vain do they seek to turn Him down on His own affirmation, that if one testifies of himself, standing alone, his testimony is not true, as He and His Father testify in perfect harmony, thus confirming the truth and establishing the validity of His testimony.

WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT John 8:17-20. “And it has been written in your law, That the testimony of two people is true. [ Deuteronomy 19:15] I am the one testifying concerning Myself, and the One who sent Me testifies concerning Me.” Here is the experimental consolation of every true Christian, the Holy Spirit witnessing along with his own spirit that he is born of God, and that his heart is clean, thus bringing all Christian testimony into harmony with the Divine law, by which every affirmation is made valid. “Then they said to Him, Where is Thy Father? Jesus responded, You do not know Me nor the Father; if you had known Me, you would also have known the Father.

He spoke these words, teaching in the treasury in the temple, and no one arrested Him, because His hour had not yet come.” There were many magnificent buildings on the Temple Campus, all indiscriminately denominated “the temple.” We have here quite a significant statement of our Savior, while looking those preachers and official laymen in the face, and notifying them that they did not know God, involving the conclusion that they were sinners on their way to perdition. Doubtless they were as honest as the clergy, and ecclesiastical rulers of the present day. What an awful inference is deducible! Lord, help us all to examine ourselves, and see whether we truly know God!

ALARMING PREDICTION AGAINST THEM John 8:21-27. “Then He again said to them, I go, and you shall seek Me, and you shall perish in your sin; whither I go, you are not able to come.” The prophetic eye of Jesus saw the awful calamities coming on those people, when they would perish miserably by sword, pestilence, and famine, doubtless many of them seeing their awful error when too late. “Then the Jews said, Whether will He kill Himself? because He says, Whither I go, you are not able to come; and He said to them, You are from beneath, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” Those people, both preachers and members, solidly believed themselves to be the true people of God. Here the Infallible Teacher informs them that they are from beneath; i .e ., not only unacquainted with God, but actually in the hands of Satan, and led captive at his will. “Therefore I said unto you, that you shall perish in your sins; for if you may not believe that I am He, you shall perish in your sins.” This is a most solemn and sweeping abnegation of all human hope without Christ. John the Baptist had preached to those people three years previously, telling them, in words of heavenborn eloquence, winged with celestial lightning, that this Jesus is the veritable Christ of prophecy, Redeemer of Israel and Savior of the world; actually pointing Him out, introducing Him to them, and inaugurating Him into His official Messiahship by the rite of baptism. These three years they have been taking counsel of the devil, imbibing unbelief, hardening their hearts, and stiffening their necks against the truth; not only sealing their own doom, but, by precept and example, leading the multitudes in the way of death. “Then they said to Him, Who art Thou? Jesus said to them, That which I tell you from the beginning, I tell you now. I have many things to speak and judge concerning you.” He knew that the judgment of the quick and dead would devolve on Him in the last day. “But the One having sent Me is true; and whatsoever things I heard with Him, these I am speaking to the world.” What a wonderful blessing is the gospel of Christ, as, having lived in heaven from the dawn of creation, in the very bosom of God, He then spoke on earth precisely what He heard from His Omniscient Father! “They did not know that He was speaking to them of the Father.” THE CRUCIFIXION John 8:28,29. “Then Jesus said, When you may lift up the Son of man, then you shall know that I am He; and I do nothing of Myself; but as the Father taught Me, these things I speak.” In that memorable sermon to Nicodemus, in the beginning of His ministry, in His reference to Moses lifting up the serpent, our Lord assures us by what death He is going to die.

Here He repeats the affirmation. This was quite a new departure, as the Jews had no such a punishment, it being peculiarly Roman. Hence, His death by the hands of the Gentiles, by the most cruel of all methods, He predicts ever and anon. When His ministry thus wound up, it was too late for those hard-hearted, unbelieving Jews, as doubtless the Holy Spirit withdrew, leaving them to their dreadful doom; meanwhile, the darkening sun, rending rocks, heaving earthquakes, bursting tombs, risen saints, rending veil, descending angels, empty sepulcher, etc., would inundate them with conviction that they had actually killed the Prince of light, not a few of them repenting and getting saved during the Pentecostal revival, but vast multitudes only the more hardened, evidently having crossed the deadline, and sealed their doom in endless woe. “The One having sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, because I always do those things pleasing unto Him.” Jesus is our only Paragon. Such is the bountiful redeeming grace which He gives His humble followers, that we are enabled always to do those things pleasing to the Father, thus walking in His footprints and emulating His example.

DEGREES OF FAITH John 8:30-32. “He speaking these words, many believed on Him.

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed on Him, If you may abide in My Word you are truly My disciples; you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” We see from the context that these Jews, addressed in these verses, had but a vague, shadowy faith in Him, believing that He was an extraordinary messenger sent of God, a prophet, and might perhaps, in the end, prove to be the Christ who is to redeem Israel. O how the Churches of the present day abound in this superficial, carnal belief in Christ, which staggers at the promises, failing in their appropriation!

EGREGIOUS BLINDNESS OF THE JEWS John 8:32,33. “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They responded to Him, We are the seed of Abraham, and have never been in bondage to any one; how do You say, That you shall be free?” This illustrates the alarming fact that even religious people may become so hallucinated by the devil as to tell falsehoods with unblushing effrontery and amazing volubility, and at the same time not know it, but think they are preaching the truth. Not only had these Jews been in bondage to the Egyptians two hundred and fifteen years, but at that very moment they were in bondage to the Romans, and, worst of all, to the devil.

THE SLAVE OF SIN John 8:34. “Jesus responded to them, Truly, truly, I say unto you, That every one doing sin is the slave of sin.” The devil’s people all night long wheeling in the mazy gyrations of the giddy, lustful dance, quaffing the inebriating bowl till they kindle hell-fire in their blood and transform their cranium into rattlesnake dens, wasting their vitality in brutal debaucheries and diabolical sensualities, vainly dream in their drunken revelries that they are the freest people in all the world because they can do such things, while at the same time they are the most miserable slaves, demons from the bottomless pit lashing them with the firebrands of inflamed appetites and abnormal passions, actually precipitating them into suicide, and forcing them, in the black foundries of an earthly pandemonium, to forge the adamantine chains that shall bind them in penal fires through the flight of eternal cycles.

THE SON THE AUTHOR OF TRUE FREEDOM John 8:35,36. “The slave does not abide in the house forever.” This great and beautiful world is one of God’s houses, in which not a few of His children have been living these six thousand years. All sinners are the slaves of sin and Satan. The slaves never inherit anything, having neither possessions nor rights in the home, their sojourn being transitory, and winding up when they are worn out and can toil no more. Not so with the son. He inherits the estate, transmits it to his children, and in his posterity abides forever. The wicked think they are getting this world, while they are simply traveling through it to their bed in hell. Now, suppose the son of the estate liberates and adopts a slave, do you not see that he will abide forever?

So the time is very near when the redeemed of the Lord shall possess this world, with other paradisian orbs, to shine and shout forever, every track of the wicked having been obliterated in the sanctifying fires, followed by the glorious renovation ( Revelation 1), making the earth new, and enveloping it in a new firmament, which never reverberated the blasphemy of the wicked.

SATANIC PATERNITY OF THE UNREGENERATE John 8:37-47. “I know that ye are the seed of Abraham; but you seek to kill Me, because My Word has no place in you.” How sad the condition of those preachers and people when Jesus, looking through them, actually saw them full of repellency and diabolical antagonism to the truth! N.B.

You will find it so in many Churches nowadays, I awfully fear and doubt not. “Whatsoever things I saw with the Father, I speak; therefore you indeed are doing the things which you heard with your father.” This arouses in those shrewd, cultured priests an awful suspicion that He is impeaching their claim to the Abrahamic paternity. “They responded, and said to Him, Abraham is our father. Jesus says to them, If you are the children of Abraham, you did the works of Abraham; but now you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has spoken to you the truth which I heard with God. Abraham did not this. You are doing the works of your father.

They said to Him, We have not been born of fornication; we have one father, God. Then Jesus said to them, If God were your Father, you would love Me with Divine love; for I came out from God, and I go back; for I have not come from Myself, but He sent Me. Wherefore do you not know My speech? Because you are not able to hear My word.” What a profound significance! His words were then ringing in their ears! Yet He said, “You are not able to hear My word.” The mystery is readily solved. The soul has the five senses — i .e ., sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch — just like the body. When the soul is dead, as in the case of all the unregenerate, the senses are all dead with it. A dead man has eyes, but they are dead; ears, but they are dead; smelling organs, but they are dead; a tongue, but it is dead; nerves, but they are dead. Now these preachers, Church officers, and members, in whose physical ears His sweet, eloquent, melodious words were ringing, heard them plainly with their bodily ears, yet He certifies to them, “You are not able to hear My word.” This is the reason why they rejected it: His utterances were deep, rich, spiritual truth, and they were spiritually dead, so they never heard them; they rang in at one ear and out at the other, the dead soul within knowing nothing about the message of life which had resounded in their mortal ears. How signally does this penetrating truth apply to the fallen Churches of the present day, both ministers and members, as well as to this wicked world! What is the remedy in that case? An avalanche of importunate prayer, that the Holy Ghost may quicken them into life, in which case their spirit will hear and understand the glorious spiritual truth of the gospel. Deficiency of prayer explains multitudes of failures on the part of holiness preachers and workers. As a rule, it is painfully deficient. Shall we not wake up to the fact that we waste our ammunition on dead game, if we do not pray down the Holy Ghost to quicken them into life? “You are of your father the devil, and you wish to do the lusts of your father.” This tells an awful secret, which everybody ought to know, smashing the silly Universalist dogma now ringing from the Protestant pulpits; i .e ., the Divine paternity of the wicked.

You see from the very words of the Savior that it is not so. Preachers, standing in their pulpits, address their audiences as the “children of God,” when in all probability nine-tenths of them are the children of the devil, having never been born from above. Divine life was lost in the fall, and is only regained in regeneration. Consequently all the unregenerate, — whether never converted or backslidden, as you see from the plain words of our Savior, here addressed, not simply to the uncouth rabble, but to the preachers and Church members, — all the unregenerate are the spiritual children of the devil till quickened into life by the Holy Ghost. “He was a murderer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth, because the truth is not in him.” How is the devil a murderer? He murders all the souls that follow him, beginning with the destroying angels, and sweeping down the terrestrial ages, deluging hell with the fallen millions. “When he may speak the lie, he speaks of his own, because he is the liar, and the father of the same. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me.” Those people, like the fallen Churches of every age, were deluded by Satan’s lies, making them believe that they were saved when they were lost, in order to blind them and lead them down to hell. Humanity is uniform in all ages. So is Satan, sin, religion, salvation, and God the same now as in our Savior’s time. You must not shove aside these awful truths uttered by our Savior and leave them with the scribes and Pharisees, when they apply to the present generation as pertinently as to them. The world is girdled with Churches today — Pagan, Mohammedan, Papal, and Protestant — standing spiritually precisely where our Savior’s audience, backslidden members of the Jewish Church, stood, so deceived and led away by Satan’s lies, making them believe that they are Christians and on their way to heaven, while they are sinners and on their way to hell, that a preacher coming among them and telling them the truth, as Jesus did, shares the same fate — i .e ., is rejected and persecuted; while a false prophet coming along, and helping Satan to keep them blindfolded till he can dump them into hell, is received like an angel, remunerated, honored, and applauded as a man of God, such as all Churches need. Lord give us all the light, help us to be true, like Jesus, and abide our destiny! “Which one of you convicts Me concerning sin? If I speak the truth, why do you not believe Me?” “Convict” here is the very word descriptive of the condemnatory sentence of a criminal judge, as Jesus defied men and devils to convict Him concerning sin. Good Lord, help us all so to speak the truth and walk in His footprints that we can challenge the powers of earth and hell! His own Church fell out with Him and killed Him because He told them the truth. If He had preached falsehood, they would have received Him with enthusiasm. Satan’s people love lies and fatten on them, preparatory for a barbecue in hell, when devils will devour their flesh and drink their blood. “The one being of God, heareth the words of God. Wherefore do you not hear? Because you are not of God.” Lord, help us to preach the same gospel that Jesus preached, fearless of men and devils! Here you see the reason why the truth has always been so unpopular. In this case, Satan had the Jewish Church with him, in addition to the wicked world. So few people in this world are of God, comparatively with the multitudes in Satan’s kingdom, deluded by his lies and led captive by his caprice, that the truth in every age has found but few adherents, Jesus falling a victim to the cruelty of the fallen Jewish Church, so duped by Satan that they loved lies and hated the truth, and two hundred millions of martyrs following in His track, sealing their faith with their blood. When the present holiness movement becomes popular, it is ruined.

SIMPLICITY AND CANDOR OF JESUS John 8:48-52. “The Jews responded, and said to Him, Do we not truly say that Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a demon?” The Jews hated the Samaritans so inveterately that they doubtless thus stigmatized Him because He had preached in Samaria, not only in the beginning of His ministry, but a few days previously on His journey to Jerusalem. The charge of demoniacal possession was old and trite, and they still perpetuated it, because His preaching dug them up and burnt them so horrifically, exposing so lucidly the dead formality and hollow hypocrisy with which Satan had them blindfolded, fast leading them to the pandemonium. “Jesus responded, I have no demon but I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me.” The most acute philosophy fails to recognize the slightest manifestation of resentment in this simple, direct answer to that awful accusation of demoniacal possession. How meekly and perspicuously does He speak a simple negation to the opprobrious allegation! Lord, help us to follow Thy example, and when accused of the blackest sins and vilest crimes, simply, dispassionately, and unostentatiously answer in the negative! “I do not seek My own glory; there is One who seeketh and judgeth.” The Father who sent Him vindicates Him in all of His mediatorial work, and administers righteous retribution to contemptuous despisers. “Truly, truly, I say unto you, If any one may keep My Word, he can never see death.” JESUS PRE-ABRAHAMIC John 8:52-59. “The Jews said to Him, Now we know that Thou hast a demon.” Sharpers, sent out for that specific purpose, hung on His lips, like lightning upon the skirts of the clouds, seeking with diabolical chicanery to catch some word on which they could found an accusation, either to arraign Him before the Roman governor or the Sanhedrin. “Abraham and the prophets are dead, and You say, That if any one may keep My Word, he shall never taste of death; art Thou greater than our Father Abraham who is dead? And the prophets are dead; whom do You make Yourself? Jesus responded, If I shall glorify Myself, My glory is nothing; there is One who glorifieth Me, whom you say that He is your God, and you do not know Him, but I know Him.” Jesus made no mistakes. These people stood at the head of the Church, both clerical and laical; yet they were strangers to saving grace, aliens from God, and traveling the way of death. Never did the sun look down on a people more sanguine that they were right than those scribes and Pharisees, who were in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity. “If I say that I do not know Him, I shall be a liar like you; but I know Him, and I keep His Word.” See with what utterly unimpassioned candor our Lord calls them liars! To convict is to convince. As conviction is fundamental in every work of grace, everything else being spurious without it, it becomes pre-eminently important that we call everything by its right name, as otherwise the normal force always goes out of the message. “Abraham, your father, rejoiced that He might see My day, and He saw it, and was glad. Then the Jews said to Him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?” Some have concluded that our Lord was much more than thirty-three when crucified, deducing their proof from this statement. We doubt not the correctness of the chronology, making Him thirty years old when John formally introduced Him into His official Messiahship; then His ministry, beginning at the Passover in the purification of the temple, winding up by crucifixion at another Passover, two other festivals transpiring in the interim, making three years in all. Then why do they speak of fifty? From the simple fact that, as thirty was their majority, fifty was their maturity.

Hence they think to confound Him outright by the affirmation that He has not so much as reached mature manhood, being comparatively a tyro.

Hence the glaring inconsistency of His claiming, as they construed it, to be contemporary with Abraham. “Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.” The present tense of the verb “to be” is peculiar to the Deity, applicable to Him in all ages, and to no one else; hence, in this affirmation, our Lord not only claims to be pre-Abrahamic, but eternal, without beginning or end. Hence the “I Am,” immutable, through all ages, without beginning or end. “Then they took up stones, in order that they may cast them at Him.” With the Jews, the penalty of blasphemy was death by stoning. They see from His phraseology that He identifies Himself with God, being even pre-existent to Abraham.

Consequently they construe His phraseology into blasphemy, and, apparently in a paroxysm of righteous indignation, take up stones, to vindicate the Mosaic law by His execution. “And Jesus was hidden, and passed out from the temple;” i .e ., as on many other occasions, resorting to His omnipotence, in order to prolong His life and finish His work, He renders Himself invisible, passing through the midst of the crowd unseen, and going away from the Temple Campus. In this miracle He, to the surprise of all, suddenly disappears, all looking for Him, both His friends and His enemies; but no one being able to catch a glimpse of His person, while at the same time He is passing through the crowd unseen. It seems that such a miracle would satisfactorily confirm His Christhood in the estimation of all. However, they well remembered when Elisha, at Dothan, dropped an optical illusion on the whole Syrian army, so that they mistook him for their own commanding officer, obsequiously obeying his marching orders, till he led them to Samaria and turned them over to the king of Israel. Hence the tardiness, even on the part of His own relatives and friends, to acquiesce in His Messiahship, so many of them thinking that He was either a mighty prophet of Israel or one of the prophets risen from the dead.

CHAPTER - ENTANGLEMENT OF A THEOLOGIAN Luke 10:25-28. “And, behold, a certain theologian stood up, tempting Him, and saying, Teacher, having done what shall I inherit eternal life?” The word here translated “lawyer” in E.V., is nomikos , from nomos , “law.”

When you remember that their laws were all written in the Old Testament, you will know that a lawyer with them was not identical with the profession in our day, as their lawyers, were exponents of the Old Testament Scriptures. If you do not keep in mind this fact, you will utterly misapprehend the meaning of “lawyer” in the New Testament. He was not a lawyer in any modem sense, but a Biblical exegete; i .e ., a theologian . This elegantly-cultured clergyman interviews our Savior in reference to the economy of grace, by which he might inherit eternal life, and, as the record says, “tempting Him,” doubtless realizing his own proficiency in the law, and thinking to entangle Jesus on some point of legal complicity. “And He said to Him, What has been written in the law? How readest Thou? And responding, He said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with Divine love, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself. And he said to Him, You answered correctly; do this, and thou shalt live.” He threw the boomerang; but being unskillful, it came back, settled down on him, and took his head off. Thinking to puzzle Jesus in a complicated legalism, he gets caught in his own trap. Our Lord simply puts him on the witness-stand. He can not go back on his theological profession; consequently He makes him witness to the verdict of the law. You see, he comes out in a frank confession, admitting to all that perfect love is the Bible standard of life and salvation.

Many a modern theologian forfeits his reputation for candor or proficiency in the law of the Lord when, like this man, put on the witness-stand. We are bound to give him more credit than many of his successors, who, in the pulpit, labor to evade the grand issue, dodging all around the great, salient Bible truth that perfect love is the condition on which we must all inherit eternal life, or forfeit it, world without end. Modern theologians would do well to sit at the feet of this man, who unhesitatingly rings out the Bible standard of salvation, though it was his own death-knell, as we are satisfied he did not have it. O that all who stand before the people as Biblical exegetes would so study the Word of the Lord as to know the way of salvation, and be candid enough always to ring it out to every inquirer, regardless of consequences! Jesus fully endorses his admission, telling him to go and practice what he preaches.

THE GOOD SAMARITAN Luke 10:29-37. “And he, wishing to justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor? And Jesus, responding, said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who, both stripping him of his raiment and administering blows, departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance a certain priest went down that road, and seeing him, passed by on the other side. Likewise also a Levite being at the place, coming and seeing, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, journeying that way, came near him, and seeing him, was moved with compassion. And coming to him, bound up his wounds, pouring in the oil and the wine; and setting him on his own beast, took him to the tavern, and cared for him. And on the morrow, departing, taking out two denarii, gave them to the host, and said to him, Care for him, and whatsoever you spend, I will pay you on my return. Then which one of the three seems to you to have been neighbor of him having fallen among the robbers? And he said, The one having mercy on him. Then Jesus said to him, Go thou, and do likewise.” This theologian was no counterfeit, but evidently well-posted in the Scriptures, as he not only answered Jesus in inspired phraseology, but he had it at his tongue’s-end, and so gives it peremptorily and unequivocally. While popular pulpits this day abound in men claiming to be theologians, who either lack the candor or the wisdom of this man, and consequently labor assiduously to evade the great issue, loath to admit the great Bible truth of perfect love, which is the grand upper-side of entire sanctification, and is the only condition of admission into heaven, we are gratified to admit that there is another class, who, like the man in the text, admit unhesitatingly that entire sanctification is the Bible standard; yet, painfully conscious of their own deficiency, they resort to diversified stratagems in order to justify themselves, like the theologian in the text, who switches off on the inquiry, “Who is my neighbor?” tacitly recognizing the Jewish attitude of looking upon the whole Gentile world as enemies, and none but the Jews as neighbors, and many exceptions among them.

Having been caught in the lasso he threw out for Jesus, he is floundering terrifically; but, as you see in the finale , utterly unsuccessful in his efforts to extricate himself, as he here lights on the word “neighbor,” aiming to use it as a back-door of escape from the entanglement in which he had been caught, our Lord delivers this beautiful parable by way of response to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” a. I have traveled the road from Jerusalem to Jericho four times, and always accompanied by an armed escort, as my guide refused to accompany me without this protection from the robbers. The solution of the matter is, the most of the route leads through a great bed of rugged, desolate mountains, in the Bible designated “the wilderness of Judea.” As this is really a desert, having little or no rain, and consequently neither water nor vegetation, it is uninhabitable while the mountains are so rugged and cavernous, the hiding facilities so ample, that it has been infested with robbers from time immemorial. Under Roman rule, the robbers were so troublesome that they actually put garrisons along the road to protect the travelers. In one of my journeys, my guide pointed me out five armed robbers, hiding in the caves in the Valley of Blood, so called because so many travelers have there been killed by robbers, assuring me that if they did not see our armed escort, they would be on us immediately. You have nothing to do but travel that road to find the state of things at the present day graphically identical with this account given by our Lord — an item, along with so many which literally corroborate the inspired Word. b. Jerusalem, in this parable, emblematizes the kingdom of God, being the holy city, honored by the Almighty with His temple and residence; while Jericho typifies the kingdom of Satan, having-been desperately wicked during the four hundred years from the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, whose successor Jericho became, till the conquest of Joshua, when it was utterly destroyed, and its rebuilding interdicted; though it was rebuilt on another site in the vicinity, where it stood in the days of Christ, and was destroyed by the Romans in the desolation of the land, responsive to prophecy, and afterward rebuilt by the Crusaders, in the eleventh century, on a still different site, near by, where it stands to this day. c. The situation of Jerusalem, high up on the great mountains of Judah and Benjamin, associated with its wonderful sacred history, qualifies it very strikingly to emblematize heaven; while that of Jericho, deep down in the Jordan Valley, on tile plain of the Dead Sea, qualifies it very forcibly to symbolize hell, the road being all the way down the mountain, thirty miles. d. By the glorious redemption of Christ, the whole human race is born in the kingdom of God, only getting out by sinning out; like this traveler, who was born in Jerusalem, the beautiful city of God, the joy of the whole earth, the symbol of heaven, where he should have spent his life, but like the great majority, he put out, traveling down to Jericho, and got into all that terrible trouble. The robber demons never get their black hands on us while we stay in Jerusalem; i .e ., abide in the kingdom of grace, where we are all born. e. These robbers emblematize evil habits, which rob us of our infantile innocence, purity, and justification. We see the robbers were not content to take all of his money and utterly divest him of every stitch of apparel, which is their custom this day, but as dead men tell no tales, they actually undertake to kill him. Fire-arms being unknown in that day, they beat him till they think he is dead, and would have made certain work of it if they had not been interrupted by at least the imaginary tread of an approaching troop, and so fled away to escape detection. When evil habits are once formed, they become an awful disease, like an eating cancer, that will not let up day or night till death claims his victim; i .e . the last hope of heaven is eclipsed in the gloom of eternal night, the Holy Ghost having been grieved away. f . Now we come to the remedial side. The priest passing along, looking on him, but giving no relief; erelong followed by the Levite, who halts, and contemplates the hopeless victim of the cruel robbers, but gives no relief, passing by on the other side of the road. Then the Good Samaritan, perchance passing along, recognizes the dying victim, draws nigh, his heart breaking with sympathy; dismounting, turns surgeon, binding up his wounds, pouring in the oil and the wine; setting him on his own beast, carries him to the tavern, commits him to the landlord, spends a night with him; in the morning, handing the landlord thirty cents, which in that day was equivalent to about three dollars now, and sufficient to pay his board a week, assuring the innkeeper that he will return and pay the entire bill that shall subsequently accrue. g . Now what is the meaning of this plain, beautiful, natural description of the remedial side? The priest emblematizes all the preachers, illustrating our utter incompetency to do anything for the lost sinner sinking into hell. We can only tell him about Jesus. What about the Levite? Under the former dispensation of the Levites were the custodians of the tabernacle and the temple; i .e ., the keepers of God’s house. These Levites are the Church officers, emblematizing the visible Church, and showing up the fact of her utter incompetency to save a solitary soul. What about the good Samaritan?

Reproachfully, our Savior’s enemies called Him a Samaritan, which was synonymous with the greatest conceivable antipathy. Hence, Jesus Himself is the Good Samaritan, who alone can rescue the perishing sinner. The preachers all having administered water baptism, eucharist, and Church rites, done all their preaching, and praying, and everything in their power, prove utterly incompetent to deliver a solitary soul from Satan’s strong grip.

Here is the great delusion — millions of people depending on preachers, who can’t save their own souls, much less other people’s; while teeming multitudes are looking to the Church to save them, all destined to fail, and enter eternity destitute of the wedding garment; like this poor victim, utterly naked and wounded unto death. The Good Samaritan is the only hope of a sinking world. All we can do is to tell the poor, dying travelers to eternity about Him, so they will give Him a chance to bind up their wounds which Satan’s robbers have inflicted, pouring in the healing oil and the spiritualizing wine; i .e ., the two blessings constituting this wonderful double cure. Now He mounts him on His own beast; i .e ., Jesus takes him in His arms, carries him to the tavern — i .e ., the visible Church; commits him to the landlord — i .e ., the faithful pastor; spends a time with him, pays the landlord a nice installment, and promises the remainder of his bill when He comes again. When a soul is gloriously saved and added to the Church, the Lord gives the faithful pastor a running-over blessing. O how he rejoices to see a soul rescued from the vortex of hell, happy in God, and on his way to heaven, saved and sanctified! But our Lord is coming again. If we do not survive till He descends in glory to receive His saints, we shall very soon leave this world and go to Him, which, from an experimental standpoint, is the second coming of the Lord to us individually. Salvation from sin and Satan is glorious; but mounting away from this world of sin and sorrow, and sweeping into heaven, saluted by angels and redeemed spirits, is infinitely more so. The blood-washed pastor receives a wonderful spiritual uplift when the soul is saved from hell, and committed to His care by the Good Samaritan; but when his pilgrimage winds to a close, and he dies in glorious triumph, the fire-baptized pastor, standing over him, gets a Pisgah’s view of the glory-world, and feels like mounting the chariot with his brother pilgrim, and soaring away to the mount of victory. Thus the heroic pastor having received a rich compensation when the man was saved and committed to his care, when he dies, with heaven in full view and glory in his soul, receives a transcendent boom for the heavenly country.

MARTHA AND MARY Luke 10 : 38-42 “And it came to pass , while they were going along , He came into a certain village , and a certain woman , by name Martha , received Him into her house ; and there was a sister to her , called Mary , who indeed , sitting at the feet of Jesus , continued to hear His Word . And Martha was busy about much serving , and standing over her , she said , Lord , is there no care to You that my sister has left me to serve alone ? Therefore say to her that she may assist me . And Jesus , responding , said to her , Martha , Martha , you are solicitous and troubled about many things ; there is need of one thing . And Mary has chosen the good part , which shall not be taken away from her .” I have frequently been at Bethany, a village on the slope of Mr. Olivet, over the summit from Jerusalem, one and seven-eighths miles.

The house occupied by Mary, Martha, and Lazarus is still there, but in ruins, as stone never rots. We conclude from this narrative that Martha was the elder of the two sisters, her seniority being here recognized by the proprietorship of the house. Methinks you already recognize an obvious contrast in these two sisters, Martha very vividly, illustrating the justified and Mary the sanctified experience. The former, having kindly received Jesus into their home, is deeply solicitous for His temporal comfort, doing her best to get Him a splendid dinner, working hard, and running herself out of breath; while the latter, listening to the words of wisdom, righteousness, holiness, love, grace, and glory, flowing from His eloquent lips, has actually become spellbound, so thrillingly edified, entertained and delighted that she has lost sight of domestic duty altogether, her eyes centered on the face of Jesus, her mind utterly absorbed, her intellect flooded with edification, her heart inundated with the rivers of grace flowing out of the heart of Jesus; but her older sister, feeling that she needs her help and must have it, and signally failing to catch her eye or command her attention, feels constrained to resort to the only surviving expedient — i .e ., appeal to Jesus, that He may suggest to her to feel excused till dinner is over, when she shall enjoy ample opportunity to satisfy her voracious spiritual appetite for the heavenly pabulum which He is so richly dispensing. In this she signally fails, as Jesus, to her surprise, vindicates her younger sister in her utter inattention to domestic affairs, sitting down at the feet: Jesus, drinking in the wonderful lessons of truth which emanate, like honey-dews, as the words of heavenly beauty and glory drop from His lips. He now administers a kind and loving castigation to Martha for her undue solicitude and labor, as it is infinitely more important to feed the soul than the body, and he is caring nothing about her variety. What He wants is, that they all feast on angel’s food; and as to the dinner, they have plenty already on hand. So all that solicitude about temporal things was really out of harmony with the visit of the Prince of light. Pastoral visiting is frequently perverted and ruined in that way, the family wearing themselves out and wasting the precious time they should spend in prayer, praise, and hearing the precious Word dispensed by their faithful pastor. O what a waste of opportunities along this line! Every preacher should do like Jesus, spend the time in the home preaching, discouraging all that work and solicitude “about many things,” there being need of but one, and that is the grace of God, which would, in this connection, be very beautifully symbolized by one edible — a loaf of bread and a cup of sparkling water; as in the case of the circuit-rider, who, after preaching, received but one invitation to go and eat, and that was by an old woman, living in a smoky hut, down between two hills, who, escorting him into her humble home, dispensing with all Sunday cooking, set down a big cup of buttermilk on a three-legged stool in the middle of the cabin, and laid a big chunk of cold corn-bread by its side, and said, “Now, brother, sit down there and eat your dinner. If you are a good man, it is good enough; if a bad man, it is too good.” O that we may all so enter into the blessed soul-rest which Jesus gives as to be utterly disencumbered of all solicitude about temporal things, and sit down, like Mary, at the feet of Jesus, and let this old world, with its cares, emoluments, solicitudes, and vexations, pass along! While all earthly achievement and aggrandizement are transitory, Jesus assures us that if we will choose this good part, it shall not be taken from us.

CHAPTER - THE DISCIPLE’S PRAYER Luke 20 : 1-4 . “And it came to pass , that He was in a certain place , praying ; as He ceased , a certain one of His disciples said to Him , Lord , teach us to pray , as John also taught his disciples .” We have this same lesson in the Sermon on the Mount, which he preached near Capernaum, on the Sea of Galilee, early in His ministry, and we have expounded in Volume 6. I have repeatedly visited the spot on Mt. Olivet where this prayer was offered. A few years ago, Aurelia de Rossa, a French princess, expended a great sum of money in the erection of a beautiful, snowy-white, stone church-edifice on this very spot. It is really magnificent and charming, having in front a great open court, on whose surrounding walls of white marble this prayer (popularly denominated the Lord’s Prayer, but really given to His disciples for their use till He comes in glory) is superscribed in every language under heaven, so that every one of the thirty thousand pilgrims, annually coming to Jerusalem to explore the footprints of Jesus, can there read the Lord’s Prayer in his own language. The marble tomb and statue of this noble saint, who, at her own expense, erected this memorial edifice, is also at the south Side of this great veranda. “He said to them , When you pray , say , Our Father who art in the heavens , let Thy name be hallowed .” Hence it is never to be spoken except in the deepest reverence, humility, and godly fear. “Let Thy kingdom come .” The kingdom is already here, in the hearts of all saints. While we should pray for it to come to all aliens in the whole earth, the moment of this prayer contemplates the kingdom of glory coming down to earth in millennial triumphs, as the kingdom of grace had already come in the first advent of Jesus. How strange that a species of infidelity has ever crept into the Church, ignoring and rejecting the coming of the glorious kingdom! There never was a dissenting voice on this subject raised in the first three centuries, till after the Constantinean apostasy had so secularized the Church as to disqualify her to meet her descending Lord and enter the glorious kingdom. Consequently, during the Dark Ages, the millennium was repudiated, and, as a necessary consequence, the whole Book of Revelation repudiated as spurious. It is the glory of the present holiness movement now to preach the coming kingdom in all the earth. “Thy will be done , as in heaven , even upon the earth .” This is a beautiful standard of entire sanctification, which alone can qualify people to do the will of God on earth as the angels do it in heaven. While multitudes of preachers stand in their pulpits and preach against sanctification and the coming kingdom, it is very gratifying to know that they all pray on the side of truth, when, on their knees, they repeat the Lord’s Prayer, in concert with their congregations, Sabbath after Sabbath. O that they would preach what they pray for, thus bringing heaven down to earth! “Give us this day our daily bread .” This is to be understood spiritually, in a very pre-eminent sense, while in a secondary significance it includes temporal sustenance. “Forgive us our sins ; for we truly forgive every one who is indebted to us .” We have no promise of pardon unless we actually forgive everybody else; thus all unforgiving spirit actually rearing between us and the mercy-sea, a mountain, high as heaven, deep as hell, and broad as the universe. Whole Churches are dragged by Satan into apostasy black as midnight by an unforgiving spirit. “Lead us not into temptation ;” i .e ., Suffer us not to go into temptation, an Orientalism we frequently meet in the Bible. We have the blessed assurance that if we are true to the triple Divine leadership — God’s Word, Spirit, and providence — He will never suffer us to be tempted beyond our ability, by His wonderful grace, to bear it for His glory, and receive a blessing thereby; i .e ., strength from the conflict and courage from the victory. The ponderous blows develop the Herculean muscles of the blacksmith’s arm. These awful fights we have with the strong intellect of the devil are a wonderful means of grace, constituting the grandest spiritual gymnasium in probationary life. Temptation from within, when “each one is drawn out by his own lust and enticed,” should be utterly dispensed with, as entire sanctification eliminates all that inward lust, putting all of our enemies on the outside, and giving us the down-hill pull against them. “Deliver us from the evil one .” The E.V. is too weak, rendering this, “Deliver us from evil;” i .e ., giving the abstract, whereas the Greek gives the concrete; not simply meaning evil, but the evil one — i .e ., the devil. What a glorious privilege, not only to be delivered from everything the devil ever put in us, but from the devil himself! This prayer goes up from pulpit and pew throughout all the Churches of Christendom, and the people at the same time ridden and debauched by the devil, without the remotest apprehension of the glorious privilege, not only to get rid of all their sins, but even the devil himself. Will you not go and tell them this wonderful news? The Omnipotent Christ is ready, by their side, responsive to their perfect consecration and doubtless faith, to confer on them this glorious triumph, not only delivering them from everything in them belonging to Satan — i .e ., all sin, actual and original — but, best of all, delivering them from the devil himself, so he never again can put his black hand on them, and they can go shouting on their way: “Hallelujah! ‘t is done!

I believe on the Son, I am saved by the blood of the Crucified One!” THE SHAMELESS PRAYER Luke 11 : 5-11 . “And He said unto them , Which one of you shall have a friend , and he shall come to you at midnight , and say to thee , Friend , lend me three loaves , since my friend has come to me on a journey , and I have nothing which I may place before him ; and he within , responding , may say , Give me no trouble ; the door is already shut , and my children are in bed with me ; I am not able , having risen up , to give unto you . I say unto you , If , having risen up , he will not give unto him because he is his friend , truly , on account of his shamelessness , having risen , he will give him as many as he needs .” You are a little surprised that this traveler does not stop for lodging till midnight. In Palestine and other Oriental countries, especially in the tropical and semitropical climates, it is customary to travel in the night, and lie up during the heat of the day. The English rendering, “importunity ,” is too weak. The Word used by the Savior is anaideia , from a, the strongest negative, and aideia , “shame.” Hence the straight, lexical definition of anaideia is “shamelessness;” so beautifully, naturally, and vividly illustrated by the man corning at midnight, when all are fast asleep, muscles relaxed and nerves unstrung, lying in their beds under the heavy grip of old Somnus . He knocks at the door till he awakens the father of the family, and tells him his business — a friend stopped to lodge, hungry and weary, and he has nothing to give him to eat. Hence he appeals to him to loan him three loaves till he can replace them. The man is so tired, lazy, and sleepy that he peremptorily refuses, giving quite a train of excuses, doing his utmost to repulse the man, so he will go away and let him sleep, as rising will wake the babies, which will probably cry the balance of the night. The man persists, importunately pleading, getting worse and worse, till he passes the shame line, and becomes desperate, roaring like a lion, driving away all their sleep, jumping like a kangaroo, and banging at the door as if he would knock it down. Such is the attitude of the man that nothing can be said to him calculated to effect the slightest conciliatory influence. Having passed the boundary of shame, he is simply reckless and intolerable. They are bound to get rid of him or be annoyed all night, every wink of sleep driven away. There is absolutely but one way to rid themselves of the unbearable nuisance, and that is, to get up and give him the bread. Of course, the man does it; gets rid of the disturber, lies down, and enjoys ambrosial slumber the remnant of the night.

Now what is the meaning of this? Our Savior is a plain Preacher, and at the same time the most profound the world ever saw. This is His own illustration of prevailing prayer, whether for yourself or for others. You must reach the point of shamelessness — i .e ., get to where you care for nothing and nobody; but open your mouth, and plead as a guilty culprit for his life, or a woman for her child. In a ministry of forty-six years, I have seen this constantly verified. When mourners at the altar pass the limit of all shame, and get so they do their own praying, with wide-open mouths, regardless of the learned clergy, royalty, or nobility, something wonderful always happens. Sunbursts from heaven sweep down and light up the scene with superhuman glory; rivers from the heavenly ocean find their way down, and roll over the congregation in billows of love, grace, and glory; hardened sinners sweep triumphantly in, to life, old backsliders are gloriously reclaimed, weak believers powerfully sanctified, saints filled with the Holy Ghost, people on all sides speaking with new tongues, jubilant pilgrims leaping and shouting as if they would fly away to heaven, and the whole community shaken with a wonderful spiritual earthquake. Do not forget this shameless prayer. It is the heavenly fuse, that reaches and fires the celestial dynamite. It forever sweeps away all quibble about public prayer and testimony. As shame is the devil’s padlock, with which he locks up the mouth of saint and sinner, closing the draught; so, in the case of the former, the celestial fire will soon go out, and in the case of the latter, will never be able to kindle the heavenly flame in his heart, which alone can consume all sin. If you want a truly Pentecostal Church, you have nothing to do but lead the people beyond the limitude of Satan’s shame, so they will all throw their mouths open, and clamor aloud for just what they want. God and His salvation must have the pre-eminence, or hell is wide open and coming to meet us. From the inception of conviction to the altitudes of glorification, you will find it utterly impossible to serve God with reserves.

He will have the whole heart or none. The tongue is the exponent of the heart, always going along with it. Hence, dumbness and cowardice are two of the devil’s adamantine chains, with which he binds his victims and drags them into the burning pit. O that Churches and preachers could only learn the secret of the shameless prayer, here specified by the Savior! “And I say unto you , Ask , and it shall be given unto you .” Why is there so much asking and so little receiving? It is because they do not ask in a shameless prayer, caring neither for men nor devils, criticism nor persecution, but making their petition an absolute sine qua non . “Seek , and ye shall find ; knock , and it shall be opened unto you . For every one that seeketh , findeth ; and he that asketh , receiveth ; and to him that knocketh , it shall be opened .” God is absolutely infallible. The only reason why there is ever a defalcation is because the shameless prayer is delinquent. Halfhearted petitions never rise above your head. Good Lord, inspire that shameless prayer in your heart and mine!

YOUR FATHER WHO IS FROM HEAVEN Luke 11 : 11-13 . “But which father of you , shall his son ask bread , whether will he give him a stone ? Or indeed a fish , whether , instead of a fish , will he give him a serpent ? Or if he may ask an egg , will he give him a scorpion ?” You see from the plain teaching of our Savior that God never gives anything useless nor injurious; e .g ., a stone, an utterly worthless thing, as the hungry boy can not eat it; nor a serpent, nor a scorpion, which might bite him and kill him. The reason why so much prayer is not answered directly is because it would be detrimental to the recipient. Many good people pray for riches, which God sees would make them proud, worldly, and oblivious of Him; giving Satan the down-hill pull on them, to drag them, not only out of the kingdom, but down to perdition. Millions of people are now happy in heaven who would be in hell if their prayers for riches had been answered. Myriads will praise God through all eternity for His signal mercy in keeping them poor enough to escape the awful temptations of riches, and be humble enough to get to heaven. We should be like God, and never grant the petitions of our children for anything useless or injurious, as Satan’s temptations come thick and fast along those lines. If you permit your children to attend Satan’s fandangos, with their concomitant follies and vices, you simply, with your money, purchase for them a ticket over the Black Valley Railroad down to hell. “Therefore , if ye , being evil , know how to give good gifts to your children , how much more shall your Father , who is from heaven , give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him !” The Holy Spirit is not only the Omnipotent God, but He is the Executive of the Trinity. Consequently the Holy Spirit is but another name for “All Good Things.” When you have Him, you are a king and a priest in Zion, enjoying heaven in your heart. The contrast here between earthly parents, inheriting evil natures, and our blessed Heavenly Father is very forcible, giving us one of those a fortiori arguments so common in our Savior’s illustrative expositions of the unutterable love and unfathomable wisdom of our Heavenly Father. What is an a fortiori argument? It is, from a human standpoint, an argument in the superlative degree; e .g ., if a bushel of apples is worth one dollar, how much more would a thousand bushels of apples compensate for the dollar! The E.V., in this wonderful passage, “Our Heavenly Father,” signally fails to bring out the full force of our Lord’s affirmation. So do not forget the translation of this passage which I literally give you, “How much more will your Father who is from heaven give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” Now, see the beautiful and significant concatenation of our Savior’s argument confirmatory of real efficiency in prayer. That “shameless prayer,” the sine qua non of every victory at a throne of grace, actually brings your Heavenly Father down to you, so that He is convenient and ready to give you His Holy Spirit, victory over the devil, and a heavenly sunburst. The simplicity of Jesus is actually inimitable. Here, describing this efficient prayer, illustrative of the very form he has given us, He assures us of victory invariably attending that “shameless prayer,” and culminating in the gift of the Holy Ghost, by “our Father who is from heaven,” having come down in answer to that shameless prayer. Hence, you see the Divine presence is indispensable in all acceptable worship, and absolutely necessary to the blessings of salvation and sanctification and victory over the enemy. We must have the real, personal presence of God. There is but one way to succeed, and that is to pray Him down from heaven. Now do not forget that this “shameless prayer” is the only one that will bring Him down, making His presence our paradise, giving to all the Holy Ghost — to impenitent infidels and demon-filled sinners in the capacity of a Convictor; to all brokenhearted penitents, a Regenerator; to weak believers, an Illuminator; to consecrated, believing Christians, a Sanctifier; and to all the sanctified, a Glorious Edifier.

CHAPTER 6.

REPORT OF THE SEVENTY EVANGELISTS Luke 10 : 17-24 . When our Savior was at Capernaum, in Galilee, about September first, He called these Seventy, and sent them out two by two, thus constituting thirty-five evangelistic bands, to peregrinate all Israel, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, healing the sick, and casting out demons. It is now about December first, giving them three months, in which these thirty-five evangelistic forces could actually scour the whole country. This commission of the Seventy was really a magnitudinous affair.

They were not like seventy preachers sent out by a Conference into a country, to wait all the week for Sunday to come round, that they may preach to the people; but they are flaming evangelists, going in lightningwinged duets throughout the whole country, preaching incessantly and indiscriminately to all the people as they go. As the Savior’s ministry was fast winding to a close, it became pre-eminently important to expedite the work, cut it short in righteousness, as a transcendent responsibility now devolves on the Jewish people, destined to seal their doom for time and eternity. Having been sent out from Capernaum, Galilee, they return to Him at Jerusalem; as, soon after they received their commission, He, winding up His ministry in Galilee, took His final departure, traveling through Samaria, and preaching on His way, arriving at Jerusalem midway of the Tabernacle Festival, and devoting the remaining six months of His ministry, to Southern Palestine. “And the Seventy returned with joy , saying , Lord , even the demons are subject to us through Thy name .” It is really indispensable that we do all of our work — pray, preach, exhort, appeal, and sing — in the name of Jesus. “And He said to them , I saw Satan , having fallen like lightning from heaven .” This is corroborated by Isaiah, “How thou art fallen, O Lucifer, the morning star!” Lucifer means light-bearer, the archangelic name which honored Satan in the celestial worlds before he fell; when, judging from his name, we conclude he was one of the brightest and most glorious of all the heavenly host. We have here the imperfect tense, etheoroun , “I was seeing [i .e ., was accustomed to see] Satan , having fallen like lightning from heaven .” His cognomen, “light-bearer,” indicates extraordinary brilliancy. The fact of his falling like lightning from heaven would involve the conclusion of his brightness at the time of the fall, and the suddenness of his ejectment out of heaven. Everything in heaven is holy, bright, and glorious. When the Infallible Eye saw his deflection from the Divine administration, quickly as the lightning he was precipitated away, his glory fading in his flight, his brilliancy evanescing, a horrific transformation supervening, as down he goes, plunging with electrical velocity into the bottomless abyss, God’s penitentiary for the incarceration of the incorrigible subjects of his universal empire. You must not forget that there never was a devil in heaven. Satan, which means “adversary,” was never applied to him till after his fall; Lucifer, his heavenly name, “lightbearer,” having a very sweet and beautiful signification. Here we also see that Satan moves with the velocity of lightning — i .e ., twenty thousand miles per second — competent to go round the world fifty times in a minute, thus explaining his apparent omnipresence — which is not true in case of him nor any order finite being, angelic, diabolical, or human — by his exceedingly rapid locomotion from place to place; the universal prevalence of demons being also misapprehended for the omnipresence of Satan. Now, as here we see Satan moving with the velocity of lightning, does it not follow as a logical sequence that all finite spiritual beings have the locomotive capacity of electrical velocity? “Behold , I give unto you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions , and all the dynamite of the enemy ; and nothing shall hurt you . Moreover , rejoice not in this because the spirits are subject unto you , but rejoice rather that your names are written in the heavens .” This is certainly an ineffable consolation, infinitely eclipsing all the power and availability we can possibly possess. O how wonderful to think that our names are written in heaven! Well can we afford to go through floods and flames, as here we have the blessed assurance that He will enable us to tread under foot all the dynamite of Satan, the very artillery of hell only serving to make music for us, inspiring valor on the battle-field and quickening our march to glory. “In that hour , Jesus rejoiced in spirit , and said , I praise Thee , O Father , Lord of heaven and earth , because Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent , and revealed them unto babes .” Even our Savior’s apostles and evangelists remained in the primary department of spiritual babyhood till the fires of Pentecost consumed all hereditary depravity, and led them out in the full-fledged experience of spiritual manhood. We do not wonder that the sweet, sinless spirit of Jesus leaped for joy on the reception of this glorious report from His seventy evangelists. We still see the partial blindness, here mentioned by our Lord, adhering to the “wise and prudent.”

How blessed to be an innocent babe in Christ, taught by the Holy Ghost the deep things of God, rather than enjoy all the wisdom of collegiate culture and the highest prudence of social refinement, in the absence of the indwelling and sanctifying Comforter! “And turning to His disciples , He said , All things have been delivered unto Me by My Father ; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father , and who the Father is except the Son , and he to whom the Son may wish to reveal Him .” So you see we must be right with the Father, reverencing and obeying His law in every ramification, scrupulously recoiling from everything out of harmony with His sweet heavenly will, and in loving homogeneity with the angels and redeemed spirits, doing His will on earth as they do it in heaven, simultaneously with our eye on Jesus, our Blessed Mediator, with, out whom we would drop instantly into hell. Hence you see the Father alone can reveal the Son, by His blessed Holy Spirit, and the Son alone reveal the Father. Hence the reciprocal indwelling of the Father and Son in every saved soul. Millions of people in the world claim to worship the Father while they reject the Son. All such are deluded by Satan, who is so fond of dressing up like an angel of light, passing himself off for God, and thus deceiving the multiplied millions of devil-worshipers in the world this day. While Christ is the only way to God, it is equally true, as we here see, that God is the only way to Christ; the Holy Ghost being the Spirit of the Father and the Son, the latter giving Him to reveal the former, and the Father giving Him to reveal the Son. How fearful to contemplate the fact, “God, out of Christ, is a consuming fire!” ( Hebrews 12:29.) One hundred and seventy-five millions of Mohammedans claim to worship the Father with great enthusiasm while they contemptuously reject the Son, scouting the very idea of the Divine Sonship. Hence they are without hope, save through the uncovenanted mercies of God; the Unitarians in Christian lands being in the same awful dilemma. “And turning to His disciples privately , He said , Blessed are your eyes , which see those things which you do see . For I say unto you , Many prophets and kings wished to see those things which you see , and saw them not ; and to hear those things which you hear , and heard them not .”

Jehovah preached the first gospel sermon to Adam and Eve in the garden, before their expulsion out of paradise, whose salient truth, “The Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head,” assured them that a Deliverer should be born in their family, whose mighty arm would defeat Satan and regain paradise for them, which they should enjoy forever. Consequently they retreated out of Eden, their broken hearts cheered with the joyous anticipation of the coming deliverance and restoration. Such was their glowing enthusiasm that Mother Eve actually hailed her own first-born Son as the promised Messiah, exclaiming “I have brought forth the man- Jehovah.” Now, when we remember that Jehovah is the Old Testament name of Christ, we see how they actually hailed Cain as the Redeemer promised in Eden. How crushing the disappointment when he turned out to be a murderer! Thus the Old Testament saints lived in constant anticipation of the Messianic advent. The trend of things growing worse instead of better, evil predominating and constraining the Divine mercy to bring on the flood, in order to give grace a great victory over sin and perpetuate the hope of the world, then the post-diluvians continued to look for the promised Deliverer down through the patriarchal age. Through all the centuries of Judaism, the Scriptures, both the law and the prophets, unanimously holding up the Incarnate God, in type, symbol, and prophecy, the saints through the intervening centuries, from Moses down to John the Baptist, and especially the prophets, lived in longing anticipation to feast their eyes on the Shiloh of prophecy, and be permitted to behold with mortal vision the Redeemer of Israel, the Christ of God, and the Savior of the world. All these had lived and died in loving and longing anticipation to behold the Lord’s Christ, and ready, like old Simeon, to take the infant Redeemer in their arms and die of joy. How beautifully here Jesus adverts to those thrilling facts characteristic of the saints of the last four thousand years! The same has been true ever since He ascended into glory, having filled and thrilled the hearts of His disciples with the positive assurance of His return.

One of the most cheering omens in all the world today, is the wonderfully rapid development of this universal expectancy of our coming King, illustrating the consolatory assurance that He is even now bending from the skies, and whispering to His saints, “Wash and dress My beloved, for I am coming.”

CHAPTER - METEMPSYCHOSIS John 9 : 1-3 . This word means the transmigration of souls, a doctrine, long ages ago, exceedingly prevalent in India, China, Japan, and many other Oriental countries, going on the hypothesis that the Deity created all human souls at the beginning of the world, and ever since they have been inhabiting mortal bodies, at death passing out and taking possession of a baby somewhere in the world and living again, and so on. A sect of religious philosophers, called Theosophists, has recently appeared in this country, now scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific, one of whose prominent tenets is this reincarnation of human souls, none going away, but, as they move on through different ages, accumulating wisdom, and rising to a higher spiritual development, so that eventually, rising above the earth, they will inhabit ethereal worlds. They quote this Scripture very prominently in the maintenance of this heathen dogma of reincarnation, which their speakers especially emphasize, “And passing along , He saw a man blind from his birth ; and His disciples asked Him , saying , Master , who sinned , this man or his parents , that he may be born blind ?” The Theosophists stoutly claim that this is a recognition of the pre-existence of the man before his natural birth. I trow, the disciples simply spoke a little inadvertently, and did not aim to recognize the responsible existence of the man before his natural birth. “Jesus responded , Neither did he nor his parents sin , but in order that the works of God may be manifest in him .”

Hence, you see, our Lord negatives the whole matter, putting His veto on the hypothesis of the man’s pre-natal sin, and at the same time affirming that his blindness had not resulted from any especial sin of his nor his parents, but, at least incidentally, was a providential provision for the mighty work he was about to execute.

DAY AND NIGHT John 9 : 4 , 5 . “It behooveth us to work the works of Him that sent us while it is day ; the night cometh when no one is able to work . While I am in the world , I am the Light of the world .” As God is original light, everything else in the spiritual universe is shining in different degrees by light reflected from Him, as in the material world, planets, moons, and all material entities, shine by light reflected by the sun. When Satan captured the world in the fall, God retreating away and veiling His face because of sin, he threw his black wing over all this world, bringing on a dismal night of storms, which has lasted six thousand years, with a solitary exception of Immanuel’s presence the short period of His earthly life, which was really a sunburst from heaven, bringing down the daylight to the elect few, who so heeded redeeming grace as to walk in it. Paul says, “The night is far spent, and the day draweth nigh” ( Romans 13:12), alluding to the coming of the Lord to arrest Satan, take him out of the world, and reign forever, thus superseding the long, dreary night, intervening between Eden and the millennium, by the glorious reign of incoming celestial day, descending from heaven when our Lord, in His glory, shall return to reign. You see here that He applies the word “day” to His presence, and “night” to his absence. John 9 : 1-41 . “Speaking these words , He spat on the ground , and made mortar of the spittle , and besmeared the mortar upon his eyes , and said to him , Go , wash in the Pool of Siloam , which is interpreted ‘Sent .’ Then he departed , and washed , and came seeing .” Evidently the clay and the spittle, and the waters of Siloam, were not used medicinally, but merely as objects of attention, to concentrate his mind upon the stupendous miracle, proving auxiliaries to his perceptive faculties. As the body is material, any physical transaction is calculated to concentrate the mental faculties, and prove an auxiliary to an invisible, spiritual, miraculous operation; as this was not simply a matter of healing, but creation of the eyesight, which the man had never enjoyed. In both of my tours at Jerusalem, I visited this pool. It is in a deep gorge, down the southwestern slope of Mount Zion, in a half mile of its base, in the Valley of Jehoshaphat and that of Hinnom, being in the angle between the two, and about equidistant from each valley, and about one mile from their confluence. When I saw it, in June, 1895, it had a good supply of water in November, 1899, it was very scarce. There is a Mohammedan minaret at the pool, having been erected during the interval of my visits. “Then the neighbors , and those formerly seeing him when he was a beggar , continued to say , Is not this the one sitting down and begging ? Some said , It is he ; others said , No , but he is like him ; he said , I am he . Then they said to him , How were your eyes opened ? He responded , A man called Jesus made mortar , and besmeared my eyes , and said to me , Go to Siloam , and wash . Therefore , having departed and washed , I looked up . They said to him , Where is He ? He says , I know not .”

SABBATICAL FANATICISM John 9 : 13-16 . “They lead him to the Pharisees , who was at one time blind . And it was the Sabbath , on which day Jesus made the mortar and opened his eyes . Then again the Pharisees asked him how he looked up . And he said to them , He placed the mortar on my eyes , and I washed , and see . Then certain ones of the Pharisees continued to say , This man is not with God , because He does not keep the Sabbath . Others said , How is a man who is a sinner able to perform such miracles ? And there was a division among them . Then they again speak to the blind man , What do you say concerning Him , because He opened thine eyes ? And he said , That He is a prophet .” Here we see the silly and disgusting fanaticism of the fallen Jewish Church on the Sabbath question, actually running it in, to nonsense by their rigid adherence to the mere outward form. I meet a similar fanaticism in my travels, and much like these Jews, because they require you to keep the old Jewish Sabbath, and so magnify it out of all legitimate proportions that you may be a vile sinner, ignorant of God, and at the same time they are ready to hail you as a paragon saint if you agree with them on their Sabbath dogma. It is really the same old, silly, crazy fanaticism over which they persecuted Jesus all His life, and hounded Him to the cross. “Then the Jews did not believe concerning him that he was blind , and looked up until they called the parents of him looking up , and asked them , saying , Is this your son , whom you say that he was born blind ? How then does he now see ? Then his parents responded and said , We know that he is our son , and that he was born blind ; but how he now sees , we know not ; and who has opened his eyes , we know not . Ask him , he is of age ; he shall speak for himself .”

EXCOMMUNICATION John 9 : 22-34 . “His parents said this because they feared the Jews ; for already the Jews had entered into a covenant that if any one may confess Christ , he must be put out of the synagogue .” It is said that at that time there were four hundred and fifty synagogues in Jerusalem, where all the people gathered on the Sabbath, that they might hear the Scriptures read and expounded by their pastors and theologians. Jesus was the Leader of the holiness movement at that time in the Jewish Church. You see how they resorted to this diabolical stratagem to intimidate people from confessing Him, the authorities passing a resolution that all such should be turned out of the Church. Much of the same thing has been done in this country in the last twenty years, and is still going on. Ecclesiastical ostracism has accompanied the bloody persecutions in all ages, the civil law in this country, happily for us, preventing the latter.

ADROITNESS OF THIS MAN UNDER PROSECUTION John 9 : 23-38 . “Therefore his parents said , He is of age ; ask him . Then they called the man the second time who was blind , and said to him , Give glory to God ; we know that this Man is a sinner . Then he responded , If He is a sinner , I know not ; one thing I know , that being blind , I now see . Then they said to him , What did He unto thee ? How did He open thine eyes ? He responded to them , I told you already , and you did not hearken ; why do you wish again to hear ? Whether do you wish to be His disciples ? They railed on him , and said , Thou art His disciple , but we are the disciples of Moses . We know that God spoke to Moses ; but we do not know this One whence He is . The man responded , and said to them , For in this it is astonishing that you do not know whence He is , when He opened mine eyes . We know that God heareth not sinners ; but if any one may be a worshiper of God , and do His will , him He heareth .” This passage has very shrewdly, and even diabolically, been used by modern heretics in the pulpit, assuming the hypothesis theft a sinner has no right to pray, and should come prayerless, with all his sins, join the Church, and get remission in water baptism. I have heard them, over and over, use this Scripture to justify their foolish, wicked, fanatical dogma, which would deny the sinner access to God on his knees for pardon and salvation, and turn him over to the preacher and to water baptism. Certainly this is one of the most unapologizable heresies ever hatched in the bottomless pit, and, worst of all, they blame the Savior with it. The truth of it is, the penitent, praying sinner is a “worshiper of God,” and according to this very Scripture, God hears and saves him, independently of human instrumentality, or priestly absolution and Church rites. The meaning of the passage is that God will not hear a sinner if he undertake to work a miracle, but that He will hear him if he falls down with a broken heart, and impleads His pardoning mercy. “It was never heard of that any one opened the eyes of one who had been born blind . Unless he was with God , He would not be able to do anything . They responded , and said to him , Thou wast born altogether in sins , and dost thou teach us ? And they cast him out ;” i .e ., they excommunicated him from the synagogue, turned him out of the Church.

This poor, uneducated beggar, who had never seen the light of day, and of course enjoyed no educational opportunities, proved more than a match for the quirky, astute, and quizzical priests and theologians, who, like unprincipled, tricky lawyers, did their utmost to puzzle, complicate, and confuse this man, whom they regarded as a very ignoramus. In all their stratagems to entangle him, they signally failed. He had good, common sense, and the light of the Holy Spirit, and God helped him to triumph gloriously over the combination of his enemies. You have frequently seen a witness in court, so confused, befogged, and entangled by the chicanery of the attorneys as to become utterly bewildered and self-contradictory, thus invalidating his own testimony. A similar effort is made by these Pharisees, scribes, and high priests; but all in vain. The uncouth rustic sticks to the pith of the matter, and never flickers nor cowers. Consequently they do the only thing left in their power, and that is, arbitrarily and illegally turn him out of the Church. How wonderfully, in our day, does the history of the Bible times repeat itself! “Jesus heard that they cast him out , and finding him , said , Dost thou believe on the Son of man ?” This was a favorite cognomen with Jesus, conveying a deeper significance than many apprehend. Jesus is the only Son of man, because He is the only Son of unfallen humanity, having taken our nature, sin excepted; whereas Adam and Eve had no posterity till after they sinned, the posterity of fallen humanity having received the Satanic nature through the beguilement of the serpent, or the spiritual children of the devil. ( John 8:44.) Therefore, Jesus is really and truly the Son of man, and the only one, all of Adam’s posterity having forfeited sonship ill the fall; our only possible hope of heaven consisting in the transference from Adam the First to Adam the Second, by the internal infusion of the Divine life in regeneration, and elimination of the Satanic virus in sanctification. “He responded and said , Who is He , Lord , that I may believe on Him ? Jesus said to him , And you have seen Him , and the One speaking with you is He . And he said , I believe , Lord ; and he worshipped Him .” Jerusalem, like other Oriental cities, swarms with beggars, and, of course, many of them are blind. As a rule, every beggar has his place, and in the case of this man it was pre-eminently so, because, being stone blind, it was not convenient for him to travel about. N.B. Jesus at this time had been in Jerusalem but a few weeks, having spent the entire period of His ministry in Northern Palestine, except two brief periods, when he attended the first and second Passover at Jerusalem. The presumption is, this man had never met Him before. The very fact of His stupendous miracle convinced him that He was a prophet, sent and empowered from heaven. Elijah and Elisha had wrought great miracles, even raising the dead, yet neither of them being the Christ. Consequently, while the opening of his eyes perfectly assured him of His Divine commission, it did not satisfy him as to His Messiahship; but feeling fully assured that He was a godly man in a very pre-eminent sense, when He declared to him His Christhood, he believed unhesitatingly, confirming his faith by falling down before Him and worshipping Him as God.

OPTICAL ENIGMAS John 9 : 39-41 . “And Jesus said , For judgment I came into the world , in order that those not seeing may see , and those seeing may be made blind . Certain ones of the Pharisees being with Him heard , and said to Him , Whether are we also blind ? Jesus said to them , If ye were blind , you had not sin ; but now you say , That we see , your sin remaineth ;” i .e ., abides forever, as conviction, which takes away all the false consolations of the hypocrite and fills him with darkness, must anticipate the salvation of every soul. These utterances of Jesus provoke the most scathing criticism from the infidels, as they sound so contradictory. Our Lord knows that we have intelligent minds, as well as immoral souls, and consequently gives us much to sharpen our wits, and bring into availability our thinking powers.

Really, the Bible is the grandest intellectual gymnasium in the world Proud, carnal people look with contempt on the Bible, and go after collegiate learning to develop their intellects, making the mistake of their lives. The finest intellectualists of the ages are found among the most assiduous Bible students. In the above Scripture, the enigmas are found in the diversified phases of vision, physical, mental, carnal, spiritual, counterfeit, and genuine. He came to confer sight on the physically blind, as illustrated in the case of the man who is born blind, this wonderful miracle gloriously symbolizing the normal office of the Savior to open the spiritual eyes, and confer the blessing of vision on those wrapped in Satan’s midnight. Now, in what sense does Satan make people blind? He is the great deceiver, having multiplied millions of wily demons, manipulating every human soul in the direction of ruin and damnation. Consequently these demons delude the unsaved with diversified visions of false faith, false peace, false hope, and even counterfeit experiences, which render their way quite luminous with foxfire, phosphorescence, and ignis fatuus , “Whose delusive rays light up unreal worlds, And glow, but to betray.” In this way, Satan comforts his people, so they go, jolly, hilarious, gleeful, flippant, egotistical, and sanguine of heavenly ingress, till Diabolus finds it convenient to dump them into hell. The first great work of the gospel is to take away these false lights, which is the office of the Holy Ghost in conviction, thus leaving the sinner in his normal condition, without a solitary ray of hope, wrapped in storms and dragged by demons down to perdition. The trouble with those Pharisees and scribes was the rejection of the Holy Spirit, whom God had sent “to open their eyes , turn them from darkness to light , from the power of Satan unto God , that they might receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among the sanctified .”

CHAPTER 8.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD John 10 : 1-29 . “Truly , truly , I say unto you , The one not coming in through the door , but climbing up some other way , he is a thief and a robber .” It is subsequently revealed that Christ Himself is the door. I have heard superstitious, ignorant preachers hold up water baptism as the door, and contend most pertinaciously that you must receive it according to their ipse dixit , or lose your soul. “Let God be true , and every man a liar .” Here you see that Christ Himself is the door into the fold of redeeming grace, the Church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven. Hence it is silly heresy to talk about any other door, and, as here Jesus says, the one entering in through another door is a thief and a robber: A thief, because he is trying to steal heaven for himself without paying the price — forsaking all, and following Jesus to Calvary, and having old Adam crucified. He’s a robber, because he robs all who follow him of their heavenly hopes and never-dying souls. “He that cometh in through the door is the shepherd of the sheep . To him the porter openeth , and the sheep hear his voice , and he calls his own sheep by name , and leads them out .” The porter here is none other than the Holy Ghost, who goes before and prepares the way for Jesus; i .e ., opens the heart and lets Him in. So the blessed Holy Spirit keeps the door of the heart, and if you yield to His heavenly influence, will certainly open it and let Jesus come in. In a similar, but a subordinate sense, this is true of all who faithfully follow the Good Shepherd. If you are truly the Lord’s blood-washed, spirit-filled, fire-baptized preacher, the Holy Spirit will go before you, and open the hearts of the Lord’s elect, give you audience with them, and make you humbly instrumental in doing them good. Here we see that the Lord’s sheep know His voice, and He calls each one by name. In Palestine there are no fences, and all stock are herded, the herdsmen remaining with them day and night. An old tourist, who has spent twenty-five years in that country escorting travelers all over it, and is intimately acquainted with everything appertaining to it, related to me the literal fulfillment of this Scripture at the present day; e .g ., a sheep has been lost out of a flock, and the shepherd surmises that it has gotten into some other, calls to his neighbor shepherd on a contiguous mountain, “Have you any stray sheep?” “I do not know. Wait a minute, and I will see.” He calls out to his flock, and they all quit grazing, and raise up their heads to hear his voice, except one, which pays no attention to him, but grazes on. Then he answers, “Yes, I have one that does not belong to me. Come and see if it is yours.” So he comes over and calls, and none of the flock quit grazing to give him any attention except that one, which holds up his head and listens to him. Then the shepherd says,” Take it along; it is yours.” It is very consolatory to know that the Good Shepherd is so familiar with us as to call us all by name. During my childhood and youth, I heard my name constantly. Since I entered public, professional life, I am called by other epithets, and seldom hear the name given to me by my beloved parents, who are now in glory. When I meet an old friend of my boyhood, who freely calls me by my name, I feel good. “When he may put out all his own , he goeth before them , and the sheep follow him , because they know his voice .” It is not the custom of the Oriental shepherd to drive his flock, but to lead them, and they always follow whithersoever he goes. This is also the custom in the great West, where they are herded after the manner of the Old World. An old California shepherd told me that he was herding two thousand sheep up on the mountain, when a snow fell, covering the grass so they could not get it. Then, mounting his pony and calling aloud, he sets out for the plains, where the snow never falls, the whole flock following him. We should adhere pertinaciously to our Savior’s Word, and never drive, but always lead the people of God. There is but one way to lead them, and that is to be more proficient in the Truth of God, a better exegete of the Scripture, more zealous for truth and righteousness, more abundant in good works, more humble, meek, and lowly, and more like Jesus, than they are. If some of them excel us in Christ-likeness, we should rejoice in God, and be a follower of such, as they follow Jesus. Pastor is a Latin word, which means shepherd; episcopos , bishop, being the Greek. O how few pastors actually lead their flocks in the way of humility, love, holiness, and heaven! All who do not thus lead them should resign at once. How common is it now, rather than lead, thus diametrically to antagonize the precept and example of the Chief Shepherd! “But they will not follow another , but will fly from him , because they do not know the voice of strangers .” This explains the reason why the godly members of Churches in all ages have been stigmatized as schismatical, revolutionary, and unmanageable. It is because there is a stranger in the pulpit, and they are the Lord’s true sheep, and will not follow him. At this point bloody persecutions have broken out, ever and anon, through all bygone ages. You have nothing to do but give this matter a little attention, and see how carnal pastors are utterly incompetent to manage the spiritual members of their congregations. To follow them would be to go down to perdition. The Lord’s sheep never have followed, and never will fallow, the voice of a stranger. “Jesus spake this parable to them ; and they did not know those things which Jesus was saying to them .” An unspiritual audience frequently signally fails to understand spiritual truth. “Then Jesus said , Truly , truly , I say unto you , That I am the door of the sheep .” Hence you see we must come to Jesus personally, and pass through His arms into the fold of salvation. Consequently all of the Lord’s sheep enjoy a happy, personal acquaintance with the Good Shepherd, who, like the Palestinean herdsman, abides with His flock night and day. “All, so many as came, are thieves and robbers; but the sheep did not hear them.” Here we have ethon , “came,” in the second aorist tense, not only past, but instantaneous and complete, alluding to Satan and his demoniacal armies, who made the first run on the world, and did their utmost to capture it all, four thousand years having rolled away before the Incarnate Shepherd came on the earth. The sheep were here in all ages, but did not hearken to the voice of the counterfeit shepherds. “I am the door ; through Me , if any one may enter in , he shall be saved , and shall go in and out and find pasture .” This is a beautiful, natural description of nomadic life among the Orientals, the flock going out and coming in, led by the shepherd. How beautifully symbolic of the spiritual shepherdhood!

N.B. — There are no fences in that country, the sheep having access to any and every place whither the good shepherd may lead them. You can not find a trace nor a track of denominationalism in the Bible. This is man’s work, Satan thus building up fences to separate the Lord’s sheep, so he can starve at least some of them to death; as there is always plenty of good grass in some river valley, mountain cove, or fertile plain, where the showers fall and keep the fields always green. Consequently, if there were no fences, the sheep could all find good grazing, live fat and flourishing. All the great revivals in bygone ages have conduced to break down these partition walls.

The present holiness movement is doing a grand work, knocking down the fences, and letting the Lord’s sheep come together and enjoy the good grass in all the different pastures. Besides, entire sanctification disencumbers people of every burden, making them active as catamounts, so they can jump over all the devil’s fences into a Methodist clover-field, a Baptist bluegrass pasture, a Presbyterian wheat-field, or a grand Quaker lawn, where a variety of grasses grow, and thus availing themselves of the wholesome pabulum which the Good Shepherd provides. O how we flourish and fatten, the beautiful lambs skipping on all the hills, and the copious white fleeces washed clean in the crystal rivers, which course through the fertile plains of Immanuel’s pasture-lands! “The thief does not come except that he may steal , murder , and destroy .” All carnal, worldly preachers belong to the catalogue of these thieves, who are really actuated by carnal motives, and the effect of their work is to steal the fleece, fat, and milk of God’s flock, and destroy them, because they do not care for their souls; so when they get what they have, they let Satan take their souls. “I came that they may have life , and have it more abundantly .” We have life in regeneration, and the same life superabounding in sanctification. “I am the Good Shepherd . The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep .” As Jesus died to save the whole world, so we, as His subordinate shepherds, should be ready at all times to lay down our lives for souls. “The hireling , not being a shepherd , whose own the sheep are not , seeth the wolf coming , and leaves the sheep and flies , and the wolf seizes them and scatters them ; because he is an hireling , and there is not a care to him concerning the sheep .” Read Ezekiel 34 to the shepherds abiding in their tents, feasting on the fat, drinking the milk, and clothing themselves with the wool of the flock, while the sheep are scattered abroad, on every high hill, down in every deep valley, wandering amid the crags and precipices, the wolves devouring them without mercy. The above statement of our Savior with reference to the hireling shepherd, certainly does sweep the salaried ministry from the face of the earth. We dare not stipulate and make finances a consideration, lest we fall under the ban of the hireling shepherd.

O how significant in this connection the faithful words of Peter, while venerable with years and looking bloody martyrdom in the face! “Therefore I , being an elder , and a witness of the sufferings of Christ , also a participant of the glory about to be revealed , exhort the elders who are among you : Feed the flock of God which is among you , not from constraint , but willingly , for God ’s sake ; not for filthy lucre , but of a ready mind ; nor as it were domineering over the heritages , but being examples of the flock ; and the Chief Shepherd appearing , you shall receive a crown of glory , which will never fade away .” The man who is afraid in reference to his temporal support has mistaken his calling, or at least he has not tarried long at Jerusalem, nor received the “perfect love, which casts out fear” of starvation and everything else. The Lord does not want any shepherds who are troubled with fears in reference to temporal support. Full salvation clears all that away, and prepares you to go to Greenland, and freeze to death for Jesus’ sake, or to India and starve, and in either case, die shouting, in glowing anticipation of a martyr’s crown, the grandest boon achievable beneath the skies. These declarations of Jesus abundantly explained the present deplorable apostasy of the Churches. The devil’s wolves come round in the form of dances, frolics, theaters, circuses, cardparties, horse-races, saloons, etc. The pastor sees his flock going headlong to ruin, ignores the whole matter, and plays dummy. Why? If he takes the devil by the throat, does his duty, contends for the faith once delivered to the saints, preaches holiness or hell like lightning, and enforces discipline, fearless of men and devils, taking the rotten potatoes all out of the barrel so as to save the few sound ones, they will get mad at him, refuse to pay their assessments, his salary must be reported largely deficient at the ensuing Conference, himself discounted for inefficiency, and be taken out of the fat station and sent to a poor circuit. What is the result? His courage fails, and the wolves devour the flock: he sells out their souls to the devil for filthy lucre, receives a fat salary, lives like a king, lets his own children go to the devil; is honored and applauded as an efficient and faithful pastor, while heaven mourns and hell rejoices. What is the solution of this dismal problem? He is a hireling shepherd, and Jesus says, for that very reason, he is utterly untrustworthy; for the sake of his salary, he lets the wolves devour the sheep. You see the point? He should be no hireling, but a volunteer for Jesus, to save souls from hell, and looking to God alone for support, temporal and spiritual. Let me corroborate the venerable apostle I assure you, God will be everything to you, and feed you and yours, like He feeds the birds. I have been a preacher longer than Peter, but not so long as John. So I gladly add my testimony to theirs. O Lord, what shall become of Thy Church under a hireling ministry? Jesus tells the dark secret. Satan’s wolves capture and scatter the flock. “I am the Good Shepherd , and know Mine , and Mine know Me , as the Father knows Me , and I know the Father ; and I lay down My life for the sheep .” How grand and glorious is the preaching of Jesus on the direct witness of the Spirit! He knows every true heart, and every faithful soul knows Him. Blessed consolation! Here He affirms repeatedly that He lays down His life for the sheep. That is true subjectively, as none but the elect avail themselves of His vicarious atonement; while objectively, He gave His life for all, making their salvation a gracious possibility. “He tasted death for every one.” ( Hebrews 2:9.) “But I have other sheep , which are not of this fold , and it behooveth Me to bring them , and they shall hear My voice , and there shall be one Shepherd and one fold .” And the other sheep, not of the Jewish fold, were in all the Gentile world. Here you see that the Lord wills but one fold, as there is but one Shepherd. He broke down the partition wall between the Jews and the Gentiles ( Ephesians 2); and you may rest assured that He is grieved over all the partition walls which have ever been built up by the sects and denominations . “Therefore the Father loves Me , because I lay down My life , that I may take it again .” In the track of Jesus and two hundred millions of martyrs, we have blessed assurance that if we lay down our lives for Him, we shall follow Him in the glorious resurrection, receiving life immortal, triumphant over death, hell, and the grave, and glorious beyond all possible conception. “No one taketh it from Me , but I lay it down of Myself ; but I have the privilege to lay it down , and I have the privilege to take it again ; this commandment I received from My Father .” With Jesus, our Paragon, and like Him constantly ready for martyrdom, O what a glorious privilege to be one of His sheep, and even a subordinate shepherd! The elect of God are in every nation, the sheep of the Lord’s pasture, and exposed to prowling wolves, roaring lions, and bloodthirsty tigers. O what a grand open door for the subordinate shepherds of Jesus, to go away to the mountains, deserts, and jungles, hunt the lost sheep, and bring them back to the fold! They are all around us, invaded, desolated, and scattered by the ferocious beasts of prey, beside the millions in heathen lands. If you could only look up to heaven, and see the crown of glory in the hand of the Chief Shepherd, ready to place on the brow of the most humble man or woman who will dare to go out in the name of the Good Shepherd, and hunt up the lost sheep, and lead them into green pastures, where they can lie down beside the still waters, methinks every reader of these lines would cry out: “Good Shepherd, let me go. I do not wait for the hire of paltry pelf. I am ready to lay down my life for the sheep.” Mark it down, we can not depend on a hireling ministry to do this work. Jesus has so decided, and He makes no mistakes. “Again there was a division among the Jews on account of these words . Then many of them were saying , He hath a demon , and is gone mad ; why do you hear Him ? Others were saying , These are not the words of a demonized man ; whether is a demon able to open the eyes of the blind ?” “The servant is not above his Lord , nor the disciple above his Teacher .”

You see here how they declared that Jesus had a demon, and was gone mad; i .e ., that He was actually run mad by the demon which possessed Him. You see here that many of His audience spoke out, pleading with the people to go away and not listen to Him, as He was a demonized madman.

Do you not know that the carnal world and counterfeit religion are the same today as in our Savior’s time? Rely upon it, if you go out and preach the truth as it is in Jesus, fearless of men and devils, they will talk about you in the scurrilous and blasphemous manner in which they denounced and anathematized Him. “And it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem ; it was winter .” This feast was the anniversary of the temple’s dedication, after it had been purified from idolatry and thoroughly repaired, at the close of the three years and a half, during which it was polluted by idol worship during the occupancy of the Syrians, and the time was B.C. 25. “And Jesus was walking about in the temple , in the Porch of Solomon .”

This was not connected with the temple proper, but was a magnificent building, erected by King Solomon, near the Beautiful Gate, leading through the east wall of the city into the Temple Campus, and about six hundred yards northeast of the temple proper, as all the campus, about thirty-five acres, with its many buildings, was denominated The Temple. “Then the Jews surrounded Him , and continued to say to Him , How long will You take away our life ? If Thou art the Christ , tell us openly .” This seems like a reasonable appeal, begging Him to relieve all their suspense, solicitude, and torture by telling them outright whether He is the Christ.

They had a law among themselves that if any one claimed to be the Christ, he should be brought before the Sanhedrin for examination. In this way they were hypocritically endeavoring to get some clue at Him to make Him a prisoner. Besides, it is well understood that the Christ was to be King of the Jews. Hence the liability of bringing Him into trouble with the Roman Government, and having Him arraigned before Pilate on the charge of high treason. While thus they outwardly manifest sincerity and candor, Jesus read their hearts, and knew the diabolism of their intention. “Jesus responded , I told you , and you do not believe ; the works which I do in the name of My Father , these testify concerning Me .” The healing of the man born blind, about which they all well knew, was all that honest men could want by way of assurance as to His Christhood. So He refers them to His miracles, which spoke louder than words. “But you do not believe , because you are not of My sheep .” This tells the dark secret. Those Jews, the favored people of God, the leading preachers and laymen, standing at the head of the Church, were not of His sheep; i .e ., they were reprobated and hopelessly doomed; not that God reprobates men to death, but they reprobated themselves, rejecting the Holy Ghost, and even imputing His works to the devil, thus, with all their clerical offices and honors, plunging headlong into everlasting woe. “My sheep hear My voice , and I know them , and they follow Me ; and I give to them eternal life , and they shall never perish , and no one shall pluck them out of My hand .” This is wonderfully strong, beautiful, and consolatory. The reason why those Jews did not spiritually hear His voice (because they certainly heard it physically) was because they were not of His sheep. While He assures us that His sheep will never perish, and no one is able to pluck them out of His hand, we must bear in mind the liability of the sheep to stray away from the fold and be lost. While there is no power in the universe competent to pluck us out of the hands of the Omnipotent Savior, yet we are free and on probation, exposed to temptation and a thousand liabilities and snares, as we see above, in the case of those wolves, which are prowling all around us and ready to devour us. The danger is not on the side of power, but our own will. “The Father , who has given them unto Me , is greater than all , and no one is able to pluck them out of the hand of the Father .” Of course, the Father saw all the saved before He sent Jesus into the world and gave them to Him; therefore if Satan comes first, so far as the question of power is concerned, he, a poor finite being, would have to be stronger than the Almighty. He would have to conquer the Son, who has us in His hands, and also the Father, who gave us to His Son, if He ever gets us. Hence you see, the omnipotence of the Trinity is pledged for our security. Consequently the danger, in view of which Jesus so faithfully warns us about Satan’s wolves, is altogether on the human side. Therefore we see, while God elects people to life, He does not reprobate any of them to death. We are all free to choose between sin and holiness. If we choose the latter, we are elected to life; if the former, we are reprobated to death, from the simple fact that the “wages of sin is death.” If we remain in sin, we are in the hands of Satan, who, at the close of this life, has no place to put us but hell.

THE ASSAULT John 10 : 30-39 . “I and My Father are one .” There is but one God, but three persons — i.e. , three characters — manifested by the Deity to the world. I am a preacher, a teacher, and a book editor, three characters, and yet but one . “Again the Jews took up stones that they may stone Him .” As they felt that they were prepared to sustain their condemnation of blasphemy against Him because He claimed to be the Son of God, they thought if they could raise a row and excite the rabble, they might get rid of Him by stoning Him to dearth, and cover up the whole transaction under the charge of blasphemy. Though they take up stones, and show every manifestation of instantaneous death, Jesus remains perfectly tranquil. “And Jesus responded to them , Many good works have I shown to you from the Father , on account of which work of these do you stone Me ? The Jews responded to Him , We do not stone Thee for a good work , but for blasphemy , and because Thou , being a man , makest Thyself God .”

According to the Mosaic law, the penalty for blasphemy was death by stoning. The same also was the penalty for Sabbath-breaking.

Consequently His enemies, who hounded Him day and night, thirsting for His blood, were constantly on the alert, ready to catch up anything whatever, and use it as a charge against Him. It so happened, in the normal administration of His official Messiahship, He was really under the necessity of rendering Himself vulnerable to the charge of blasphemy, in order to enunciate and vindicate His claims to the Messiahship, as it would have been really impossible for any one to preach and testify in harmony with the Messianic office without exposing Himself to the liability of the charge of blasphemy; whereas His constant works of philanthropy, healing the multitudes of sick people everywhere He went, would have necessitated Him to intermit His work on the Sabbath or become vulnerable to the charge of Sabbatic violation. Consequently His enemies, having these two strings to their bow, pulled on them incessantly, making music for the bottomless pit. “Jesus responded to them , Is it not written in your law that I said , Ye are gods ?” ( Psalm 80.) Here the word is applied to tyrannical world-rulers. “If He called them gods to whom the Word of God came , and the Scripture is not able to be broken , whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world , do you say that Thou blasphemest because I said , I am the Son of God ? If I do not the works of My Father , do not believe Me ; but if I do , believe not Me , believe the works , in order that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me , and I in the Father . Then they were seeking to arrest Him , and he went out from their hand .” Our Lord’s ministry is now rapidly winding to a close. Consequently it is important to emphasize the great, salient point of His earthly mission, and everywhere prominently hold up His Christhood, so that all the people would clearly apprehend and indubitably witness His claims to the Messiahship, thus exposing Himself to the constant liability of arrest and arraignment, as they had a rabbinical law specifying that any man claiming to be the Christ should be brought before the Sanhedrin for investigation and examination.

Now that He boldly meets the issue, despite their charge of blasphemy, they proceed to arrest Him. Of course, the Sanhedrin would have condemned Him to death by stoning ( Leviticus 24:16), thus cutting off His earthly ministry about one month before the time. Consequently He passed away from their hands, of course unobserved, all losing sight of Him, and thinking He was somewhere in the crowd; but no one being able to find Him, meanwhile He passes clearly away.

JESUS AT BETHANY, PEREA John 10 : 40-42 . “And again He went away beyond Jordan , into the place where John was first baptizing , and there abode . Many came to Him , and continued to say , That John did no miracle ; but all things , so many as John said concerning this One , were true , and many believed on Him there .” This Bethany was in the Jordan Valley, on the east side, about twenty miles above the ford where Israel crossed, and where Jesus was baptized, in the territory occupied by the two and a half tribes east of the Jordan. When the multitudes followed Him, the sight of the place reminded them of John’s ministry, which they had there enjoyed three years previously. Consequently the conversation naturally turned on that subject.

Though John was the greatest of all the prophets, he wrought no miracles like his illustrious predecessors, Elijah and Elisha. They naturally contrast these two most illustrious characters — i .e ., John and Jesus — and remember so vividly the powerful preaching of the former in reference to the latter; and now, in contemplation of His mighty works, all certify that John’s wonderful testimony in reference to Him is literally true.

CHAPTER - RESURRECTION OF LAZARUS John 11 : 1-44 . “And a certain one was sick : Lazarus , of Bethany , the village of Mary and Martha her sister .” John, who accompanied Jesus, very discreetly omits the name of the place where Jesus is at this time beyond the Jordan, in order to avoid the confusion superinduced by the reader confounding the two Bethanies. Lazarus was sick at Bethany, Judea, one and seven-eighths miles east of Jerusalem, and Jesus was preaching at Bethany, Perea, about fifty miles northeast. “And Mary was the one anointing the Lord with myrrh and wiping His feet with her hair , whose brother Lazarus was sick .” This transaction is recorded in the twelfth chapter of this Gospel. a. “Then the sisters sent to Him , saying , Lord , behold he whom Thou lovest is sick .” The word for love is phileo , which means the love of friendship — i .e ., human love — in contradistinction to agapao , Divine love. The unfallen humanity of Jesus is capable of a human love and tender affection infinitely more delicate and sensitive than any of us, hardened and darkened by the fall, can conceive. “And Jesus , hearing , said , This sickness is not unto death , but for the glory of God , that the Son of God may be glorified through it .” Even after the word came to Him, He declined to pronounce Lazarus dead, but said he was asleep. Of course, the death of Lazarus had taken place before the arrival of the messengers sent by the sisters, as we subsequently see, from the fact of the four days having elapsed at the time of His arrival.

These apparent disharmonies all clear away when we remember that Jesus declines to use the word “death,” but substitutes “sleep,” setting forth the significant fact that the body is immortal as the soul, which is true, when we consider the resurrection in its normal economy. “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus .” Here we have agapao , Divine love, thus disarming the infidel criticism that might wickedly be foisted on that statement, as there is nothing physical in the meaning of the word, but purely spiritual, and identical with the love which the Holy Ghost pours out in the heart in regeneration. ( Romans 5:5.) b. “Therefore , when He heard that he is sick , then indeed He remained in the place in which He was two days .” This was the greatest miracle wrought by our Lord during His earthly ministry, from the fact that Lazarus had been dead four days, and consequently putrefaction had set up, and really made great progress in the work of dissolution. It seems that Jesus was determined that this miracle should be pre-eminently decisive and convicting to all who should hear of it. Consequently He remains there two days after He received the word. “Then , after this , He says to His disciples , Let us go into Judea . Then His disciples say to Him , Master , just now the Jews were seeking to stone Thee , and do You again go thither ?” They were all unutterably astonished when He spoke of returning to Judea, from which He had so recently fled for His life, as they were in the very act of stoning Him. c. “Jesus responded , Are there not twelve hours of the day ?” The Jews counted from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M. “If any one may walk in the day , he stumbleth not , because he sees the light of this world ; but if any one may walk in the night , he stumbleth , because there is no light in him .” The simple meaning of this is, that they could not kill Him till His work was done. Yet we see how He fled from place to place, in order to prolong His life till He could finish His work, illustrating the fact that we, too, are immortal till our work is done, if we abide in God’s order; but if we recklessly disregard it, then we take our lives into our own hands. Hence there is no premium here offered to careless indifference. While Jesus was immortal till His work was done, He must utilize the providence of the Father in His behalf. In this passage, God’s providence is the day, and our own depreciative indifference the night. Hence, if you walk in the light, true to God’s Word, Spirit, and providence, you’ll never stumble nor fall. d. “He said these words , and after this He speaks to them , Lazarus , our friend , has gone to sleep ; but I go that I may wake him up . Then the disciples said to him , Lord , if he is asleep , he will get well . But Jesus spoke concerning his death ; but they thought that He is talking about the rest of sleep . Then Jesus said unto them boldly , Lazarus is dead ; and I rejoice on your account that I was not there , in order that you may believe ; but let us go to him .” We see that our Lord purposely delayed till Lazarus had been dead four days, in order that this miracle might be overwhelmingly convincing and demonstrative. He had raised the widow’s son at Nain when on the way to the tomb, having only been dead a few hours, as the Jews bury their dead immediately after expiration. He had also raised the daughter of Jairus, at Capernaum, who had been dead but a little while. Some might conclude that in these cases a spark of vitality lingered till He arrived and revived it. In the case of Lazarus, putrefaction and disintegration had made such progress that the miraculous feature of the transaction actually beggared all criticism, and silenced all possible cavil. e. “Then Thomas , called Didymus , said to his fellow-disciples , Let us go also , that we may die along with Him .” Some have thought that Thomas meant that they should die with Lazarus, which is utterly implausible and untenable. Thomas was peculiar in his make-up for taking the dark side of every question. This is the reason why he refused to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead till the most thorough and indubitable evidence was furnished, after which he never again hesitated nor doubted.

Notwithstanding his predilection to take the blue side of everything, he was one of the grandest men called to the apostolic office. In the distribution of the world, pursuant to the Gentile Commission ( Matthew 28:19), he received India as his field of labor. Though his territory was so very large, and occupied by countless multitudes, he not only went to it and labored heroically, but he traveled through Ethiopia and Persia, preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ, and finally being cruelly martyred by the Brahmin priests in India, who interpenetrated his body with a cruel iron bar, as they sag, that his influence would utterly undermine and defeat their religion. In this case, when they had all remonstrated with Jesus not to go back to Judea, whence He had so recently fled from a cruel, stony massacre, and He persisting in His determination to go anyhow, Thomas, feeling now that He is going back to expose Himself to His enemies, they will kill Him to an absolute certainty. “So now , brethren , let us all go back and die with Him .” Thomas was true as steel, and heroic enough to lay down his life with Jesus but his prevailing peculiarity to take the dark side of every problem here crops out. f . “Then Jesus , having come , found that he is in the tomb four days .”

Bethany was near to Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs. It is on the Jericho road, just beyond the summit of Olivet, on a southeastern slope. “Many of the Jews had come to Mary and Martha , that they may comfort them concerning their brother .” The Jews mourn for the dead seven days.

Consequently, Jesus arrived in the midst of the mourning. “Then Martha , when she heard that Jesus comes , went to meet Him ; but Mary was sitting in the house .” Jesus and His disciples arrived on the Jericho road. It is said that they had halted and were resting a little, and were enjoying a drink at Jeremiah’s Fountain in the suburbs. “Then Martha said to Jesus , Lord , if Thou wast here , my brother had not died . And now I know that as many things as Thou may ask God for , God will give unto You . Jesus says to her , Your brother shall rise again . Martha says to Him , I know that He will rise in the resurrection in the last day . Jesus said to her , I am the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth on Me , though he may die , shall live , and every one that liveth and believeth on Me can never die ; do you believe this ? She says to Him , Yea , Lord , I have believed that Thou art the Christ , the Son of God , who cometh into the world .” Our Savior’s responses to Martha are thrillingly consolatory. O the inestimable premium the Bible sets on faith in Jesus, reaching out, and not only appropriating eternal spiritual life, but that of this mortal, fleeting body, in the glorious resurrection, leaping from the dust, triumphant over death, hell, and the grave, invested with immortality, and dynamited with eternal life, soaring away to join the unfallen angels, explore celestial worlds, range the fenceless fields of glory, contemplate the ineffable beauty of the unfallen heavenly worlds, and magnify the glory of Omnipotence through the flight of eternal ages! g . “And saying this , she went away and called Mary : her sister , speaking secretly , The Teacher is come , and calls thee . When she heard it , she rises quickly , and comes to Him . Jesus had not yet come into the village : but was in the place where Martha met Him . Then the Jews , who are with her in the house and comforting her , seeing Mary , that she arose up quickly and went out , followed her , thinking that she goes to the tomb to weep there .” On both of my tours in Jerusalem, I was frequently at Bethany, and visited the house of Mary and Martha, and entered the tomb of Lazarus; i .e ., a stone tomb, excavated out of the rock, in the side of Mount Olivet, designated the Tomb of Lazarus. Of course, Mary did not receive the first news which reached Martha, or she would have gone with her to meet Jesus. Now, Martha, darting in stealthily, whispers to Mary the thrilling news that Jesus has come. During the four days, while the broken-hearted sisters mourned the death of their only brother, on whose faithful labor they depended for temporal support, having sent for Jesus, somehow they entertained a thrilling anticipation that He will come, and, in some mysterious way, a forlorn hope lingers with them that He will actually bring their brother back.

Consequently when Mary, the more hopeful and trustful of the two, hears the glad nears of His arrival, instantly rising from her prostrate attitude of deepest grief, she runs away to meet Him, the Jewish mourners thinking that she had gone to the tomb to weep. As Jesus came from the direction of Jericho, the Tomb of Lazarus, shown to travelers as above mentioned, is in the same direction, corroborating the conclusion of the mourners that she had gone thither. “Then Mary , when she came where Jesus was , seeing Him , fell at His feet , saying to Him , Lord , if Thou wast here , our brother had not died . Then Jesus , when He saw her weeping , and the Jews who had come with her weeping , groaned in spirit , and afflicted Himself , and said , Where have you placed him ? They say to Him , Lord , come and see .”

O how the hope of Mary leaps into reality when Jesus asked them to escort Him to the tomb! A strange sensation has swept over Bethany since He arrived a hall hour ago. All the people have heard it, and are on tiptoe with excitement and anticipation of something wonderful and extraordinary.

Now He starts away to the tomb, led by the two sisters on either side; meanwhile all the people are crowding along the streets and alleys from all parts of the village. The neighbors round are hearing of it. The news, on the wings of the wind, in some mysterious way has traveled out, and every one — the old, the young; the great, the small; the rich, the poor — come pouring in, swelling the crowd into a multitude. A mysterious awe, a holy hush, is on the people; somehow the anticipation of a wonderful and extraordinary miracle has taken hold of them. The idea that a man, dead four days, is to be raised is unheard of in all the ages. “Jesus wept.” What vivid, beautiful, and sublime juxtaposition of the human and the Divine!

The more you get filled up with the sweet, perfect love of God, evil tempers having been consumed by the refining fires of the Holy Ghost, the more sympathetic you become. If you have a clean heart, and filled with the Holy Ghost, how quickly do your tears spontaneously pour out when you enter the house of mourning, and see the broken-hearted kindred and friends of the deceased weeping all around! Your sympathy is a good test of your religion. If your heart is clean, tender, and sweetened by the perfect love of God, the presence of sorrow and mourning will bring sympathetic tears in copious affusion quickly. This weeping of Jesus was pure, tender sympathy with Mary and Martha and the mourners, as Jesus well knew that He was going to raise him from the dead, and turn all this mourning into joy. How vividly do the two natures of Jesus mutually show up in this notable transaction! Here we see the tender, unfallen humanity of Jesus, weeping as if His heart were broken; meanwhile, His Divinity reveals creative omnipotence in the restoration of life and health to the putrescent corpse; meanwhile, He calls back the soul of Lazarus from Abraham’s bosom, again to inhabit his body. “Then the Jews continued to say , Behold , how He loved him ! And some of them said , Was not He who opened the eyes of the blind able to bring it to pass that this one may not die ? Then Jesus , again groaning in Himself , comes to the tomb ; it was a cave , and a stone was laid upon it .” Caves, in those days, and at the present in that country, are not only used as habitations for the living, but sepulchers for the dead — as a rule, augmenting and modifying them artificially. h. “Jesus says , Take away the stone . Martha , the sister of him who is dead , says , Lord , already he smelleth ; for he is dead four days .” This was about the first of April, when the weather is quite warm in Palestine.

Consequently a young, fleshy man, like Lazarus, would mortify with great rapidity. “Jesus says to her , Did I not say to thee , That if thou mayest believe , thou mayest see the glory of God ?” This remark of Martha indicated the staggering of her faith; while we hear nothing of the kind from Mary, whose type of spirituality was that of sanctification, Martha being on the plane of justification. “Then they took the stone away ; Jesus lifted up His eyes , and said , Father , I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me . But I knew that Thou dost always hear Me ; but on account of the multitude standing by , I spoke , in order that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me .” Jesus here prayed orally to His Father for the benefit of the multitude who stood by. We would all do well to follow His example. A prayer which people can hear is always more efficient with them than the inaudible cry of the heart to God. Hence, if you want your family, friends, and neighbors saved, be sure that you let them hear you pray for them. It is all right to pray for them in secret; but that is not enough. Be sure that, like Jesus, you lift up your voice, and let the people in your home Church and community hear you pray for them. i . “And speaking these words , He cried , with a great voice , Lazarus , come forth . The dead man came out , bound , as to his feet and hands , with graveclothes , and his face was bound around with a napkin .” The resurrection of Lazarus from the dead is a grand and glorious symbolism of spiritual regeneration, in which the Omnipotent Savior calls the dead soul into life.

Lazarus had once lived like the multitude moving upon the earth. Physical life had evanesced away, leaving him a corpse. Jesus put forth His creative fiat, by whose omnific sweep He tossed revolving worlds from the effulgent throne, giving each other its appointed track in the ethereal void, to go singing on its way forever, — the very same power He brought into availability when He restored physical life to the dead body of Lazarus. We were all created in Adam, and had spiritual life before the fall. This life our wonderful Savior graciously restores in regeneration. Interceding priests may grant a thousand absolutions; clergymen may administer water baptism, eucharist, and other Church rites indefinitely till doomsday, — unless Jesus speak, “Lazarus, come forth,” not a soul will ever be saved. j. “Jesus says to them , Loose him , and let him go .” This is a beautiful and vivid symbolism of entire sanctification. Lazarus was really raised from the dead; life and vigor again coursing through his veins and arteries; his heart having again wheeled into normal activity; his brain flashing out electrical thoughts, recognitions, apprehensions, and moving forward into all the complicated work or ratiocination; his limbs electrified with vitality; his nerves, like a grand galvanic battery, again charged with vital electricity, — still his hands and feet were encumbered with the long, strong fabric of the winding-sheet, so he could neither move rapidly nor labor with much efficiency; meanwhile the napkin, bound round his face, rendered his utterances difficult and his speech broken. He was neither in fix to fight the devil, run for glory, witness for Jesus, sing the sweet songs of Zion, nor preach the everlasting gospel. Jesus says, “Loose him, and let him go.”

Hence you see that our Savior wants all the people whom He raises from the dead loosed from all the chains, fetters, and grave-clothes; i.e. , all the cumbersome habitude which characterized them before they were converted, when they sojourned in the land of death, and had the habits of the spiritually dead, — Jesus wants all these swept away, and all the men, women, and children whom He has raised from the dead, disencumbered and turned loose, to fight the armies of the pandemonium, not only like soldiers, but heroes, brave enough to run through a troop or leap over a wall, swift as eagles and strong as lions, fearless of men and devils; so one shall chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight. O how quickly could the Church bring the millennium, if loosed and let go! Our pulpits are filled with preachers, tied up with their grave-clothes, some of them even using tobacco, encouraging Church frolics, winking at theater-going, cardplaying, dancing, etc.; meanwhile the pews are occupied by people decked off in the phantasmagoria of the world, thus invested in the grave-clothes.

O how few are free to talk for Jesus! Will you not go and take the napkin off their faces, and let their tongues loose, to speak like apostles, testify like martyrs, and shout like angels? k. “Then many of the Jews , who had come to Mary , and seeing those things which He did , believed on Him ; and certain ones of them departed to the Pharisees , and told them the things which Jesus did .” This stupendous miracle, unprecedented in the history of the world, sends an earthquake shock through all the multitude, so that the people fall in platoons on all sides, and with adoring wonder confess their faith in Jesus. This miracle shook all Jerusalem as fast as they could hear of it, and sent an electric shock throughout all Israel, confirming many whose faith had been much mixed with doubts, and arousing multitudes who had not hitherto believed to seriously and candidly investigate the matter, the result being a rolling tide of popular belief in His claims to the Christhood.

CONDEMNATORY VERDICT OF THE SANHEDRIN John 11:47-54. “Then the chief priests and Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin , and continued to say , What shall we do ? because this man is performing many miracles .” If the leading ministers and Church authorities had not stood in the way of the people, Israel would have received Jesus unanimously, turned evangelists, and preached Him to the world, bringing on the millennium long ago. The truth of the matter is clear. The high priests, Pharisees, and Sanhedrin had so yielded to Satan and grieved the Holy Spirit as to superinduce the departure of the latter, and the actual, diabolical possession of the former, till they had crossed the dead-line and were unconvincible. “If we thus let Him alone , all will believe on Him .” What a frank confession of the truth, if they had not meddled with them and obstinately stood between the people and Jesus, they would all have believed on Him.

The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of Jesus. The present holiness movement, like that of Luther, Wesley, and others, is Jesus again walking upon the earth in His spiritual manifestation, inviting the people to enter the kingdom of holiness, as He did in the days of His incarnation. If let alone, the Churches would en masse seek holiness, and inundate the world with salvation. The leading preachers are still in the way, as in the days of Christ. “The Romans will come , and take away both our place and nation .” Thirtythree years Judea had been a Roman province, every vestige of their former freedom swept away. They were looking for Christ, and all believed that He was to be the King of the Jews when He came; in which case they knew that mighty Rome would be arrayed against them, with her invincible armies, and their only chance to have their own king was to conquer the Romans, an utter impossibility, as they ruled the whole world in one vast, consolidated despotism. This prophecy actually did come true. Though they rejected Christ, they erelong revolted against the Romans, and fought for their independence till literally exterminated, with the exception of a few poor people, driven away to the ends of the earth; while the Romans not only destroyed Jerusalem, but desolated all Palestine. So the very calamities they here deprecate as an excuse for the rejection of Christ, actually overtook them. “And a certain one of them , Caiaphas , being high priest that year , said to them , You do not know nor consider that it is profitable to you that one man may die for the people , and not the whole nation perish .” This prophecy is literally true, and yet you see it was uttered by that wicked high priest, whom Satan had captured. The next verse explains it. “He spoke this, not from himself, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but that He may gather together in one the children of God which had been scattered abroad.” The elect of God have been in all nations, in all ages, as will be revealed when the assembled universe shall stand before the Great White Throne. Before Jesus came on the earth in His Incarnate Personality and preached the gospel, the Holy Spirit revealed Jehovah — i.e. , God in Christ — to the humble, sincere, true, and appreciative souls of every age and nation, who, in the absence of the written Word and a knowledge of the Incarnate Redeemer, walking in the light of nature, conscience, providence, and the Holy Spirit — even the savage, in his primeval wilds, seeing God in the clouds and hearing Him in the winds, “Whose soul proud science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky-way,” — were accepted of God, like Cornelius, the heathen Roman centurion. The advent of Christ marked a signal epoch in the history of redemption, after which no soul who stubbornly rejects Him can be saved; meanwhile the Christhood of Jesus becomes the great dogma on which the visible Church is built in all the world. However differing in non-essential matters, she must be a unit on the Christhood of Jesus. ( Matthew 16:18.) In this instance, we have a demonstrative proof that the gifts of the Spirit are not invariably limited to the sanctified nor to the regenerated, as here we have a demonstrative case, in which the gift of prophecy, pronounced by Paul the most important, is conferred on Caiaphas, for the moment, who at that time was leading the Council against Jesus, and ready to sign His death-warrant, which he did a few days afterward. “Therefore from that day they counseled in order that they may kill Him .” Ebouleusanto , “counseled,” is in the aorist tense, which means an instantaneous and complete performance, setting forth the fact that the Sanhedrin, on that occasion, passed a formal verdict condemning Him to death. So potent and overwhelming was the popular influence, superinduced by the resurrection of Lazarus, that they, after deliberate counsel and consideration, came to the conclusion that, despite all they could do, the people would rally and crown Him King, thus precipitating on them a war with the Romans, which could only end in their extermination. Consequently they concluded that it was better for one to die than that multitudes should perish, a verdict so common among the Orientals; meanwhile, the spirit of prophecy coming on Caiaphas, the high priest, in a thrilling proclamation of a clear Messianic prophecy setting forth the vicarious atonement. Thus we see a strange combination of concurrent events: the true prophecy of Caiaphas, inspired by the Holy Ghost, proclaiming the necessity for one to die for the people rather than that all perish, and at the same time the seventy sages constituting the Sanhedrin corroborating that prophecy from a purely selfish and secular consideration, illustrating how wonderfully “God makes the wrath of man to praise Him, and restrains the remainder of wrath;” i.e. , when the wrath of man can no longer be made subservient to the glory of God, then He puts His hand on it and restrains it altogether. “Therefore , Jesus no longer was walking about among the Jews , but departed thence into the country near the desert , into the city called Ephraim , and there abode with His disciples .” Ephraim here is identical with Ephron in O.T. After that condemnatory verdict of the Sanhedrin, immediately following the resurrection of Lazarus, finding it unsafe to abide among the Jews, He retired to this quiet, rural retreat on the border of the desert, known in the N.T. as “the wilderness of Judea.” I have journeyed through it four times.

CHAPTER - JESUS IN PEREA Matthew 19:1,2 , and Mark 10:1. “Rising up from thence , He comes into the boundaries of Judea , through the country which is beyond the Jordan and again multitudes come to Him , and , as was His custom , He again taught them .” Matthew says , “Many multitudes followed Him , and He healed them there .” As above specified, when, in consequence of the tremendous popular sensation arising from the resurrection of Lazarus, the Sanhedrin had passed the condemnatory verdict against Him, unanimously assigning His death-warrant, in order to prolong His life and finish His work, He goes away to the city of Ephraim, about forty miles north of Jerusalem; thence: after a short interval, journeying on toward the northeast, crossing the Jordan over into Perea, the land which had been given to Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh for their inheritance, at their own request, when Joshua divided the land of Canaan among the twelve tribes. Now He spends perhaps a dozen days in that country east of the Jordan, in the days of Joshua ruled by Og, the king of Bashan, and Sihon, the king of Heshbon; but in the days of our Savior known as Perea. It is superfluous to say that Jesus utilized all of His opportunities while in that country, as everywhere else, teaching the people the wonderful truths of the kingdom and healing the sick.

THE RHEUMATISM OF EIGHTEEN YEARS HEALED Luke 13:10-17. “And He was teaching in one of their synagogues on the Sabbath . Behold , a woman having a spirit of infirmity eighteen years , and was bent over , and not able perfectly to straighten up ; and Jesus seeing her , called to her and said , Woman , thou art loosed from thy infirmity , and put His hands on her ; and immediately she straightened up , and continued to glorify God . And the chief ruler of the synagogue , being angry because Jesus healed her on the Sabbath , continued to say to the multitude that there are six days in which it behooveth to work ; therefore during these , coming , be healed , and not on the Sabbath-day . But the Lord responded to him and said , Ye hypocrites , does not each one of you loose his donkey or ox from the stall , and leading it away , give it water on the Sabbath ? But did it not behoove this woman , being a daughter of Abraham , whom Satan bound , lo , these eighteen years , to be loosed from this bondage on the Sabbathday ? And He , thus speaking , all those opposed to Him became ashamed ; and the whole multitude continued to rejoice over the glorious things done by Him .” In this case, when this poor woman, bent down in the shape of a curve, suffering from muscular rheumatism eighteen years, hobbled out to see and hear the wonderful Prophet of Galilee, whose fame had gone to the ends of the earth and raised the nations on tiptoe, thrilling all with burning enthusiasm, and stood before the sympathetic Savior in the crowd, the very sight arousing the sympathies of His pure, unfallen humanity, so that He immediately, to her joyful surprise, calls aloud, thus commanding the attention of the entire multitude, “Woman , thou art loosed from thy infirmity ;” simultaneously, forgetting her spinal curvature and incurable rheumatism, she leaps into the air with shouts of victory, — again His old enemies raised the Sabbath question. You see, Jesus calls them hypocrites, and why? Because the people who are so overzealous for mere forms and ceremonies, as a rule, are destitute of the inward reality, taking the form for the substance, which is a literal definition of hypocrite. They are numerous this day as the locusts of Egypt, devouring the heritage of the Lord; and, like the vampire, sucking away the life-blood of the Church, while they fan her into lethean slumber. The argument of Jesus in reference to the man loosing his ox or donkey, and leading him to water on the Sabbath, was an irrefutable stunner; consequently the whole multitude turn on the scribes and Pharisees, who thus assaulted him, such an uproarious laughter that they dropped their heads, and retreated crestfallen from the controversy.

You see here that Jesus imputes this chronic rheumatism to Satan, who is equally the author of sin and sickness, both alike having emanated from the fall, besides being manipulated by demons in their universal prevalence to the destruction of soul and body. The responses and arguments of Jesus are a constant and an irrefutable confirmation of His Divinity. His enemies were the men of highest learning, and official position in the Church of His day. They studied, day and night, to fix up hard questions and dilemmas, in hopes that they might entangle Him in His speech; but all in vain. His unanswerable arguments everywhere literally swept controversy from the field, utterly dumbfounding all of His enemies. “You loose your ox and donkey on the Sabbath , lest he should be bound in the stall two days . Here is a daughter of Abraham , whom Satan has bound , lo , these eighteen years ; shall I not loose her on the Sabbath ?” What a knock-down argument! No wonder the multitude laugh the priests out of countenance.

THE MUSTARD-SEED AND THE LEAVEN Luke 13:18-21 “Then He said , To what is the kingdom of God like , and to what shall I liken it ? It is like the seed of mustard , which a man , having taken , cast into his garden , and it grew and became a tree , and the fowls of the air lodged in its branches .” The trees in the Old World are not large comparatively with this country. The mustard-tree is one of the largest in and about Palestine. If you ever go to that country, you will find some nice specimens of it at the Fountain Enrogel, near the southern coast of the Dead Sea. While the tree is one of the largest in that country, the seed, as you know in the case of the mustard-plant in this country, is very small.

The kingdom of God, when introduced into the heart by the Holy Spirit, like almost everything else, originates with a very small beginning, growing and developing, not only through this life, but all eternity. Hence it is the most progressive thing of which we have any information, not only filling the body, but utilizing the mind, to reach out its Briarean arms, and circle the world in its enterprises of love and mercy, envelop the globe with the light of the Divine glory, leaping away from the earth, sweeping out, winging its flight from world to world, realizing enlargement of capacity and fellowship, deepening, broadening, and towering through the flight of eternal ages. The lodging of the birds in the branches evidently omens no good to the tree, but magnifies the conception, not only of that exalted philanthropy peculiar to the kingdom of God, but the enhancement of its magnitude as well. “And again he said , To what shall I liken the kingdom of God ? It is like unto leaven , which a woman having taken , hid in three measures of meal until the whole was leavened .” “Leaven” has no definition but “corruption ,” fermentation, sourness, etc. The idea that it must be substantially like the kingdom is incompatible with its lexical meaning and Scriptural use. Paul says, “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump;” i.e. , a few bad men in a Church will corrupt all the balance. A few rotten potatoes in a barrel will rot the entire quantity. “Purify away the old leaven, in order that you may be a new lump, as you are without leaven; for Christ indeed was made our Passover.” ( 1 Corinthians 5:6,7.)

Here we are exhorted to purify away all the old leaven; i .e ., all sin, and thus become free from the leaven, like Christ, who is our Passover. They were required diligently to remove all leaven out of their houses before the Passover, and eat unleavened bread, as the leaven symbolizes sin. The idea that leaven here, or anywhere else in the Bible, means the grace of God, is flatly contradictory of the plain and unmistakable word. Leaven corrupts everything, and invariably turns it sour, thus symbolizing sin and nothing but sin; while the grace of God sweetens everything with which it comes in contact, thus the very opposite of the sour leaven. The three races of mankind are said to have originated from the house of Noah — Ham, meaning “black,” and being a black man, receiving Africa from his father, and becoming the ancestor of the black races; Shem, which means “red,” being a red man, receiving Asia for his portion, and becoming the ancestor of all the brown races of Asia and America, which was originally populated from Asia, evidently crossing at Behring’s Strait; Japheth, which means “white,” being a white man, receiving Europe for his inheritance, and becoming the ancestor of all the Caucasian races. These all received the leaven of sin from Mother Eve, which has inhered in fallen humanity without exception in all the dispersions, whether beneath tropical skies, or amid the green fields of the temperate zone, or shivering in the icy wigwams around the North Pole, human depravity everywhere cropping out in corruption, impurity, bitterness, and sourness, thus extending the leaven to the ends of the earth. Now where is the point of similitude? We have already given it. While the mustard-seed, so very small, developing into a great tree, lodging and feeding the fowls of the air, symbolizes the wonderful and inscrutable progress of grace in the heart and life, the leaven symbolizes the transcendent interpenetrating power of the kingdom, going everywhere, from nation to nation, and literally reaching the whole world Many nations who are now wrapped in the fogs of Mohammedanism and heathenism, once flourished through rolling centuries in the kingdom of God. You must remember those Moslem wars desolated Africa and Asia eight hundred years, with few intermissions, doing their utmost to exterminate Christianity from the globe, largely: succeeding in many of the most populous countries of Asia and Africa, and the most fruitful fields of apostolical labor. Christianity will spread despite all the powers of earth and hell, which in bygone ages, through rolling centuries, did their utmost to exterminate it in blood and fire, slaughtering two hundred millions of martyrs, Yet Christianity moves on with the tread of a giant to the conquest of the world, and is destined actually to go everywhere, revolutionizing every country: under heaven.

ARE THE SAVED FEW? Luke 13:22-29 Our Savior answers the above question in the affirmative — i.e. , that the saved are few — certainly a very alarming affirmation of our Infallible Lord. Shall you and I be numbered with those favored few? “And He was journeying through cities and villages , teaching and making his way toward Jerusalem .” He is over in Perea, the country of the two and a half tribes east of the Jordan, preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing the sick. “And one said to Him, Lord, are the saved few?” (That is, “Are those who are saved many or few?) The answer is a decisive affirmation that the saved are few. This awful result is not because the people do not desire to be saved, but stupefied by the enemy, they take too much risk. They are willing to walk as near-hell as possible, just so as not to fall into it. When an English nobleman advertised for a carriagedriver, three young men report in his office, candidates for the position.

Turning to Number One, he says: “Sir, there is an awful precipice, five hundred feet sudden fall, along one of my carriage roads; how near can you run to it with perfect security?” Dropping his head a moment, looking up, he says, “Sir, I can run within eighteen inches of: it with perfect safety.”

Then turning to Number Two, he said,’ “Sir; What have you to say for yourself?” “O, I can run within a foot of it with the utmost safety,” thinking he had to beat the other one or miss the job. Finally, turning to Number Three, who by this time is much excited, and in response to the nobleman’s question, “How near can you run?” throws up both hands and exclaims, “Sir, if I drive your carriage, I shall run as far from it as I can every time.” “Well,” says the nobleman, “you are the very man I want to drive it. I would not, for a bushel of money, risk my wife and children in the hands of one of these other fellows.” While nobody is willing to go to hell, they take the risk of going too nigh the brink. Consequently devils lasso them, trip them up, and tumble them in by millions, the only way to escape hell being to go as far from it as you can. “And He said to them , Agonize to enter in through the narrow door , because many , I say unto you , shall seek to enter in and shall not be able .”

The pearly gate through which we enter the celestial metropolis is not narrow, but amply capacious for the ingress and egress of the sainted millions and angelic billions. This is the door of admission into the kingdom of grace, which we pass through in regeneration, so narrow, contracted, and difficult of entrance that the soul must give up everything, and squeeze naked through that strait gate. The E.V. “strive” is too weak for the Greek agonidzesthe ; i.e. , “agonize.” This verb is from agona , the gladiatorial combat in which the gladiator fought for his life, doomed to die on the spot or conquer his antagonist. Hence this word means to put forth all the power of soul, mind, body, home, estate, influence, and everything we can possibly command, subsidize, or utilize. I have seen so much of this in our revivals, people agonizing as in the throes of death, fainting away, and losing the power of their bodies, lying for hours as if they were dead. We do not attach spiritual moment to physical demonstrations, but merely mention the latter by way of illustrating the soul-agony, without which, Jesus says, no one shall enter. We live in an age of superficialism, and, sad to say, it is pre-eminent in religion as well as everything else appertaining to this life. Many seek; but Jesus says they shall not enter in without this soul-agony. The Civil War over slavery deluged the land with blood and heaped it with the slain. Terrible was the suffering of the Nation while that deep-rooted, eating cancer was being torn loose by cannon-balls and cut out with the sword. Sin has so interwoven the warp and woof of the spiritual, mental, and physical constitution, that it is like drawing eyeteeth, cutting off right hands, and plucking out right eyes to get rid of it and enter the kingdom of God. “When the landlord may rise up and close the door , and you will begin to stand without and knock at the door , saying , Lord , open unto us ; and , responding , He will say to you , I know not whence you are ; then you will begin to say , We were accustomed to eat and drink in your presence , and You taught in our streets ; and He will say , I say unto you , I know not whence you are ; depart from Me , all ye workers of iniquity .” Our Lord is here addressing the preachers and members of the popular Churches. What a scene in the judgment-day, when these Church members come up from every land and clime, and knock for admission into heaven, having spent their lives in certain anticipation of getting there! When Jesus tells them He knows them not, they remind Him of the sacrament which they had participated in, in the house of God on the holy Sabbath, thus eating and drinking in His presence, when His Word was read and expounded in their Churches. How awful the final issue, “Depart from Me , all ye workers of unrighteousness !” The truth of the matter is, they were strangers to the righteousness of Christ by which we are justified, having spent their lives in the delusion, finally to wake up in hell. Now these people were all, in a sense, seeking to enter; yet they were strangers to that soul-agony peculiar to the spiritual birth. Everything is born into the world with excruciating pain and agony, thus vividly symbolizing the birth of the soul. “And there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you shall see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves cast out.” They verily believed that they were in the unbroken succession of the patriarchs and prophets, and avowedly and pertinaciously claimed to have the same religion which had cheered their holy ancestry in a dying hour. But you see they were egregiously mistaken.

How history repeats itself! Good Lord, send down awakening power to the Church of the present day, and alarm the slumbering millions in the track of fallen Judaism! If the followers of Luther, Bunyan, Knox, Fox, and Wesley only had the religion which filled and thrilled these heroic spirits, qualifying them to light up the world in their day and generation, and kindle the signal fires on the summits of evangelistic mountains, which brightly glow today and will shine on till Jesus comes, they would certainly be all right; but O what a weeping and wailing when they shall see these sainted prophets, as well as those of the old dispensation, along with the apostles and martyrs, safe in the kingdom of God, and they themselves cast out! “And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God.” This is a beautiful prophecy relating to the call of the Gentiles, which our Lord gave in the Great Commission, just before He left the world. The kingdom of God, as you see here, both in the olden times and the Gospel Age, is the Divine administration, in contradistinction to Satan’s government, with which all the wicked are identified. Hence we see that the saints of all ages have been citizens of the kingdom of God. That kingdom, however, like everything else in the Divine economy, is wonderfully evolutionary in its character, symbolized by the starlight in antediluvian times; the moon approaching the horizon in the patriarchal ages, and shining in her beauty amid the glittering constellations in the Mosaic dispensation; day dawning with John the Baptist, and the sun rising when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, who shone upon the earth till He reached the celestial zenith, then ascending into glory; the noonday culminating at Pentecost, the sun going not down, like the diurnal orb, but, as in the days of Joshua, standing still amid the heavens, evolving floods of hallowed light, bursting forth on heathen nations, thus expediting our Lord’s return, in glory to reign, when that blessed kingdom, which has been the light and glory of all the saints, from Abel down to the latest generations, shall no longer be restricted to the souls of men, but reach out and girdle the whole world, every monarch doffing his crown at the feet of King Jesus, who shall be coronated and sceptered King of kings and Lord of lords; “For He shall have dominion over river, sea, and shore, Far as the eagle’s pinion or dove’s light wing can soar;” Satan having been arrested as a common criminal and locked up in hell, no longer on earth to mar the beauty and glory of the Lord’s triumphant kingdom, in millennial victories girdling the globe, and bringing back the bright memories of an unfallen Eden.

SALVATION OF THE JEWS Luke 13:30. “Behold , the last shall be first , and the first shall be last .”

The Jews had long stood at the front of the world. Because they rejected Christ they were relegated to the rear, the Gentiles coming to the front, where they are today. Yet we see from this, and in innumerable promises in both Testaments, that the fallen children of Abraham are coming back into the kingdom of God, to take their place as in days of yore; however, these promises are restricted to the elect few, as in the case of the Gentiles. The prophetic eye of Jesus, looking through the rolling centuries, saw the desolation of the land, the destruction of that generation, the survival of His race, the final return of the elect, restoration of the land, and the conversion of His people down at the end of the Gentile age; as here He says that the Jews will be the last to receive the gospel, and ( Ezekiel 37) that they will be gathered back in their unregenerate state — i.e. , “valley of dry bones” — involving the conclusion that the elect children of Abraham will return to the Holy Land before there is a general conversion of them to Christianity, which will be the last great evangelistic work of the Gospel Age. The universal commotion among the Jews, and their rapid return to the Holy Land despite the most formidable difficulties, is a certain prophetic omen that the end of all things is nigh. Earth and hell are combined to prevent the return of the Jews, the Mohammedan-Turkish Government doing everything in her power to keep them out, passing laws forbidding their citizenization in that country, and permitting them only to visit it as sojourners thirty days, under the most rigid and tyrannical restrictions. This law passed the Porte, A.D. 1874, when there were only about five thousand Jews in all the Holy Land. Despite all their tyrannical restrictions, there are now two hundred thousand, and coming rapidly all the time. I especially investigated this subject, and have it from the most reliable sources. It is not much known, as the Jews have to keep the matter secret. In Jerusalem alone there are fifty-five thousand Jews, one-half of the whole population; besides, they have great, growing, and flourishing colonies at Janneh, Safed (Sah-fed, old Chorazin), Nazareth, Shechem, Caesarea, Joppa, Hebron, Bethlehem, Ekron, Ashdod, Tiberias, and many other places. The attention of all Christendom is now being called to the consideration of restoring to the Jews their own country, which God gave them, and it is going to be done very soon. If you will attend the “wailing of the Jews” without the temple, at the west end (as it is a penalty of death for a Jew to put his foot inside the holy Temple Campus), and hear their weeping and wailing, down on their knees, kissing the great stones which Solomon put in the temple, reading from their Hebrew Bible the promises of God to hear their cries from every land of their dispersion and gather them back to their holy land and city, methinks you would conclude that the answer is nigh. I know not when, in all my life, I have so vividly realized the presence of God as when I attended those wailings. I verily felt that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was listening to the cry of His unfortunate children, and do believe that the answer is now coming from Heaven for the gathering of Israel from every land and nation. How wonderfully the Jews make that country bud and blossom, and again bend beneath the delicious fruits and luxurious crops of which we read in the Bible, sounding in our ears like paradoxes!

HE IS THREATENED WITH HEROD Luke 13:31-33. “In the same hour certain Pharisees came to Him , saying , Go out , and depart hence , because Herod wishes to kill Thee . And He Said to them , Going , tell that fox , Behold , I cast out demons , and perfect healings today , and tomorrow , and the third day I am made perfect , Moreover , it behooveth Me to travel today , and tomorrow , and next day , because it is not pertinent that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem .” We have no evidence that King Herod, in whose country Jesus was then preaching, had threatened Him. If he had wanted Him killed, he had a chance at Jerusalem a few days afterward, when Pilate, learning that He was from Galilee, Herod’s jurisdiction, sent Him to him for trial. The solution of the matter was, those Pharisees wanted to get rid of Him, and thought to drive Him out of the country by threatening Him with Herod, as He had already fled from the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem. Jesus knew all about it, and how he was to die at Jerusalem in about a dozen days from that time. How boldly He preaches, and how little does He care for the royal dignity of King Herod, in whose territory He was then preaching, and who had quite recently killed John the Baptist! See how, in the presence of that vast multitude, He calls their king a fox! In this we learn an important lesson, illustrating the manner of our Lord’s preaching, and warning us against pressing a metaphor too far. In calling him a fox, He simply refers to the animal to symbolize the cunning and dishonesty of Herod. If you extend the application, you run into gross error. Herod was a well-educated, highlycultured, intelligent ruler of the earth, and only like a fox in the isolated point of his cunning and rascality. We are very liable to make egregious mistakes by thus pressing metaphors too far, and violating a prominent rule laid down in rhetoric; e.g. , in our Lord’s parables of the kingdom, each one emblematizes some peculiar phase of His kingdom — the tares and the wheat, the saints and the hypocrites; the blade, ear, and full corn, regeneration, sanctification, and glorification, progressively: and contrastively;: the mustard-seed, the development of grace in the heart and life; the leaven, the progress of the Christian religion in the whole earth; the drag-net, the promiscuous character of the gospel Church; the treasure in the field, regeneration in the Church; and the pearl of great price, entire sanctification, when we have consecrated everything unreservedly and eternally to God, “I must travel today, and tomorrow, and next day,” does not mean that He was to die in three days, but in a short time, as He did.

Then He says He must hasten, because it is not pertinent that a prophet die out of Jerusalem. John the Baptist, the greatest of prophets, had died out of Jerusalem, and at Machaerus, which was near the place where our Lord was speaking at that time; yet, as a rule, the prophets had died at Jerusalem.

WOES AGAINST JERUSALEM Luke 13:34,35. “O Jerusalem , Jerusalem , thou that killest the prophets , and stonest them that are sent unto thee , how frequently did I wish to gather thy children in the manner in which a hen doth gather a brood under her wings , and you were not willing !” Jerusalem means “possession of peace,” and is built high up on Mount Zion, surrounded on three sides by the Valleys of Jehoshaphat, Hinnom, Gihon, and Kidron, one continuous, deep, mountain gorge, bearing the above names in different localities and impassable by an invading army, thus rendering it the most impregnable natural fortification of any city on the globe — a consideration of greatest moment, when we remember that Jerusalem has been besieged seventeen times and destroyed seven times; as all the kings of the earth, in all ages, seem to hold a grudge against this city, doubtless because they feared her power and influence, as she was universally understood to be the City of God. Not only in the creation of the world and the formation of these great, deep valleys did God favor Jerusalem, but His manifest miraculous interventions in her behalf are more than tongue can tell. Despite the lavish goodness of God and the copious bounty of heaven, which He poured upon her, giving her pre-eminence in all the earth for the inspiration of her prophets, the wisdom of her statesmen, the valor of her warriors, and the thrift and enterprise of her citizens, yet she would reject, persecute, and slay His prophets and saints, and go off after the idolatry of her heathen neighbors, following false prophets. Finally, as Jesus here sees in glowing panorama, moving before His infallible vision, instead of receiving her own Christ, for whom she had waited four thousand years in longing anticipation, she rejected and slew Him, thus provoking the righteous indignation of the merciful and infallible Jehovah, and brining on the Roman armies, with rivers of blood and deluges of fire, to accelerate those awful retributive judgments which expedited her hopeless ruin. “Behold , your house is left unto you desolate .” In A.D. 66 the Roman armies laid siege to Jerusalem, waging an exterminating war, consummating her utter destruction in 73. At the same time they rolled the desolating tide of fire and blood over all Palestine, literally verifying this terrible prophecy. The laud actually went into desolation, a million of Jews at Jerusalem alone perishing by sword, pestilence, and famine; a million more sold into slavery; and the scathed and peeled remnant driven to the ends of the earth, fugitives and tramps in every land. Jesus saw this awful panorama of blood and fire, death and destruction, rolling in horrors indescribable from Dan to Beersheba. Our mortal, finite conceptions, when augmented by the literal history of these awful tragedies, are utterly incompetent even to approximate apprehension; while the omniscience of Jesus saw every suffering, dying victim. It was God’s will and purpose that the Jews should receive their own Christ with open arms, and enjoy the exalted honor and blessing of preaching Him to the whole world, thus promoting the children of Abraham to the leadership of all nations. What a wonder that Jerusalem thus failed!

N.B. — Man has proved a failure in every station, and actually forfeited all responsibility, under most favorable circumstances; and without a shadow of apology, he failed in Eden. After his lamentable fall and expulsion from Paradise, it seems that he should have profited by his failure and done better. But he did not. Going on and getting worse and worse, he so signally failed in antediluvian times as to provoke the righteous indignation of the Almighty and bring on the flood. Then he so failed in the postdiluvian age as actually to land in hopeless slavery. Afterward we see him failing so signally in the Jewish dispensation as to wind it up in the fulfillment of these awful prophecies, the destruction of Jerusalem and the desolation of the land. All this resulted from the long-prevailing maxim of Rome, “To rule or ruin.” Hence when the Jews, in their wild infatuation, because forsaken by the Holy Spirit and manipulated by Satan, persistently revolted against the Romans, they came with invincible armies, destroyed their city, and desolated their land. “I say unto you that you can see Me no more until it shall come to pass that you may say , Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord .” Here we see the transcendent sweep of the Divine mind, through all the intervening centuries of their alienation and sojourn among the Gentiles, till the elect remnant shall have been gathered out of every nation, which is so rapidly going on at the present day. Having thus been gathered from every land in a dry-bone state ( Ezekiel 37), those bones will stir and rattle, and come together in glorious, spiritual reconstruction, when they will at last find out their awful mistake in rejecting their own Christ, turn to Him by thousands and myriads, and thus get ready, right there at Jerusalem, to hail Him with joyful triumph riding down on a cloud, and shout uproariously, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord !” You see the wonderful sweep of this prophecy — beginning with the destruction of Jerusalem and the desolation of Zion, following them in their long dispersions, wandering among the Gentiles to the ends of the earth, providentially gathered back to their native land, then gloriously saved and felicitously sanctified, so that when He returns in His glory, His own consanguinity will meet Him with joyous shouts of welcome.

CHAPTER - THE DROPSICAL MAN HEALED Luke 14:1-6. “And it came to pass that He entered into the house of a certain one of the rulers of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread , and they were watching Him ;” i.e. , hawk-eyes were on Him every minute, with diabolical vigilance, watching every word and act, if possible to implicate Him. If you do not stir the devil enough to concentrate on you demoniacal eyes, to watch and criticize you night and day, remember you are not much like Jesus. Satan is no fool. He always shoots at something. If he does not shoot at you, go back to the mourner’s-bench, and stay till the Lord makes something out of you, which Diabolus will count worth firing on. While these preachers and official laymen were hounding Jesus, incessantly charging Him with violating the Sabbath, you see here that one of the rulers of the Pharisees actually had a big festival at his house on the Sabbath, thus overtly desecrating the holy day — a thing which Jesus never did. N.B. — He is still in Perea, east of the Jordan. “Behold , there was a certain dropsical man before Him . And Jesus , responding , said to the theologians and Pharisees , Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day or not ? And they were silent . And taking him , He healed him , and sent him away . Responding to them , He said , Of which one of you shall the son or the ox fall into a pit , will he not lift him up on the Sabbath day ? And they were unable to respond to these things .” That rugged limestone country abounds in caves, precipices, chasms, and pits. Hence the liability of their livestock, and actually little children, falling in. All knew they would rally at once in that case, and extricate the sufferer, even on the Sabbath. Consequently those theologians, so shrewd in their exposition of the Scriptures, and those Pharisees, the official laymen of the Church, were all dumbfounded, and utterly unable to gainsay this plain, practical statement of Jesus. Nomikos , “lawyer,” E.V., is from nomos , “law,” and means a man cultured and skilled in the law of Moses, and an exegete of the O.T. Scriptures. Though here for the avowed purpose of lassoing Him by some vulnerable utterance which might drop from His lips, they are all utterly disconcerted.

HUMILITY AND PRIDE Luke 14:7-11. “But He spoke a parable to those who had been invited [i.e. , called to the feast in the house of this Pharisaical ruler ], warning them how they were accustomed to select the first couches , saying to them , When you may be invited by any one to a marriage feast , do not sit down on the first couch , lest some one may be more honorable than you , having been called by him , and the one having called you and him , having come , shall say to you , Give place to this one , and then , with shame , you will begin to take the last place . But when you may be called , going , sit down in the last place , in order that when the one having called you may come , he shall say to you , Friend , come up higher ; then there shall be glory to thee in the presence of all those sitting at the table with you . Because every one exalting himself shall be abased ; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted .” In those days they had couches, much after the order of a modern sofa, on which they reclined at the table, leaning over on the left side — quite an accommodation for gluttons, who were in the habit of eating a long time, as was customary at their festivals, meanwhile interspersing social confabulation freely, either with other. The Greeks and Romans were celebrated for simultaneous literary edification while eating, having some one standing in their midst and reading aloud the poems of Homer, Virgil, or some other poet, or the orations of Demosthenes, Lysias, Cicero, or Cato, or some other first-class literary production. Certain positions about the table were held in preference; e.g. , the sides where they had the best couches, and edibles and potables most abundant and convenient. At this festival they were well accommodated in the way of literary edification, having with them the Prophet of Galilee, to preach the living Word and teach them the deep truths of the kingdom. John Wesley pronounces pride the great mother-sin, whose diabolical posterity is innumerable, swarming round in the form of envy, jealousy, revenge, bigotry, sectarianism, partisan strife, etc.; while the theologians of all ages concur in the recognition of humility as the primary and most important Christian grace, shining out so brightly in the character of Jesus, and in all ages the most beautiful diadem that has ever shone on the brow of God’s saints and martyrs. More vices are traceable to pride than any other sin; and more virtues to humility than any other grace. If we can keep truly humble, we will never fall, as perfect humility puts us down on the Lord’s bottom plane, from which there is no failing. Pride must do some climbing before you can fall. In this attitude, the final perseverance of the saints is a cardinal truth, very full of comfort. Pride is an awful impediment to the prosecution of study and the cultivation of the intellect, as a proud person feels that he knows it already; while humility, realizing its own ignorance, will always be an assiduous student.

HEAVENLY RECOMPENSE Luke 14:12-14. “But He also said to the one having invited Him , When you may make a dinner or a supper , do not call your rich friends , brothers , relatives , or neighbors , lest they may also call you in turn , and there may be a recompense unto you . But when you may make a feast , call the poor , maimed , halt , blind , and you shall be happy , because they have nothing to recompense you ; and it shall be recompensed unto you in the resurrection of the righteous .” The Bible plainly teaches two resurrections — that of the just and of the unjust. ( Revelation 20:5.) This is certainly an exceedingly beautiful paragraph, enunciated by our Lord to that Pharisaical ruler who had complimented Him with an invitation to that Sunday festival. With what meekness and simplicity does He administer this good advice to His kind host! As we find the theologians and Pharisees present at this festival, and no allusion to the presence of the different sympathetic characters here specified (i.e. , the poverty-stricken, the lame, the maimed; i.e. , persons whose hands were afflicted till they could not use them. All persons who are deprived of the use of either their feet or their hands are objects of universal charity; while the blind always deserve, not only our pity, but our benefactions), I trow this man had called his rich friends, brothers, relatives, and neighbors, while these real objects of charity are all absent. Jesus knew that they would all make a festival and invite this man, thus compensating his favor. Lord, pour in the light, that we may all see this beautiful truth taught by Thyself! How insignificant the recompense of another festival, where you will go, and lose your time, and make yourself sick, eating to gluttony! O what a grandeur and glory in the heavenly recompense of the first resurrection, giving you a place in the bridehood of Christ, to reign with Him a thousand years, during the glorious millennium, which will be succeeded by the celestial ages, promoting you to grander honors, and opening to you worlds of bliss and glory, possibilities, attainabilities, achievements, aggrandizements, emoluments, and triumphs infinitely beyond the possibility of conception while incarcerated in these mud houses! O the infinitude of immortal developments evolved out of the possibilities of redeemed intelligences, winging their flight from world to world, and exploring the grandeur, sublimity, and glory of Omnipotence through the flight of eternal ages!

N.B. — “There are infinite degrees in the heavenly state.” ( 1 Corinthians 15). Do you not know that the heavenly recompense in the resurrection of the just is a thousand million times more valuable than the invitation which some rich family could give you to a dining? How strange that the followers of Jesus do not remember and practice this beautiful precept, calling the poor, distressed, unfortunate, afflicted people of every sort to a feast, and using the opportunity to preach Jesus to them and get their souls saved!

THE MARRIAGE SUPPER Luke 14:15-24. “And a certain one of those sitting along with Him , hearing these things , said to Him , Happy is every one who eats bread in the kingdom of God !” Jesus and His disciples preached the kingdom of God all the time, in contradistinction to the law and the prophets of the old dispensation. While the precepts of the latter were extensively formal, ritualistic, and symbolic, the doctrines of the former were purely spiritual, appertaining to experimental salvation and practical godliness. This man at the table who thus responded to Jesus was evidently wrought upon by the Holy Spirit, and favorably disposed with reference to the preaching of Jesus, having come to the conclusion that it is very nice and desirable to enjoy a place in the kingdom of God. “And He said to him , A certain man made a great supper , and called many .”

This is the gospel call given to all, from Abel down to the latest posterity, whether by the written Word or the Holy Ghost, who is practically the incarnate Word, being the Spirit of Jesus. “And he sent his servant at the hour of the feast to say to those who had been called , Come , because all things are now ready .” This refers to the epoch of our Savior’s coming into the world, when He sent John the Baptist to invite the people, who had been called by all the prophets of all ages, to come at once to the supper. O what a pity that the high priests and Pharisees did not lead the way! In that case all Israel would have followed, as a flock of sheep will follow their leaders. Hence the awful responsibility they incurred by rejecting the Savior. The prophets, patriarchs, martyrs, and saints, under the leadership of the Holy Ghost, in the good providence of God, had labored four thousand years to get everything ready. A strange influence at that time had settled down upon all nations, impressing them that the Christ of Jewish prophecy was at hand. The polytheistic idolatries had expended their forces, and were everywhere waning. The profound philosophy of Greece and Rome, the mythology of Egypt, and the deep, metaphysical lore of India, had all exhausted their resources, and signally failed to expound the important problems of man’s origin and destination, and satisfy the longings of the immortal soul. The whole Gentile world was ripe for the Messianic advent. If the Jews had received their own Christ (as they certainly would have done if their preachers and ruling elders had led the way), turned evangelist under the Great Commission, and peregrinated the whole world, the nations would have fallen in line with paradoxical unanimity, inundated the world with the glory of God and actually have brought on the millennium in the early centuries of the Christian era. “They all , from one accord , began to make excuses . The first said to him [i .e ., John the Baptist ], I have purchased a farm , and I have need , having gone out , to see it ; I entreat thee have me excused . And another said , I have bought five yokes of oxen , and I go to prove them ; I entreat thee have me excused . And another said , I have married a wife , and on this account I am not able to go .” This catalogue of excuses belongs primarily to the high priests and Pharisees, who led the way in the rejection of Jesus; but secondarily to all the people in the world, in all ages, who hear the gospel and decline its overtures of mercy and grace. They all have their excuses.

Examine these three. Does a man go to see a farm after he has bought it or before? Does he not test the oxen before he makes the purchase? And as to the man who had married a wife, why not take her along to the wedding supper, a place to which young brides are very fond of going? The solution of this matter is plain and simple. The very inconsistency of these answers shows falsehood on the front, as well as preposterous nonsense. Now, while these three excuses are ostensibly destitute of truth and sense, yet they are as good as any sinner can make for rejecting the kingdom of God and staying with the devil, under the liability of dropping into hell every moment. These excuses are a fair sample of the very best which the most intelligent sinner can make for staying away from God and rejecting salvation. “And the servant coming , proclaimed these things to his lord . Then the landlord , being angry , said to his servant , Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city , and lead hither the poor , maimed , blind , and halt .”

City here means Jerusalem, including all the cities of Israel and intervening territory. When the rulers rejected Christ, the proclamation was carried to the common people, and especially to the thousands of poor invalids which Jesus healed. O what a flood of converts to His ministry came by way of His physical philanthropy! In connection with the personal ministry of Jesus, the twelve apostles, the seventy evangelists, and many others whose names are in the book of life, and the three thousand converted in the morning of Pentecost and the five thousand in the afternoon, and the swelling tide of gospel grace and sanctifying fire which rolled in heavenly billows from the Pentecostal scene of Mount Zion in all directions, inundating the whole country, we find a wonderful influx into the kingdom, consisting almost exclusively of the poor and the unfortunate, as the leading clerk and popular rulers had already rejected Him, and actually put Him to death. “And the servant said , Lord , it is done as you commanded , and yet there is room . And the Lord said to the servant , Go out into the roads and hedges , and compel them to come in , that my house may be filled .” This is the call of the Gentiles, when the apostles, pursuant to the Great Commission, divided up the whole world among them James the First, at an early day, being decapitated by Herod Agrippa in Jerusalem; James the Less suffering martyrdom in Jerusalem, at a later date, by precipitation from a pinnacle of the temple; Matthew, taking Ethiopia; Mark, Egypt; Matthias, Abyssinia; Thomas, India; Jude, Tartary; Andrew, Armenia; Philip, Syria; Paul, Asia Minor and Europe; Peter, Rome; John, Lydia; Simon Zelotes, the British Islands, — all of these pushing the battle in their various fields, like cyclones of fire, till bloody death set them free, thus booming the whole world with a gospel earthquake, everywhere shaking down the timehonored temples of idolatry, and flooding the nations with heavenly light. “For I say unto you , that no one of these men who have been called shall taste of my supper .” This is the death-knell of the high priests, Pharisees, and leading officials, who received the first invitation and obstinately rejected it, even imputing the miracles of Jesus to the devil, thus grieving away the Holy Spirit, crossing the dead-line, wrapped in the black delusions of diabolical intrigue, and sealing their doom in endless woe.

Beware how you reject the offers of gospel grace, lest you fall into this black catalogue of irretrievable reprobacy! You see, in the above quotation, we are commanded to go out and compel them to come in. The persecutors who have murdered God’s saints by millions were always fond of quoting this, claiming that Jesus had sent them out to compel the heretics to come in, thus making it an apology for wholesale murder. It does not mean physical compulsion, as they construed it, from the simple fact that the gospel is not a physical transaction, but purely spiritual, simply involving the conclusion that we are to do everything in our power, by prayer, appeal, exhortation, argument, tears of sympathy, and deeds of mercy, to bring people to Jesus and get them saved. You also find in the above Scripture the statement, “The Lord being angry .” N.B. — It is impossible for God to be angry in the human sense, as He has no evil tempers nor passions to arouse. The anger of God is simply holy indignation against everything wrong. In this sense, Paul says ( Ephesians 5:26), “Be ye angry, and sin not;” i.e. , indulge freely the holy indignation which the Holy Spirit has given you against all evil, compromising with no sin, in thought, word, or deed, nor anything whatever out of harmony with God’s sweet will.

TERMS OF DISCIPLESHIP Luke 14:25-27. “The multitudes were traveling along with Him , and turning He said to them , If any one comes to Me , and hates not his father , mother , wife , children , brothers , sisters , and even his own soul , he is not able to be My disciple . Whosoever does not bear his cross , and come after Me , is not able to be My disciple .” Jesus carried His cross to be crucified on it. Paul says that bearing the cross is “denying: all ungodliness and worldly lusts, and living holy, righteous, and godly in this present world.”

Hence you see that bearing the cross is forsaking every sin, in thought, word, and deed, and performing every duty, however arduous, irksome, unpleasant, repellent, unpopular, and embarrassing. In the justified experience, you do all this with an inward conflict. Sanctification is necessary to take out the “old man,” who fights against your efforts to abstain from sin and live a holy life, so that in the sanctified experience you have no cross to bear, as you have already died on it, and the crucified man no longer bears his cross, but the cross bears him. Therefore the true experience of entire sanctification puts you where you “rejoice in tribulation ;” i.e. , shout under crosses, losses, persecutions, and triumph over the antagonism of men and devils. How can you hate father, mother, wife, brother, sister, and even your own life? Hate in this connection is a comparative with love, and a Hebraistic expression for love in a less degree. You may be so cold that ice laid on your body feels warm, and is warmer than you are. These expressions, “love” and “hate,” are here in juxtaposition and contrast. While you truly and sincerely love the dear inmates of your home and your own life, you must love Jesus so preeminently and supremely as to throw into eclipse all other loves, and contrastively give them a negative signification, so that you would unhesitatingly forsake them all, leave home and family, and die for Jesus if such an emergency should supervene. Hence we see that supreme love — i.e. , perfect love — is the condition of successful discipleship. You can be a disciple in the justified state by carrying your cross. But you can not enter heaven with the cross on your shoulder, as there are no crosses there. Jesus was crucified before He ascended to heaven. If you would be His disciple, you must walk in His footprints, as none but the crucified ever go to heaven. Therefore, if you would be a successful disciple, and go up to heaven to live with Jesus, “O pilgrim, come to Calvary this moment, and let the Holy Ghost crucify thee on the cross which thou didst take up on leaving all to follow Jesus. It is heavy on thy shoulder, and high time for the exchange. Let the Holy Ghost crucify thee. Then the cross will carry thee, instead of thee carrying the cross.” Hence, you see, you can not be a perfect disciple, such as have admission into heaven, without that supreme love which eclipses and contrastively negatives all other loves, preparing you for martyrdom every moment for Jesus’ sake. Our Savior has left the festival, and is now traveling along the road, with His face toward Jerusalem, still in Perea, east of the Jordan, and about ten days before He laid down His life for a guilty world.

CHRISTIAN PERFECTION Luke 14:28-30. “For which one of you , wishing to build a tower , does not first , sitting down , count the cost , if he has unto sufficiency ? Lest he , having laid the foundation , and being unable to finish it , all those seeing it may begin to mock him , saying that this man began to build , and was not able to finish .” The word which we here in two verses translate “finish” is ektelesai , “completely perfect.” Telesai is the regular verb constantly used in the New Testament where the E.V. has “perfect.” Hence this word for Christian perfection occurs twice in the above quotation. Besides, the preposition ok , preceding this verb, adds additional force to its already superlative signification. Hence the plain meaning of this forcible little parable is, that it is not worthwhile to become a disciple or set out for heaven, unless you are going for perfection. Before the man begins to build, he projects and contemplates, not an unfinished frame, but a house complete in every respect, suitable and comfortable for habitation. An unfinished house, exposed to the weather, soon rots down. Man is unwilling to live in an unfinished house; how can he expect Jesus to live in it? No wonder you have a lonesome time out in an uninhabited house. Stir up, push the work to completion, and turn over the key to Jesus, so He will move in, to abide with you forever, bringing down heaven and glory. Here you see that Jesus gives no encouragement to imperfect discipleship, but presents the highest possible incentive to Christian perfection, His plain statement clearly involving the conclusion of ultimate wreckage and failure, even becoming a laughing-stock for men and devils, if you do not reach the experience of perfection. O, what an inspiration to entire sanctification!

PREPARE TO MEET GOD Luke 14:31-33. “What king , marching off to engage in war with another king , will not first , sitting down , counsel if he is able , with ten thousand , to meet him coming against him with twenty thousand ? and if not , while he is still a great way , sending an embassy , he asks those things appertaining to peace .” This brief parable is very clear, explicit, forcible, and overwhelmingly convincing. The sinner is one king, and God is the other. The sinner is on his march to meet God Almighty, who is coming to meet him with the mighty hosts of celestial armies. Death and judgment are ahead. Every day makes the number less. Hence the transcendent importance of availing yourself of all your time and opportunities to prepare to meet God. How fortunate for you if the meeting is far enough ahead for you to send on an embassy and negotiate for peace! How can you send that embassy? Go to praying with all your might. Let every breath be a fervent prayer, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” and if possible make your peace with God before you must meet Him face to face. “If now Thou standest at the door, O let me feel Thee near, And make my peace with God before I at Thy bar appear!” The stupid indifference which characterizes an ungodly world is an incontestable confirmation of the total depravity so prominently taught in the Word of God. “Thus , therefore , every one of you who does not consecrate all of his possessions is not able to be My disciple .” This is a grand climacteric conclusion, rung out by the Savior in the ears of the vast multitude, and clinching all the nails which He has driven during this powerful discourse on discipleship. “Here I give my all to Thee Friends and time and earthly store; Soul and body, Thine to be — Wholly Thine, for evermore.” How can I know that I have really consecrated all to God? He will let you know it. You will reach bottom-rock, and be conscious of the tremendous reality from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet. How wonderfully Jesus preaches Christian perfection! How can any man claim to be one of His preachers, or even a disciple, and entertain heretical or even superficial views on this grand central idea of the redemptive scheme?

Errors on other matters of revealed truth may be overlooked and counteracted by the genuine and glorious experience of experimental perfection, but on this doctrine the fearful liability is that the experience will not rise above your Creed. Good Lord, help us all!

THE SALT Luke 14:34,35. “Therefore salt is good , but if indeed the salt may lose its savor , with what shall it be salted ? It is neither fit for the land nor the manure-heap . They cast it out . Let the one having ears to hear , hear .” In the Sermon on the Mount, our Savior says , “Ye are the salt of the earth ,” speaking concretely of His disciples. Here we have the same, but abstractly considered. The Christian religion is the salt, put in this world to save it.

The Holy Ghost is the savor of that salt. Therefore when, like Judaism, Romanism, and many dead, worldly, Protestant Churches, the Holy Ghost has been grieved away, that religion becomes savorless salt, the most worthless thing in the world. If you put it on the soil, it covers it up, and disqualifies you to cultivate it. If you put it in the washes, you annihilate all hope of restoring them to fertility and productiveness. Jesus says it is only fit “to be cast out, and trodden under foot;” i.e. , make nice, comfortable walks, along which the deluded members of the fallen Churches travel blindfolded down to hell. This statement about hearing, if you have ears, is quite axiomatic with Jesus and His apostles, keeping us reminded of the distinction between physical and spiritual hearing. Unless the Holy Ghost open the spiritual ear, you can no more hear the voice of God than the deaf man can hear the human voice.

CHAPTER - THE HUNDRED SHEEP Luke 15:1-7 . Our Lord is still in Perea, east of the Jordan, with His face toward Jerusalem, traveling slowly, accompanied by vast multitudes, to whom, daily halting, He preaches the living Word. “And all the publicans and sinners were drawing nigh to hear Him . And the Pharisees and scribes were murmuring , saying , He receiveth sinners , and eateth with them .” Jesus associated freely with sinners, showing Himself kind and loving, and eating at their tables. He did this for the sole purpose of doing them good. We should do likewise, associating with them only to save them, diligently utilizing every opportunity, by prayer, appeal, exhortation, and brotherly kindness, to bring them to repentance and draw them to the Savior. “And He spoke this parable to them , saying , What man of you , having a hundred sheep and losing one of them , does not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness , and go after the lost one until he may find it ? Having found it , he places it on his shoulders , rejoicing , and coming to his house , he calls together his friends and neighbors , saying to them , Rejoice with me , because I found my sheep which was lost . I say unto you that there is joy in heaven over one sinner repenting , rather than ninety and nine just persons who have no need of repentance .” This is a beautiful symbolism of the faithful pastor Jesus frequently called the Jews “sheep without a shepherd,” not that they were aliens and heathens, for they were all bona fide members of the visible Church; but He simply means that they were destitute of the much-needed spiritual guides, i.e. , they had plenty of preachers, but no one to care for their souls. The sanctified pastor, filled with the Holy Ghost and endued with His gifts ( 1 Corinthians 12:8-11), has very acute spiritual discernment, so as to readily detect a backslider in his congregation. John Wesley pronounced every one back-slidden who did not pray orally and testify. O how the Church needs faithful shepherds this day, endued with spiritual discernment, competent to detect the wandering sheep, courageous enough to pursue it into every hell-den, and at the peril of his life rescue it from Satan’s prowling wolves; and then