*CHRISTOLOGY
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According to reports, “The United States has returned 38 lost cultural relic items to China, marking yet another instance of successful bilateral cooperation in fighting antiquities trafficking.” That is good, but I noticed they were only the cheap ones. I have seen Chinese National Treasures displayed at Smithsonian Institution, etc.; some single item worth more than hundreds of millions dollars. It is about time that America, Britain, France, Germany, etc. return the Chinese national treasures without further delay.
Palestinians say they don't know what they have done wrong: 1. Palestinians are wrong to occupy the Jewish land. 2. Palestinians are wrong to have the terrorists Hamas rule over them. 3. Palestinians are wrong NOT TO go to Arab lands to build a Palestinian state. 4. Palestinians are wrong to live on charity, believe and practice a false ........
An authoritative definition of a state or nation is that it must have a territory, a population, and sovereignty. For example, Taiwan is a province of China where China has sovereignty; for that reason Taiwan could never become a state or nation. Palestine can never become a state or nation because it has no territory and no sovereignty. However, if Palestinians establish itself in a land of Arabs with its own territory and sovereignty, then Palestine can be a state or nation. UN is so useless it must be reformed. This is the truth. Gaza, West Bank, Golan Heights, Holy Mount, etc. all belong to the Jewish land. Palestinians do not own one inch of the Promised Land. Palestinians are Arabs who have no part or portion, who do not have resettlement right in the Jewish land. No Arab-Islamic nations welcome more than one million Palestinians. They would rather beg for charity than work. Many do not know that Iran and Syria support terrorists Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis and provide rockets, missiles, unmanned planes and weapons to the terrorists.I
All the troubles and problems of Palestinians are self-inflicted. They have garbage because they created garbage. Pompous and provocative Palestinians say they do not know what to do. Yes, they could and should go to the lands of Arabs. Palestinians are Arabs and they could and should go to lands of Arabs. Palestinians have no resettlement right in the Jewish land, no part or portion. There is no future to be part of terrorists Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis. The only way of peace is for Palestinians to go to the lands of Arabs, there to establish a Palestinian state and build lives for themselves. Something is new and strange in 2024. The UN, WHO, EU and Arab-Islamic nations recognize and support terrorists HAMAS, HEZBOLLAH, and HOUTHIS. Palestinians, UN, EU, WHO, all Arab-Muslim nations do not want to talk about who support terrorists with rockets, missiles and weapons for Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis.a
Illinois judge rules Donald Trump is disqualified from the state's 2024 election ballot. All US judges should rule so, the US Supreme Court should do so. Or, the US COURTS are unfit.
Terrorists attack of Moscow in killing more than 144 - 551 injured or wounded persons, prove the urgency of Israel to wipe out terrorists Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis now.
*THE U.S.A. MANIFESTO
*Why I believe America cannot be saved:
1. Whereas American government is systematically and structurally corrupt, it is impossible to change or reform America.
2. Trillions of dollars are involved by vested
interests who are self-serving and seek to preserve America status quo.
3. There is not one strong righteous leader backed up by righteous citizens. The sign of the times is that a convicted crook and criminal wants to be the American leader.
4. The once big and dependable organizations have now become centers of falsehood. The American TVs, movies, guns, games and toys companies can only produce products of evil because violence and vulgarity make BIG money.
5. As God is my witness, I stand alone; but I have done my duty to warn the American people and I have done what I have done.
Dated 11/28/23 Signed Willie Wong
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China's earthquake in Gansu-Qinghai demonstrates and proves what China has done for its people no superpower democratic or autocratic has ever done before. Some nations think and act as if they had done China a favor by declaring to keep One China policy. China needs to use its hard-earned resources to help China Poor first. The China Poor in rural areas deserve AID because they are industrious, productive,ethical
and skilled. In comparison to many poor peoples in undeveloped nations who are lazy, useless, dancing and drinking, having sex and produce many children they cannot support!!!
IOWA and New Hampshire Republicans are sick and stupid to let a convicted crook and criminal win in the Republican primaries. The whole world will laugh at the Republican Party for one hundred years!!!
The true madness is the Ukraine war supported by US, EU, and NATO, it should be ended at once unconditionally. Ukraine should immediately surrender and renounce the former goal of joining NATO.
Netanyahu has no need to run; he is a great leader and a savior of the Jews. In fact he will go down in the history of Israel and earn him a firm place in the pantheon of Jewish legends.
Hamas terrorists not only kill hostages, they also committed sexual violence against hostages. Palestinians face death and starvation in Gaza are self-inflicted. Palestinians do not demand Hamas to surrender and release all Jewish hostages unconditionally. Palestinians are Arabs who do not go to lands of Arabs. Not one Arab-Islamic nation welcomes one million Palestinians who do not have homeland in the Promised Land.
UN, WHO, RED CROSS, EU, etc. are wrong to support Palestinians. If Hamas terrorists
surrender and unconditionally release all hostages, if all Palestinians move out of Jewish land into the lands of Arabs, if Houthis terrorists in Red Sea harm and threaten world trade, they must be destroyed at once.
Ukraine must surrender and renounce the old goal of joining EU and NATO, so that the war can be over at once.
Isn’t it strange that ICJ does not condemn terrorists Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis???!!! Palestinians and Arabs are unworthy people. Hamas even kill hostages and Hezbollah and Houthis are wicked terrorists who must be destroyed!!!
Isn’t it strange that UN, WHO, EU, and all Arab-Islamic nations support terrorists Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis??? UN chief and high-paid officials must be replaced. The terrorists Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis are threats to global peace.
The terrorist Hamas also killed hostages. Families of Israeli hostages should demand Hamas to surrender and unconditionally release hostages. IDF must destroy Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis once and for all. Hamas must unconditionally surrender and release all hostages. No one objects Palestinians to build a Palestinian state in an Arab land, but Palestinians cannot build a Palestinian state in the Jewish Land!!!
Isn’t it funny that UN Security Council demands Houthis to stop Red Sea attacks? Why doesn’t UNSC demand Hamas to surrender, Hezbollah and Houthis to disappear? You do not make demands on the terrorists, you ONLY destroy them!!! Palestinian authority, Lebanon and Yemen have no reasons to exist. They exist only to do evil. Iran supports evil through words; when Iran supports evil through deeds, it has to be destroyed too.
Is it not strange not one nation demands
Hamas to surrender??? Not one nation demands Hamas to free hostages??? The 3-H Terrorists are Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis -- Hamas rules Gaza, Hezbollah Lebanon, and Houthis Yemen. Since when wicked TERRORISTS become humanitarian? Nations that support terrorists are public enemies. No one is angry at the terrorists Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis. Lebanon and Yemen have become legitimate targets also. Houthis are the terrorists of the Red Sea who cause world trade big losses. For peace, IDF must quickly destroy Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis. It is right for USA to annihilate Houthis for good. Incredible indeed, UN, WHO, EU, all Arab-Islamic Nations recognize the legitimacy of terrorists Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis in 2023. South Africa has officially supported terrorists Hamas. For that reason South Africa must be kicked out of BRICS for good.
When Hamas governed Gaza and West Bank, Palestinians had refugee camps, shortages of many kinds; but they did not scream for aid. When Hamas suddenly attacked Israel with rockets and missiles, killed 1,400 Israelis and took hundreds of hostages, Palestinians did not shout for peace. Now Hamas are on the brink of annihilation, Palestinians yelled for ceasefire and peace and cried out for International aid. What a perverse generation!!! Palestinians are Arabs, why don’t Arab countries take in Arabs -- something seems strange???!!!
Strangest thing: UN, WHO, EU, NATO, ARAB-ISLAMIC nations all work for the terrorists Hamas -- the historical greatest distortion.
Hamas and Palestinians do not have homeland in Israel. The sooner they realize it the better. Who is stopping Palestinians to establish a Palestinian state in an Arab land? Arabs go to Arab’s land is most reasonable. Palestinians and Arabs are unworthy. Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis are wicked terrorists deserved to be destroyed for good.
It is Hamas and Hezbollah who have to escape. Hamas thought a surprised attack of killing more than 140 Israelis and hundreds of hostages would be a military advantage. Little they realized the collateral damages become so unbearable. Hamas are cowards who hide themselves in hospitals and schools, they were found out and targeted.
The whole world believes in a lie.
Two-state solution will work if Palestinians establish a Palestinian state in an Arab land. It will not work if they establish a Palestinian state in the Jewish land. Isn’t is STRANGE that UN, EU, all Arab and Muslim states support the terrorists Hamas to rule in a Palestinian state? The world believes in a lie. Arab-Muslim nations rally in support of Palestinians. Strangest indeed, none welcomes to take in Palestinians. The British Empire (United Kingdom) must come out to tell the truth: Palestinians and Hamas were Arabs who illegally occupied the Jewish land. Israel needs a big map that describes what God gave the Promised Land to Abraham and his descendants some 4,000 years ago. It is a new thing under the sun that UN, WHO, and terrorists are in bed and they speak in a new tongue of humanitarian?! Terrorists become humanitarians?!
No one asks the real question? Where do Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists get their rockets, missiles, weapons and unmanned planes from? Since when terrorists stop killing the people? To give humanitarian aid to Palestinians is to support the terrorists. Palestinians (Arabs) must evacuate from Gaza, West Bank, etc. from Israel. Arab nations must accept Palestinians (Arabs) from the Jewish land. Palestinians (Arabs) must establish a Palestinian state in an Arab land. Israel must destroy Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists once and for all. Then conflict and crisis are ended.
Palestinians (Arabs) are displaced in Israel. Palestinians are free to go. Those who did not evacuate died in vain. Arab nations are hypocrites, not one welcomes to take in Palestinians (Arabs). Arab nations are actually causing humanitarian crisis. To demand Gaza Ceasefire is to help Hams terrorists. GAZA CRISIS was created by terrorists Hamas. Lebanon shall be destroyed for harboring terrorists Hezbollah. UN and WTO protect terrorists in the name of schools and hospitals, those died in vain. Only Egypt accepts a few Palestinians, no Arab nation is willing to taken in Gaza Palestinians (Arabs). It is high time for the British government to tell the truth to Palestinians (Arabs, Hamas) that they have no right to stay in the Jewish land. Palestinians are free to go to the Arab lands, the sooner the better.
I was willing to waste my time and effort to make a comprehensive plan to change and save America because I am an American citizen. I am not willing to waste my time and effort on United Nations because it is nothing to me. I wrote some good suggestion for China because China is the land of my ancestors. I have a few point to warn the world. 1). UN chief and some high-paid officials are good for nothing, they must be replaced. 2). UN, WHO and ICC are protecting the terrorists. 3). UN must move out of New York. 4). UN needs a new charter and requires all member states to have a NEW CONSTITUTION. The New Constitution must stipulate the majority of citizens (51%) can change government, remove any elected or appointed official instantly, and power to change government and decide any issue through the National Referendum.
What AFRICA needs most is SELF-SUFFICIENCY in everything; not useless general elections, not modernization, not deluded democracy, not new corruption replacing old corruption, not fat people who sing and dance and drink beer and produce children they cannot support, not foreign aid of any kind to deal with natural disasters and man-made disasters. African nations and citizens need a NEW CONSTITUTION with majority (51%) through National Referendum to instantly remove unwanted leaders or politicians, to execute the junta of any military coups d'etat for any reason, and to change government or direction. Nations and peoples who habitually are corrupt, unmotivated, unproductive, with abilities to eat and drink beer, to sing and dance, to have sex and produce children they cannot support; unable to solve their own problems and perennial in shortages of money and basic necessities; -- who have no reason to exist should not receive any humanitarian aid.
Let us be straight. Although I am a Chinese descent, I am an American citizen; I neither work for nor speak for America or China. I speak for myself. What I am doing will not win friends and influence people. Telling the truth always offends people, like dropping a bomb. I believe only Protestant Ethic can save Africa. Black leaders and peoples have to embrace Protestant Ethic to save themselves. You do not need to be a Protestant to practice Protestant Ethic. Years ago America was built great by Protestant Ethics. Protestant nations are corrupted now. You do not know Protestant Ethic? Ask and learn from China who is not a Protestant country. Whether black leaders and peoples will have self-respect, self-dignity, hard work, thrift and self-discipline only history will tell. In all sports (whether Basket ball, Foot ball, Soccer, etc. It is wrong and unfair for Black Athletes to join White (European) or Chinese or Asian teams or groups. Black Athletes should join only Black teams or represent Africa.
For that reason Pakistan in one day deported 1.2 million illegal Afghan migrants. Jus as your neighbors cannot enjoy sex and produce a bunch of children they do not support and force you to support them. There is nothing wrong with Texas anti-immigration law. Mexico has been the conduit for unlawful migrants for many years. When illegal and unlawful migrants force themselves in, American government has every right to use military force to expel them and expel them for good. No humanitarian aid may be given to unworthy crooks and criminals.
Palestinians in Gaza died because they refused to evacuate. After Israel made repeated and urgent orders for Gaza to evacuate. Hamas uses Palestinian children for protection. UN and WHO use schools and hospitals to protect terrorists. Only Egypt has taken less than 100 injured Palestinians. Not one Arab nation demonstrates its sincerity to take in Palestinians (Arabs) from Gaza. As Israel forces advance on grounds, Hamas buried tons of explosives and bombs in Gaza. The world must help Israel to eliminate the wicked Hamas, Houthis and Hezbollah terrorists once and for all. America must destroy any nation that attacks Israel, including Iran.
The UN is a useless organization. What it should do, it does not. What it should not do, it does. In truth, Palestinians have no “legitimate right” in the Promised land. God gave the Promised Land to Abraham and his descendants some 4,000 years ago. During the British colonial rule, Palestinians and Hamas were Arabs who surreptitiously moved into the Promised Land (so-called Palestine) unlawfully. Hamas dared to make first the barbaric attack of Israel. Hamas made the first barbaric attack, killed more than 1,400 Jews, took hundreds of hostages, illegally occupied the Jewish land -- are these not war crimes? Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis are known terrorists. UN is using all its resources to help the terrorists. They and Arab nations want to cease fire now, because they are afraid with one stroke Israel can wipe out Hamas and Hezbollah and illegal occupants. Whatever strategy Israel uses to destroy Hamas and Hezbollah and expel illegal Palestinians effectively is a good strategy. Peoples of Arab and Muslim nations protest for Palestinians, yet no Arab or Muslim nation wants to welcome or take in any Palestinians. Iran is warned not to participate in the war, lest it be totally ANNIHILATED. Israel has no option but to destroy Hamas and Hezbollah and expel all Palestinians from the Jewish Land. The territories occupied by Palestinians and Hamas are the Jewish land. There is no Palestinian land in the Jewish land. It is high time that Israel gets rid of all Palestinians, Hamas, Arabs from the Jewish land. No aid should be given to Palestine or Palestinians. The “legitimate aspirations” of Palestinians are to get out the Jewish Land at once to establish a Palestinian state in Arab land or there will be conflict and no peace. Syria is not wise to provide weapons to Hamas. Israel is surrounded by enemies. A stupid question: Where do Palestinians go? Palestinians are Arabs, Arabs go to the lands of Arabs. After all have been said, it is awakening and eye-opening: Arab countries do not want Palestinian Arabs. Their doors are closed. All Arab nations and peoples in protests support the Palestinians; but most strangely no Arab nation would indeed welcome or take in Palestinians (Arabs). Why should there be any reason for Israel to let Palestinians (Arabs) and Hamas live in the Jewish land? Arab nations and peoples who protest for Palestinians should indeed take Palestinians in. Palestinians may go to the Red Sea. Watch will their god open the Red Sea so that Palestinians may walk through dry land? I have lost faith in UNITED NATIONS. I have reached the conclusion: there is no hope for the world, “without God, without hope.”
No true Christians can enjoy seeing a fake courtroom sketch of Jesus by Trump’s side. Donald Trump is not a Christian, much less like Jesus, more like a son of the devil. Jesus says, Jhn 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.” It is not known that during his presidency did he order killing in American foreign wars covert and overt. Courts are charging him of frauds and lies. Clearly, Donald Trump is a liar, there is no truth in him. He is the most disgraced leader, demagogue and shameless character in American history, unfit and unworthy to run as a presidential candidate of any party. Jesus also says, Mat 7:20, “So then, you will know them by their fruits.” Jhn 10:27, “My sheep listen to My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.”
A so-called Christian organization is quoting the American military, “The head of the U.S. Strategic Command has said the aggressive actions from the US rivals of China and Russia are creating the “real possibility” of nuclear war.” AS A REASON THAT PEOPLE SHOULD GIVE MONEY TO THEM. “The prophecy has come true, the perilous times are here. The need is greater than ever before. If each of our viewers would give a donation, no matter the amount, you will help ensure the signs of Biblical prophecy continue to be shared here with the world. Please Give Here any amount, no matter the size, to help us continue sharing more signs of Biblical prophecy. ” The Bible prophesy will come true and we do not need to ensure the signs of Biblical prophecy continue. The dichotomy THAT the US is the good guy and Russia and China are bad guys -- is complete false and un-Biblical. It is the aggression and world domination of the West that cause the peril and threat to the world today, as evident in the Ukraine war that many Europeans oppose their governments to follow America. America is not a Christian nation and it is not on the side of Jesus Christ -- the West is the agent of the devil creating the possibility of a nuclear war that will destroy the whole world. Western leaders and politicians are blind and fools who believe they can win in a nuclear war.
Western media is not only fraudulent but most malicious and fictitious and WICKED, they are in concert declare: Who killed the Chinese economy? With two insidious and treacherous objectives: one is to create internal conflict in China to blame someone; two is a desperate distortion of fact. This Western media dare not say anything about American and European economy; Why? They are afraid of self-fulfilled prophesy. Mark Twain had an answer for them, “The reports of the death of China’s economy are greatly and grossly exaggerated.” China has the best and greatest economy in the world. It is hoped my suggestions as follows are noticed. Some Western media poisons the well by fraudulently declaring the end of China’s economic miracle. It unwittingly admits China’s economy is a miracle. If you have a perspective of China from 1985 to the present of 2023, you know for sure the spectacular successes of China in every field is truly a miracle.
ACCORDING TO Elizabeth Gulino, “According to a 2007 story in The Atlantic, Cullen Murphy, author of Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America, says there are six areas that create a compelling argument that ancient Rome and the U.S. are alike: “an exaggerated sense of self importance coupled with a myopic view of the world; a military overstretched and alienated from civilian society; an imprudent rush toward the privatization of public services; a mounting struggle to police borders; and, finally, the inherent impossibility of managing an environment of such burgeoning complexity.”
I see two most fatal areas: An exaggerated sense of self importance as an empire coupled with a deadly wrong myopic view of the world; an aggressive military overstretched and bent on world domination… American leaders and politicians are leading America to commit suicide. To save America, a NEW CONSTITUTION is needed for change.
Illegal migrants crisis exist because the UN and world leaders mismanage. The measures to solve the crisis are the following:
1). The UN must require all member states to have a New Constitution.
2). The New Constitution must stipulate the majority of citizens (51%) have the power and right to remove instantly any elected or appointed official without impeachment, change the government, change national policy, change the way of government, etc. through national referendum.
3). All military coups d'état are unlawful for whatever reason, participating generals or junta shall be executed without appeal.
4). All civil wars and war with neighbors, armed conflicts, gangs and riots, terrorists, violence and corruption are unlawful, the responsible parties shall be executed without appeal.
5). Any nation who created self-destructive problems will receive no international aid or intervention. There will be no peace-keeping troops.
6). All unlawful migrants are not true refugees, but economic and fortune seekers, public enemies who are useless for self-support, fancy themselves to enter rich nations and live on welfare for the rest of their lives.
7). All nations must declare whether they accept or reject illegal migrants and political asylums.
8). The majority of Americans reject illegal migrants, demand to deport 45 million illegal aliens already residing in America, and reject so-call asylum seekers. No humanitarian aid will be given to illegal migrants. They will be forced to return where they come from.
9). America builds walls, fences, wires, etc. to deter illegal migrants and attacks Mexico who serves as a conduit for illegal migrants.
10). Any forced entry to America by illegal migrants will be expelled by military force, the borders will be secured by the military to prevent illegal entry. Only American citizens may apply for welfare and it requires work. No single or unmarried woman may produce many children without husbands and receive welfare benefits. Any man who gets a woman pregnant shall be responsible financially and socially for woman and child.
Global hunger exists mostly because many useless nations do not produce, but they are able to engage in national conflict, corruption, civil wars, war with neighbor (s), military coups d'etat , destructive behavior. Nations like Sudan have no reasons to exist. The UN mismanages. China should not waste its hard-earned resources. The international community should not give aid to violent and worthless nations.
“Admiral John Aquilino, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), offered remarkably detailed comments on what he sees as critical future capabilities needed to fight and win a high-end conflict in his vast area of responsibility — namely against China.”
Historically, America has wronged China many times. Not once has China wronged America. The American leadership and its military have conspired to destroy China anyway without cause. America has prepared QUAD and AUKUS to do the job. American leaders and politicians have determined to do EVIL despite against the wishes and will of the people. America does not have a Constitution that stipulates the national sovereignty lies in the hands of majority citizens. Majority of citizens are powerless to remove unwanted leaders and change the government. Be alert, the DOOMSDAY Clock has struck! Nuclear exchange will SOON wipe out humanity and Jesus Christ is coming to judge and rule.
Supplements of a Japanese drug maker killed five persons and put more than 200 on hospitalization.
Japan has willfully continuously released of nuclear contaminated waters into the Pacific because there are not enough good nations to rise up and retaliate and sanction against the evil empire of Japan. Japan has willfully done the great evil and harm, no longer persuasion; Japanese arrogance calls for retaliation and retribution. August 24, 2023 was the day of infamy because Japanese government, in spite of strong internal and external oppositions, on purpose most outrageously, irreversibly, and irresponsibly dumped nuclear contaminated waters into the Pacific to harm the world. The war crime nation never fulfills its unconditionally surrendered obligations or abides by International Law. Japan does the easy evil way because it costs them nothing. I salute Hong Kong and Macao and nations to boldly boycott imported food from Japan. All decent nations must rise up to sanction against Japan in food ban.
A man who has been charged, indicted, arrested, mug shot taken, on high bail is a crook and criminal and not a Christian, forever unfit and unqualified to be a presidential candidate of any party but locked up or exiled for good. America is doomed by the world forces of spiritual darkness because of unwise Americans who support diabolical Donald Trump to make himself great by destroying America!!!
According to https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2.019/11/01/making-sense-of-the-national-debt “Governments (and their economies) do not retire, and governments do not die (or don't intend to).”
I hold if America continues financing high deficits and debts, and foreign wars BY printing money, America is committing suicide intending or not. The day of reckoning is near.
QUAD (USA,Japan,Australia,India) and AUKUS (Australia, U.K. and U.S.) cohabit and conspire to target China. China does not have quarrel with India. China-India border conflict was a result of the British empire made the Indian map bigger by misappropriated and illegally incorporated large Chinese territories into the Indian map. The fraudulent British officials deliberately fail to tell the truth to the Indian government. Since QUAD & AUKUS are incompatible with BRICKS. India for ulterior motive has violated BRICKS, it should withdraw or be expelled. Indonesia is fit to replace India in BRICKS perfect.
There are many poor and backward nations in the world like leeches who suck the blood of China. I cannot list those nations who have no reason to exist, lest I will be the target. If this bloodsucking activity is not stopped, China will be sucked dry and poor again. China must not set a bad precedent in giving loan to any nation. A nation does not have enough money should not start a project. A nation can go to IMF, World Bank, and Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) for a loan, or a nation can sell its assets to pay for projects.
Useless and violent Sudan holds the world as hostage and acts with contempt because world leaders are stupid. What to do with Sudan? NOTHING. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!
Sudanese glorify and pride themselves in killing its own Black people. Let them do it! Never negotiate; never give aid; never interfere! Let Sudan alone and in a year or so Sudan will vanish from the world! The world should make Sudan a pariah nation, a bad example.
American rising debt is not only a measure of Washington’s profligacy which has nothing to do with income distortion, it is completely due to the evil national policy of American imperialism and world domination -- I always hold this leads to American suicide. There is no confused thinking. China should never follow America in rising debt and deficits.
War in Ukraine: Lives and livelihoods, lost and disrupted. No one to blame except the stupid Ukrainians themselves and its nincompoop leader who is obedient running dog of the West and wants to prolong the proxy war indefinitely with billions of dollars, cluster bombs and F-16. In spite of corruption, US, EU and NATO support Ukraine.
Since Ukraine has admitted the terrorist acts of blasting substantial damages to Crimean Bridge, ICC must issue a warrant to arrest the nincompoop of Ukraine and execute him to stop the war. The UN must identify the terrorists who blew up Nord Stream pipelines and execute them without further delay.
The UN must condemn any nation that uses cluster ammunitions or bombs in Ukraine or anywhere.
BRICKS was established to weaken American hegemony and circumvent the Western domination. India would be in conflict of interest to be used by America in QUAD. BRICKS would be a mistake in developing a new global currency. The strong and reliable Chinese yuan (
) can compete or even displace the US dollar. Each member state should strengthen its finance and economy. More than 100 nations should be welcome to join BRICKS at once.
Under US protection, the war crime nation Japan has never fulfilled its agreement as an unconditional surrendered nation. Japan has never paid one penny for killing 35 million Chinese, making millions of slave workers, and hundred thousands of sex slaves which Japanese military conveniently called “comfort women.” The US has re-militarized Japan as its running dog in Asia; now it boldly violates international law by deliberately dumping nuclear contaminated waste water into the Pacific to harm the whole world, in spite of being opposed strongly by overwhelming majority of Japanese citizens, opposed by its neighbors and island nations. Among other measures, the international community must rise up to ban and boycott the imported food and goods from Japan.
Ukraine is an evil the world must get rid of promptly: The Ukrainian nincompoop must be executed at once as a war criminal; knowingly or unknowingly, Putin has fallen into the Western trap. Led by US, EU, NATO, etc. blindly promote and prolong the most meaningless war.
Russia needs to declare a clear policy: Whenever and wherever Russia is being attacked by NATO, with absolute certainty Russia will respond with nuclear weapons.
Ukraine will collapse in one day if US, Canada, EU, G-7, NATO, UK, etc. stop giving financial and military aid, and the Ukrainian war criminal is executed at once. The war will end and there will be peace.
Most Americans do not understand the consequences of US Debt Limit. American leaders and politicians of both parties have mismanaged the country with negligence and neglect. Even with the highest debt, they sent billions and billions of borrowed money and weapons to corrupt Ukraine to prolong the war. By spending spree they commit America to suicide. Reform will not save America, America needs Revolution as suggested by founding fathers. America needs to ditch phony democracy by a New Constitution that stipulates national sovereignty lies in the hands of American citizens. With a majority (51%) of American citizens through a National Referendum, Americans have power to remove instantly any elected or appointed official without impeachment to change the government.
Jesus Christ is coming again!
The world must finally wake up to the dark evil forces and face an aggressive, belligerent, irrational, hegemonic and bad-faith superpower who seeks its monopoly on global power and is the greatest source of instability, chaos, inflation, injustice, trouble and conflict in the world -- which is seeking to contain Russia and China, and strategically crush them at all costs. The West has wronged China since the infamous Opium Wars to the present. Not only there will be no peace, these hostile activities and militant mind-set will inevitably leads to a coming nuclear war to destroy the whole world.
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My definition of Christology: the study of the Person, Nature, Role and Work of Jesus Christ. Theologians are wrong to call Christology a branch of Christian theology. There is no high or low Christology. There is only one Christology. Christology is the Central Theology of Christianity. Without Jesus Christ there is no Christian Religion. To write about Christology would require a big book. I try to be as concise as possible to be tolerated by the owner of the website.
If the readers follow through with this article, they will know that I only present the truth in Jesus Christ.
According to https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/christology
I agree with “In Engaging Theology, Ben C. Blackwell and R. L. Hatchet address how Jesus’ arrival changed everything:
His first advent stands as the fulcrum of history, and it separates the current Western calendar into its two eras: BC (before Christ) and AD (anno Domini, in the year of the Lord). His second advent will mark the next great transition in history. As someone so central to Christianity, Jesus has inspired an almost innumerable array of conceptions regarding his person and work by those in and outside the church. Increasingly, in this age of skepticism we have students who think he is a figment of imagination. Yet others follow him as the incarnation of God.”
I disagree with the theoretical framework of “Christology from Behind: Old Testament Messianic Expectations”, Christology from Below: New Testament Messianic Fulfillment; and Christology from Above: The Divine Son Becomes Incarnate.
I am only responsible for what I am doing. Everyone is responsible for what he/she is doing. God is the Judge. It is not my job to point out what is wrong with the views of other people.
1Ti 3:16, “Beyond question, great is the mystery of godliness:
He who was revealed in the flesh,
Was vindicated in the Spirit,
Seen by angels,
Proclaimed among the nations,
Believed on in the world,
Taken up in glory.”
I. HIS ORIGIN
Jhn 1:1-5, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God. All things came
into being through Him, and apart from Him not
even one thing came into being that has come into
being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of mankind. And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it.”
Without Revelation, no one could or would know the beginning. Jesus Christ is the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
According to https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/bnb/john-1.html
“Was the Word - Greek, “was the λόγος Logos.” This name is given to him who afterward became “flesh,” or was incarnate (John 1:14 - that is, to the Messiah. Whatever is meant by it, therefore, is applicable to the Lord Jesus Christ… The opinion which seems most plausible may be expressed as follows:
1. A “word” is that by which we communicate our will; by which we convey our thoughts; or by which we issue commands the medium of communication with others.
2. The Son of God may be called “the Word,” because he is the medium by which God promulgates His will and issues His commandments. See Hebrews 1:1-3.
3. This term was in use before the time of John.
- I. It was used in the Aramaic translation of the Old Testament, as, “e. g.,” Isaiah 45:12; “I have made the earth, and created man upon it.” In the Aramaic it is, “I, ‘by my word,’ have made,” etc. Isaiah 48:13; “mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth.” In the Aramaic, “‘By my word’ I have founded the earth.” And so in many other places.
- 1. This term was used by the Jews as applicable to the Messiah. In their writings he was commonly known by the term “Mimra” - that is, “Word;” and no small part of the interpositions of God in defense of the Jewish nation were declared to be by “the Word of God.” Thus, in their Targum on Deuteronomy 26:17-18, it is said, “Ye have appointed the Word of God a king over you this day, that he may be your God.”
4. The term was used by the Jews who were scattered among the Gentiles, and especially those who were conversant with the Greek philosophy.
5. The term was used by the followers of Plato among the Greeks, to denote the Second Person of the Trinity. The Greek term νοῦς nous or “mind,” was commonly given to this second person, but it was said that this nous was “the word” or “reason” of the First Person of the Trinity… It was important, therefore, that the meaning of the term should be settled by an inspired man, and accordingly John, in the commencement of his Gospel, is at much pains to state clearly what is the true doctrine respecting the λόγος Logos, or Word. It is possible, also, that the doctrines of the Gnostics had begun to spread in the time of John. They were an Oriental sect, and held that the λόγος Logos or “Word” was one of the “Aeones” that had been created, and that this one had been united to the man Jesus. If that doctrine had begun then to prevail, it was of the more importance for John to settle the truth in regard to the rank of the Logos or Word. This he has done in such a way that there need be no doubt about its meaning.
Was with God - This expression denotes friendship or intimacy. Compare Mark 9:19. John affirms that he was “with God” in the beginning - that is, before the world was made. It implies, therefore, that he was partaker of the divine glory; that he was blessed and happy with God. It proves that he was intimately united with the Father, so as to partake of his glory and to be appropriately called by the name God. He has himself explained it. See John 17:5; “And now, O Father, glorify thou we with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” See also John 1:18; “No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” See also John 3:13; “The Son of man, which is in heaven.” Compare Philippians 2:6-7.
Was God - In the previous phrase John had said that the Word was “with God.” Lest it should be supposed that he was a different and inferior being, here John states that “he was God.” There is no more unequivocal declaration in the Bible than this, and there could be no stronger proof that the sacred writer meant to affirm that the Son of God was equal with the Father; because:
I. There is no doubt that by the λόγος Logos is meant Jesus Christ.
II. This is not an “attribute” or quality of God, but is a real subsistence, for it is said that the λόγος Logos was made flesh σάρξ sarx - that is, became a human being.
III. There is no variation here in the manuscripts, and critics have observed that the Greek will bear no other construction than what is expressed in our translation - that the Word “was God.”
IV. There is no evidence that John intended to use the word “God” in an inferior sense. It is not “the Word was a god,” or “the Word was ‘like God,’” but the Word “was God.” He had just used the word “God” as evidently applicable to Yahweh, the true God; and it is absurd to suppose that he would in the same verse, and without any indication that he was using the word in an inferior sense, employ it to denote a being altogether inferior to the true God.
V. The name “God” is elsewhere given to him, showing that he is the supreme God. See Romans 9:5; Hebrews 1:8, Hebrews 1:10, Heb 1:12; 1 John 5:20; John 20:28.
The meaning of this important verse may then be thus summed up:
I. The name λόγος Logos, or Word, is given to Christ in reference to his becoming the Teacher or Instructor of mankind; the medium of communication between God and man.
II. The name was in use at the time of John, and it was his design to state the correct doctrine respecting the λόγος Logos.
III. The “Word,” or λόγος Logos, existed “before creation” - of course was not a “creature,” and must have been, therefore, from eternity.
IV. He was “with God” - that is, he was united to him in a most intimate and close union before the creation; and, as it could not be said that God was “with himself,” it follows that the λόγος Logos was in some sense distinct from God, or that there was a distinction between the Father and the Son. When we say that one is “with another,” we imply that there is some sort of distinction between them.
V. Yet, lest it should be supposed that he was a “different” and “inferior” being - a creature - he affirms that he was God - that is, was equal with the Father.
This is the foundation of the doctrine of the Trinity:
1.That the second person is in some sense “distinct” from the first.
2.That he is intimately united with the first person in essence, so that there are not two or more Gods.
3.That the second person may be called by the same name; has the same attributes; performs the same works; and is entitled to the same honors with the first, and that therefore he is “the same in substance, and equal in power and glory,” with God.”
According to https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/ryl/john-1.html
“We learn, firstly, that our Lord Jesus Christ is eternal. John tells us that "in the beginning was the Word." He did not begin to exist when the heavens and the earth were made. Much less did He begin to exist when the Gospel was brought into the world. He had glory with the Father "before the world was." (John 17:5.) He was existing when matter was first created, and before time began. He was "before all things." (Colossians 1:17.) He was from all eternity.
We learn, secondly, that our Lord Jesus Christ is a Person distinct from God the Father, and yet one with Him. John tells us that "the Word was with God." The Father and the Word, though two persons, are joined by an ineffable union. Where God the Father was from all eternity, there also was the Word, even God the Son,—their glory equal, their majesty co-eternal, and yet their Godhead one. This is a great mystery! Happy is he who can receive it as a little child, without attempting to explain it.
We learn, thirdly, that the Lord Jesus Christ is very God. John tells us that "the Word was God." He is not merely a created angel, or a being inferior to God the Father, and invested by Him with power to redeem sinners. He is nothing less than perfect God,—equal to the Father as touching His Godhead,—God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds.
We learn, fourthly, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Creator of all things. John tells us that "by Him were all things made, and without Him was not any thing made that was made." So far from being a creature of God, as some heretics have falsely asserted, He is the Being who made the worlds and all that they contain. "He commanded and they were created." (Psalms 148:5.)
We learn, lastly, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the source of all spiritual life and light. John tells us, that "in Him was life, and the life was the light of men." He is the eternal fountain, from which alone the sons of men have ever derived life…whatever light of conscience or understanding any one has obtained, all has flowed from Christ. The vast majority of mankind in every age have refused to know Him, have forgotten the fall, and their own need of a Savior. The light has been constantly shining "in darkness." The most have "not comprehended the light." But if any men and women out of the countless millions of mankind have ever had spiritual life and light, they have owed all to Christ.”
I can honestly say that I recommend the writings of G. Campbell Morgan and J. C. Ryle without any reservation.
II. HIS INCARNATION
The Word Made Flesh
Jhn 1:14-18, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testified about Him and called out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who is coming after me has proved to be my Superior, because He existed before me.” For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time;
God the only Son, who is in the arms of the Father, He has revealed Him.”
THE WORD BECAME FLESH by G. CAMPBELL MORGAN
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us .. . full of grace and truth.
John 1:14
WHATEVER, IN THE COMPLEXITY OF PRESENT-DAY THOUGHT, may be our view of the method of the advent, it is impossible to deny that nigh two thousand years ago that happened which has absolutely and completely revolutionized human thinking and human life. The student of history is always interested in tracing great streams to their sources. The rise and fall of dynasties, great discoveries, revolutions, all of them are important and interesting, and yet in some senses all these things are related directly or indirectly to the one event described in the mystic language of this text.
In this advent of Jesus there was both a crowning and a comprehension of all that was excellent in the past; and the conception and initiation of all the ideas and movements which are lifting humanity ever nearer to God.
… If you tell me that man is a person, I say, Yes, undoubtedly he is; but he is finite. Now, a finite person is an incomplete person, and therefore not a perfect revelation of what a person is. A perfect Person must be infinite also.
This at least is declared, that in the beginning there was an expression of Deity. But that is not helpful to us, for it was beyond our finite comprehension. "The Word became flesh," that is where the help begins. When the infinite Person - and I do not quite know what that means - becomes a finite Person Whom I can understand, I do pass into some new appreciation of the character and the value, and the fact of the infinite that transcends me, "In the beginning was the Word. ... And the Word became flesh."
A few words only are necessary concerning the second of these couplets, "And the Word was with God." That which was the method of Divine speech and manifestation was with God, and again I freely confess to you here are terms, finite terms struggling to express infinite meaning, and failing even though they be the words of inspiration. Then I read, "He pitched His tent among men"; and the thing that has baffled me and perplexed me, and overwhelmed me in the realm of Deity, which is beyond my comprehension, becomes something I can look at within the realm of human life: "He tabernacled among men."
And then, finally, when I read in the great introductory word, "the Word was God," both with God, and God; both method of Divine expression, and that which expresses itself, again I am overwhelmed, I cannot understand. Again I feel that I have read a simple sentence that is so full of mystery as absolutely to defy my explanation. Then I read "full of grace and truth," and I have an unveiling of the nature of God, though perhaps no explanation of the method. I have seen One Who is flesh, and pitches His tent by my side in the valleys where I dwell, upon the mountains to which I climb, in the midst of the life I live; and in the life of this One grace and truth flash and flame in glory. I am told that that is God, and I feel, not that I have been able to encompass all the mystery of Deity by revelation, but that I have been taken through a wicket gate, and my eyes are gazing out upon light such as I had never seen. I have at least been able to look through a veil at that which unveiled would have blinded me: "In the beginning was the Word," and I do not understand it. "The Word became flesh," and it has come within the reach of my hand. "The Word was with God," and I cannot comprehend the meaning of the statement, but the Word "tabernacled among us," pitched His tent near us, and I at least may draw near and behold. "And the Word was God," and there is no more in the statement than there was in all the other things that men had said long before. But "full of grace and truth," and here are two essential facts concerning God which will help me.
Pass over this ground with me again. "In the beginning was the Word" ... "the Word became flesh." What does this signify? Eternity, the ageless age, coming into time; expressing itself in the language of time, manifesting itself in the method of time. "In the beginning was the Word," the utterance of God; not letters, or syllables or words merely; not a literature which I can commence here, and finish presently, but the Word of God. Not only that which fills the whole fact of space so far as I can imagine it; but "the Word became flesh," that is, came to a locality; it came to a place to which I can travel; it came to a place to which coming, I can see.
"The Word was in the beginning," the infinite, but it became flesh, the finite. "In the beginning was the Word," the infinite Wisdom, the all-encompassing Wisdom, the Wisdom that lies at the back of all manifestation, the Wisdom of which the preacher sang long ago in the Proverbs. But "the Word became flesh," that is, Wisdom began to spell itself out in an alphabet. We sometimes quote the words of Jesus uttered to John in Patmos as though they were full of dignity. So they were, but they have another tone also. "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last." There is some sense in which in God there is no first, no last; and, consequently, that is not a figure of completeness intended only to create amazement and wonder. It is the symbol of simplicity, it is the figure of the alphabet. "I am the Alpha and the Omega," the alphabet which the little child may learn. Yet remember that all literature lies within the compass of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Do not talk to your children about a thing being as easy as A B C. It is the hardest thing we have to learn. You have forgotten the task, but it was such. You did not know it, but in that task you were beginning to climb up to that literature which you love, and all its vast reaches lay before you. So when the Word became flesh infinite Wisdom expressed itself in an alphabet. That began nineteen centuries ago. There had been attempts before, hieroglyphics before, but at last the mysterious hieroglyphics of the past found the key of interpretation in Alpha and Omega - the Alphabet. We must be little children to begin; but we never arrive at the infinite literature to which it introduces us until we have learned it. The Word, the infinite Wisdom, dwelt with God, and was the mighty Work-man at His right hand when He created, by whatever process I care nothing. That Wisdom became an alphabet when a baby Boy lay upon His mother's breast in the Judean country.
But notice the next couplet of contrast. "The Word was with God." There are those who can explain it to me. I cannot. I make no attempt to do it. But I will attempt the next. He "tabernacled among us." This Person Who defies definition - for I do not know the meaning of "person," as I have already said - this Person "tabernacled among us," and John of the mystic vision had looked at Him, and warm-hearted Peter had gazed upon Him, and all the rest had seen Him. He "tabernacled among us." Now for the parenthesis a moment. "We beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father." "We beheld," we saw that which was with God, and the statement overwhelms us. I love the other rendering of that, not accurate translation perhaps, but certainly correct interpretation. He pitched His tent by us, and came to live where we lived. He pitched His tent down by the side of my tent. … He "tabernacled among us." We are pilgrims through the world, coming out of darkness, and passing toward the darkness. He "tabernacled among us," put His tent down by the side of our tent.
Yet that is not all, and we must interpret this word "tabernacled" by the religious thinking of the man who wrote the words, by John's religious conviction and upbringing. If you do that you will see that this word "tabernacled" has its explanation in the religious mysteries of the past. I go back again to the kindergarten days of religion, to the hieroglyphics of the past, and I find the Tabernacle. You remember how in the Old Testament that word "Tabernacle" is written descriptively in two ways. Sometimes it is called the Tabernacle of witness, and sometimes it is called the Tabernacle of the congregation, and both are faulty. May I take the same ideas, and express them in other words? The Tent of meeting rather than the Tabernacle of the congregation. The Tent of testimony, rather than the Tabernacle of witness. That is to say, when in your Old Testament you read that the Tabernacle was the Tabernacle of the congregation, it does not mean that it was the place where men congregated for worship, but that it was the place where God and man met for fellowship. The Tabernacle of meeting was the place, God-appointed, where He met with man, and to which man came to meet with Him.
It was the Tent of testimony, which did not mean that it was the place where men proclaimed the truth of God. The Tent of testimony was the place where God spoke to men, and men listened. Now, wrote John, who had been brought up in that religion, and to whom that symbolism was always luminous, the Word pitched His tent among us. That was the Tabernacle for which we had been waiting, toward which we had been looking. He became at once Tent of meeting between God and man, and Tent of testimony through which God spoke to man. And so in this Word, the infinite and incomprehensive mystery of the eternities, Who became finite and comprehensive in time, by becoming flesh, I find my tent of meeting with God. He is all I am, but He is all God is. And when I lay this hand of mine upon His hand, I have touched the hand of a man such as I am; but I have taken hold of the might of God. And when I look into the eyes of the Man Who pitched His tent among Galilean fishermen I have looked into human eyes all brimming with love, but through them I have looked out into the very heart of the Infinite God. He is the Tent of meeting. I find God in Christ, as nowhere else. I cannot find Him in Nature. I see His goings; I hear the thunder of His power; I mark the matchless beauty of the delicate touch of His pencil on the petals of the flowers; but I cannot find Him, I cannot reach Him. But here, as God is my witness, I come to the Christ - warm, sweet, tender, even yet:
A present help is He:
And faith has still its Olivet,
And love its Galilee.
I feel in my spirit the consciousness of the human Christ; but enwrapping me all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And because He pitched His tent by me, and pitches it by me still in all sympathy, I have found God, and if you take that away I have lost God. "He tabernacled among us," He pitched His tent by us. It was the Tent of meeting, and it was the Tent of testimony. Through that life God spoke so that I might hear; and to explain that I must use terms that seem to be contradictory, but the relation of which I am sure you will see. In Christ, the long, long silence became speech. But in Christ the thunder became a whisper. Silence became speech. Men had been waiting and longing and listening, climbing mountains for stillness, getting into loneliness to hear. They had heard, but they had never heard. They had heard the thunder of His power, but they had never heard all that they needed to hear. But in Him Who pitched His tent by the side of the fishermen, they heard. And the long silence and all the loneliness became the sweet speech for which men had waited; and all the thunder that had reverberated around the rocky fastnesses of Sinai became love whispers in the ears of listening individuals when He became flesh. "The Word became flesh, and pitched His tent among us."
"And the Word was God," and again I remit the mystery, "full of grace and truth." All that men saw and heard in Jesus was an unveiling of Deity. The attractiveness of His grace, the awfulness of His truth, were revelations to men of God.
If that is the fact of the incarnation, what is this inclusive revelation that it has brought to us? "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us ... full of grace and truth." Grace. You may express that in another way, in another phrase, in another sentence, of this selfsame writer. "God is love," "full of grace." Truth. You may express that also in another way. "God is light," "full of truth." Out of the grace came the redemption. Out of the truth was manifest the righteousness. The supreme revelation that Jesus made to men was not a revelation first of grace, or only of grace; not a revelation first of truth, or only of truth; but a revelation of the relation between "grace" and "truth."
Look at them in separation. Do not rob this word "grace" of its beauty by reading into it merely the ideas of a human system of theology. We behold him "full of grace," full of tenderness, full of gentleness, full of pity, full of all that winsomeness and attractiveness that made Him dear to children, and to needy men, and to sinning souls. We behold Him full of grace, full of grace to children, gathering them into His arms, putting them into the midst of His disciples; full of grace toward the afflicted, forevermore moved with compassion in the presence of any limitation. No cripple ever crossed the vision of Christ without Christ feeling the pain of all the cripple's limitation. Full of grace toward sinners. Take the New Testament and read it once more, and see if you can find one harsh thing He said to a sinner. Harsh things to oppressors and to sinners in that particular respect; but to someone taken in an act of sin, overwhelmed with the burden of sin, never an angry word. Full of grace, full of winsomeness, full of beauty. That is human. I am not dealing with all the infinite values of the word "grace," but with the simplicity of it as manifested in the life of this Man.
But "full of truth," capable of anger, capable of severity, capable of cursing as well as of blessing, with lips that could frame a "Woe" of unutterable terror as well as a "Blessed" of unutterable tenderness. Truth, and truth manifesting itself in anger against all selfishness, all tyranny, all sin. Grace acting in truth because it is grace. Truth acting in grace because it is truth. Here is the revelation that surprises. We have put these into two compartments. We often still speak of the grace of God and the righteousness of God as though they were poles asunder. They are never separated. They cannot be separated, and in the moment in which you deny truth, you deny grace. If there be no severity in God He is incapable of tenderness. Because there is love there is light, and it is love that will make no peace with the thing that spoils and harms and ruins. Grace and truth always go together. I have referred to His grace as manifested in His welcoming of the children. I have declared that truth could be manifest in anger, and these two things were operating at the same moment. When He said the most beautiful thing that men ever heard concerning little children, there was the tone of anger in His voice. The voice which was brim-full of tenderness was vibrant with thunder. The disciples would have kept the children away. Why should He be angry for a small thing like that? It is not a small thing to keep a child away from Christ. It is a misunderstanding of God and the child; and the man who misunderstands God and the child is a curse to society, find him where you will. Jesus was angry, and through the tenderness of the welcome to the bairns throbbed the anger of truth against a false idea of dignity that excluded bairns. That is but illustration of grace and truth acting together, as they did from beginning to end. This was the revelation that came to the world.
So, finally, we see the values of this incarnation, truth concerning God and man, and grace joining men to God. In Jesus man found God. In Him man finds himself. These were the two things that men had lost, their knowledge of God and their knowledge of themselves. The great and final word of the teaching of one of the greatest Greek masters, Socrates, was, "Man, know thyself"; but men could not obey him, and Socrates had to say so. He confessed that it was not given to him to do anything but teach humanity to ask questions. He said some other teacher must come and answer the questions, and in that word he revealed how much of heaven's light he had in his own soul. Jesus came to answer the questions, and man found himself again, and realized the meaning of the mystery of his life, when the Word became flesh, and tabernacled, pitched His tent, by the side of him. And that tabernacling meant not merely truth concerning God and man, but triumph for God and man. It was God's highway to accomplish His purposes for man. It was man's highway unto the purposes of God.
Let me say in conclusion that we underrate the infinite value and meaning of this fact of incarnation when we speak of it as something in the past. The incarnation is an abiding fact, not something merely past. At this very hour that same Person is at the centre of the universe of God, the risen, glorified and enthroned Man. And if you tell me that that is to state something that cannot be believed because it transcends the possibility of belief, I tell you that it no more transcends the possibility of belief than does the fact of the historic incarnation. If He came into human flesh, and tabernacled among us, and if while there He could speak of Himself as yet in the bosom of the Father, and as yet being the Word with God, so remember that today He abides for manifestation at the centre of the universe of God, the risen and glorified Man, at once a prophecy and a promise, hearing which we dare believe that at last He also will perfect us, and we shall see Him, and be with Him, and be like Him.”
According to http://www.theologue.org/Incarnation-GCMorgan.htm
“The Incarnation
The whole teaching of Holy Scripture places the Incarnation at the center of the methods of God with a sinning race.
Toward that Incarnation everything moved until its accomplishment, finding therein fulfillment and explanation. The messages of the prophets and seers and the songs of the psalmists trembled with more or less certainty toward the final music which announced the coming of Christ. All the results also of these partial and broken messages of the past led toward the Incarnation.
It is equally true that from that Incarnation all subsequent movements have proceeded, depending upon it for direction and dynamic. The Gospel stories are all concerned with the coming of Christ, with His mission and His message. The letters of the New Testament have all to do with the fact of the Incarnation, and its correlated doctrines and duties. The last book of the Bible is a book, the true title of which is The Unveiling of the Christ.
Not only the actual messages which have been bound up in this one Divine Library, but all the results issuing from them, are finally results issuing from this self-same coming of Christ. It is surely important, therefore, that we should understand its purposes in the economy of God.
There is a fourfold statement of purpose declared in the New Testament: the purpose to reveal the Father; the purpose to put away sin; the purpose to destroy the works of the devil; and the purpose to establish by another advent the Kingdom of God in the world.
Christ was in conflict with all that was contrary to the purposes of God in individual, social, national, and racial life. There is a sense in which when we have said this we have stated the whole meaning of His coming. His revelation of the Father was toward this end; His putting away of sin was part of this very process; and His second advent will be for the complete and final overthrow of all the works of the devil.”
Now I have read quite a bit from great and famous theologians, none are so sublime, illuminating and instructive like that of G. Campbell Morgan. If you have fully understood all the fourfold statement of purpose declared in the New Testament on Incarnation, you have not studied in vain.
III. HIS DUAL NATURES
Unlike any human being, Jesus Christ has dual natures which means He is both God and Man; Perfect God and Perfect Man.
According to https://www.theopedia.com/hypostatic-union#:~:text=
“The two natures of Jesus refers to the doctrine that the one person Jesus Christ had/has two natures, divine and human. In theology this is called the doctrine of the hypostatic union, from the Greek word hypostasis (which came to mean substantive reality). Early church figures such as Athanasius used the term "hypostatic union" to describe the teaching that these two distinct natures (divine and human) co-existed substantively and in reality in the single person of Jesus Christ. The aim was to defend the doctrine that Jesus was simultaneously truly God and truly man.”
HUMANITY AND DEITY by G. CAMPBELL MORGAN
Bring then the offspring of God.
Acts 17:29
… The cross was not Paul's ultimate and final message. "It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead." All the spaciousness of his message was created by the fact that while he never forgot the fundamental truth of Christianity, that of the cross, he left the first principles and passed on to the perfection of teaching as he attempted to lead men to see how in resurrection life they had possession of all that was necessary for the realization of the purpose of God within them.
Of set purpose, quietly and deliberately he reaffirmed this truth, and proceeded to make the application which was necessary at the moment. "Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone," that is, we ought not to imagine that we can make something like Him of something which is less than ourselves. When you make likenesses of God in gold or silver or stone, you degrade the God Whom you yet know to be the One of Whom you are the offspring. So much for the setting of the text.
I bring you this message today, although its application is a different one. Being then the offspring of God, ye ought not to degrade yourselves by being satisfied with anything less than that which Christ laid down as the supreme and final injunction of His ethic, "Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Being then the offspring of God, the one true passion of every human life ought to be to become like Him, and so to be true to the underlying fact and force of personal life.
It is a great truth, though I am inclined to say, improperly used by some people. False deductions have been made from it, and still are being made, and because improperly used by some, it is feared by others. I believe that as we see this truth individually, we shall be prepared to listen to the call of Christ to come to Him for life; as we understand this truth collectively we shall be busy in the enterprise of making known the great Evangel to the men at home and in the far distant places of the earth. I do not hesitate to say that it is this conviction which is the driving inspiration of all my life and ministry and work.
Man is the offspring of God. What is this word "off-spring"? It occurs about twenty times in the New Testament and is translated in seven ways. It is translated "race" seven times. It is translated "offspring," as in our text, three times; "kinds," three times; "kind," twice; "countrymen," twice; "stock," twice, and "kindred," once. You will at once see that running through all these words there is one thought, or one particular quantity, and it is to that I desire to draw your attention. I think perhaps we come nearer to the true sense of the Greek word here translated "offspring" by using the Latin word which has come into the common speech of today, genus. A genus includes all the species which, differing in proportion and colour, are yet of the same life essence, and there you have the thought in the word translated "off-spring."
There are three lines I shall attempt to follow. First, the evidences of Deity in humanity. Second, the failure of the Divine in the human, and, finally, the restoration of man to God. To omit any one of these is to omit something of Christian truth and doctrine. To begin by the declaration of man's restoration to that which he has never lost is illogical and foolish. To begin by declaring that man has failed to realize the possibility of his own being, and to deny the possibility is again illogical. On the other hand, to begin by declaring that man is essentially kin of God, and to deny the fact of wrong and sin and evil, is to contradict the common experience of every man who has lived an ordinary life in the midst of the things of this world. The three things are necessary if we would understand what Christ has to say to this and every age concerning man.
First, then, the evidences of Deity in humanity. When Wordsworth sang
Trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home
he sang as one of the seers. A study of humanity in the light of God's self-revelation results in an almost overwhelming mass of evidence for the kinship of man to God. The ultimate conviction of such consideration is that all the essentials of humanity are kin to Deity. Only the accidentals are unlike God. Do not read into my word accidental anything less than ought to be in it. An accident may be a tragedy, a catastrophe. Only the accidentals are unlike God. Take some few of the evidences.
You will find in every human being a passion for life. Have you ever asked yourself what the passion for life really means? How is it that everywhere, in all circumstances, in all ages, all men manifest a hunger for life; that the deep cries of humanity which are recorded for us in the simple terms of Holy Scripture are the cries of humanity everywhere; that when the young ruler looked into the face of Jesus and said "Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit age-abiding life?" he was simply speaking out of the depth of his humanity? He was saying what every man says sooner or later. Wherever you find a human being you find a being in revolt against death asking for life. What is this passion for life? It is born of the consciousness of the infinite. It is born of the fact that in the soul of man there is a profound consciousness from which he never escapes, of the fact of age-abiding life. His mind encompasses infinitely more than he can understand. He tells you he cannot grasp the thought of the infinite either as to time or space; but the man who knows a thing is unknowable has grasped that thing. In the moment when I know that I stand at the centre of infinite reaches and stretches and forces, there is born within me a passion to hold, to possess, to grasp. It is that which puts man into the attitude of revolt against death.
Wherever you go you will find men characterized by a passion for dominion. The campaigns of humanity demonstrate the truth of it. Man is forevermore attempting to win his territory and reign over it. Wherever you find me a man determined to hold the sceptre I show you one of whom the psalmist sang long ago. "Thou hast made him but little lower than God" - for dominion. The passion for dominion which is in the human heart is demonstration of man's relation to God.
Again, wherever you find man, you find a thirst for knowledge. If you have any children in your home and will listen to them you will learn wonderful lessons. You will find in those days when they are first beginning to talk that the words which most often pass their lips are "Why?" "How?" "What?" In asking these questions the child proves its capacity for knowing, and if you will follow that child through all its years, to youth and manhood and even old age, you will find it asking the same questions. Man is asking to know. He begins as a little child: "Why do flowers grow, mother?" end when he is an old man he has not answered that question unless he has listened to Christ as He says to him, "Consider the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spin, yet your Father garbs them with a glory which Solomon never knew." That is the answer. Christ summarizes all truth about knowledge when he says, "This is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and Him Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." Wherever you see a man seeking knowledge - he may be seeking it wrongfully, but the fact that he seeks it demonstrates him the offspring of God.
Again, take man's eagerness to create. All the inventions of the centuries demonstrate man's eagerness to make a new thing. The artist will tell you that art is a passion for creation. The passion for the new is always evidence of man's desire to create. It may be journalism, it may be theology. Man, foolishly, or otherwise, is after the making of something new. The passion for creation is demonstration of man's kinship to God.
Take yet another illustration. The appreciation of beauty which you will find everywhere in the world is demonstration of the same thing, whether in art, sculpture, poetry, or music. Of course, I take it for granted that no one will say to me, "What has beauty to do with God?" If you do ask that question, I remind you of the words of the ancient prophet who, in an ecstasy of worship cried out, "How great is His goodness, and how great is His beauty." The admiration of beauty is everywhere. It is demonstration of the fact that humanity is offspring of God.
Take another illustration on a higher level. Man's admiration for goodness. You say, "Is that universal?" Absolutely universal. Remember, I said "admiration"! I do not mean that all men are good. Far from it. I do mean that you cannot find me a man in all the circle of your acquaintanceship who in the deepest of him does not admire goodness. He may affect not to admire it, but in the deepest of him he knows that it is high and noble. It is there - the conviction of the goodness of goodness, the beauty of holiness.
Once again, man's capacity for love is an evidence of his relationship to Deity.
None of these things has come into human life as the result of the influence of sin, evil, and the devil. All these are found in humanity as a whole. In some measure they are found in every man. In some men someone essential is more prominent than the others. These facts are demonstrations of the truth which the poets sang and which Paul reaffirmed, that man is the offspring of God.
If I sent you away with that as the only message I should be false not only to the Bible, but to all your experience Think for a moment of the failure of the Divine in the human. When Heber sang
Where all the prospect pleases
And only man is vile,
he uttered the most tragic and awful truth. He sang a thin we would fain blot out of our hymnbooks, but we dare not. It is true. It is when I see man in his magnificence as offspring of God that I really understand his ruin. It is the sense of man's true kinship to God which reveals his awful failure as nothing else can do. Inter-human comparison may satisfy me, but this dignity of which I have been speaking demonstrates the degradation which I find all about me. If man is not kin of God in specific and special manner by creation, what is he? If he be merely of the dust and only of the dust, only so much related to God as the flowers are related to God, I quit my preaching. If that is all the truth about man, then man is doing very well: If indeed man is the outcome of the dust by the force of the one life common in the flower and man and God, then let me find an honest occupation; because man is climbing up, let me leave him to his climb. Why should I interfere? If that be true, there may still be room for the ethical cult, but the vocation of preaching the Evangel is a past vocation, and has been a ghastly mistake and an awful failure. But when I see in every human face the stamp of the image of God, and when I know that man is more kin of God than any other form of creation, then I begin to see man's degradation, and in every one of the illustrations I have taken to prove man's relation to Deity I have evidence of man's failure in that respect. Man's passion for life is confronted with the necessity for death, and he cannot by any means escape. Man's desire for dominion is defeated by a sense of slavery. The thirst for knowledge is intensified by the feverishness of agnosticism. Agnosticism never has been and never can be an intellectual resting place. No man who is an intellectual can rest there. He may have to declare his agnosticism, but it will make him more than ever restless. If he be indeed intellectual his thirst for knowledge is forever answered by a point beyond which he cannot go, until the Word of God has spoken the mystic secret in his ear.
Man's eagerness to create is ever unsatisfied in that nothing is ever new. The love of the beautiful is ever conscious of an unattained beauty, and here is the principal point, the admiration of goodness is the agony of inability to realize it. Is it true that men everywhere see how good goodness is? It is equally true as Paul wrote - and he voiced not merely a theological creed but the actual experience of life - "The good which I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I practice." If it is true that when a man takes strong drink he is engaged in a quest for God - and I believe it is true - is he finding God that way? The man stooping over the stagnant pool is seeking water, but is he finding water? Is it not unutterable folly for that man to attempt to satisfy his thirst with the water of the stagnant pool when the living streams are gushing from the rock just at hand. All these are demonstrations of a degradation which needs some power to lift it. In every human life there is this paralysis. There is the vision of goodness but no virtue that can translate the vision into history. The capacity for love is ever suffering for lack of the final centre. The sum total is failure. All fail in greater or less degree in every man. Flaming exceptions are all partial. Every demonstration of man's kinship to God is evidence of his degradation, his failure.
What message has the Christ of the New Testament to this double fact in human life? I make my answer first by saying that Christ recognizes the double fact. It was His recognition of the double fact which created the passion of His heart. When He saw the multitudes as sheep without a shepherd He saw them in their ruin, and at the back of the ruin He saw the Divine intention. Let no man imagine that he has recently discovered the fact of man's relationship to God. Christ proclaimed it long ago. He saw not merely the great capacity, He saw also its paralysis, and His heart was moved with compassion in the presence of it. The whole meaning of Christ's mission in the world is that He addressed himself to the two facts, the fact of man's kinship to God, and the fact of man's degradation. When Isaac Watts sang,
In Him the sons of Adam boast
More blessings than their father lost,
he sang a solo with all the infinite harmonies of the Evangel sounding behind and through it. Jesus confronts man in his kinship and ruin and makes possible the realization of the kinship of God by the negation of the forces of wrong which have brought man to the place of degradation. How does He do it?
First, consider this fact. The things I have said of man are true of Christ in part, but only in part. The things I said first of man are all true of Him. The things I said of man secondly are not true of Him. Remember that first of all He realized all that which man feels himself capable of by creation, and yet, never can realize in actual experience. Men feel the passion for life. Jesus possessed it so that He could say, "No one taketh it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." They are words He actually uttered. If I cannot understand aII the depth of their meaning, I can understand the first simplicity of them, and in that simplicity I find that Christ declares that no man can take His life from Him. In the laying down of it He will do it voluntarily and take it again. Did He take it again? On your answer to that question depends your relation to the Christian fact. If you say, No, then He did not rise, "Then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain … we are of all men most pitiable." If you say Yes, He did take it again, then His taking of it again demonstrates the fact that He laid it down and that no man could have taken it from Him had it not been His will to lay it down.
Man seeks dominion: He exercises dominion. Standing once upon the mountain heights, Christ said to a group of fishermen, "All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations." They started, and all the triumphs of Christianity have been won in the name and power of Christ. He rose from the dead and grasped the sceptre of universal empire.
We speak of knowledge and the desire to know. Our knowledge is limited. Jesus said, "This is the age-abiding life, to know God." He also said, "Father, I have known Thee." He possessed the ultimate secrets. We speak of the desire to create: He said, "I make all things new." We speak of man's admiration for beauty and his inability to overtake it: He declared - and the centuries demonstrate the truth of it - "I am the bright and morning star." Other men admire goodness and cannot realize it. He stands challenging the ages by His words, "Which of you convinceth Me of sin?" "I do always the things that are pleasing to Him." Other men have capacity for love. He stands in the centre, the flaming, eternal vision, and says, "I ... abide in His love." So that all man is in kinship to God by first nature, this Man is. All that man is in degradation, this Man is not. Identified with the essential human nature of the sinner, He is separated by in finite distances from all the sin of the sinner and all the limitation of knowledge resulting from the sin of the sinner. The lonely Man! But I am not saved by that fact. The contemplation of the great ideal never communicates dynamic to paralyzed man. I may gaze upon the beauty but I am not thereby transformed into it. I may see the perfection of His life, and all it does for me is to bow me to the dust in shame Have you seen it? Then do you not know it in your own experience? I say to you tonight, in the name of God, that the man who tells me that he has seen Christ, and hopes within his own life by some effort of his own to reach Him, has never seen Him.
To see the vision, to see the spotless, matchless purity, to see human life in Christ is to know how weak I am, how low I am in the scale, how far off I am from Him, it is to know the power of the poison that paralyzes me, and to cry out in agony of soul, "If that Man has done none other for me than to reveal to me the beauty of human life He leaves me upon the highway bruised and helpless."
Thank God, I have an Evangel! The Evangel tells me that this Man perfect in realization in His life entered into all the limitations resulting from sin, was numbered with the transgressors in birth and baptism, and all the circumstances of poverty and pain, and yet I am not so saved, for by sympathy no man can save his brother. I follow Him reverently until I see Him in the hour of a great cross - a cross that grows upon my vision in its height and depth, and in the wide sweep of its outstretched arms, the cross upon which I once saw the Galilean carpenter, but upon which I now see God manifest in flesh. There in the mystery of that cross I know that He has entered into the very place of the ultimate issue of my sin. When you are told that we of the Evangelical faith declare that one man by dying saved the race, say it is not true. We make no such affirmation. We do affirm that the one lonely Personality in all the ages Who was man and God, God and man, God-man, God manifest, by dying provided plenteous redemption for the whole race. There in the cross, in which there is wrought out into visibility the eternal verities which I never could have known otherwise, I see how I, kin of God, yet ruined, may lift my face again toward the light, for by the sacred, hallowed, overwhelming mystery of the cross I have life.
Every man is capable of Deity. When Christ calls He calls to the deepest in man. No man can realize the possibility of his first creation who has once sinned a sin that leads him into distance and paralysis, save as he is born again, born anew of the Spirit, and as he abandons himself to the grace of God.”
Martin Luther said, “This is the fallacy of composition and division. In the major premise you divide the human nature and the divine; in the minor premise you join them. This is a philosophical solution; but we are speaking theologically. I deny the consequence, for this reason, that in Christ the humanity and the divinity constitute one person. But these two natures are distinct in theology, with respect, that is, to the natures, but not with respect to [secundum] the person. For then they are undivided [indistinctae], but two distinct natures, yet belonging to an undivided person [indistinctae personae]. There are not two distinct persons, but what is distinct is undivided [sed sunt distinctae indistinctae], that is, there are distinct natures, but an undivided person.”
Among Scriptures that declare or explain His Divinity:
Jhn 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Jhn 10:30, “I and the Father are ONE.”
Jhn 14:6, “Jesus said to him, “I AM the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Among the Scriptures that explain His humanity:
Mar 4:38, “And yet Jesus Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke Him and said to Him, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?”
Jhn 4:6, “and Jacob’s well was there. So Jesus, tired from His journey, was just sitting by the well. It was about the sixth hour.”
Mar 11:12, “On the next day, when they had left Bethany, He became hungry.”
IV. HIS MISSION
Jesus was sent. The Father sent His Son. God sent Jesus. Jesus stressed this again and again, “He sent Me.” We must emphasize what Jesus emphasizes. His works include His mission, His healing and His miracles, His preaching and teaching.
Mat 1:21, “She will give birth to a Son; and you shall
name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”
Mat 11:2, “Now while in prison, John heard about the Works of Christ, and he sent word by his disciples.”
Mat 15:24, “But He answered and said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Mat 10:40, “The one who receives you receives Me, and the one who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.”
Mar 9:37, “Whoever receives one child like this in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me does not receive Me, but Him who sent Me.”
Mar 12:6, “He had one more man to send, a beloved son; He sent Him to them last of all, saying, ‘They will respect my Son.'
Luk 4:18, “THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME,
BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO BRING GOOD
NEWS TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE
THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED.”
Luk 4:43, “But He said to them, “I must also preach
the Kingdom of God to the other cities, because I was sent for this purpose.”
Luk 10:16, “The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me; but the one who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me.”
Jhn 3:34, “For He whom God sent speaks the Words
of God; for He does not give the Spirit sparingly.”
Jhn 4:34, “Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His Work.”
Jhn 5:23, “so that all will honor the Son just as they honor the Father. The one who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.”
Jhn 5:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the one who hears My Word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”
According to https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/ryl/john-5.html
“v24.—[Verily, verily, I say.] Here, as in other places, these words are the preface to a saying of more than ordinary solemnity and importance.
[He that heareth my word.] The "hearing" here is much more than mere listening, or hearing with the ears. It means hearing with the heart, hearing with faith, hearing accompanied by obedient discipleship. He that so hears the doctrine, teaching, or "word" of Christ, hath life. It is such hearing as that of the true sheep: "My sheep hear my voice," (John 10:27,) or as that spoken of by Paul: "Ye have not so learned Christ, if so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him." (Ephesians 4:20-21.)
[Believeth on Him that sent Me.] This must not be supposed to mean that a vague faith in God, such as the Deist professes to have, is the way to everlasting life. The belief spoken of is a believing on God in Christ,—a believing on God as the God who sent Christ to save sinners,—a believing on God as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has planned and provided redemption by the blood of His Son. He who so believes on God the Father, is the same man that believes in God the Son. In this sense the Father is just as much the object of saving faith as the Son. Thus we read, "It shall be imputed if we believe on him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead." (Romans 4:24.) And again, "Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God." (1 Peter 1:21.) He that rightly believes on Christ as his Saviour, with the same faith believes in God as his reconciled Father. The Gospel that invites the sinner to believe in Jesus as his Redeemer and Advocate, invites him at the same time to believe in the Father, who is "well pleased" with all who trust in His Son.
Henry remarks, "Christ’s design is to bring us to God. (1 Peter 3:18.) As God is the first original of all grace, so is He the ultimate object of all faith. Christ is our way, and God is our rest. We must believe on God as having sent Jesus Christ, and recommended Himself to our faith and love, by manifesting His glory in the face of Jesus Christ."
Lightfoot remarks, "He doth most properly center the ultimate fixing and resting of belief in God the Father. For as from Him, as from a fountain, do flow all those things that are the object of faith,—namely free grace; the gift of Christ, the way of redemption, the gracious promises,—so unto Him as to that fountain doth faith betake itself in its final resting and repose,—namely to God in Christ."
Chemnitius remarks, that the expression "believe on Him who sent me," shows "that true faith embraces the word of the Gospel, not as something thought out by Christ alone, but as something decreed in the secret counsel of the whole Trinity."
[Hath everlasting life.] This means that he possesses a complete title to an everlasting life of glory hereafter, and is reckoned pardoned, forgiven, justified, and an heir of heaven, even now upon earth. His soul is delivered from the second death.—The "presentness" of the expression should be carefully noticed. Everlasting life is the present possession of every true believer, from the moment he believes. It is not a thing he shall have at last. He has it at once, even in this world. "All that believe are justified."—"Being justified by faith we have peace with God." (Acts 13:39; Romans 5:1.)
[Shall not come into condemnation.] The Greek word for "come" is in the present tense, and it would be more literally rendered "does not come." The meaning is, there is no condemnation for him. His guilt is removed even now. He has nothing to fear in looking forward to the judgment of the last day. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus."—"He that believeth on Him is not condemned." (Romans 8:1; John 3:18.)
I cannot see in these words any warrant for the notion held by some, that the saints of God shall not be judged at the last day in any way at all. The notion itself is so utterly contradictory to some plain texts of Scripture (2 Corinthians 5:10; Romans 14:10; Matthew 25:31-40), that I cannot understand any one holding it. But even in the text before us, it seems to me a violent straining of the words to apply them to the judgment-day. The thing our Lord is speaking of is the present privilege of a believer. The tense He uses, as Chemnitius bids us specially observe, is the present and not the future. And even supposing that the words do apply to the judgment-day, the utmost that can be fairly made of them is, that a believer has no condemnation to fear at the last day. Judged according to his works he shall be. Condemned he may certainly feel assured he shall not be. From the day he believes, all his condemnation is taken away.
Ecolampadius remarks how irreconcilable this verse is with the Romish doctrine of purgatory.
[But is passed from death to life.] This means that a believer has passed from a state of spiritual death to a state of spiritual life. Before he believed, he was dead legally,—dead as a guilty criminal condemned to die. In the day that he believed he received a free and full pardon. His sentence was reversed and put away. Instead of being legally dead, he became legally alive.—But this is not all. His heart, which was dead in sins, is now renewed, and alive unto God. There is a change in his character as well as in his position toward God. Like the prodigal son, he "was dead and is alive." (Luke 15:24.)
We should mark carefully the strong language of Scripture in describing the immense difference between the position of a man who believes, and the man who does not believe. It is nothing else than the difference between life and death,—between being dead and being alive. Whatever some may think fit to say about the privileges of baptism, we must never shrink from maintaining, that so long as men do not hear Christ’s voice and believe,—so long they are dead, whether baptized or not, and have no life in them. Faith, not baptism, is the turning point. He that has not yet believed is dead, and must be born again. When he believes, and not till then, he will pass from death to life.
Ferus remarks, "Although it seems very easy to believe, and many think they do believe when they have only heard the name of believing,—supposing that to believe is the same as to understand, to remember, to know, to think,—yet this believing is in truth a hard and difficult thing. It is easy to fast, to say prayers, to go on pilgrimage, to give alms and the like; but to believe is a thing impossible to our strength. Let superstitious people learn that God requires of us a far higher and more difficult kind of worship than they imagine. Let pious people learn to seek faith more than anything, saying,—Lord, increase our faith."
Jhn 5:30, “I can do nothing on My own. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of Him who sent Me.”
Jhn 5:36, “But the testimony I have is greater than the testimony of John; for the works which the Father has given Me to accomplish—the very works that I do—testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me.”
No prophet was sent to be the Savior, the Redeemer.
Jhn 5:37, “And the Father who sent Me, He has testified about Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form.”
Jhn 5:38, “Also you do not have His Word remaining
in you, because you do not believe Him whom He sent.”
Jhn 6:29, “Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”
Father, I do believe in Jesus Whom You have sent.
Jhn 6:38, “For I have come down from Heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”
Jhn 6:39, “And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of everything that He has given Me I will lose nothing, but will raise it up on the last day.”
Jhn 6:44, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Jhn 6:57, “Just as the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, the one who eats Me, he also will live because of Me.”
Jhn 7:16, “So Jesus answered them and said, “My teaching is not My own, but His who sent Me.”
Jhn 7:18, “The one who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”
Jhn 7:28, “Then Jesus cried out in the temple, teaching and saying, “You both know Me and you know where I am from; and I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know.”
Jhn 7:29, “I do know Him, because I am from Him, and He sent Me.”
Jhn 7:33, “Therefore Jesus said, “For a little while
longer I am going to be with you, and then I am going to Him who sent Me.”
Jhn 8:16, “But even if I do judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone in it, but I and the Father who sent Me.”
Jhn 8:18, “I am He who testifies about Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies about Me.”
Jhn 8:26, “I have many things to say and to judge
regarding you, but He who sent Me is true; and the things which I heard from Him, these I say to the world.”
Jhn 8:29, “And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.”
Jhn 8:42, “Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I came forth from God and am here; for I have not even come on My own, but He sent Me.”
Jhn 9:4, “We must carry out the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.”
All these Scriptures cited above testify to the important truth that the Father sent His Son.
Act 3:26, “God raised up His Servant for you first, and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.”
THE PURPOSE OF THE ADVENT: 1. To Destroy the Works of the Devil by G. CAMPBELL MORGAN
To this end was the Son of God manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.
1 John 3:8
The importance of the subject cannot be overstated. The whole teaching of Holy Scripture places the Advent at the centre of the methods of God with a sinning race. Toward that Advent everything moved until its accomplishment, finding therein fulfilment and explanation. The messages of the prophets, seers, and the songs of psalmists trembled with more or less certainty toward the final music which announced Jesus' coming. All the results of these partial and broken messages of the past led toward the Advent. It is equally true that from that Advent all subsequent movements have proceeded, depending upon it for direction and dynamic. The writings which we have in the Gospel stories are all concerned with the coming of Christ, with His mission and His message. The last book of the Bible is a book the true title of which The Unveiling of the Christ. Not only the actual messages which have been bound up in this one Divine Library, but all the results issuing from them are finally results issuing from this selfsame coming of Christ. It is surely important therefore that we should understand its purposes in the economy of God.
There is a fourfold statement of purpose which I pro-pose to make. The purpose to destroy the works of the devil, the purpose to put away sin, the purpose to reveal the Father, the purpose to establish by another Advent the Kingdom of God in the world.
In dealing first with the purpose to destroy the works of the devil I am attempting to follow the order of historic appreciation. There is a sense in which these purposes go forward concurrently, the destruction of the works of the devil, the taking away of sin, the unveiling of the face of the Father and the administration of the Kingship of God toward consummation. In yet another sense we may state the order of these things differently. We may say that He came first to reveal the Father, then to deal with sin, presently by way of the second Advent to set up the Kingdom in the world, and ultimately and finally to destroy the works of the devil. I think, as I have already intimated, that so far as historic appreciation of the purposes of God is concerned, I have suggested to you the true order. To the men of Christ's own age, both those who yielded to Him and those who rebelled against Him, He was first of all a reformer - and I pray you do not interpret the meaning of that word "reformer" by those who have followed in His wake or those who preceded Him, but gather all your thought of it from what He was in Himself - a soul in conflict with all that was contrary to the purposes of God in individual, social, national, racial life.
Such was Christ, and there is a sense in which when we have said this we have stated the whole meaning of His coming. His revelation of the Father was toward this end; His putting away of sin was a part of this very process, and His second Advent will be for the complete and final overthrow of all the works of the devil.
Confining ourselves, however, to the simplest meaning of this particular passage, let us notice, first of all, John's description of the Advent. He does not say, "For this purpose, or to this end, was Jesus of Nazareth born." That would be true, but only part of the truth.
Remember, there can be no question as to Whom John referred when he said "the Son of God." We all know that he was writing of the One of Whom he always wrote. We are taken back irresistibly, however, to words at the beginning of John's Gospel and Epistle. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ... and the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us." "That which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled." It is impossible to read these words and imagine they are wholly or exclusively spiritual statements. John is most carefully defining the Person. In all the writings of John it is evident that his eyes are fixed upon the man Jesus. Occasionally he does not even name Jesus, does not even refer to Him by a personal pronoun, but indicates Him by a word you can use only when you are looking at an object or a person. For instance, "That which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled." Upon another occasion John said, "He that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself also to walk even as that One walked." It is always the method of expression of a man who is looking at a Person. Forevermore the actual human Person of Christ was present to the mind of John as he wrote of Him. How intimate he had been with Him we all know. One of the most tender and beautiful things in all the story of the life of Jesus is the story of John's love for Him, pure human affection for Him. The other disciples loved Him in a sense, and I do not undervalue their love, but it was of a different tone and quality from that of John. You cannot imagine Peter getting very intimately near to Christ. There was something of distance, of breeze and bluster, and of beauty, about the love of Peter. He would be quite content to talk to Jesus across the table, but John must get close to Him and lay his head upon His bosom. There was none of the disciples so intimately associated with the actual human personality of Jesus as John. When John refers to Him it is always in words that thrill and throb with the warm tenderness of human consciousness, of human friendship. Yet there is not one of you here who does not know that if I said no more I would not have uttered half the truth. If John the mystic, the lover, laid his head upon the human bosom of the Man of Nazareth, he heard the beating of the heart of God. If he laid his hand upon Jesus when he talked to Him he knew that beneath the warm touch of the human flesh there beat the mystic majesty of Deity. "That which our hands handled, concerning the Word of life." Mark the contradiction of it in this materialistic age of ours. Can you handle a word? Can you handle life? Yet John says, "This is what we have done." He is perfectly conscious of the flesh, but supremely conscious of the mystic Word veiled in flesh and shining through it. He is perfectly conscious of the human and gets thereby to Deity. So that when John comes to write of this One he speaks of Him as "the Son of God." He remembers the warmth of His bosom, the gentleness of His touch, the love-lit glory of His eyes, but He is "the Son of God."
The word "manifested" presupposes existence prior to manifestation. In the Man of Nazareth there was manifestation of One Who had existed long before the Man of Nazareth.
The incarnation was not an act by which God began to be in any single sense. It was not an act by which God came into nearness to human life. It was an act by which God manifested His nearness to human life, and by which manifestation He was able to do in human life and in human history things He could not have done apart from that selfsame method of manifestation. "To this end was the Son of God manifested."
Now we come to the statement of purpose. The person referred to, the devil. The things to be destroyed, the works of the devil. The purpose declared, to destroy the works of the devil.
The enemy is described here as the devil. I want to take other passages from the writings of John and let their light fall upon this name. In the eighth chapter of John's Gospel it is recorded that Jesus, using this very name, declares of the devil that "he was a murderer from the beginning ... he is a liar." A little further on in the Gospel it is declared it was he who put it into the heart of Judas to betray Christ. I read in the context of my text that he is the fountainhead of sin, the lawless one. Gather up these thoughts concerning this personality - murderer, liar, betrayer, the fountainhead of sin, himself missing the mark because of lawlessness - and it will immediately be manifest what his works are. The work of the murderer is destruction of life. The work of the liar is the extinguishing of light. The work of the betrayer is the violation of love. The work of the arch-sinner is the breaking of the law. These are the works of the devil. First, as to the destruction of life, for he is a murderer. This consists fundamentally in the destruction of life on its highest level, which is the spiritual. Alienation from God is the devil's work. It is also death on the level of the mental. Vision which fails to include God is practical blindness. On the physical plane, all disease and all pain are ultimately results of sin and are among the works of the devil. These things all lie within the realm of his work as a murderer, destroyer of human life. The Greek word might perhaps be translated more forcefully "man-slayer." He is the slayer of man, in the spiritual, which is supreme; in the mental which marks consciousness, whether spiritual or material; in the body, which is the instrument of the spirit, whether for good or evil. The man-slayer is one who comes in to spoil humanity, to rob it of its life, to blind it spiritually toward God, to limit it mentally because of the blindness of the spiritual, and to bring into it all manner of disease and death in the physical realm.
He is more. He is the liar and to him is due the extinguishing of light, so that men blunder along the way. All ignorance, all despair, all wandering over the trackless deserts of life, are due to the extinction of spiritual light in the mind of man. I can quite imagine someone saying, "You are going outside the realm of what is true when you declare that all ignorance is the devil's work." I abide by that statement, perhaps for reasons which are not ordinarily advanced or held. I will make one contrast in your mind tonight. I claim that in this Man of Nazareth as pure man there was an utter absence of ignorance. His thinking was perfectly clear. He as man saw right through to the heart of mystery, and that because He was never brought under the dominion of sin, never brought under the dominion of the evil one, was able in His life perpetually to rebut every advance of the prince of darkness, who is a liar from the beginning. I am not merely speaking of Him as One infallible in spiritual things. I believe He was also absolutely infallible in other things. I am asked today if I imagine that Jesus knew the laws of nature by the discovery of which in recent years men have made such rapid progress. Yes, absolutely. He knew everyone. I am asked if I believe that He understood the mystery of electricity. Yes. Then you say, "Why did He not tell the race?" The race was not ready for the knowledge. What is true in the spiritual realm is true also in the scientific. He had many things to say which men were then not able to bear. I for one have no part or lot in the view of Christ that He was scientifically half ignorant, while spiritually infallible. You say, "Then He was not upon our level." He was not upon our level. No perfect man was ever upon our level. There was in Him no sin, no darkness, no limitation, and you have one gleam of this fact in the impression He produced upon the men of His own age. He went up to Jerusalem and was talking in the midst of men of culture and men of light and leading, in the midst of the school men. What did they say of Him? "How knoweth this Man letters, having never learned?" "Whence hath this Man the accent of the school, never having been to school? How is it that this Man in His teaching is most evidently familiar with the things we have obtained through strife and difficulty?" They did not answer their question. Men today cannot answer their question, save as they recognize that here was a Man never having learned yet knowing, and seeing clearly to the heart of things. I go back from that illustration, which is in some sense a digression, and yet I think you see its purpose. All ignorance is the result of the clouding of man's vision of God. "This is life eternal," age-abiding life, high life, deep life, broad life, long life, comprehensive life, "that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." The proportion in which man knows God is the proportion in which he sees clearly to the heart of things. You say, "How is it that Christian people have not been able to see these things? How is it that the great discoveries of science have not been made by Christian people?" I would have you remember first that the discoveries of science have always been made in a Christian atmosphere. In the second place, the redemptive work of Christ will not be perfected in humanity until that mysterious morning of His second Advent, when we shall have our new bodily powers as well as our new spiritual powers, and when man is wholly restored to God. Let me say this as superlatively as I believe it. In that day manhood will laugh at the foolish pride of this day, which thinks it understands this world. Sinning man has but scratched upon the surface of the infinite mysteries of this world. By and by, when the redemptive work of Christ has been perfected in man, and in the world, we shall find that all ignorance is banished and man has found his way into light. But the liar, the one who brings darkness, has made his works far spread o'er all the face of humanity, and all ignorance and resultant despair and all wandering aimlessly in every realm of life are due to the work of the one whom Jesus designated a liar from the beginning.
Again, the violation of love, as a work of the devil, is seen supremely in the way he entered into the heart of Judas and made him the betrayer. All the avarice you find in the world today and all the jealousy and all the cruelty are the works of the devil.
Finally, He is the supreme sinner. Sin is lawlessness, which does not mean the condition of being without law, but the condition of being against law, breaking law. So that all wrong done to God in His world, all wrong done by man to man, all wrong done by man to himself, are works of the devil.
To summarize them, death, darkness, hatred, find them where you will, are works of the devil.
The Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil. If at the beginning we saw Him as a soul in conflict with all these things, remember that was an indication of the program and a prophecy of the purpose. The Advent which we celebrate was not merely the birth of a little child in whom we were to learn the secret of childhood and in whom presently we were to see the glories of manhood. All that is true; but it was the happening in the course of human events of that one thing through which God Himself is able to destroy the works of the devil.
"To destroy." What is this word? It is a word which means to dissolve, to loosen. It is the very same word that is used in the Apocalypse about loosing us from our sins; or, if you will be more graphic, it is the word used in the Acts of the Apostles when you read that the ship was broken to pieces; loosed, dissolved, that which had been a consistent whole was broken up and scattered and wrecked. The word "destroyed" may be perfectly correct, but let us understand it. He was manifested for what? to do a work in human history the result of which should be that the works of the devil would lose their consistency. The cohesive force that makes them appear stable until this moment He came to loosen and dissolve. He was manifested to destroy hatred by the gift of love. He was manifested to destroy lawlessness by the gift of law. He was manifested to loosen, to break up, to destroy the negatives which spoil, by bringing the positive that remakes and uplifts.
He was manifested to destroy the works of the devil as to death by the gift of life. This means first spiritual life, which is fellowship with God. It means also mental life, the vision of the open secret. Not yet perfectly do we understand, but already the trusting soul in this house, utterly devoid of education, hears more in the wind at eventide, and sees more in the blossoming of the flowers than any scientific man. Was it not Huxley who said that if our ears were but acute enough we would hear the flowers grow. You say that is a purely scientific statement. I know it is, and science, in the last analysis, is spiritual. Christ has so far invaded the world that the men who do not name His name are beginning to spell out this great truth. The merely physical scientist of a generation ago has passed never to return. I hear of whitening dawns of psychological investigation, but what does it mean? That men are gradually beginning to hear the singing. There is no simple-hearted child of God in this house but that looking into a flower sees the face of God. I think, perchance, I have told you here before of something that happened in my boyhood's days which I have never forgotten. There came to my father's house a young fellow who had been led to Christ but recently in one of my father's meetings. One day he took me down the garden - I was but eight years old - and he plucked a nasturtium leaf, and putting it in his hand he said, "Look at this." Boy-like, I thought he had found a great curiosity, and hurried to see it. I did not see what he saw. The day came when, by the grace of God, I saw it also. He said, "See, is not God beautiful?" For me, you may take all your botanists if you will give me that man with the leaf in his hand. That is not imagination. It is the open secret. It is what Carlyle called the great significance shining through. Mrs. Barrett Browning was right -
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes -
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
How many there are in the "rest"!
He who sees has the true intellectual vision, which Christ has bestowed in His gift of life. "This is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God." The gift of life was to destroy death, and the man who has His gift of life laughs in the face of death, laughs triumphantly, and - yes, I will say it - makes fun of death! Do not misunderstand me - I mean for himself, never of the sorrow which comes to the bereaved. I still believe, say what you will, that there was laughter in the Apostle's tone when he said, "O death, where is thy sting?" As though he had said, "What hast thou done with thy sting, death? What hast thou done with thy victory? I trembled in thy presence once, O rider upon the pale horse, but now I laugh in thy face, for thy paleness has become the glistening white of an angel of light." So He destroys the works of the devil by giving the gift of life which destroys death.
As for darkness, this is intimately associated with the thing already said, the gift of light; but remember light always comes out of life. If there be death then there is no vision. If there be life there is light. Light means knowledge and hope and guidance, so that there is no more wandering aimlessly. By bringing light into human life and into the world Christ has destroyed the works of the devil.
As for hatred, He destroys hatred by His gift of love, benevolence - and I am not using the word idly as we often do; I am using it in all its rich, spacious, gracious meaning - benevolence, well-willing, self-abnegation, kindness in the Apostle's sense of the word who, when writing to the Galatians, gives kindness as one of the qualities of love, the specific doing of small things out of pure love. All these things are things by which the works of the devil are being destroyed. Hatred, avarice, jealousy, selfishness, how are these things destroyed? By shedding abroad love which is the warmth of life, as light is its illumination. By these things He destroys the works of the devil.
As for lawlessness, this Jesus destroys by the gift of law, passion for the rights of God, service to my fellow men, the finding of self in the great abnegation, and the finding of self in perfect freedom because I have become the bond-slave of the infinite Lord of Love. The works of the devil, what are they? Death working within us, the spirit that is against truth and light, the darkness of ignorance. The spirit of hatred and malice, avarice and jealousy and the whole unholy brood of things which are unlike God, lawlessness lying at the base of all, the refusal to submit, these are the works of the devil. Nineteen centuries ago the Son of God was manifested, and during those centuries in the lives of hundreds, thousands, He has destroyed the works of the devil, mastered death by the gift of life, cast darkness out by the incoming of light, turned the selfishness of avarice and jealousy into love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness. He has taken hold of lawless men and made them into the willing, glad bond-servants of God. So has He destroyed the works of the devil.
Do not forget the meaning of the Advent historically. It was the invasion of human history by One who snatched the sceptre from the usurper. It was the intrusion of forces into human history which dissolved the consistency of the works of the devil, and causes them to break and fail. "How long, O Lord, how long?" is the cry of the heart of the saint today. Yet take heart as you look back and know that force has operated for nineteen centuries and always toward consummation. Still, the works of the devil are manifest, the works of the flesh are manifest. Yes, but the fruit of the Spirit of life which has come through the Advent of Christ is also manifest. All over the world today on many a branch of the vine of the Father's planting the rich clusters of fruit are to be found. All, so far, is but preliminary. It is twilight only. High noon has not yet arrived; but it is twilight, and noon must come. What the Advent has wrought it will still work. That which it has accomplished in the face of opposition it will accomplish. That which has dissolved the vested and established evils proves to my heart the certainty of the ultimate victory. I tell you that if we have but eyes anointed to see we shall discover the fact that all the works of the devil in the world are wrapped about by the slow burning fires that came when the Son of God was manifested that He might loosen, dissolve, destroy the works of the devil.
The last word is to be personal. The Advent personally was the coming of the Stronger than the strong men armed. It was the coming of One to destroy the works of the devil in my own life. Are they not destroyed? Are they not shaken to their foundations? Are they still established in the fiber of your being? Do you know as you sit in this house tonight that the works of the devil, death, darkness, hatred and rebellion are the master forces of your being? Then I bring you the Evangel. I tell you of One manifested to destroy all such works. I tell you not merely as a theory, but as having the testimony of history attesting the truth of the announcement of my text. I do not move you by that! Suffer me, then, to tell you as a word of personal and actual experience: not that in me the victory is perfectly won, not that the Master's work is accomplished, but that in me, solemnly, I bear the testimony, the forces of this Christ have operated and are operating, and the things that were formerly established are loosened and are falling to decay. He was manifested to destroy the works of the devil. If tonight you are in the grip of forces of evil, if you realize that in your life his works are the things of strength, then I pray you turn with full purpose of heart to the One manifested long ago, Who is here now, Who, in all the power of His gracious victory, will destroy in you all the works of the devil and set you free.”
THE PURPOSE OF THE ADVENT: 2. To Take Away Sins by G. CAMPBELL MORGAN
Ye know that He was manifested to take away sins; and in Him is no sin.
"If the works of the devil are death, darkness, hatred and lawlessness, the one word "sin" expresses all these things for us. Sin is due to death and issues in death, that is, death as separation from the life of God, Sin is due to darkness - the carnal mind which cannot see the things of God - issues in yet denser darkness. Sin is due to hatred - the man continuing in sin continues a carnal man, not knowing God, is at enmity with God - and issues in yet profounder hatred. Or, comprehensively, it may be stated that sin - is due to lawlessness as a principle expressing itself in lawlessness as an activity. Thus in our text we get nearer to an understanding of the purpose of the Advent as it touches our human need.
The simple and all inclusive theme which the text suggests is, first, that the purpose of the Advent was the taking away of sins, and secondly, that the process of accomplishment is that of the Advent.
Let us first, then, take the purpose as declared. "He was manifested to take away sins." In order to understand it we must take the terms in all their simplicity, and be very careful to find what they really mean. "To take away sins." What is intended by this word "sins"? The sum total of all lawless acts - the thought is incomprehensible as to numbers. I think I shall carry you with me when I say that there is no human being here who would care to have the task allotted to him of counting up his own lawless acts. If the thought is indeed incomprehensible as to numbers let us remember that in the midst of that which overwhelms us in our thinking are our own actual sins. The actual sins which we cannot enumerate are nevertheless included in this declaration of purpose. For a moment postpone the activity of your mind which suggests difficulties as to how anyone can do such a thing as this; leave out of the question the whole thought of process and simply face the avowed declaration of purpose "manifested to take away sins." "Sins," missings of the mark, whether wilful missings of the mark or missings of the mark through ignorance, does not at present matter. The word includes all those thoughts and words and deeds in which we have missed the mark of the Divine purpose and the Divine ideal: those things which stand between man and God, so that man becomes afraid of God because he recognizes that in his sins he has violated the Divine purpose and broken the Divine law; those things which stand between man and his fellow man, so that man becomes afraid of his fellow man, knowing that he has wronged him in some direction; those things which stand between man and his own success. Call them failures if you will, call them by any name you please, so that you understand the intention of the word.
When John the Baptist looked upon Jesus, he said, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." There he used the same word but in the singular. There he referred to the principle manifesting itself in lawless acts. He used a word which includes all sins, and therefore is, in some senses, the profounder word, and yet in our text we understand the writer to mean that the Advent was in order to the taking away of all acts of lawlessness springing out of the attitude of lawlessness, of all practice of wrong-doing issuing from the principle of wrong life.
Let us now examine the phrase "to take away." This is a statement of result, not a declaration of process. There is a marginal reading which says "to bear sins," and in the Gospel of John there is also a marginal reading, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away," or "beareth the sin of the world." These words are not incorrect if we are very careful to understand what they really mean. The Hebrew equivalent of the word "taketh away" is found in that familiar story of the scapegoat. It was provided that this animal should be driven away to the wilderness, "unto a solitary land." This suggested that sins should be lifted from one and placed upon another, and by that one carried away out of experience, out of consciousness. That is the simple signification of this declaration, "He was manifested to bear sins." If you take this word and track it back - not always a safe process, but here, I think, a helpful one - to its root meaning, it is, "He was manifested to lift sins." He was manifested in order that He might come into relationship with human life, and passing underneath the load of human sins lift them, take them away.
Either this is the most glorious Gospel that man has ever heard, or the greatest delusion to which man has ever listened. I care nothing, for the moment, about your theological tendencies, or convictions, or prejudices - you may choose your own word! What I do care about is that there is in the heart of every man and woman in this house a consciousness of sin. No one of us would be prepared to say, "I have never deliberately done the thing I knew I ought not to do." That is consciousness of sin. You may attempt to excuse it. You may even say that it does not much matter, that the sin was the result of some infirmity of the flesh. You may even go so far as to say that the fact that you have repeatedly done the thing you knew was not the right thing was simply part of a process in which you were learning not to do it. So ingenious is the human heart that it will attempt to excuse itself by all kinds of fallacies. I do not believe there is a single person here who will deny the charge - if you deny the arguments I care nothing.
I will go one step further, and declare that in the deepest of you, in the best of you - again notwithstanding theological opinions, or prejudices, or convictions, as you choose - the one thing you hate most of all in your past is your own sin. You may affect to excuse it. You may be ready to argue with me as to the reason for it and the issue of it, but, if you could, you would undo it. If you could make it not to be, there are some here tonight who would be ready to sacrifice right hand or right eye. You may profess to have turned your back upon these evangelical truths which we declare, and yet you know you have sinned, and you wish you had not.
Passing for a moment from that outer fringe of men and women, who are somewhat careless about the matter, to the souls who are in agony concerning it - to the men and women who know their sin and loathe it, to the men and women who carry the consciousness of wrongs done in past years as a perpetual burden upon their souls - and there are many of them who have never confessed it, who have never spoken to another soul about it, but nevertheless hate the memory of their own sins - I say that to such, a declaration like this is the cruellest word or the kindest that can be uttered. Cruel if it be false, kind indeed with the kindness of the heart of God if it be true. If somewhere, and somewhen, and somehow, in human history One was manifested to lift sins and bear them away; if by some means I can find some just and honourable peace of conscience notwithstanding sins and sin, then have I found blessing greater than any man can give me. I dismiss for the moment for the sake of my argument not only the outer fringe but also the inner circle of burdened souls, and I speak as a witness. Turning aside from advocacy, I bear testimony that if it be true, that He was manifested somehow, in some deep mystery that I shall never perfectly understand, in order to get beneath my sins, my sins, my thought of impurity, my words of bitterness, my unholy deeds, and lift them and bear them away - that is the one Evangel I long for more than all. More valuable to me, a sinner, than anything else that He can do for me is this.
In order that this great purpose of the Advent, as declared, may be more powerfully and better understood, let us reverently turn to the indication of the process which we have in this particular text, for while the supreme value of the text last week was its unveiling of the purpose of the Advent in victory gained over the enemy of the race, I am inclined to think that the supreme value of this declaration of purpose is its indication of process. "He was manifested to take away sins." Notice the Person referred to. "He was manifested." Who was the Person? "Ye know," says John, "that He was manifested." The reference certainly is to some One. If you go back over this chapter you come presently to the statement, "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him." Whom? The same Person is being referred to as in my text. I go back a little further and read, "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God: and such we are. For this cause the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not." Whom? I go yet further back, into the preceding chapter, and trace my way until I come to the twenty-third verse, "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also." You cannot read the context of this text without seeing that, in the thinking of the man who wrote it, there is identity between God and the Son. It is perfectly evident that John here, as always, has his eye fixed upon the Man of Nazareth, and yet it is equally evident that he is looking through Jesus of Nazareth to God. That is the meaning of his word "manifested" here. It is the Word made flesh. It is flesh, but it is the Word. It is something that John had appreciated by the senses, and yet it is Someone Whom John knew pre-eminently by the Spirit. When he says in this same letter, "Everyone that hath this hope set on Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure," he means hope set on God finally, on the Son by manifestation. So that the Person who is presented to our view here is that One Who in human life was the manifestation of God Himself. "He was manifested." He was before manifestation. Who was He before manifestation? Because Whosoever He was before manifestation, He was in manifestation; and Whosoever He was before manifestation and in manifestation, He was in the taking away of sins.
Notice that after John makes the affirmation, "He was manifested to take away sins," he adds this great word, "In Him is no sin." Will you let me put that into another form? Let me render the actual word of John in slightly different terms, "Missing of the mark was not in Him." The One in Whom there was no missing of the mark was manifested for the express purpose of lifting, bearing away, making not to be, the missings of the mark of others. Mark that declaration of the eternal and essential sinlessness of the One Who came. We can interpret the language of John only by the teaching of John; so without apology I take you back again to the introductory word in his Gospel, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." No missing of the mark was in Him. He was sinless through all the unmeasured and immeasurable ages. "In Him was life; and the life was the light of men" - all created things springing from the energy of that mysterious One in Whom was no sin, in Whom was no missing of the mark in the mystery of creation. "All things have been made by Him"; that is continuity of activity in creation. In Him, the Upholder as well as the Creator, there was no missing of the mark. Presently "The Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the Only Begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." In Him was no missing of the mark. Presently we see Him yielding Himself to death, and even there, in the hour of His death, there was no missing of the mark. Through resurrection, by way of ascension at this moment at the centre of the universe of God, the same Person, and in Him is no missing of the mark.
"He was manifested" - and in the name of God I charge you do not read into the "He" anything small or narrow. If you do you will at once be driven into the place of having to deny the declaration that He can take away sins. If He was man as I am man merely, then though He be perfect and sinless He cannot take away sins. If into the "He" you will read all that John evidently meant according to the testimony of his own writing, from which alone I have been making my quotations - if you will read into it all John meant, "He," the Word made flesh, in Whom was no missing of the mark before or after He was manifested to take away sins, you begin to see something of the stupendous idea, and something of the possibility at least of believing the declaration that "He was manifested to take away sins."
Consider the manifestation and sins, as to man. The terms of the promise of the Advent were, "Thou shalt call His name Jesus; for it is He that shall save His people from their sins." From hell? Certainly, but I pray you remember, only by saving them from their sins. From the punishment of sin, because from sin itself. That was the great word, "He shall save His people from their sins." When the songs to which the shepherds listened were heard, what said they? "There is born to you this day ... a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." The promise of the Advent was that of the coming of One to lift sins.
During the probation of the long years this Person was meeting all the forces of human temptation and overcoming them. I think we may accurately and reverently speak of the long years of probation as testing years, years in which there was being wrought out into human visibility the fact of the sinlessness of the Son of God.
During His life and ministry what were the words of Jesus? Words revealing the meaning of sin. Words calculated to rebuke sin and to bring men away from sin. What were the works of Jesus? By works I mean miracles and signs and wonders. They were chiefly works overtaking the results of sin. You tell me that the miracles of Jesus were supernatural. I tell you they were always restorations of the unnatural to natural positions. When He cured disease it was not a supernatural thing, but the restoration of man to the normal physical condition. He was taking away the results of sin. So all along the line of His miracles of healing and His calling back out of death He manifested His power. I see Him forevermore in grips with sin, showing men tentatively, not yet finally, how He had power to lift sins. Once, in the course of a miraculous revelation of that wonderful power, He said to a man, "Thy sins are forgiven thee," and He was immediately criticized. What was His answer to the criticism? "What reason ye in your hearts? Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins are for-given thee; or to say, Arise and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins, I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch." You will sadly misread that story if you think He did some piece of jugglery in the physical to convince them of His power in the moral. There was most intimate connection between the man's palsy and his sin, and Jesus demonstrated His power to lift sin by setting the man free from the result of sin and sending him on his way in sight of the men who had heard Him. These men who criticized had no more to say. They criticized Him for pretending to forgive sins, but when they saw the man raised they had enough simple mental intelligence to see the connection between the thing said and the thing done.
I come now to the final thing in this manifestation, the process of the death, for in that solemn and lonely and unapproachable hour of the cross I come to the final fulfilment of the word of the herald on the banks of the Jordan, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." It is not open for us in these days to attempt to interpret that word of John by the day in which we live, or by the conditions in which we live. We can interpret that word of John only by the simple facts in the midst of which he stood when he uttered it. Remember that phrase, "the Lamb of God," could have but one significance in the ears of the men who heard it. This was the voice of a Hebrew prophet speaking to Hebrews, and when he spoke of the Lamb taking away sins, they had no alternative other than to think of the long line of symbolical sacrifices which had been offered, and which they had been taught shadowed forth some great mystery of Divine purpose whereby sin might be dealt with. When John stood there in the midst of the great ethical revival which came under his preaching, and said, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," we must explain his language, not by any poetical license of this age, but by the deep religious intention of the man who uttered it, and by the religious understanding of the people who listened to it. In all probability, when John uttered that word there were men from all parts crowding up to the Passover Feast, taking with them lambs of sacrifice in great numbers. In the midst of all the ritual, these men were arrested by the voice of John crying, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." So in the hour of death you have the ultimate meaning of that great word. Whereas by manifestation, from first to last, He is forevermore dealing with sins and with sin, lifting, correcting, arresting, by gleams of light suggesting to men the deepest meaning of His mission, it is when I come to the hour of His unutterable loneliness and deep darkness and passion baptism that I have that part of the manifestation in which I see as nowhere else and as never before the meaning of my text, "He was manifested to take away sins."
Reverently let us take one step further. The manifestation and sins - as to God. Let me take you back simply to this affirmation that the manifested One was God. If that be once seen then we shall forevermore look back upon that Man of Nazareth in His birth, His life, His cross, as but a manifestation. The whole fact cannot be seen, but the whole fact is brought to the point of visibility by the way of incarnation. If indeed this One be very God manifested, then remember this, the whole measure of humanity is in Him and infinitely more than the whole measure of humanity. Do not forget the last part of my assertion. If you take the first part only - that the whole measure of humanity is in Him, you may imagine that humanity is the measure of Deity. I did not say so. But the whole measure of humanity is in Him. It is true of the whole race, from its beginning to its last, that "in Him we live and move and have our being"; that we are as to first creation and essential meaning of life, "the offspring of God." The whole race is from God and of God, and I repeat, the measure of humanity is in Him, but He is infinitely more; it is also true that the measure of all created things is in Him - and infinitely more. Beyond the utmost bound of creation, God is. All creation, heaven and earth, suns and stars and systems, angels and archangels, principalities and powers, the hierarchies of whom we hear but cannot perfectly explain their nature or their order, all these are in Him; but He is infinitely beyond them all. They are but the dust in the balances which His right hand holds, and it is an arrogant and ignorant assumption to declare that humanity is the sum of God. All humanity is within the compass of His upholding might. No man can escape from God. In some deep sense of the word, no man can live a God-less life. "If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me." Humanity is not the measure of Deity; but the measure of humanity is in Deity. "He," the immeasurable, "was manifested to take away sins."
I begin to wonder. In amazement I begin to believe in the possibility of lifting the burden of my sin. The cross, like everything else, was manifestation. In the cross of Jesus there was the working out into visibility of eternal things. Love and light were wrought out into visibility by the cross. Love and light in the presence of the conditions of sin became sorrow - and became joy! In the cross I see the sorrow of God, and in the cross I see the joy of God, for "it pleased the Lord to bruise Him." In the cross I see the love of God working out through passion and power for the redemption of man. In the cross I see the light of God refusing to make any terms with iniquity and sin and evil. The cross is the historic revelation of the abiding facts within the heart of God. The measure of the cross is God. If all the measure of humanity is in God and He is more, and the measure of the cross is God, then the measure of the cross wraps humanity about so that no one individual is outside its meaning and its power. When next you ask, or hear anyone else ask, "How can one man bear the sin of the race?" say, "He cannot, and he never did." One man cannot bear the sin of another man, to say nothing of the sin of the race. He Who was manifested is God. He can gather into His eternal life all the race as to its sorrow and its sin, and bear them.
Yet remember this - I would state this with great carefulness - it was not by the eternal facts that sins were taken away, but by the manifestation of those facts. My text does not affirm, and there is no text that begins to affirm, that He Who was manifested takes away sins. There is a sense in which that is true; but this is the truth, "He was manifested to take away sins." It required the "He," the Person manifested, but it required His manifestation. Most reverently do I declare that the passion revealed in the cross was indeed the passion of God; but the passion of God became dynamic in human life when it became manifest through human form in the perfection of a life and the mystery of a death. Man's will is the factor always to be dealt with, and whereas the sin of man was gathered into the consciousness of God and created the sorrow of God from the very beginning, it is only when that fact of the sorrow of Godhead is wrought out into visibility by manifestation that the will of man can ever be captured - or ever constrained to the position of trust and obedience which is necessary for his practical and effectual restoration to righteousness. Wherever man thus yields himself, trusting - that is the condition - his sins are taken away - lifted.
If it be declared that God might have wrought this selfsame deliverance without suffering, our answer is that the man who says so knows nothing about sin. Sin and suffering are coexistent. The moment there is sin there is suffering. The moment there are sin and suffering in a human being it is in God multiplied. "The Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world." From the moment when man in his sin became a child of sorrow, the sorrow was most keenly felt in heaven.
Yet I would that my last word should be a word specifically and especially to the man who is burdened with a sense of sin. I ask you to contemplate the Person manifested. There is not one of us here of whom it is not true that we live and move and have our being in God. God is infinitely more than I am, infinitely more than this whole congregation, infinitely more than the whole human race, from its beginning to its last. If infinitely more, then all my life is in Him. If in the mystery of incarnation there became manifest the truth that He, God, lifted sin, then I can trust. If that be the cleaving of the rock, then I can say as never before,
"Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee."
He was manifested and by that manifestation I see wrought out the infinite truth of the passion of God, what we speak of - and whether our language be the best or not, who shall tell? - as the Atonement. All the mystery of Deity was rendered visible by the Advent, the Incarnation, the Manifestation, so I know that here and now, as nineteen centuries ago on the rough Roman gibbet, as surely as God is God, here and now are the living values of the thing of which men sang and of which we still sing. Here and now I trust, and here and now I know that my sins are lifted, carried, borne away.”
THE PURPOSE OF THE ADVENT: 3. To Reveal the Father by G. CAMPBELL MORGAN
He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.
John 14:9
THIS IS NOW THE THIRD STUDY ON THE GENERAL SUBJECT OF the purposes of the Advent. Having spoken of the fact that Jesus was manifested to destroy the works of the devil, and of the fact that He was manifested to take away sins, we now turn to that wonderful fact that He was manifested to reveal the Father. I have chosen to take this, His own statement of truth, in this regard because of its simplicity and its sublimity. In our translation of the passage, so simple is it that no word of two syllables is employed save the word "Father." "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father"; and yet so sublime is it that among all the things Jesus said concerning His relationship to the Father none is more comprehensive, inclusive, exhaustive than this. Its very simplicity leaves us no room for doubt as to the meaning of our Lord.
The last hours of Jesus with His disciples were passing away. He was talking to the disciples, and four times over they interrupted Him. Peter first, "Lord, whither goest Thou?" While He was yet answering Peter, Thomas said, "Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; how know we the way?" While He was yet dealing with Thomas, Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." Ere He had done with Philip, Jude said, "What is come to pass that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world?" The lonely Christ, recognizing the fact that the nearest friends of His life, His own followers, did not perfectly understand Him, could not walk with Him along the via dolorosa, were afraid of the gathering shadows, yet taught them, patiently and gently answering objections, clearing away difficulties, storing their minds with truth.
Philip's interruption was due, in the first place, to a conviction of Christ's relation in some way to the Father. He had been so long with Jesus as to become familiar in some senses with His line of thought. He had heard over and over again strange things fall from the lips of the Master. He had listened to the wonderful familiarity with which Jesus had spoken of God as "My Father." In all probability, moreover, Philip was asking that there should be repeated to him and the little group of disciples some such wonderful thing as they had read of in the past of their people's history. He would have read therein of the great and glorious theophanies of days gone by, of how the elders once ascended the mountain and saw God; of how the prophet had declared that "in the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple"; of how Ezekiel had declared that when he was by the river Chebar he had seen God in fire, and wheels; in majesty and glory.
It was to that request, based upon a vision of Christ's relationship to the Father, based upon the memory of how God had manifested Himself to the men of olden days, that Jesus replied. I cannot read this answer of Jesus without feeling that He divested Himself of set purpose of anything that approached stateliness of diction, and dropped into the common speech of friend to friend, as looking back into the face of Philip He said, "Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know Me, Philip? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." Mark the simplicity of it. They were most familiar with Him. I think you will agree with me that it requires no stretch of the imagination to believe that they had looked upon His face more often than upon the face of any other during the three years. They had listened with greater interest to the tones of His voice than to any other sounds that had come to them during that period.
The very simplicity of it is its audacity. The word may not be well chosen, and yet I take it of set purpose. If you want to know how audacious and daring a thing it is, put it into the lips of any other teacher the world has ever produced. Looking into the face of one man, who was voicing, though he little knew it, the great anguish of the human heart, the great hunger of the human soul, Christ said, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father," and in that declaration He claimed absolute identity with God. So much for the setting of my text and the claim thereof.
That claim has been vindicated in the passing of the centuries. The conception of God which is triumphant, intellectually capturing the mind, emotionally capturing the heart, volitionally capturing the will, came to the world through that One Who, standing Man before man, yet said to Him, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."
My purpose this evening is not to argue but to consider. I shall ask you therefore to consider with me, first, what this revelation of God has meant to the race; and, secondly, what it has meant to the individual.
First, consider the highest knowledge of God which man had before the Advent, and the new values consequent upon the manifestation in Jesus.
What conception of God had man before Christ came? Taking the Hebrew thought of God, let me put the whole truth as I see it into one comprehensive statement. Prior to the Advent there had been a growing intellectual apprehension of God, accompanied by a diminishing moral result. There had been a growing intellectual apprehension of truth concerning God. That is the first half of my statement. It is impossible to study the Old Testament without seeing that gradually there broke through the mists a clearer light concerning God: the fact of unity of God, the fact of the might of God, the fact of the holiness of God, the fact of the beneficence of God. These things men had come to see through the process of the ages. There had been progressive understanding of the fact of God's might. There had been progressive understanding of the fact of His holiness. There had been progressive understanding of the truth of His beneficence. Yet, side by side with this growing intellectual apprehension of God, there was diminishing moral result, for it is impossible to read the story of the ancient Hebrew people without seeing how they waxed worse and worse in all matters moral until the last. The moral life of Abraham was far purer than life in the time of the kings. Life in the early time of the kings was far purer than the conditions which the prophets ultimately described. This diminishing moral result is not to be wondered at. In proportion as men grew in their intellectual conception of God, it seemed increasingly unthinkable that He could be interested in their everyday life. Morality became something not of intimate relationship to Him and therefore something that mattered far less. In some senses that has been repeated during the last half century. The discoveries of the scientists have created an ever-increasing sense of the greatness of the universe. Every decade has given man a larger grasp upon the truth of the universe. With the progress of man's intellectual apprehension of the greatness of the universe, there has been an increase necessarily in his conception of the God of the universe, until at last God has grown out of knowledge and men have declared that He is unknowable, and have defined Him as force, as intelligence - or as the operation of force and intelligence combined. The greater the universe, the greater the God, and the greater the God, the less man has been able to appreciate his relation to Him.
Think of the great Gentile world as it then was, and as it still is, save where the message of the Evangel has reached it - for the things of the Gentile world prior to the Advent are the things of the Gentile world until this hour, save where the Gospel of the grace of God has reached it.
In Gentile thought there is always a substratum of accurate consciousness. Go where you will, get down deeply enough, and you will find in the common consciousness of humanity a substratum of truth. When it begins to express itself it does so falsely. When it begins to take that deep under-lying conviction, and put it into form or expression it breaks down; but there is universally a sense of God.
Occasional flashes of light have broken out of this underlying sub-consciousness. We have had such remarkable teachers as Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, men speaking true things flashing with a new light.
Notwithstanding these things, a perpetual failure in morals and a uniform degradation of religion have been universal. No voice which has spoken some message of truth out of the sub-consciousness in the passing of the centuries has been able to lift those to whom it has been addressed in the moral scale. The history of the Hindu religion is, perhaps, the most conspicuous illustration of this fact. Buddhism as it is practiced today and Buddhism as Buddha lived and taught are at the poles asunder.
Wherever you find Gentile nations you find these things true - a substratum of accurate consciousness, occasional flashes of clear light, but perpetual failure in morals and uniform degradation of religion. The failure has ever been due to lack of final knowledge concerning God.
At last there came the song of the angels and the birth of a child. At the close of one swiftly passing generation of teaching and of working, of gathering a few souls together, there stood One in the midst of a little group of disciples, and at the same moment in the midst of all humanity, and He looked into the face of one man and said, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."
Through that Advent and ministry there came to men a new consciousness of God.
I turn to the centuries that have passed since His coming. What effect has that coming had in the realm of revelation? By that I mean among those who had received revelation from God. First, the inclusion in His teaching and manifestation of all the essential things which men had learned in the long ages of the past. He did not deny the truth of the unity of God. He re-emphasized it. He did not deny the might of God. He declared it and manifested it in many a gentle touch of infinite power. He did not deny the holiness of God. He insisted upon it in teaching and life, and at last by the mystery of dying. He did not deny the beneficence of God. He changed the cold word "beneficence" into the word throbbing with the infinite heart of Deity, "love"! He did more. He brought to men the new, that toward which they had been groping but had never found. That which men had imperfectly expressed in song and prophecy He came to state. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." Not Elohim, not Jehovah, not Adonahy, none of the great names of the past, all of them suggestive, but "He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father." In and through Him that truth of fatherhood was revealed. When I say that I beseech you remember that fatherhood means a great deal more than we sometimes imagine it means. It is not merely a term of tenderness. It is also a term of law and discipline. But Fatherhood means supremely that if the child have wandered away the Father will suffer everything to save and bring it home again. Within the realm of revealed religion this truth emerged, that the one God, mighty, holy, beneficent, is the Father Who will sacrifice Himself to save the child. There man found the point of contact in infinite love which never abandons him, never leaves him. That is the truth which, coming into revealed religion, saved it from being intellectual apprehension minus moral dynamic, and sent running through all human life rivers of cleansing, renewal, regeneration.
Wherever Christ comes to people who have never had direct revelation, He comes first of all as fulfilment of all that in their thought and scheme is true. He comes, moreover, for the correction of all that in their thought and scheme is false. All the underlying consciousness of humanity concerning God is touched and answered, and lifted into the supreme consciousness whenever God is seen in Christ. All the gleams of light which have been flashing across the consciousness of humanity merge into the essential light when He is presented. I will take the illustration which is the lowest and the simplest, and therefore perhaps the profoundest at this point. It is an old story, I have often used it before. In Africa are found men of whom we speak as superstitious, perhaps the lowest in all the scale intellectually. The only form of religion they have is that of which we speak as fetish worship, which means nothing less and nothing more than that the uninstructed mind of the savage connects with some charm - a little piece of stick, a little piece of leather - certain values that are beyond his ken, supernatural values. He does not think it possible to be fortunate in business, in pleasure, in home or in marriage or any-thing else save as he is accompanied by his fetish. That is a low form of religion. You smile at it - and yet I know of people in England who carry charms about with them. In Africa, if you are about to trade with one of these men after he has driven his cattle hundreds of miles, and discovers that in his unutterable folly he has not brought his fetish with him, you cannot persuade him to trade with you. He will tramp all the weary miles back again, and postpone his traffic for days, weeks, months, because he cannot trade unless that fetish is with him. You smile at him. When Jesus meets that man he does not destroy that belief. He fulfils it. Christ comes to him and says in effect, "You are perfectly right in your underlying consciousness that you cannot be fortunate in business or home or marriage or pleasure unless you have dealing with the thing that is more than you are, the supernatural. You must have God with you." Jesus takes out of the black hand the fetish, the little piece of leather or stick, and flings it away and puts back into the hand His own pierced hand, saying, "Lo, I am with you all the days - business days, pleasure days, home days, all the days. Never do business without God." Before you mock the African who will not traffic without his fetish learn this, that if you do business without God you are far more heathen than he is. Christ comes not to contradict the essential truth of Buddhism but to fulfil it. He comes not to rob the Chinaman of his regard for parents, as taught by Confucius, but to fulfil it, and to lift him upon that regard into regard for the One great Father, God. He comes always to fulfil. Wherever He has come, wherever He has been presented, wherever men, low or high in the intellectual scale, have seen God in Christ, their hands have opened and they have dropped the fetishes and the idols and have yielded themselves to Him. If the world has not come to God through Him it is because the world has not yet seen Him; and if the world has not yet seen Him the blame is upon the Christian Church.
The wide issues of the manifestation of God in Christ are the union of intellectual apprehension and moral improvement, and the relation of religion to life. When you are tempted to admire Buddhism, or to admire Confucianism, and to think that in these God has spoken to men, never forget that in no system of religion in the world has there come to men the idea of God which unites religion with morals save in this revelation of God in Jesus Christ. There is through all India today divorce between religion and morals. There a man may be the most immoral of all men and yet be religiously a saint. But wherever this manifestation of God comes, and the heart of God and the sacrifice of God, behind His unity and His might, His holiness and beneficence, emerge into view, there men have found that religion means morality.
I pass, in the second place, to say some few words concerning the effect of the manifestation in relation to the individual. Here I propose to see one man as illustration. I think we cannot be truer to the text than by taking Philip, the man to whom Christ spoke. Mark the words of Jesus to him, "Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know Me, Philip?" The evident sense of the question is, "You have seen enough of Me, Philip, if you have really seen Me, to have found what you are asking for, a vision of God." There is no other interpretation of Christ's question possible. "Show us the Father and it sufficeth us," was Philip's request. "Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know Me, Philip? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." He surely meant that Philip had seen enough of Him to have found the Father. What, then, had Philip seen? What revelations of Deity had come to this man who thought he had not seen and did not understand? Christ evidently intended to say he might have seen and might have understood. What were the things to which Christ referred? I am not going to indulge in speculation. I might gather up the general facts of His teaching and His doing, but I think we shall be safer if we adhere to what Scripture tells of what Philip had seen.
All the story is in John. Philip is referred to by Matthew, Mark, and Luke as being among the number of the Apostles, but in no other way. John tells me of four occasions when Philip is seen in union with Christ. I will take the first three, for the last is the one in which our text occurs. Philip was the first man Jesus called to follow him. I do not say the first man to follow Him. There were other two who preceded Philip, going after Christ in consequence of the teaching of John. Philip did not go to inquire. It is distinctly stated in the first chapter of John's Gospel that Jesus found him and said, "Follow Me." That was the first man to whom Christ used that great formula of calling men which has become so precious in the passing of the centuries. "Follow Me." What happened? "Philip findeth Nathaniel, and saith unto Him, We have found Him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write." That was the first thing that Philip had seen in Christ, according to his own confession, One Who embodied all the ideals of Moses and the prophets. When he said, "We have found Him, of Whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write," he did not refer to any particular word of Moses. The word he used covers the whole of the Old Testament teaching. What he meant was, "We have found Him Who embodies the ideal of Moses, and the ideal of the prophets, all the teaching of Moses, all the messages of the prophets. We have found Him." It was the cry of a soul inviting another soul. It was the cry of a soul who had this conviction borne in upon it - Here is One Who fulfils all the ideals and suggestions and intention: of the whole religious economy of the past! That was the first thought.
I find Philip next in the sixth chapter, when the multitudes were about Christ and they were hungry. Jesus singled out Philip and said to him, "Whence are we to buy bread, that these may eat?" John is very careful to state that Jesus did not ask that question because He needed advice, "for He Himself knew what He would do." He asked it to prove Philip. Philip answered, "Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient, that everyone may take a little." That is the back-ground. What happened next? Philip, who considered it impossible to feed the hungry multitude, is next seen with the other disciples seating them ready to be fed, incredulously, perhaps; I do not know. Then he watched this selfsame Jesus take the loaves and fishes of the lad and break them. Then with the others he carried the food to rank after rank until all the assembled multitude were fed. So that Philip had now seen Someone Who in a mysterious way had resource enough to satisfy human hunger. That is not all. Philip then listened while in matchless discourse Jesus lifted the thought from material hunger to spiritual need and declared, "I am the Bread of Life." So that the second vision Philip had of Jesus, according to the record, was a vision of Him full of resource and able to satisfy hunger both material and spiritual. I see Philip next in the twelfth chapter. The Greeks coming to him said, "Sir, we would see Jesus." Philip found his way with Andrew to Jesus, and asked Him to see the Greeks. Mark the relation with the Father, and that there was perfect harmony between them, no conflict, no controversy. He saw, moreover, that upon the basis of that communion with His Father and that perfect harmony, His voice changed from the tones of sorrow to those of triumph, "Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself." That was Philip's third vision of Jesus. It was the vision of One acting in perfect accord with God, bending to the sorrow that surged upon His soul in order that through it He might accomplish human redemption.
We now come back to the last scene. Philip said, "Show us the Father and it sufficeth us." Gathering up all the things of the past, Christ looked into the face of Philip and replied, "Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know Me, Philip? When thou didst first see Me did there not come to thee the conviction that in Me there was the embodiment of law and righteousness? When thou didst watch Me feed men didst thou not understand that I am the One Who can satisfy all the hunger of the human heart? In the mystery of that strange hour when thou didst bring the Greeks to Me didst thou not understand that in union with God I am moving toward unutterable pain in order that men may be set free?" No, Philip had not seen these things. We are not to blame him. They were there to be seen, and by and by, the infinite work of Christ being accomplished and the glory of Pentecost having dawned upon the world, Philip saw it all. Then Philip saw the meaning of the things he had seen and had never seen, the things he had looked upon and had never understood. Then Philip found that having seen Jesus he had actually seen the Father. When he looked upon One Who embodied in His own personality all the facts of the law and righteousness, he had seen God. When he had looked upon One Who could touch the loaves of a lad until they fed a multitude, and One Who could deal with the spiritual needs of restless hearts until they were rested, he had seen God. When he had seen a Man Who shrank from sorrow yet pressed into it because through it in co-operation with God He could ransom humanity, he had seen God.
This manifestation wins the submission of the reason. This manifestation appeals to the love of the heart. This manifestation demands the surrender of the will. Here is the value of the Advent as revelation of God.
Let my last word be one in which I ask you solemnly to see what this means in your case. Call back your thoughts from the wider application of the earlier part of my sermon. Call back your thoughts for a moment from the particular application in the case of Philip, and think what this means to you. Is it true that this manifestation wins the submission of your reason, appeals to the love of your heart, asks the surrender of your will? Then to refuse God in Christ is to violate at some essential point your own manhood. To refuse, you must violate reason which is captured by the revelation, or you must crush the emotion which springs in your heart in the presence of the revelation, or you must decline to submit your will to the demands which the manifestation makes.
May God grant that we shall rather look into His face and say, "My Lord and my God"! So shall we find our rest and our hearts be satisfied. It shall suffice as we see the Father in the Christ.”
THE PURPOSE OF THE ADVENT: 4. To Prepare for a Second Advent by G. CAMPBELL MORGAN
Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time, apart from sin, to them that wait for Him, unto salvation.
Hebrews 9:28
WE COME THIS EVENING TO CONSIDER THE LAST OF THE FOUR great values of the first Advent. We have spoken together of the fact that He was manifested that He might destroy the works of the Devil, that He was manifested to take away sins, that He was manifested to reveal the Father; and now we come finally to this great truth that He was manifested to prepare for another manifestation, that He came once in order that He might be able to come again. All the things of which we have spoken as constituting the values of the first Advent were necessary in order that there should be another Advent.
... As the writer of this said in another connection, "Now we see not yet all things subjected to Him." The victory seems not to be won. There seems to be very, very much still to do. Or, if I may put this into another form, it is impossible to read the story of the first Advent and to believe in it, and to follow the history of the centuries that have followed upon that Advent, without feeling in one's deepest heart that something more is needed. The first Advent demands something else.
Therefore, we turn with relief to the declaration of the New Testament which formed the very hope and song of the Early Church, the declaration which states that He Who has come will come, that the first Advent was indeed preparatory, and that the consummation of its meaning can be brought about only by another coming, as personal, as definite, as positive, as real in human history as was the first.
Think of the fact stated in my text: "Christ ... shall appear a second time." There is no escape, other than by casuistry, from the simple meaning of these words. The first idea conveyed by them is that of an actual personal advent of Jesus yet to be. To spiritualize a statement like this and to attempt to make application of it in any other than the way in which a little child would understand it is to be driven, one is almost inclined to say, to dishonesty with the simplicity of the Scriptural declaration.
This statement is not peculiar to the letter from which it is taken. It is the teaching of the whole of the New Testament. To the man who has given up the New Testament as final, authoritative, and infallible, I have no appeal. We have no common ground. If you are attempting to erect a Christian structure upon your philosophizing I have no time to argue with you. I respect your conviction, I believe in your honesty, but I part company with you. To me the New Testament is the living, final, absolutely infallible Word of God.
I find a great many Christian people, however, who believe that as surely as I do, who yet seem not to be perfectly sure of a second personal Advent of the same Jesus. I repeat, and again I would say it carefully, with no desire to offend or hurt the convictions of any, that you cannot take your New Testament and read it simply and honestly without coming to the conclusion that the Christ Who came is still to come.
…Paul in all his writings is conscious of this truth of the second Advent. In some of them he does not dwell upon it at such great length or with such clearness as in others, for the simple reason that it is not the specific subject with which he is dealing. In the Thessalonian letters you have most clearly set forth Paul's teaching concerning this matter. In the very center of the first letter we have a passage which declares in unmistakable language that "the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we that are alive, that are left, shall together be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord." "It was this hope which more than anything gave its colour to the primitive Christianity, its unworldliness, its moral intensity, its command of the future even in this life." The latter sentence is a quotation from the book of a man who does not hold the position I hold, who does not believe as I believe in the actual second personal Advent of Jesus, who, nevertheless, recognizes that this view gave the bloom to primitive Christianity and constituted the power of the early Christians to laugh in the face of death, and to overcome all forces which were against them.
That is not peculiarly Pauline. Writing to those who were in affliction, James said, "Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord is at hand."
With equal clearness, Peter said to the early disciples, "Be sober and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
John, who leaned upon his Master's bosom, and who wrote the most wonderful of all mystic words concerning Him, said, "We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is. And everyone that hath this hope set on Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure."
Jude said to those to whom he wrote, "Ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life."
That is but a rapid passing over of the great field of New Testament teaching. To summarize yet more briefly the things to which I have already referred, I would declare that every New Testament writer presents this truth as a part of the common Christian faith. I believe there is nothing more needed in our day than a new declaration of this vital fact of Christian faith. Think what it would mean if the whole Church still lifted her face toward the East and waited for the morning, waited as the Lord would have her wait - not star-gazing and almanac examining, but, with loins girt for service and lamps burning, waiting as she serves. If the whole Christian Church were so waiting she would cast off her worldliness and infidelity and all other things which hinder her march to conquest. It is because we have lost the bloom of hope that our songs are so poor. If we may but hear again the promises of the New Testament, the assurances of the Word that He Who came is coming, then there will be strength in service and new fortitude for suffering, and new hope for all the world in its sin and its sorrow and its sighing.
Our text does more than affirm the fact of the second Advent. In a somewhat remarkable way, it declares the meaning thereof, "Christ ... shall appear a second time, apart from sin."
To understand this rightly we must look upon it as putting the second Advent into contrast with the first. That is what the writer most evidently means, for the context declares that Jesus was manifested in the consummation of the ages, to bear sins. That we have considered. He now says that "Christ ... shall appear a second time, apart from sin." Consequently, I repeat, to understand this rightly we must look upon it as putting the second Advent in contrast with the first. All the things of the first Advent were necessary to the second, but all the things of the second will be different from the things of the first. The whole of the first Advent was conditioned within the fact of sin. Jesus came to deal with sin. By His first Advent sin was revealed. Men never truly understood the meaning thereof until He came, and by the light of His presence in human history flung it into clear relief. From the slaughter of the innocents which accompanied His birth to His own death upon the cross His presence in the world flung hatred into view. The slaughter of the innocents was the action of a false king who feared a new king coming to snatch his sceptre, and hatred manifested itself in devilish cruelty to little children. Our Lord's own cross was the place where all the deep hatred of the human heart expressed itself most diabolically in view of heaven and earth and hell.
There was also revelation of darkness as contrary to light. "Men loved the darkness rather than the light," was the supreme wail of the heart of Jesus. His presence in the world was, moreover, revelation of spiritual death as contrary to life. In the perpetual attempt of men to materialize His work, the attempt of His own disciples as well as all the rest, and their absolute failure to appreciate the spiritual teaching He gave, we see what spiritual death really is.
In His first Advent He not only revealed sin but bore it. In the words, "Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many," the reference is not merely to the final movement of the cross. The word "offered" is used in reference to God's action in giving Him. It would be perfectly correct interpretation to supply the word "offered" by the word "gave," the word which you have in John's Gospel, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son." Let us put that word here, "Christ also, having been once given to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time." All through His life He bore sin. All through the long, long days, He was putting Himself underneath sin in order to take it away. He bore its limitations throughout the whole of His life. In poverty, in sorrow, in loneliness He lived, and all these things are limitations resulting from sin. All poverty is the issue of sin. It is well we should remember that. The problem of poverty has a deeper problem lying at its heart which is the problem of sin. I do not mean that the poor man is the sinner always. Far from it. It is very easy for people who live in comparative ease and comfort, or in affluence, to write about the blessings of poverty. There are no blessings of poverty save as God does overrule all the grinding and crushing of human life for some essential good. All poverty is the result of sin, either of the man who is poor or of some other who is robbing him. When Jesus Christ entered into flesh He entered into the limitations which follow upon sin and He bore sin in His own consciousness through all the years. Not poverty only, but sorrow in all forms. Sorrow is lack. The sorrow of bereavement is the lack of the friend. Every sorrow is a sense of lack, something wanting, something gone, and Jesus lived through all the years "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." And in His long loneliness He lived in the midst of limitations resulting from sin. Finally gathering all these things to a crisis, He reached the ultimate issue of sin, bearing it, carrying it, lifting it, placing Himself, very God as well as very man, underneath it until all its weight was upon Him - the weight of its poverty, for "though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor"; the weight of its sorrow, for all the sorrows of the human heart were upon His heart until He uttered that unspeakable cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Such was the story of the first Advent.
Now hear my text. Having finally dealt with sin and destroyed it at its very root in His first Advent, Jesus' next coming, His second Advent, is to be that of victory. He will come again, not to poverty but to wealth. He will come again, not to sorrow but with all joy. He will come again, not in loneliness, but to gather about Him all trusting souls who have looked and served and waited. We are celebrating the Advent when there was no room for Him in the inn. When He comes again the whole world and the universe will make haste to make room for Him. At the close of the first Advent we saw Him holding the reed of mockery, robed in the purple of contempt, crowned with thorns, surrounded by a mob. When He comes again He will hold the sceptre of the universe in His right hand; upon His brow there will be many diadems; He will be panoplied with all the splendor of God, and ten thousand times ten thousand angels will be the cohorts that accompany Him. All in His first Advent of sorrow and loneliness, of poverty and of sin, will be absent from the second. The first Advent was for atonement, the second will be for administration. He came, entering into human nature and taking hold of it, to deal with sin and put it away. He has taken sin away, and He will come again to set up that Kingdom, the foundations of which He laid in His first coming.
I pause for one moment to say I am not dealing with the different phases of the Advent, with the fact that He will first gather His Church to Himself and then establish the Kingdom on earth. I am viewing the whole in general outline, recognizing the different phases, but insisting now only upon the glorious and gracious fact that this One Who came is yet to come.
Let us go one step further, and we shall find that my text declares the purpose of the Advent. "It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment; so Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time, apart from sin, to them that wait for Him, unto salvation." A similarity is suggested. "It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment." Over against that dual appointment stands "So Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time, apart from sin, to them that wait for Him, unto salvation." As His first Advent was parallel to the appointment of death, His second Advent is parallel to the appointment of judgment. "It is appointed unto men once to die ... Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many." It is appointed that after death there shall be judgment - He "shall appear a second time, apart from sin ... " But the contrast seems to break down. The similarity is not carried out. There is a strange differentiation in the ending of the two declarations, and we must notice it. We expected that it would have been written to complete the comparison, thus, "It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment; so Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time, apart from sin, unto judgment." That would seem to be a balanced comparison, but the writer does not so write. Notice how this very difference unfolds the meaning of the first and second Advents. It is appointed to men to die - He was offered to bear the sins of many. After death judgment - He is coming again unto salvation. As the first Advent negatived the death appointed unto men, the second Advent will turn the judgment into salvation.
"It is appointed unto men once to die." It is often some-what carelessly affirmed that men must die. While admitting the truth of this statement, we inquire why must they die? Ask the scientist. Science can no more account for death than it can account for life. It has never been able to explain the mystery of the beginning of life. It has never yet been able to say why men die. How they die, yes; why they die, no! We are all reconstructed on the physical side every seven years. The essential personality is not reconstructed, but maintains its individuality through all the processes of reconstruction. I am the man I was seven years ago, and yet there is not a particle of this tabernacle, through the medium of which I speak to you tonight, that would have been here had I been here seven years ago. Waste of tissue and break-down of the physical is a constant process of remaking. The mental in man gains breadth and strength and beauty as years pass on. The man who has run out the allotted three score years and ten, or for whom God has lengthened the lease a few years, mentally and spiritually is greater than he has ever been before, but the reconstruction of the physical is not quite so perfect as it used to be, the elasticity is missing, the vision is becoming dim, the new-made temple is not quite so fibrous and tough as the old one. Why? I wait for scientific answer, but I wait in vain. No man without revelation has ever been able to tell me why the physical ceases at maturity to reconstruct itself with ever-increasing strength. I will tell you why. Death is the wage of sin. Science will admit that death comes by the breaking of certain laws. Science will use some other word than the word "sin." Sir Oliver Lodge tells us that sensible men do not use the word "sin." I am a little tired of the Church's worship of Sir Oliver Lodge. I am surprised at the way Christian ministers have welcomed his creed. I have every respect for him as an honest scientist, but he does not understand Christianity. His creed is not the Christian creed. If there is no place for "sin" and "blood," there is no room for Jesus Christ. "It is appointed unto men once to die" by the fiat of God Almighty because they are sinners, and no man can escape that fiat.
But Jesus Christ was offered by God to bear the sins of many - that was the answer of the first Advent to man's appointment to death.
Beyond death there is another appointment, that of judgment.
Who shall appeal against the absolute justice of that appointment? He "shall appear a second time, apart from sin ... unto salvation." To those who have heard the message of the first Advent and have believed it, and trusted in His great work, and have found shelter in the mystery of His manifestation and bearing of sin, to such, salvation takes the place of judgment. But to the man who will not shelter beneath that first Advent and its atoning value judgment abides. All the things begun by His first Advent will be consummated by the second.
At His second Advent there will be complete salvation for the individual - Righteousness, Sanctification, Redemption. We believed, and were saved. We believe, and are being saved. We believe, and we shall be saved. The last movement will come when Our Lord comes.
What of those who have fallen on sleep? They are safe with God and He will bring them with Him when He comes. They are not yet perfected, "God having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be perfected." They are at rest and consciously at rest. They are "absent from the body ... at home with the Lord," but they are not yet perfected, they are waiting. We are waiting in the midst of earth's struggle, they in heaven's light and joy, for the second Advent. Heaven is waiting for it. Earth is waiting for it. Hell is waiting for it. The universe is waiting for it.
That coming will be to those who wait for Him. Who are those who wait for Him? Let Scripture interpret this. In the Thessalonian Epistle I find Paul's description of the early Christians, "Ye turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven." The first thing is the turning from idols. Have you done that? The second thing is serving the living God. Are you doing that? Then because you have turned from idols and are serving Him you are waiting. That is the waiting the New Testament enjoins, and to those who wait, His second Advent will mean salvation. There is waiting other than that, but we have no share in it. That is our waiting, because we have heard the Evangel of the first Advent and know it. The whole creation waiteth, "groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." I hear the sob of the waiting myriads in China and Africa and India. They are waiting. They have never yet heard of the first Advent. They are waiting. They know not for what. They cry as a child in the night, with no language but a cry. Oh the pathos and the tragedy of it!
"Christ shall appear." Glorious Gospel! He shall appear, to heal the wounds of all creation. "He comes to break oppression and set the captives free." He is coming to rule with a rod of iron, which means absolute and inflexible equity. Often times there is more love in justice than in mercy. When He Who came in meek mercy long ago comes again, He will come in majestic might, and also in love. He will come to gather out His trusting souls and then to establish His own rule and set up His own government. What a day of burning it will be for some! What terror will come to the hearts of those who have lived and fattened upon devilism!
He is coming! That is my hope and confidence. That is my hope and my song for the world this Christmastime. He came to commence, to initiate. He will come to complete. "Christ ... shall appear a second time, apart from sin ... unto salvation." Salvation means judgment wrought out in the impulse and power of love.
We stand tonight between the Advents. Our relation to the first creates our relation to the second. To receive Him as rejected is to be received by Him at His coronation. To accept His estimate of sin and share in the value of His atoning work is to enter into His coming administration of righteousness. To trust in the first is to wait for the second.
How stands it between my soul and the Advents, first and second? I am not trying to cast a cloud over the merriment of Christmastime. But have a reason for your merriment, and in God's name cease your merriment if the Child Who was born, and of Whom you sing, is excluded from your heart and hearth and home. The blasphemy of it! The tragedy of it! The shame of it! People who by persistent sin are crucifying this Christ afresh every day yet make merry this Christmastime. If you have admitted Him and found room for Him for Whom there was no room in the inn, if you have handed Him the kingdom of your life though the world still rejects Him as in the days of old, then make merry. Let your songs abound. Let your hearts be glad. Give the children a good time. But I warn you against all merriment if you have shut Him out, for He comes again, and if, in spite of the light of the first Advent you have rejected Him, He must, on the basis of eternal justice, reject you. He is coming. May we so trust Him as to the meaning and merit of His first Advent as not to be ashamed of Him when He comes again!”
V. HIS WORKS
The WORKS of Jesus include preaching, teaching, healing, and performing miracles:
1). PREACHING
Mar 1:14, “Now after John was taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of God.”
Luk 8:1,“Soon afterward, Jesus began going around
from one city and village to another, proclaiming and
preaching the Kingdom of God. The twelve were with Him.”
Luk 20:1, “On one of the days while He was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the Gospel, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders confronted Him.”
2). TEACHING
Mat 4:23, “Jesus was going about in all of Galilee,
teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the
Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every disease
and every sickness among the people.”
Mat 7:28, “When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching.”
Mat 7:29, “for He was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.”
As regards the teaching of Christ, there are many and vary.
According to https://biblenotes.online/resources/books/cmorgan_teachingofchrist.htm
“Please click on the following links to go to each chapter or download the pdf copy.
- · 1. The Teaching of Christ - The Claim of Christ as to the Value of His Teaching
- · 2. Concerning Personalities: God
- · 3. Concerning Personalities: Himself
- · 4. Concerning Personalities: The Spirit
- · 5. Concerning Personalities: Angels
- · 6. Concerning Personalities: Satan and Demons
- · 7. Concerning Personalities: Man
- · 8. Concerning Sin and Salvation: Sin
- · 9. Concerning Sin and Salvation: Salvation
- · 10. Concerning Sin and Salvation: His Saving Mission
- · 11. Concerning Sin and Salvation: Human Responsibility
- · 12. Concerning Sin and Salvation: Sanctity
- · 13. The Teaching of Christ on the Kingdom of God: Summary Table
- · 14. Concerning Kingdom of God: The Fundamental Conception
- · 15. Concerning Kingdom of God: Different Phases of the One Fact
- · 16. Concerning Kingdom of God: The Existing Anarchy
- · 17. Concerning Kingdom of God: The Redemptive Processes - The Cross
- · 18. Concerning Kingdom of God: The Redemptive Processes - The Church
- · 19. Concerning Kingdom of God: The Redemptive Processes - The Conflict
- · 20. Concerning Kingdom of God: The Crisis
- · 21. Concerning Kingdom of God: An Individual Application
- · Download the original Book in PDF format
3). HEALING
According to https://www.studylight.org/concordances/eng/top/h/healing.html
“The Topical Concordance The LORD Healing
Exodus 15:26; 2 Kings 20:5; Psalms 30:2; Psalms 103:1-3; Isaiah 53:1-5; Isaiah 57:15-19; Jeremiah 3:21-22; Jeremiah 17:14; Jeremiah 30:16-17; Jeremiah 33:4-6; Hosea 6:1; Matthew 11:4-5; Matthew 13:10-15; Mark 3:7-10; Mark 6:4-5; Luke 4:40-41; Luke 5:12-15; Luke 7:22; Acts 4:9-10; 1 Peter 2:21-24 .
Who The LORD Heals
2 Chronicles 7:12-14; Psalms 107:17-20; Isaiah 61:1; Matthew 9:11-13; Mark 2:16-17; Luke 4:14-18; Luke 5:30-32; James 5:14-16 .
Heals, Christ Thompson Chain Reference
· (Examples of )
- · Matthew 4:23
- · Matthew 8:3
- · Matthew 8:16
- · Matthew 9:35
- · Matthew 12:13
- · Matthew 12:22
- · Matthew 14:36
- · Matthew 15:30
- · Matthew 17:18
- · Matthew 19:2
- · Matthew 21:14
- · Mark 1:31
- · Mark 10:52
- · Luke 7:21
- · Luke 13:13
- · Luke 17:14
- · Luke 22:51
- · John 4:50
- · John 5:9
- · John 9:6
- · SEE Christ
- · SEE Laying on of Hands
4). MIRACLES
Mat 11:20, “Then He began to reprimand the cities in which most of His miracles were done, because they did not repent.”
According to https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/m/miracle.html
“For the Christian Church the miracles of Jesus are of primary importance; and the evidence - external and internal - in their favour may be said to be sufficient to justify belief. The Gospels assumed their present form between A.D. 60 and go. Their representation of the moral character, the religious consciousness, the teaching of Jesus, inspires confidence. The narratives of miracles are woven into the very texture of this representation. In these acts Jesus reveals Himself as Saviour. " The Jesus Christ presented to us in the New Testament would become a very different person if the miracles were removed " (Temple's Relations between Religion and Science). In His sinless perfection and filial relation to God He is unique, and His works are congruous with His Person. Of the supreme miracle of His resurrection there is earlier evidence' than of any of the others (1 Cor. xv. 3-7, before A.D. 58). His conquest of death is most frequently appealed to in the apostolic teaching. The Christian Church would never have come into existence without faith in the Risen Lord. The proof of the supernaturalness of His Person sets the seal to the credibility of His. supernatural works. In Christ, however, was the fulfilment of law and prophecy. This close connexion invests the antecedent. revelation in some degree with the supernaturalness of His Person: at least, we are prepared to entertain without prejudice any evidence. that may be presented in the Old Testament. … The Apostolic miracles, to which the New Testament bears evidence, were wrought in the power of Christ, and were evidences to His church and to the world of His continued presence. When the Church had established itself in the world, and possessed in its moral and religious. fruits evidence of its claims, these outward signs appear gradually to have ceased, although attempts were made to perpetuate them. ... (H. J. Bernard in Hastings's Bible Dictionary, iii. 395). (A. E. G.*)
Miracles Nave's Topical Bible
· “OF JESUS, IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
- o Water converted into wine
John 2:1-11 - o Heals the nobleman's son
John 4:46-54 - o The catch of fish
Luke 5:1-11 - o Heals the demoniac
Mark 1:23-26; Luke 4:33-36 - o Heals Peter's mother-in-law
Matthew 8:14-17; Mark 1:29-31; Luke 4:38,39 - o Cleanses the leper
Matthew 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-16 - o Heals the paralyzed man
Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26 - o Healing of the immobile man
John 5:1-16 - o Restoring the withered hand
Matthew 12:9-13; Mark 3:1-5; Luke 6:6-11 - o Restores the centurion's servant
Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10 - o Raises the widow's son to life at the village of Nain
Luke 7:11-16 - o Heals a demoniac
Matthew 12:22-37; Mark 3:11; Luke 11:14,15 - o Stills the storm
Matthew 8:23-27; 14:32; Mark 4:35-41; Luke 8:22-25 - o Throws demons out of two men of Gadara (Gerasa)
Matthew 8:28-34; Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-39 - o Raises the daughter of Jairus from the dead
Matthew 9:18,19,23-26; Mark 5:22-24,35-43; Luke 8:41,42,49-56 - o Cures the woman with the issue of blood
Matthew 9:20-22; Mark 5:25-34; Luke 8:43-48 - o Restores two blind men to sight
Matthew 9:27-31 - o Heals a demoniac
Matthew 9:32,33 - o Walks upon Lake Galilee
Matthew 14:22-33; Mark 6:45-52; John 6:16-21 - o Heals the daughter of the non-Jewish, Syro-Phoenician woman
Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30 - o Feeds more than four-thousand people
Matthew 15:32-39; Mark 8:1-9 - o Restores the deaf-mute man
Mark 7:31-37 - o Restores a blind man
Mark 8:22-26 - o Heals the epileptic boy
Matthew 17:14-21; Mark 9:14-29; Luke 9:37-43 - o The temple tax money obtained from a fish's mouth
Matthew 17:24-27 - o Restores ten lepers to wholeness, only one of them returns To thank Jesus
Luke 17:11-19 - o Opens the eyes of a man born blind
John 9 - o Raises Lazarus from the dead
John 11:1-46 - o Heals the woman with the spirit of infirmity
Luke 13:10-17 - o Cures a man with dropsy
Luke 14:1-6 - o Restores sight to two blind men near Jericho
Matthew 20:29-34; Mark 10:46-52; Luke 18:35-43 - o Condemns a fig tree
Matthew 21:17-22; Mark 11:12-14,20-24 - o Heals the ear of Malchus
Luke 22:49-51 - o The second catch of fish
John 21:6
N.B. I think it is necessary for me to say that I believe in all Biblical miracles because I believe in the power of God.
VI. HIS NATURES
According to https://www.theopedia.com/hypostatic-union
“The two natures of Jesus refers to the doctrine that the one person Jesus Christ had/has two natures, divine and human. In theology this is called the doctrine of the hypostatic union, from the Greek word hypostasis (which came to mean substantive reality). Early church figures such as Athanasius used the term "hypostatic union" to describe the teaching that these two distinct natures (divine and human) co-existed substantively and in reality in the single person of Jesus Christ. The aim was to defend the doctrine that Jesus was simultaneously truly God and truly man.”
1Pe 2:24, “and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.”
Heb 4:14-15, “Therefore, since we have a Great High
Priest who has passed through the Heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let’s hold firmly to our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who
cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things just as we are, yet without sin.”
Tit 2:13, “looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus.”
VII. HIS CRUCIFIXION
According to https://www.biblebaptistchurchnaples.org/pages/Library/Morgan/death.html
Death of Jesus Christ
by G.C. Morgan
" . . . I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father"
-- John 10:17-18.
"From the beginning Christ knew that the culminating fact in His ministry was death." . . . Judas came with an armed mob of men. Jesus confronted them, with that poor little handful of men standing behind Him. He asked then naturally, "Whom seek ye?" The answer was quick and ready, "Jesus of Nazareth." He said, "I am," and they fell backward to the ground. There is no possibility of escape from the conviction that there was something--whether in the tone of the voice or in the flash of the eye, I know not--by which these men were made conscious of power which they feared; and for the moment they dared lay no arresting hand on Him. There followed an almost greater marvel. These men recovered themselves . . . Herein is the wonder that He Who could so say, "I am," as to compel men to prostration and to overpowering weakness, permitted Himself to be bound. This was a demonstration of the truth of His assertion, "No man taketh My life from Me, I lay it down of Myself." This was Jesus of Nazareth, but He was more. This is a mystery, a marvel, but yet it is the solution of the first problem. So much was He Jesus of Nazareth that they could seize Him and bind Him; so much more was He than Jesus of Nazareth that, when He but said, "I am," they became as dead men in His presence.
. . . . Pilate, perplexed, astonished, and harassed, at last looked into the face of this Man in the loneliness of the inner chamber to which he had taken Him, and said in effect: You know I have power over you; You are in my hands, Jesus looked back into the face of Pilate and said, "Thou wouldest have no power against Me, except it were given thee from above." From that time Pilate worked hard to set Him free, but he was unable to do it. The explanation is to be found in His declaration, "I lay down My life . . . . no one takes it from Me."
. . . In all the mystery of the wounding and the darkness never lose sight of the regal dignity of His dying. When He knew that all things were accomplished He said, "I thirst." That is Jesus of Nazareth. Then He said, "It is finished; and He bowed His head, and gave up His Spirit." That is the Christ, dying by His own will and act.
. . . It is evident that He clearly apprehended His death, but He definitely accepted it as the issue of His ministry.
. . . Christ was supernatural, and therefore His death must be considered in the light of that fact. . . Therefore the death of Christ was unique. . . . It is the story of the death of One Who was at once Son of God and Son of Man.
It was a death in which the consciousness of God and the consciousness of man were identified. God's consciousness of man found expression when the dying One said, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" That was the cry of God as He gathered into His own heart all the consciousness of humanity in its lack of Him.
Man's consciousness of God found expression as the One upon the Cross said, "It is finished," and "Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit."
"God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19).
VIII. HIS RESURRECTION
The Value and Proof of the Resurrection
If Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain. 1 Corinthians 15:14
Strauss, who was one of the most brilliant of the critics of Christianity, and one of the most unbelieving of the apologists of Christ, declared the resurrection to be the center of the center. That declaration harmonizes with the view of the greatest exponent of the Christian faith in apostolic times. "If Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we witnessed of God that He raised up Christ: Whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, neither hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable." No language can be clearer. The resurrection is the groundwork of faith because all else in connection with the affirmations of Christianity must be interpreted by it. If Christ hath been raised, then evangelical Christianity is true. If Christ hath not been raised, then all other matters of our faith are misinterpretations. If Christ hath not been raised then God was no more manifest in flesh in Christ than in other men. If Christ hath not been raised then the teaching of Jesus has no other authority than the authority of His own personal conviction, and must be tested by subsequent thinking and speculation. If Christ hath not been raised then the Cross of Calvary was nothing more than the tragic ending of a mistaken, if noble life. All the values of evangelical Christianity are dependent on interpretations of the person and mission of Jesus resulting from acceptation of the central fact of His resurrection.
I desire to speak first of the place of the resurrection in the economy of redemption, as revealed in the Scriptures of Truth; and second, of the values of the resurrection as a basis of faith for all such as are crying out after purity, and after God.
First, then, the place of the resurrection in the economy of redemption. The Christian religion is pre-eminently a religion of redemption. Its whole message may be summarized in the words of our Lord concerning Himself, "The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost." That tells the story not merely of the mission of Jesus, it reveals the real meaning of the Christian religion. It begins with man as incompetent, and has to do with the method of his saving, his remaking. That is the distinctive note of Christianity. In that it is differentiated from any and every other religion of which the world has ever known anything. Other religions are ethical, and attempt to interpret to men the higher ideals of life. In so far as they do so they also have Divine authority. Yet others insist upon the necessity of man's culture of his own life, and almost invariably tell him with strange, weird, awful honesty, that his endeavor will be of no avail. The Christian religion comes to man everywhere, and says in effect, Thou art lost, but mayest be found. Thou hast failed, but thou mayest succeed. Thou art ruined, but thou mayest be redeemed. The content of the Christian religion is the declaration of pardon, and of power, and of peace.
In the Bible there is one central figure, and one central truth. The central Person in the Bible is Jesus of Nazareth, called as to person, Son of man and Son of God; bearing as supreme title, indicating the meaning of His mission, the Christ of God. There can be no intelligent study of the Bible that does not show the pathways since His life in the world started with that life, and owe their direction to His indication and His impulse.
The Christian religion may be summarized in one very brief sentence, "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." I therefore take the life and ministry of Jesus and divide it into four parts. First, there is the fact of incarnation. Second, there is the ministry of His life, His teaching, and His deeds. Third, there is the Cross. Ultimately, there is the resurrection. Let us interpret these facts by the supreme word, "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." To do so is to recognize that the whole life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth was an unveiling of the truth concerning God. God was speaking out into speech that men could understand the infinite and eternal things concerning Himself. In the incarnation God did not come any nearer to humanity than He had been before. I go back into the twilight of the Old Testament, and I find the stupendous recognition of the nearness of God to human life. When the prophet at the Babylonish court charged the king with sin, he said, "The God in Whose hand thy breath is, and Whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified." The Psalmist declared, Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, Thou understandest my thought afar off.... Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there." The singers and the writers of the past were thus conscious of the nearness of God. Paul speaking in the midst of the culture of Athens, said to the philosophic Greeks, "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." Men knew the nearness of God, but they did not know the God to Whom they were near. The incarnation was not the method by which God came nearer to humanity, but the method by which He came into the observation of humanity, and took the speech that man was able to understand. The Word, inarticulate through the far-flung splendor of the ages, became flesh, became articulate in human speech and human accents and human tones, in order that men might hear in their own language the infinite truth concerning God. By way of the incarnation God came into human observation; came into such form and fashion that the men who had ever lived in His presence, whose breath had been in His hand through all their lives, might listen and understand, might see and comprehend. That is the first fact in the ministry of Christ.
The second fact is exactly true to the same underlying principle. I follow Him through all the years of His private life, along the pathway of His public ministry; and as I do so I am coming to the knowledge of God. God is revealing to me His thought for me, His purpose for me, the meaning of the breadth, beauty, and beneficence of His government. I do not wonder, as I ponder the words of Jesus that have been preserved for me by the inspired writers, that men exclaimed, "Never man so spake." Was the message a new message? Was God giving us a new thought? Had God changed His mind? By no means. In Christ He said the thing that He always thought and intended, but He so said it that man might understand it. Through all the ministry of Christ I have the unveiling of the will of God for human life. Observe Him, moreover, in His attitudes toward men. His awful severity against sin, His gracious tenderness toward the sinner, unveil the attitude of God toward sin, and toward the sinner. The words that passed His lips, that scorch me even until this hour, are the words of God about sin. The words that passed His lips, and which woo and win me toward His heart for rest and healing, are the words of God toward me the sinner.
Now, reverently, one step further. As I stand in the presence of the Cross, I must recognize that the Crucified One is the same Person that I have looked upon in the years of public ministry, the same Person Who is described as the Word made flesh. If "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself" when He came into human life, and as He passed along the pathway of human teaching, it is still true that "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself" in the Cross. In that Cross is unveiled before humanity the grace of God, operating through suffering, toward the restoration of man. The Cross of Jesus Christ, according to the interpretation of the New Testament, was not the place where one Jesus of Nazareth, Who was also God in Christ, wrought out into human visibility the infinite and unfathomable mystery of that passion and pain whereby it is possible for God to take back the sinning man and remake him.
So, finally, when I come to the final fact of the resurrection, it is the revelation of the strength of God accomplishing the utmost purpose of His will. I go back to some of the ancient words concerning Him. Hear this, for instance, "In all their affliction He was afflicted." There are those who believe that from that passage a negation has been omitted and that what was actually written was this, "In all their affliction He was not afflicted." I do not say that is an accurate statement, but admitting it for the moment, see what is said. "In their affliction"--He was in it, He shared it, He passed through it with them--but He was not afflicted, He was not beaten down, overcome, defeated. Even if we take the gracious statement as it stands it has the same significance. "In all their affliction He was afflicted.... He bare them, and carried them all the days of old." I reverently come to the Cross and there I see unveiled the mystery I can never explain. I will not attempt to interpret it by the words of Scripture. The great herald of Jesus Christ said, "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." The apostolic writer said, "His own self bare our sins in His own body upon the tree." Still believing that this is God in Christ, I am face to face with the tremendous declaration that God is bearing the sin of the race. The resurrection demonstrates the fact that He was equal to the burden; that He carried it; that He dealt with it as He intended to deal with it; and therefore the writers of the New Testament invariably when they speak of the resurrection speak of it as the manifestation of the might of God. The apostle declares to us that He was "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead; even Jesus Christ our Lord." The Resurrection is the revelation of the strength of Deity; the revelation of the fact that if He was oppressed, burdened with the passion of human sin, He was not overcome thereby; that in the process of bearing the burden He accomplished His purpose, and came at last to ultimate victory. Peter had the same vision of it when He declared, "It was not possible that He should be holden of it." So that the place of the resurrection in the economy of redemption is that of demonstration of the fact that all God thought for human redemption, all God attempted in the mystery of His own being for human redemption, He accomplished.
In the incarnation the fact of God was manifest. By the pathway of Christ's public ministry the will of God was interpreted. In His crucifixion, the grace of God was unveiled. In the resurrection, the victorious strength of God was manifest. The importance of the resurrection is at once evident. Take the first three facts away from the fourth, and what is the result? He claimed identity with the Father, "I and the Father are one." He claimed authority from the Father for all He taught, "I do nothing of Myself, but as the Father hath taught Me, I speak these things." He claimed co-operation with the Father in His work, "My Father worketh even until now, and I work." I come to His Cross and I see Him die. I watch them as they bear Him tenderly and reverently, and place Him in the rock-hewn tomb, and I stand outside that tomb in the garden, and see the great stone rolled to the entrance and the seal of the Roman government placed upon it. Now, what of His claim to identity with the Father? What of His claim to authority from the Father? What of His claim to co-operation with the Father? "If Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also in vain." If there was no resurrection all the things declared are discredited. If there was resurrection these things are demonstrated. The whole Christian religion depends upon the fact of the resurrection of Christ. If He never rose, then the story of the incarnation is a myth. If He never rose then I have no demonstration of the authority of His teaching. If He never rose, then His dying was no more than the dying of Thomas Cranmer. If He rose, then by that resurrection His Person is revealed as other than the person of Thomas Cranmer, His life as different from the life of other men, His teaching as having Divine authority, and His Cross as having some infinite value and meaning. Everything depends upon the resurrection.
Paul did not end with a hypothesis. His ultimate word is, "But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that are asleep. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." The infinite music of the Gospel singing itself through Paul's heart, he declares the possibility of human redemption, basing his conviction, his testimony, upon the great and gracious fact that Jesus Christ rose from among the dead.
Degrade Christ from the place that He has occupied in evangelical Christianity, from that conception which has made the Church what she has been through the centuries; speak of Him merely as on the level of other men, and you have lost your revelation of God, and your ethical authority, and your salvation by passion and suffering and death; and in order to do this you are compelled to deny the actual historic fact of the resurrection. Let that fact of actual resurrection be admitted, and it interprets all the other facts, and explains the history and mystery of the conquest of Christianity through the centuries. "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself," revealing His nearness in the fact of incarnation, interpreting His will in the teaching of Jesus, making visible the awful mystery of His passion in the presence of sin, by the Cross; demonstrating the might by which He accomplishes the redemption, in the greatness and glory of resurrection.
Now let me turn to the second line of consideration, which is the personal application of that already taken. What is the value of the resurrection as a basis of faith? In order that we may see that let me ask you to think of Jesus before the resurrection as to the claims He made in the presence of human life, as to the purpose He declared He had in view, and as to the promises He definitely made to men as He taught amongst them.
Of His claims, I will refer to only one. In differing ways He deliberately claimed that He and He alone could lead the soul of man to God. There are many texts. Let me take you to that oldest and most familiar, which we generally begin to recite thus, "Come unto Me." That is not the commencement of the declaration. Jesus did not begin there. He began thus, "All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father: and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him." To whom will the Son reveal the Father? In a moment the answer to our inquiry comes, "Come unto Me." By all of which Christ meant to say, first of all, that what humanity needs in its restlessness is to find God. If you would cure the feverishness of life you must lead men to God. Now, mark His claim. "Neither doth any know the Father save the Son." Blasphemous audacity, or Divine Gospel, one of the two! He claimed to be the Revealer of the Father. He declared that His mission was that of leading souls to God.
What did He say concerning His purpose? He declared that He could accomplish His purpose only by dying, and whenever He referred to His dying He referred to His rising again. By many a hint in earlier days of His ministry, by clear and definite declaration in the midst of hostile crowds, by careful and patient instruction to His own disciples, He affirmed the necessity for dying, and declared that if He died He would rise again. I say by many a hint in the earlier days of His ministry. Take two illustrations. When He cleansed the temple and they inquired, "By what authority doest Thou these things?" He answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up"; referring to His body, as the inspired writer declares later. On the housetops at night, with the wind sighing through the streets of Jerusalem, an inquiring soul said to Him, "How can these things be?" Jesus said, "Ye must be born anew." This man asked, How can a man blot out the past and begin again? Jesus said in answer, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth may in Him have eternal life." Life shall come through death was His answer to the inquiry of Nicodemus. If you question the interpretation of these particular passages then come to the set and definite discourse chronicled in the tenth chapter of John's Gospel. There is nothing more wonderful in all the discourses of Jesus than that. He said, "I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd layeth down His life for the sheep.... I lay down My life, that I may take it again. This commandment received I from My Father." Or if you turn from the public declaration, which perhaps has in it still something of mystery, then follow the last weeks after Caesarea Philippi, and listen attentively. "From that time began Jesus to show unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up." How often we read that carelessly. If you tell me that was simply the conclusion of a far-seeing soul, if you tell me that Jesus was such as I am, a child of His own age, blundering His way on with great honesty, and seeing that at last these men would kill Him, and that He is now taking His disciples into His confidence and saying, Well, I see how it will all end, they will kill Me. I have been true to My teaching, and when I go to Jerusalem I know they will kill Me--then how do you explain the last thing, "and the third day be raised again"? If you study your New Testament carefully you will discover that He never spoke of His death to His disciples but that He also spoke of His resurrection. I challenge you to find a single exception. In those last weeks, over and over again, He called them to Him and always seems to have been seeking their sympathy, as He told them of the Cross; but He always told them also of the resurrection. Of course, if you question the accuracy of the records, and tear up the New Testament, do not come and hear me preach. I have nothing to preach but this Book. I have no authority other than this. I am not here to defend its authority. That is demonstrated by nineteen centuries of victory in the moral realm.
I come once more to the tomb. He is dead. He is in the tomb. I come as a sinning man. I come as a man who has to say, "The good which I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I practise... to me who would do good, evil is present." I come as a man who would say to all philosophers: do not discuss how the poison came into my blood; it is here, mastering me; I have sinned; I have seen the fair vision of His teaching and I desire it, but I cannot realize it; I am a sinner with guilt and pollution upon me. This Man said He would lay down His life for me, and take it again that I might share it. This Man said I might be born again by the mystery of His dying. He declared emphatically that He must die and be raised again. He is dead. If He do not come out of that tomb I will not say that He was a deceiver, but He was deceived. If He do not come out of that tomb, the thing He thought to do He has been unable to do. I cannot put it less reverently than that, but I must so put it. I stand in the presence of that sealed tomb of Jesus and say, Is He coming back? If He do not come forth, then though He laid down His life, He cannot take it again; the burner has been too much, the desire too mighty, the great dream of redemption of man by the laying down of His life and taking it again that they may share it, a great dream, but nothing more. If that stone remain there, and Jesus is held captive, then there is no pardon for my guilty soul, and no life for my paralyzed humanity. "If Christ hath not been raised... your faith also is vain, void; ye and it is true in my heart and life.
"But how hath Christ been raised from the dead?" In the moment of that resurrection all the claims of His life and teaching are vindicated. When I see Him come back from the grave I know full well that what He said is true. I know He laid down His life and has taken it again. In the mystery of that death, I cannot enter into the awful chambers of its loneliness, I am forevermore excluded. I cannot understand it or explain it, but I know there has been--
One death grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word.
Between the Lord of life, and death, and sin. If He did not rise again, then death won, and sin won. If He hath been raised, then He won and death is vanquished, because sin is spoiled. Then the sinner has found his Redeemer. If He took His life again, to share it, then I know that His dying was victorious dying; and the value of His dying He makes over to me for pardon; and the virtue of His life He makes over to me for power, and the presence of my risen Lord shall forevermore be the method of my victory.
I make the application of the great fact of resurrection in the words of this selfsame apostle in his epistle of salvation. Hear them, "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved: for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be put to shame." Why does the apostle put the resurrection there, why not the Cross? Why did he not say, If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that He died for thee, thou shalt be saved? Because that will not satisfy reason, and so creates no basis for faith. Death apart from resurrection makes no appeal to my confidence. Death in the light of the resurrection is that in which I put my trust. I come into the presence of the death of Christ while the light of His resurrection plays upon it, and I say, He loved me and gave Himself for Me; He was wounded for my transgressions, He was bruised for my iniquities; the chastisement of my peace was upon Him and with His stripes I am healed. It is all night if He rose not. It was a tragic death, awful death, a death of failure, as other deaths have been. In the light of resurrection I know it was a death triumphant, a death of accomplishment, a death of victory in the process of which He procured for me the pardon that my sinning heart needs, and the power my weakened life demands.
IX. HIS COMMISSION
WINNING SOULS by G. CAMPBELL MORGAN
He that is wise winneth souls.
Proverbs 11:30
THE SLIGHT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE AUTHORIZED VERSION and the Revised Version in the translation of this text suggests two different meanings. The Authorized Version reads, "He that winneth souls is wise," and that seems to mean quite simply that it is a wise thing to win souls. The Revised Version reads, "He that is wise winneth souls," and that seems to mean quite as simply that the condition for winning souls is wisdom; winning souls is a wise business; a man must be wise if he is to win souls. When the two ideas are thus suggested we realize that each translation may convey both meanings. The Authorized Version declares, "He that winneth souls is wise," that is, in himself and in his deed. The Revised Version reads, "He that is wise winneth souls," that is, wisdom is the condition for the work, and when that condition is fulfilled, the winning of souls is the inevitable issue. I feel, therefore, that we are justified in treating this text in both ways, as conveying both ideas. Whichever translation we take, whichever idea may appeal most strongly, we recognize that one subject is suggested, that of winning souls, whatever the declaration with regard to it may be. The declaration we shall treat as twofold; first, that wisdom is necessary to the work, and, second, that the accomplishment of the work is demonstration of wisdom.
Let these be the lines of our consideration: first, the subject referred to, winning souls; second, the wisdom which is necessary to do the work; and, third, the wisdom of the work done.
First, then, as to the winning of souls. The phrase is an old one. I do not mean merely by the fact of its presence in the Divine oracles, but by the fact of its use. I think we are compelled to admit that we do not hear so much about it now as some of us did in our boyhood days; but it is still being used, and is by no means unfamiliar to Christian people. Herein lies a difficulty, not insuperable, but quite definite; the difficulty of familiarity with a phrase, and the consequent difficulty of prejudice as to what the phrase may really mean. Here, therefore, we must clear our ground, or we may be lead into false speculations and certainly into misunderstandings of the enterprise which is suggested by this phrase of the Old Testament, a phrase illuminated, transfigured, and glorified by all the revelation contained in the New Testament.
What, then, is meant by winning souls? To proceed carefully with our investigation brings us immediately to another question, What are souls? When we have answered that, we may proceed to inquire, What is it to win them?
What, then, are souls? We have no right to take the word as it is in common use today and read into it either the interpretation of that common use, or the interpretation of our own conception of its meaning. We want to know what this man meant when he wrote the word. What did he mean by "souls"? I can answer the question only by looking carefully at the word and seeing its place in these Old Testament Scriptures. Let me immediately say, it is one of the commonest words to be found in these writings. Someone who has had the time to count tells us that the Hebrew word occurs 754 times in the writings of the Old Testament. Of those 754 times, the word is translated "souls" 472 times; on 282 occasions the Hebrew word is translated in forty ways, so that altogether the same Hebrew word is translated in forty-one ways. The predominating translation, however, is the one that we find in our text. If, then, this word was thus variously translated, and evidently as variously used, it is important that we discover its real intention. The word means simply a breathing creature. Its first occurrence, interestingly enough, is in the twenty-first verse of the first chapter of Genesis, which says that "God created the great sea-monsters, and every living creature that moveth," living creature meaning breathing creature. As I take my way through the Bible and observe its use, I discover that it became almost constantly and exclusively used of man himself. To take this Hebrew word nephesh, and trace it through the Old Testament and tabulate the results carefully, is to have a remarkable aid to the study of the psychology and theology of the ancient Hebrew people. It is used over and over again of man as a person, of man as a being whose existence is due to the fact of life. Thus the word does not refer to the spirit of a man alone, it does not refer to the mind of man only, and it certainly does not refer to the body of man alone; but the word in its common use excludes neither body nor mind, nor that which is essential, spirit; it includes all of them. "He that is wise winneth souls." Here the word "souls" does not mean the spiritual side of man's nature only, or the mental capacities of a man alone; certainly not his bodily powers only. It means the whole man, and man is not a disembodied spirit. The essential in man is spirit, but no man is man in his spiritual nature alone. This old-time writer, having much less of light and less understanding of the value of human life, and less understanding of God's estimate of the grandeur and glory of human life than we have to-day, said, "He that is wise winneth men" - using the word generically.
Now we may ask our second question, What is it to win men? Here again the word employed arrests us. I like the word "winneth" and yet there is a sense in which while certainly valuable as it reveals the best method of doing the work, it is not quite accurate as a revelation of the thought of the writer. "Winneth" is a very beautiful word, for it is by the note that woos and wins that men are most often helped; but the Hebrew word here is to take, to catch, and that in the widest variety of applications. Here again a little illumination may come to us if we remind ourselves of how this word is rendered in our versions. It is translated elsewhere, to accept, to bring, to buy, to draw, to infold. I would not be at all afraid of taking any one of these words and putting it into my text. He that is wise accepteth souls. He that is wise bringeth souls. He that is wise buyeth souls. He that is wise draweth souls. He that is wise infoldeth souls. That suggests all sorts of methods for doing the work, and every word seems to have some of the music of the gospel of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and some revelation of the beauty of His methods with men. But the simple meaning is, to take alive. We may get some New Testament light on this in the story of the miraculous draught of fishes (Luke 5:1-11). Jesus said to Peter on that occasion, "From henceforth thou shalt catch men." That is exactly the thought of my text. "He that is wise catcheth men." Looking at the story in Luke again, I am constrained to say that our translation misses something. What did Jesus really say to Peter? "From henceforth thou shalt catch men alive." The value of what Jesus said did not consist in the similarity of the work these men were called to do, but in the disparity between the work they had been doing and what they would do henceforth. Henceforth you shall catch men alive. They had toiled all night and had not taken anything. Jesus instructed them where they should cast their net, and they cast it, and caught a great multitude of fish. When they caught those fish they took them from the element of life into that of death. Jesus said, Henceforth you shall catch men alive, that is, you shall do for men, the exact opposite to what you have been doing in the case of fish. Those fish you have brought from the element of their life to the element of death. You shall bring men from the element of death unto life. You shall catch men, take them alive; you shall lead them into life; you shall bring them to Me, and so bring them unto life; you shall buy them by putting out your own strength and energy in service and sacrifice to bring them into life; you shall draw them in your fellowship with Me from death unto life; you shall infold them in the bundle of life.
That is the real thought of my text. Let us go back to Proverbs and think of it as a whole. First of all, we have a series of parental discourses on wisdom by a father to his son, then a collection of proverbs made by Solomon during his lifetime, then a collection of proverbs made in the time of Hezekiah, finally, certain speeches by men unknown to us. The whole book is unified by its perpetual contrast of two ideals of life, two methods of life, two conditions in which men live: the way of wisdom and the way of folly, the way of righteousness and the way of wickedness, the way of godliness and the way of godlessness, the way of life and the way of death. In my contrasts I have introduced only one word that is not in the book of Proverbs, the word "Godlessness." All the rest are there, and that is plainly inferred. In the discourses on wisdom, and in the Proverbs these things are put into contrast: wisdom and folly, rightness and wickedness, godliness and godlessness, life and death. Right here, in the heart of the book, the preacher says, "He that is wise winneth souls," that is catcheth men, leading them from folly to wisdom, from wickedness to rightness, from godlessness to godliness, from death to life. This is also what Jesus said, "Henceforth you shall catch men alive," winning them from the element of death and bringing them into the element of life, wherein all the meaning of their personalities will be fulfilled to the uttermost. The work is winning, not spirits alone, not minds only, not bodies simply, but men.
I submit to you - broad, hurried, and necessarily brief as this outlook is on a great subject - that it is a great enterprise to win souls, to capture men and bring them from darkness into light, from death to life. It is a worthy enterprise, that is, it is worth while. There is no enterprise that confronts a man when he stands in the bloom of his young man-hood that ought to appeal to him like this. There is no enterprise that presents itself to a girl in the beauty and freshness of her youth that ought to capture her dear heart like this. To win souls, to lead human beings out of darkness into light, out of death into life, out of paralysis and failure and heart-break into power and victory and joy, is a worthy enterprise. I submit to you, it is an enterprise which brings more satisfaction and delight to the soul than any other. I say to you, my Christian brothers and sisters who have never yet given yourselves to this work, you do not yet know the joy of life. There is no joy in the world like the joy of seeing a broken, soiled, spoiled man or woman healed, cleansed, renewed; to observe the haunting fear in the eyes as first we saw them changed into dancing joy when they have come to Christ and to life. To win souls, to catch men, women, and children, to take them alive, out of the element of death into the element of life - that is a worthy enterprise, a satisfying enterprise, a delightful enterprise.
In his proverb the preacher said, "He that is wise winneth souls." What is the wisdom that is necessary for this enterprise, for doing this work? What did he mean by wisdom? All the book of Proverbs reveals what he meant. The other wisdom book, which came from the same pen, the book of Ecclesiastes, will show what he meant. The third wisdom book of the Old Testament, with which in all likelihood this man was familiar, for it is probably the most ancient of all the Old Testament books, the book of Job, will show what he meant. Wisdom, in the sense in which these books are designated wisdom books, meant simply what we mean by philosophy. In these books we find the philosophy of the Hebrew religion. There is a distinction between the philosophy as discovered to us in these wisdom books and all other philosophies which I will only mention now. The Hebrew philosophy began with the affirmation of God. All others begin with Pilate's question, "What is truth?" Do not misunderstand that passing illustration. I am not criticizing the method of the question, but reminding you that the Hebrew philosophers did not begin with that question. They affirmed God, and proceeded on the presupposition that God is all-wise, that wisdom could be perfectly predicated only of God, that apart from Him there is no wisdom, that in Him all wisdom dwells. From that presupposition they deduced their doctrine of human wisdom. I go back to the beginning of this wonderful book of Proverbs and find a definition. The preface is in the first seven verses of the first chapter; then the writer gives his definition of wisdom:
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
These Hebrew philosophers believed that wisdom in man was the result of man's right relationship to God. God is the fountain of all wisdom, and in proportion as man submits himself to His law and seeks His knowledge and His guidance and direction, in that proportion man is wise. I am inclined to say, in spite of all the centuries that have passed since these wisdom books were written, that it was a very sound philosophy. I turn to the New Testament and I do not find that conception of wisdom altered. I do find it is illuminated, that a new light is breaking out, because there is a new revelation of God. In the letter to the Romans Paul comes to a point where he breaks out into a great doxology; "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past tracing out!" That is the Hebrew conception of God as the All-wise, but it follows the great apostolic teaching concerning salvation. I turn from that to the Corinthian letter and I find the same man writing to people who are being darkened in understanding by false philosophies in the Corinthian city, and he tells them that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to bring to nought the wise things of the world, until at last he reaches the culmination of his teaching when he declares that Christ Jesus "was made unto us wisdom from God." Then he analyzes the wisdom, declaring it to be "both righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption."
Thus the New Testament doctrine of wisdom is that it exists in God, that man is wise only as he comes into right relationship with God, and that wisdom has manifested itself in a method by which men, blind and foolish and far away and in darkness, may see and return and be enabled. Paul declares that for humanity in its sin and shame the ultimate unveiling of the wisdom of God is in the redemption that He has provided for man in Christ Jesus.
Then I turn to James - the supremely ethical writer of the New Testament, whose very letter is saturated with the Sermon on the Mount, and with Proverbs and the wisdom books of the Old Testament - and I find that he gives us a description of what wisdom is when it is at work: "The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without variance, without hypocrisy."
In this passage we have a perfect description of the man who wins souls. If, then, I am to be engaged in this great enterprise I must have the wisdom that cometh down from above. There is a wisdom, says James, that does not come down from above, it is earthly, sensual, devilish, and so he dismisses it. He then describes the wisdom that cometh down from above, and so shows us the wise man as God sees him. This is the man who is able to catch men and lead them from darkness to light. Let us then observe what James says about the wisdom that cometh from above, not in its widest applications, but with our minds fastened on this one subject of the capacity for winning souls. In this declaration three little words must be carefully observed which are not descriptive words but which mark a method: "First, pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without variance, without hypocrisy." My emphasis has brought out the words I ask you to observe: "First ... then … without." "First," that which is fundamental in this wisdom; "then," the attitudes of mind that result; "without," the things that are excluded. What is fundamental? Purity. What are the things that result? "Peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits." What are the things that are excluded when this wisdom masters the life? "Variance, hypocrisy."
The first word needs no comment; the wise man must be "pure." Then the attitudes of mind. "Peaceable" means not merely that the wise man is in himself a man who loves peace, but that he is pacific, that he makes for peace. Immediately the word of Jesus comes to our minds, the word from the great Manifesto, "Blessed are the peacemakers." The next word, translated "gentle" really means patient. The next word, "easy to be entreated," is a great word and certainly admits of two interpretations. This translation is the interpretation of the revisers, and I do not agree with it. "Easy to be entreated," suggests a man who can be approached easily, but I believe it means more, it means persuasive. "Full of mercy," that is, full of compassion. "Full … of good fruits," that is, full of the very things these needy people are waiting for. All these things lie within wisdom. They may be remembered by simple alliteration: pure, pacific, patient, persuasive, potential. These are the very qualities that are necessary if we are to win men.
First, pure. I cannot win men from impurity to purity if I am impure. I cannot catch men from the element of death and bring them into life if I myself am abiding in the element of death. I cannot lure men to walk the sunlit path if I hug the place where shadows lie and the darkness is thick. "First, pure." The man who attracts other men to holiness is the pure man. The reason why many people are utterly incapacitated for winning souls is that within their life is harbored, permitted, entertained, something that is impure and unholy. First, pure.
Then peaceable, pacific, making peace. Then patient. Ah, me, how often much patience is needed for winning souls! How they disappoint us, how they break out again and again into the same old sins, and how we are tempted to say, We will wash our hands of them! Never! The wisdom that is from above never washes its hands of the most hopeless, failing souls. Love never faileth. Love is at the heart of the wisdom of God. Then persuasive, knowing how to deal with men so as to lead them to the light. Then potential, replete with compassion, which is the desire to give good fruits, which are the very gifts for which men wait.
This wisdom that is from above excludes variance. Here I deliberately go back to the Authorized Version, and prefer its rendering, "partiality." God is no respecter of persons, we are told. That is not so. He is a respecter of persons. The Bible does not say that He is not. The Bible says God is no respecter of faces, and the word was spoken to Jews, who thought that their very faces won them the respect of God! That quality of impartiality is necessary if we are to win souls. We so often have respect for faces; we do have hope of but not of that other man. We look at certain people and come to the conclusion that they are not salvable. Such a conclusion is always a lie, a blasphemy. There is no man on whom Grace cannot work God's perfect will if he can be brought into right relationship therewith.
Again, without hypocrisy, that is, without pretense. In the mystery of the common human mind there is a most remarkable detection of any kind of hypocrisy or cant in a man who is trying to talk about religion. All our influence is killed if our attempt to draw a man to religion is mere pretense.
This is the wisdom that cometh down from above. This is the wisdom that is needed if we are to win men. This winning of souls is not a mechanical business which we can go to school to learn; it is not an easy arrangement which can be taken up by people when they have read a certain number of books dealing with the subject. The capacity for dealing with souls is that wisdom which cometh from above, which is, first, pure, then contains within itself these great and gracious qualities, and excludes partiality and hypocrisy. The capacity to win souls lies in life homed in the will of God, responsive to the grace of God, incarnating the very life of the Christ of God. "He that winneth souls is wise." "He that is wise winneth souls."
It seems to me that I need take no time with the third line of thought, save briefly to refer to it. I need not argue the wisdom of the work. Why is it wise to win souls? Because this satisfies God. God is against the spoiling of human lives and the wanderings of men into the paths that run out into pathlessness. Catch them, catch them alive, bring them back, turn them again into the way of peace, and God is gladdened. It is wise to win souls, for it satisfies God.
It is wise to win souls, for it glorifies man, and that in the true sense. Oh, the wasted wealth of humanity, the powers and capacities and potentialities blighted, spoiled, ruined! Oh, the agony of it! Win them, catch them, renew them! This is great, gracious, and glorious work. To see that which was out of the way turn into the way, that on which rested the cankerworm and the mildew and blight, breaking out into blossom and beauty and flowers and fruit. To see that man whose very face had become the awful sign manual of his lust being transformed into a man whose face is a revelation of the love of God. To see that girl whose eyes, naturally full of life and love, had become hard and scornful and devilish transformed, until from them flashes the glorious light of the eyes of Christ. It is great work, this!
It is wise to win souls. It is wise to win souls, moreover, because by winning souls we hasten the coming of the day of God.
Are we winning souls? Are we catching men? If not, why not? Is it that we have never seen the glory of the enterprise? Or is it that we lack the wisdom necessary? If it be that we have never been winners of souls because we have never seen the glory of the enterprise, then let us get near to Christ, really near to Him, spiritually near to Him. Resolutely forgetting and putting right out of our lives for one short hour all the influences of friends and others, and getting near to Him, and looking from His viewpoint, what shall we see? We shall see the extreme glory of humanity as we have never seen it. We shall see as He sees, that when God in the counsel of His great wisdom said, "Let us make man," He said a great thing. We shall see the consequent tragedy of human undoing as we have never seen it. The man who sees only the ruin of humanity has never seen the ruin of humanity. That man who is impressed only by the foolishness he finds in human nature does not know the tragedy of human undoing. But if behind the face bruised, marred, scarred, and battered, bloated, blasted, we can see the potential image of God, then we shall begin to know the tragedy of sin. Jesus looked through the mask (more than a mask), through the disfigurements of sin to the potential that lay behind. Thus He saw the tragedy of the leprosy. If we can see with Him, then the master passion of life will be to win souls, to have some share in the glorious enterprise of realizing the latent possibilities of humanity, in order to glorify that humanity and in order to glorify the God Who thought it and made it.
If we know the glory of the enterprise and fain would be winners of souls, but are conscious of our lack of the wisdom necessary, then let us return to an earlier word of James in this same letter: "If any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, Who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not."
I lack the wisdom, God knows how I lack it, and how I feel I lack it, the wisdom that is first pure, then peaceable, pacific, patient, persuasive, potential, and without partiality or pretense. I lack it, but I am going to ask for it, and when I do so, ashamed that I am so lacking, He does not upbraid me, and He will give it. I, even I, can have it! I can have this wisdom. I also may become a winner of souls.
Shall we not presently get away somewhere quietly and put ourselves at His disposal, that in the power of the wisdom that cometh from above we may share the high and holy enterprise?”
Mat 28:18-20, “And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority in Heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the world.”
X. HIS ASCENSION
Act 1:6-11, “So, when they had come together, they began asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this
time that You are restoring the Kingdom to Israel?”
But He said to them, “It is not for you to know periods
of time or appointed times which the Father has set by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and Samaria, and as far as the remotest part of the earth.”
(Mar 16:19, 20; Luk 24:50–53 )
And after He had said these things, He was lifted up
while they were watching, and a cloud took Him up, out of their sight. And as they were gazing intently
into the sky while He was going, then behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them,
and they said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand
looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you have watched Him go into Heaven.”
Jhn 14:28, ““You heard that I said to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.”
Jesus speaks of His Ascension as “going to the Father.”
Eph 4:10-13, “He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the Heavens, so that He might fill all things.) And He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as
pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints
for the work of ministry, for the building up of the
Body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”
1Pe 3:22, “Who is at the right hand of God, having gone into Heaven, after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to Him.”
Jhn 14:16-17, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, so that He may be with you forever; the Helper is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him; but you know Him because He remains with you and will be in you.”
It must be said clearly, the Holy Spirit represents Jesus Christ on earth, not the Catholic pope.
XI. HIS KINGDOM
I think the confusion is between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven? If fact, they are one and the same but set up by time in three different stages. The Kingdom of God began when Jesus Christ preached the Gospel of God. In fact, His forerunner John the Baptist with one step earlier by saying,
Jhn 1:29, “The next day he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
Mar 1:15, “and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the Gospel.”
Luk 5:10, “and likewise also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not fear; from now on you will be catching people.”
Mar 10:15, “Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.”
Jhn 14:7, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.”
Luk 4:43, “But He said to them, “I must also preach
the Kingdom of God to the other cities, because I was sent for this purpose.”
Luk 8:1, “Soon afterward, Jesus began going around
from one city and village to another, proclaiming and preaching the Kingdom of God. The twelve were with Him.”
Luk 16:16, “The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John came; since that time the
Gospel of the Kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it.”
Jhn 3:5, “Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.”
Water signifies the Word of God.
Eph 3:2-6, “if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already,
by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets: that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the Gospel.”
Now is the age of the Gospel, the dispensation of the grace of God; the Gentiles may repent of their sins and have faith in Jesus Christ, to partake the promises of Christ through the Gospel.
Heb 3:14, “For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.”
The end of the world is the second coming of Jesus Christ which begins the Millennium--which is the second stage.
Rev 20:1-3, “Then I saw an angel coming down from Heaven, holding the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he took hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he threw him into the abyss and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time.”
According TO https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/mcgee_j_vernon/eBooks/millennium.cfm
A note to say that I knew Dr. J. Vernon McGee
personally and in his letter he gave me permission to quote all his writings. Little did I know that one day I would actually quote Dr. McGee. He called it one “phase”, I call it one stage.
“God’s Magnificent Program
Actually, the Millennium is merely one phase of God’s eternal Kingdom; that is, the “theocratic Kingdom,” as Dr. George N. H. Peters calls it — and I like that term so much better. Actually, everything that has happened in history, that is happening in our day, and will happen in the future is all part of God’s program in setting up His Kingdom here upon this earth.
Now the Millennium, one feature of God’s eternal Kingdom, is a special dispensation that is yet future. The Millennial Kingdom will come to an end, and the eternal Kingdom will begin. That is stated clearly in Scripture. Over in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul gives the order of events, beginning with the resurrection of Christ in verse 20, then he says that those who are Christ’s will be raised at His coming.
But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming. (1 Corinthians 15:23)
Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God, even the Father …
There does come a time when this thousand-year reign will be delivered up to God the Father,
… when he [Christ] shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. (1 Corinthians 15:24, 25)
Christ is coming into this world someday, and He will come in with great judgment. He will set up His thousand-year reign here upon this earth. And during that thousand-year reign, He will accomplish a purpose. Today He is accomplishing His purpose of calling a people out of this world unto Himself. During the millennial reign He’s going to bring this earth under His rule. He will rule with a rod of iron. Those who oppose Him will be dashed in pieces like a potter’s vessel. That is going to be a time when Christ will rule arbitrarily upon this earth.
Now let me make this very clear. We have not yet seen a real dictator rule. You wait till Christ rules. When He rules on this earth a bird won’t even cheep, a rooster won’t crow and a man won’t open his mouth without His permission. That’ll be a time when His will at last will be done on this earth. And, my friend, even the Millennium would be a hell for any man who is in rebellion against God.
The Bible tells us that there will be some in rebellion, and that rebellion breaks out during the Millennium. Christ will judge it immediately because He is going to bring this earth back under the rule of God. That is God’s purpose for the earth.
For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:25-28)
Now what does that mean? It means simply this: The Lord Jesus will come to this earth, reign one thousand years, and bring this earth back under the rule of God. When this is accomplished, I take it that He will return back to His place in the Godhead. And this earth then will become what God intended it to be throughout the eternal ages of the future. This is the picture that the Scripture presents.
All the way through the Old Testament, and especially in the Prophets, this Kingdom, this thousand-year reign of Christ on the earth, is set before us. In fact, there is more Scripture — this may surprise you — on this subject than on any other subject in the Bible. The prophets had more to say about this coming Kingdom than anything else. It was their theme song. They sound like a stuck record, saying over and over that the King is coming, the Kingdom is coming, and great blessings will be on this earth.
Now, the prophets spoke of it as coming in the future. And from where you and I are today, it is still future. The conditions predicted have never been fulfilled in the past, and they are not being fulfilled yet, as we shall see.
The Kingdom of God will not be established by man’s efforts, by human ability. The church is not building the Kingdom today, yet it is geared into a program that will see the coming of the Kingdom. It’s not our business to build a Kingdom. This is one reason that I am thankful today to be out of the denomination I was raised in. I used to go to meetings in which there were always brethren building the Kingdom — and you ought to have seen the cheap little “chicken-coop” that we built! Yet we were always talking about building the Kingdom. My friend, when God is ready to set up His Kingdom, He won’t need help from any church. In fact, He is going to remove His true church out of the world before He establishes His Kingdom here upon the earth. That is His plan, that is His program, if you please.
Now the Kingdom that we are looking at in these few pages will be confined to what Isaiah had to say on this subject. And believe me, he had a great deal to say about it.”
A picture of the Millennium is described in
Isa 11:1-10, “Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch from his roots will bear fruit. The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And He will delight in the fear of the LORD, and He will not judge by what His eyes see, nor make decisions by what His ears hear; but with righteousness He will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the humble of the earth; and He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked. Also righteousness will be the belt around His hips, and
faithfulness the belt around His waist. And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fattened steer will be together; and a little boy
will lead them. Also the cow and the bear will graze, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
As the waters cover the sea. Then on that day
The nations will resort to the root of Jesse,
Who will stand as a signal flag for the peoples;
And His resting place will be glorious.”
Isa 2:2-5, “Now it will come about that in the last
days the mountain of the house of the LORD
will be established as the chief of the mountains,
and will be raised above the hills; and all the nations will stream to it. And many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let’s go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; so that He may teach us about His ways, and that we may walk in His paths.” For the law will go out from Zion
and the Word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
And He will judge between the nations,
and will mediate for many peoples;
and they will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning knives. Nation will not lift up a sword against nation,
and never again will they learn war.
Come, house of Jacob, and let’s walk in the light of the LORD.”
At the end of the Millennium begins the Kingdom of Heaven.
Dr. J. Vernon McGee
“The Kingdom of Heaven
This Kingdom — and this is important for you to understand — is the same as we find in the New Testament where it is called the Kingdom of Heaven. That was the message John the Baptist began with: “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2). When the Lord Jesus began His ministry, He said the same thing.
Now neither John nor the Lord Jesus explained what that phrase meant. That seems to indicate to me that the only ones who miss this are theologians and seminary professors today who don’t seem to know what’s happening in this world. They try to make something very obtuse, something esoteric out of the Kingdom of Heaven. When you ask one of them what the Kingdom of Heaven is, he bats his eyes, and you think he’s going off into a trance, and that it is something that only he and his little clique know. May I say to you that the common people who heard John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus understood what they were talking about. The Kingdom we are talking about is just what the Old Testament has been talking about: the Millennial Kingdom coming on the earth.
The Kingdom of Heaven is just simply this: the rule of the Heavens over the earth. When Heaven rules over this earth on which we live, we will have the Kingdom of Heaven condition.
Now look, I had to go to seminary to learn that! But that’s all it means. And it’s a shame to have to spend years in seminary and just make the discovery that the reign of the Heavens over the earth is all the Kingdom of Heaven can possibly mean.
The Millennium will be the time when there will be the full manifestation of the glory, the power and the will of God over this earth. And all agree that this is not in evidence today. You’ll not have hospitals, you’ll not have graveyards, you’ll not have the suffering nor broken hearts and lives when Christ is reigning on this earth. And it’s an insult to my Lord to say that the Kingdom of Heaven is being built today and is in existence on this earth. When He is reigning you won’t have the tragedy that presently exists throughout the world.
Now we, of course, ask these questions. Why must we have tragedies? God has to vindicate Himself. Why is it that the earth is in such a deplorable condition? Why isn’t God reigning on this earth now? Isaiah tells us how it all began. This is where sin began, and Isaiah deals with this subject.
I call the Kingdom of God, here and now the first stage. The Millennium is the second stage when Jesus Christ returns to earth the second time. The Kingdom of Heaven is the third stage, the eternal reign.
The more I hate injustice and violence in this world, the more I love 2Pe 3:13, “But according to His promise we are looking for New Heavens and a New Earth, in which righteousness dwells.”
By revelation we know a little about the Holy City, New Jerusalem -- which Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis terrorists have no part or portion. So far we know practically nothing about New Heavens and a
New Earth.
XII. HIS ETERNAL REIGN
Luk 1:33, “And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His Kingdom there will be no end.”
The Kingdom of Heaven or His Eternal Reign is pictured in Revelation Chapter 21:
Rev 21:1-27, “Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone.
And I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be His people. God Himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”
And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I AM making everything new!” And then He said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.”
And he also said, “It is finished! I AM the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End. To all who are thirsty I will give freely from the springs of the water of life. All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God, and they will be my children. But cowards, unbelievers, the corrupt, murderers, the immoral, those who practice witchcraft, idol worshipers, and all liars—their fate is in the Fiery Lake of Burning Sulfur. This is the second death.”
(cf. Eze 48:30–35 )
Then one of the seven angels who held the seven bowls containing the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come with me! I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.”
So he took me in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and he showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, descending out of Heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God and sparkled like a precious stone—like jasper as clear as crystal.
The city wall was broad and high, with twelve gates guarded by twelve angels. And the names of the twelve tribes of Israel were written on the gates. There were three gates on each side—east, north, south, and west. The wall of the city had twelve foundation stones, and on them were written the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
The angel who talked to me held in his hand a gold measuring stick to measure the city, its gates, and its wall. When he measured it, he found it was a square, as wide as it was long. In fact, its length and width and height were each 1,400 miles. Then he measured the walls and found them to be 216 feet thick (according to the human standard used by the angel). The wall was made of jasper, and the city was pure gold, as clear as glass. The wall of the city was built on foundation stones inlaid with twelve precious stones: the first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were made of pearls—each gate from a single pearl! And the main street was pure gold, as clear as glass. I saw no temple in the city, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its Temple.
And the city has no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its light.
The nations will walk in its light, and the kings of the world will enter the city in all their glory. Its gates will never be closed at the end of day because there is no night there. And all the nations will bring their glory and honor into the city. Nothing evil will be allowed to enter, nor anyone who practices shameful idolatry and dishonesty—but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”
Rev 22:1-9, “And he showed me a River of the Water of Life, clear as
crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the Tree of Life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illuminate them; and they will reign forever and ever.
And he said to me, “These words are faithful and true”; and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show His bond-servants the things which must soon take place.
“And behold, I AM coming quickly. Blessed is the one who keeps the Words of the prophecy of this book.”
I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed me these things. And he said to me, “Do not do that; I am a fellow servant of yours and of your brothers the prophets, and of those who keep the Words of this book. Worship God!”
The more I hate injustice and violence in this world, the more I love 2Pe 3:13, “But according to His promise we are looking for New Heavens and a New Earth, in which righteousness dwells.”
By revelation we know a little about the Holy City, New Jerusalem -- which Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis terrorists have no part or portion. So far we know practically nothing about New Heavens and a
New Earth.
Jhn 14:2, “In My Father's home are many mansions;
if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare
a place for you.”
Jesus went to prepare a place for His followers. I believe the Kingdom of Heaven is a place. I believe the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, as it is written is true and trustworthy. I truly believe the Holy City, New Jerusalem cited above is actual and real Capital of the Kingdom of Heaven. We have a lot to learn about the New Heavens and the New Earth.
Oh, won’t you desire and want to be heir the Kingdom of Heaven?
But you must first be born again by the Word and the Holy Spirit to enter the Kingdom of God. Then having saved by grace and faith in Jesus Christ, you may be prepared for the Rapture of the Church to meet the Lord in the space. As the sanctified, you may reign with the Lord on earth for a thousand years. In the end begins the eternal reign of the Lord for ever and ever.
You can repent of your sins and believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, your Lord and Savior now.
WILLIE WONG THOUGHT
WILLIE WONG
APRIL 25, 2024
https://williewongthought.hpage.com/
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