Jesus, The Prophet

(An address given at the Second World Conference on Christian Fundamentals at The Moody Church Tabernacle, May 20, 1920. Not revised by author).

“Jehovah thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken.

“And Jehovah said unto me, They have well said that which they have spoken.

“I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.

“And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him” (Deuteronomy 18:15, 17–19, ASV).

“Moses indeed said, A prophet shall the Lord God raise up unto you from among your brethren like unto me; to him shall ye hearken in all things whatsoever he shall speak unto you.

“And it shall be, that every soul that shall not hearken to that prophet, shall be utterly destroyed from among the people” (Acts 3:22–23).

“Never man spake like this man” (John 7:46).

Moses predicted, some 1450 years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, that God would raise up from among the Israelitish people a prophet, in whose mouth He would put His words, and who should speak the very words of God and should speak all that God commanded Him.

Peter, about 30 years after the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, 1500 years later than Moses said, after he himself had been called to be an inspired apostle and had been filled with the Holy Spirit and was speaking the words of God, that in Jesus of Nazareth this prophecy had been fulfilled. He declared that Jesus of Nazareth was this prophet in whose mouth God put His words and to whose every word we should listen, and that all that did not listen to any word of His—if we put the authority in anybody but Him, that we should be utterly destroyed with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.

Our Lord Jesus Himself said that this prediction meant Him. Our Lord Jesus Christ said that the words which He spoke were not His own words, but the very words of God,—that His teaching was not His own teaching, but the very teaching of God. For example, He says in John 7:16, “My doctrine (or the revised version is better, ‘My teaching’) is not mine, but His that sent Me.” In John 8:28 He says, “When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am He, and that I do nothing from Myself, but as the Father taught me, I speak these things.” And over in the Gospel of John 12:48–49, “I spake not from myself; but the Father that sent Me, He hath given me a commandment what I should say and what I should speak, and I know that His commandment is life eternal; the things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto Me, so I speak.” In John 14:10 He says, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? the words I speak unto you I speak not from myself; but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.” In John 14:24 He said, “He that loveth Me not keepth not my words; and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent Me.”

In one of the most solemn moments of His life, in His prayer the night before the crucifixion, speaking not to men, but to God, He said, “The words which Thou hast given me I have given them.” In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ declared that every word He uttered was God’s own Word, that He was simply speaking in every word He said, the words which God put into His mouth.

There are, in our day, many—not professed infidels, but professors in allegedly orthodox theological seminaries where they are training young men professedly to be preachers in evangelical pulpits, and training their young men to go and be the theological teachers in China and in other lands just emerging from the darkness of heathenism, who do not hesitate to say that these statements of Jesus Christ are not true, that Jesus Christ did not speak the words of God always—at least that He spoke His own words and gave His own ideas, which they go on unhesitatingly to say were largely derived from the erroneous notions of the times. Now if those theological professors are right, then Jesus Christ was a liar,—there is no escaping it; but as God has set the seal of His endorsement upon the claims of Jesus Christ by raising Him from the dead, and as we saw yesterday morning, the proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it is absolutely impossible for any candid and honest seeker after truth to weigh the evidence and come to any other conclusion than that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead as is alleged in the four Gospels; therefore every requirement of sane logic demands of me to say that the theological professors are the liars, those that teach that,—and not Jesus Christ.

God did put His words into the mouth of Jesus of Nazareth. God did speak through Jesus of Nazareth. Every word that Jesus Christ spoke was the Word of God, just as Jesus Christ said, and that is not all. Right here in this verse we are told that those who do not believe His every word shall be destroyed, punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power,—even though he be a university student, or a Y.W.C.A. or Y.M.C.A. secretary, or a theological student or a theological professor. Jesus Christ’s own assertion was that He spoke the very words of God, and God’s own declaration was that He that will not hearken to every word that He speaks shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.

Divinely Anointed

Jesus Christ was God’s divinely anointed prophet, God’s divinely anointed priest, and God’s divinely anointed king. When He was here upon the earth in His humiliation He was God’s divinely anointed prophet; when He had died and gone into the real Holy of Holies, heaven, to appear in the presence of God for us, carrying His own perfectly atoning blood into the presence of God, and, ever living to make intercession for us, He became God’s divinely appointed priest; when He comes again He will be God’s king here on this earth, but still a priest, a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, a priest-king. But we are concerned this morning with Jesus Christ as a prophet, and the first question that confronts us is this, “What does the word ‘prophet’ mean?”

The Hebrew word which is translated “prophet,” is derived from the Hebrew word NABIY, which means to fill up and then to pour forth words, and then to speak by divine inspiration, because the inspired ones poured forth the words that God put into their mouths as they were carried along (to use Peter’s interpretation of it in the New Testament) by the Holy Spirit.

Now the Greek word translated “prophet” in the New Testament, means one who speaks forth, then, one through whom God speaks, God’s spokesman. And furthermore, the Greek word is used all throughout the Septuagint version of the Old Testament Hebrew, as the translation of the very Hebrew word that I mentioned, which is translated “prophet” in my text,—therefore a prophet is the one who pours forth God’s words. The prophet is the one in whom God speaks, and every word that the prophet spoke as a prophet is just as much the very word of God as if God should speak from the open heavens with audible voice, as He did speak from the rent heavens to Jesus as He stood there in the waters of the Jordan, saying, “Thou art my beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased.”

So you see that a prophet is not merely one who foretells, but primarily one who forth-tells, who tells forth what God says to him, who gives to others the words that God gives. “The words,” says Jesus, “that God has given Me I have given them.” Nevertheless prediction constituted a very large part of what the Old Testament prophets poured forth of the words that God poured into them, and prediction, as we shall see later, constitutes a very large part of the utterances of the supreme prophet, the prophet of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. But every word that Jesus spoke, not merely when He was predicting, but every word He uttered, was the word of God. Not one syllable did Jesus of Nazareth utter here upon this earth from the baptism to the cross, that was not the very word of God, and God said it just as much as if He had spoken from the rent heavens, as He did speak to Jesus of Nazareth, saying, “Thou art my beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased.”

Fulfilled Predictions

We shall take up first of all in our division of the prophetic work of our Lord Jesus Christ, some of the fulfilled predictions that Jesus spake. First of all our Lord Jesus Christ predicted His own death and resurrection and the exact character and details of His death and resurrection. His prediction of His death is found in John 2:19, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” John comments on this, “He spake of the temple of his body.” There, almost in the beginning of His ministry, predicting His death and His resurrection.”

In Matthew 16:21 you get a more explicit prediction: “From that time forth began Jesus to shew 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 be raised again the third day.” In Matthew 20:18–19, His prediction of His own death and resurrection is still more explicit and detailed, “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered to the chief priests and scribes; and they shall condemn Him to death, and they shall deliver Him unto the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify; and the third day He shall be raised up. Here we have a prediction of His coming death and resurrection as detailed and explicit as the historical record that we have after the prediction was fulfilled.

Those predictions were seemingly preposterous and impossible of fulfillment. First of all, his predictions as to the manner of His death by crucifixion. Crucifixion was not a Jewish mode of punishment, but it was brought about in all its details by a marvelous interblending,—wicked men, the vilest of men, working together to fulfill God’s prediction through Jesus Christ to the very letter.

Furthermore, resurrection was something entirely unknown. For centuries men had come and men had gone, and as far as human observation went, that was the end of them, but, He says, “My experience is to be entirely different. I have come as others come, I shall die as others die, but the third day this body that is nailed to the cross and laid into the grave shall be raised from the grave.” Absolutely absurd! Contrary to the entire course of nature for centuries, scientifically impossible. But as a matter of history, as I showed to you yesterday, the best proven fact of history, literally fulfilled, fulfilled to the very letter.

Now as this prediction regarding the past has been fulfilled, in spite of its seeming impossibility,—not merely to say mere improbability,—as it has been fulfilled to the very letter, every demand of sane logic requires of us that we shall believe the predictions which are as yet unfulfilled because their time of fulfillment has not yet come, shall also be fulfilled to the very letter.

What is science? Not metaphysical theories. Science is carefully observed and classified and systematized facts; and science makes absolutely impossible and shows to be utterly ridiculous that system of spiritualizing, the interpretation of Professor Shailer Mathews and Professor Case, utterly unscientific and utterly unhistoric, a school of interpretation that calls itself scientific. Nothing was more unscientific in all this world’s history, for science has to do with facts, and their interpretation flies in the face of all that facts in the case,—utterly unhistorical, although they claim to call it the historical school of criticism.

The Kingdom Of Heaven

In the second place, our Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus the Prophet, prophesied that there would be a great outward growth of His kingdom, and at the same time an unseen, but nevertheless thoroughgoing corruption of its inward life and conduct. In Matthew 13:31–33 we are told, “Another parable spake he unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed which a man took, and sowed in his field: which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof. Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.”

The meaning of these parables is as plain as day. The parable of the mustard seed represents the wondrous outward growth of the kingdom, and the Jews could interpret it in the light of Ezekiel 31:3–9. The birds which were lodged in the branches were rulers and nations of the earth coming and taking refuge under the widespreading branches of this kingdom, which was but as a mustard seed when it was sown by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

The other parable, the parable of the leaven, represents the inward corruption that was to go hand in hand with the outward extension of the kingdom in its outward manifested form in this present dispensation.

I know some commentators would take issue with that interpretation, therefore I am going to prove it is true, because God has given to us in His own Word an inspired commentary on Jesus’ words. What does the inspired commentary say? Paul (1 Corinthians 5:6–8), speaking as he was moved by the Holy Ghost, interpreted our Lord’s parable: “Your glorifying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?” They say that the leaven is the leaven of the truth spreading, spreading, spreading until the whole world is converted by it, until all is leavened. Here is what God says: “Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened. For our Passover also has been sacrificed, even Christ. Wherefore let us keep the feast; not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

God’s own interpretation of it, the apostle Paul taught by the Holy Ghost, had undoubted reference to the words of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He says distinctly that the leaven is the poison of false doctrine that the woman, the apostate church, hid in three measures of meal (that was a baking, you can prove that by other passages of Scripture) which the woman, the apostate church, was to mix in three measures of meal, the baking of the children’s bread, until all should become leavened.

What a strange prediction for the founder of the church to make, that His own church, in its outward manifestation,—not the real church, but the visible church,—the kingdom in its outward manifestation, should be corrupted by false doctrine until all the doctrine and conduct of the church was leavened. As singular as that prediction was, as improbable as it was, both the prediction of the outward growth (for when He made it the kingdom was nothing,—a handful of representatives of obscure people)—that it should spread until the whole Earth came and took shelter under its protection, and the inward corruption, have been fulfilled to the letter. What more improbable and singular than that the whole life and doctrine be corrupted, and yet that was also fulfilled to the letter under Rome’s domination in the Middle Ages. If our Lord Jesus Christ had never made another prediction than that, fulfilled centuries afterwards, He would stand proven the prophet of God.

Dr. McInnis quoted from one of the leading professors of Oberlin College, Charles G. Finney’s college, that predictive prophecy was impossible because it was unscientific. But the science of facts—not the science of promise—proves that it was scientific, and not that predictive prophecy is absolutely and hopelessly unscientific.

The Fall Of Jerusalem

In the third place, our Lord Jesus Christ predicted the destruction of Jerusalem, the character and details of that destruction, forty years before it took place. Turn to Matthew 24:1–2, “And Jesus went out from the temple, and was going on his way; and his disciples came to him to show him the buildings of the temple. But he answered and said unto them. See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” In Luke 19:41–44, “And when he drew nigh, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, when thine enemies shall cast up a bank about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall dash thee to the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knowest not the time of thy visitation.”

Jesus made that prediction in 30 A.D., and when He made it, it seemed absolutely impossible of fulfillment,—no probability, no possibility, apparently,—and yet as we all know, these predictions were fulfilled to the very letter.

Every prediction in the Bible has been fulfilled to the letter—not spiritually, but fulfilled to the very letter. Titus and Vespasian, forty years after (and anyone who knows his Bible and knows numbers knows that forty is the number of testing and trial), fulfilled that prophecy to the very letter in that most awful siege of all the world’s history, in 70 A.D.

In the fourth place, Jesus predicted the centuries long scattering of the Jews, the centuries long subjection of the Jews to Gentile dominion until God’s purpose had been fulfilled, when the fulness of the Gentiles would come in and the times of the Gentiles concluded. See Luke 21:20–24: “But when ye see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that her desolation is at hand. Then let them that are in Judea flee unto the mountains; and let them that are in the midst of her depart out; and let not them that are in the country enter therein. For these are days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. Woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days; for there shall be great distress upon the land (that is, the land of Israel. The tribulation is Israelitish in its main features), and wrath unto this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led captive into all the nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”

Nineteen centuries of history have proved the exact accuracy of the first part of this prediction, that Jerusalem and the Jew will be subjected to Gentile dominion until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled; and in your day and mine we seem to be on the very verge of the fulfillment of the last part of the prediction, that when the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled Jerusalem will be restored and the land restored to Jewish rule,—since General Allenby entered Jerusalem uncovered, and since the allied nations voted to give Jerusalem and the surrounding country over to the Jew. And yet they say there is no predictive element in prophecy, that it is unscientific. They have a strange definition of science.

Some of the mightiest enemies that Christianity and Christ have ever known have brought all their forces to bear to disprove the first part of that prophecy. Why, the apostate emperor of Rome, Julian, in 361–363 A.D., brought all the military and all the political and all the financial resources of Rome to disprove the first part of that prediction. He started to rebuild the temple; but, as history tells us, he was thwarted by an opposition that seems to have been supernatural, even as recorded by an infidel historian, Gibbon. He had to give it up, and died wretched and despairing on the field of battle. Taking in his hand the blood caught from his side, and casting it in the air, he cried, “O Galilean, thou hast conquered.”

Just so, in our day, these professors in “Christian” colleges so-called,—these professors in apostate Christian colleges and theological seminaries, who seek to undermine faith in the Lord Jesus as speaking anything but the words of God, as being an absolutely inerrant teacher of the words of God,—they, too, some day (and a soon day), will have to cry, “O Galilean, Thou hast conquered,” unless they repent soon with shame of face.

The Jew “Unmelted”

In the fifth place, Jesus predicted that the Jews, though crushed and scattered and subject to oppression and agony and distress and suffering such as no other people in all the world’s history ever suffered, would preserve their racial identity until He should come again to deliver them. Centuries have rolled on since our Lord Jesus Christ made that prediction, and during those centuries kingdoms have risen and fallen, other nations great and strong have risen, have been obliterated and broken, but the Jew, although he has not had in all these centuries a standing room anywhere, remains to this day the Jew. You cannot obliterate the Jew, you cannot absorb the Jew. Why, even in America the “melting pot,” as it has been called by one of the great students of psychology along the lines of emigration,—the melting pot of the nations has been unable to melt the Jew,—he won’t melt, he won’t absorb, he is a Jew and will remain a Jew to the end of the chapter. The Jew is the miracle of the centuries.

This despised prophet of Nazareth, this One that our learned theological professors are telling us was not altogether scientific and was moved by the erroneous conceptions of His time,—He told it just as plainly as we see it today after nineteen centuries of history have sustained His words.

In the sixth place, Jesus predicted that His own words would prove indestructible,—that during the crash and fall and disappearance—not merely of philosophies and religions, but in the midst of the vanishing of nations and cities, and in the midst of the overwhelming of empires, and in the very passing away of the heavens and the earth, His words would stand (Matthew 24:35): “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” How absurd! Wow ridiculous! How preposterous! How impossible when you think who it was who said it and the circumstances under which He said it. An obscure vassal of an obscure and limited ruler of a decadent nation at the time, with no liberty, in subjection at the time to other nations,—He Himself, within a week, to be the butt of the scorn and ridicule of the passing crowds as He died as a villain upon the gibbet, yet, daring to say that during the fall of false philosophy, during the crumbling of mighty cities, during the obliteration of kingdoms and empires. “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” They have not. They have not! Empires have come and gone, cities most magnificent have crumbled into dust, philosophies and religions have proved untrue and inadequate, but the words of Jesus of Nazareth stand today! And in that day that is coming, when the elements shall melt with fervent heat and the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, still the words of Jesus of Nazareth will stand.

These critics, who, puffed up by their own fleshly mind, because they have attained unto a few meaningless university degrees, and who are intoxicated by the fumes of their own supposed scholarship, because they have learned to ring the changes upon the spellbinding word “evolution,” spellbinding to the young men and maidens in our high schools, colleges, and universities with that dope of so-called scientists who build their science falsely so-called,—not upon the self-proven rugged facts of history and of nature, but upon the filaments of their own over-wrought imaginations,—O, when these nauseating products of this philosophy shall have passed away and been utterly forgotten, the words of Jesus shall stand, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”

Unfulfilled Predictions

So much for His fulfilled predictions. Just a few words as to predictions that are to be fulfilled as the time comes. Let me say this before I give you a few illustrations. Every prediction of our Lord Jesus Christ regarding the past has been fulfilled to the very letter, so every demand of cold, hard, sane logic demands that we believe that His predictions as yet unfulfilled will be fulfilled to the very letter when the time for their fulfillment comes.

In the first place, Jesus predicted that He Himself is coming again. On the night of the crucifixion, when the hearts of the disciples of Jesus were sore and torn because He had told them He was to leave them and be taken from this world by an awful death, He said to them in the passage in John 14:1–3, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. (My, what a claim of deity!) In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” Beyond an honest question, in those words our Lord Jesus Christ predicted His personal, visible, bodily coming again. But God has given us an inspired interpretation of that prediction of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in 1 Thessalonians 4:16–18: “For 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 which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” I say that is an inspired interpretation of our Lord’s own words.

“But,” you say, “why do you say it is an inspired interpretation of our Lord’s own words?” Because there are exactly the same four points in each of them. Our Lord said, “I will come again.” The apostle Paul said, “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God.” “To receive you unto myself,” said Jesus; Paul said, “We shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air.” The Lord said, “That where I am there ye may be also”; Paul said, “So shall we ever be with the Lord.” Jesus said, “Let not your heart be troubled”; and Paul said, “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” No question about it, the same four points,—comfort one another, coming again, personal, visible bodily.

In the second place, Jesus predicted that the time of His coming will be a time when men are entirely absorbed in worldly affairs, in money-getting, in profiteering, in pleasure-seeking. Listen to Luke 17:26–30: “And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.”

Apostasy

Then our Lord said in Luke 18:8 that the church would so far have apostasized when He came that faith would be hard to find, “When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” He said in Matthew 24:44 that even His disciples would be taken unawares, “Be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” And in Luke 21, He said that a day would overtake the whole world as a snare.

In the third place, Jesus, the perfect prophet of God, predicted that the time immediately preceding His coming would be a time when human society is utterly unsettled,—its politics, its business, its international relations in utter confusion. There haven’t any of you run across a day like that, have you? Let me read it to you in Luke 21:25–27: “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”

Is there a statesman on Earth that is at all intelligent and far sighted that does not descry in England, Germany, France, Italy, America, what is coming? But listen, do you think I am a pessimist? I would be if I were not a pre-millennialist, but I am an optimist from the crown of my head to the sole of my feet. Now when these perilous times come, these grievous times, these disturbing and perplexing times, when men’s hearts are overwhelmed with fear in expectation of what is coming on the earth, shall those who believe in Jesus Christ be discouraged? No,—radiant, jubilant, full of hope—“And when these things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.”

Universal Righteousness

In the fourth and last place, Jesus, the only supreme prophet of God, has predicted that as a result of His coming, He will take the reins of government and all the crooked things will be made straight and all the evils will be corrected, and there shall be a reign of universal righteousness throughout the world (Matthew 25:31–32, 34, 46): “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”

In Matthew 19:28–30 we find that He predicts a regeneration of human society. Not the regeneration of the individual, which we have in John 3, but the regeneration of human society, yes, and the regeneration of the physical nature as well,—a new birth of society and the physical universe. “And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.”

Oh friends, all the brightest and loftiest hopes and dreams of poets and social philosophers will be realized when He comes. They will not be realized by any of these present world movements, these big drives for four hundred million dollars by men who have grown dizzy by watching the whirligig of big business and war extravagance, but they will be realized when God’s King cometh and “the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.”

Hearken!

Just one question: What should be your attitude and mind toward the prophet of God? That is answered in one of my texts, Deuteronomy 18:15, “Jehovah thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken.” No matter who says something contrary to Jesus Christ, the proven prophet of God, proven by nineteen centuries of history,—if every scientist and theologian, and German scholar, and Scotch scholar, and Irish scholar, and English scholar, and French scholar, and American scholar should say one thing, and Jesus Christ says another, I believe Jesus Christ against the bunch, and I believe in Jesus Christ.

I did not always. There was a time when, having taken two degrees at Yale, and having studied in two German universities, whenever the Bible was wise enough to agree with me, I agreed with it, but when the Bible said anything I could not square with my theories, how could the Bible be right, or Paul, or John, or Jesus right, if I, after all that education, did not see it? But I believe in Jesus Christ. What is the use of saying you believe in Him if you do not believe in Him? If a man is an infidel why is he not honest enough to say so? I have patience with Tom Payne, I have patience with Robert Ingersoll, I have patience with Bradshaw, but the man who calls himself a believer in Jesus Christ and then tells me when Jesus Christ said that every word He spoke God put into His mouth, that He spoke according to the notions of the day, and calls Jesus Christ a liar, I object to his calling himself a Christian. I do not care what theological seminary he was from. He may be a president, but no, “To Him shall ye hearken.” Notice, the speaker here is not Moses, but Jehovah.

Now listen to verse 19, “And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.” And Acts 3:23, “And it shall be, that every soul that shall not hearken to that prophet, shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.”

What shall be the attitude that we take toward Him? Listen, believe, obey. Listen intensely, believe absolutely, obey instantly; do that and you will have eternal life. Refuse to do it, neglect to do it through any cause whatsoever, and you shall perish utterly and eternally. “He that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” “And every soul that shall not hearken to that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.”

Brethren, that is solemn. It was written 3,500 years ago, but it sounds as if it were written for America, Scotland, and England today, and it was written for today.