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“False Teachings on Obscure Passages”

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False Teachings on Obscure Passages

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 13, 1954

Now we are continuing in 1 Peter, and I am trying to be honest and teach all of it, and not do like the commentaries do, skip the hard places. This that I bring to you today is a hard passage of Scripture. Peter might very well have had himself in mind when he said that Paul was in the habit of writing things very hard to be understood, in which the unstable and the unlearned wrested it to their own destruction.

Peter said that about Paul, but he might have said it about himself, because he did give us something very difficult here. Let me read it. Verse 18 of chapter 3, For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, by which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometimes were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark of God was apreparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.

The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ; Who is gone into heaven and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.

Verse 6 of chapter 4, For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. Now, verses 21 and 22, where it tells us about baptism being a figure and a good conscience toward God and the resurrection of Christ, verse 22 that tells us of Christ’s ascension and His high place of authority over angels and powers, these I am not going to mention inasmuch as we have dealt with this quite fully.

So, I am to speak about Christ preaching to the spirits in prison, verse 6, to them that are dead. And I will say that there is more in this this morning for the curious than there is for the spiritually hungry. But I am still not going to pass it up for a number of reasons.

One is that the passage is here by divine inspiration. And if it had not been intended that we should expound it, or attempt to expound it, or attempt to understand it, it would not have been put here. There are obscure passages in the Scripture, but even those obscure passages were divinely inspired and for that reason need to be treated with respect, even if we are not able fully to understand them.

Now, the second reason that I am going to courageously attempt an exposition here is that I want our people to be fully informed. We cannot be informed fully if we skip the hard places, and major only in the Scriptures it can be understood.

And third, and I think this is the most important of the three, that false teachers specialize on difficult texts. Heresy always thrives in obscurity or on obscure passages and dies when the full light of God reaches it.

Let us take such a passage as 1 Corinthians, where it talks about the baptizing for the dead. Now, it tells us there that, verse 29, “…else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead? If the dead rise not at all, why are they then baptized for the dead?”

Now, Paul put that there, and nobody knows exactly what is meant by it. And certainly, he did not approve it. He only used it casually as an arguing point for a future life. But there are those who practice baptism for the dead. And if you object to it as being unscriptural, they quote you that obscure and difficult passage from 1 Corinthians 15. And they say, why would you object when there were those in Corinth that baptized for the dead? So, they make a whole doctrine to rest upon one verse.

Let me give you a good working rule for the understanding of Scripture. If you haven’t more than one verse to support it, don’t teach it. Because if it isn’t found in more than one verse of the Bible, the chances are it isn’t found there either. And that what you think is a passage teaching a certain thing does not teach it at all.

Now, suppose that I were going to argue for the future life, and I were writing to people who practice masses for the dead, and I were to say to them, how can you deny the future life when you practice saying mass for the dead? I would be saying to them, in effect, now you yourself admit a future life because you are acting as though those persons who had died were still in existence. Therefore, you yourself believe in a future life, and your very practice of saying masses proves it. But that wouldn’t mean that I approved saying masses for the dead. It would only show that I was arguing that they believed in a future life by the fact that they attempted to help people in the future life.

Now, that’s all Paul meant here. Paul did not in any wise practice baptism for the dead, nor did he exhort anybody to do it, nor is there one line in the Bible that teaches it. But he appeals to something they already, some of them at least, did and believed to show how inconsistent they were in saying that there was no resurrection. And it’s obvious that the same persons who said there was no resurrection were the same ones who practiced baptism for the dead.

And then take that famous passage, I will give unto you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Now, that’s obviously an obscure passage. I have never heard it satisfactorily explained, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you open will stay open, whatever you close will be closed.

Now, isn’t it queer that our Roman Catholic friends will deny that the Bible has any authority over the Church on the grounds that the Bible came out of the Church and not the Church out of the Bible? And they will deny whole sections of Scripture because they say, well, you don’t understand it, and beside that it isn’t binding upon us because the Bible is a daughter of the Church and not the Church a daughter of the Bible, therefore the Bible has no authority over the Church.

But if you complain that the Pope is not Christ’s vicegerent on earth, they will run to that obscure passage, I will give unto you the keys of the kingdom, and they say, how dare you deny the Bible? Why, the Bible says, I will give unto you the keys of the kingdom, and that was Peter, and this Pope is a descendant of Peter. I don’t know how we get that way, but false teaching always hunts an obscure passage, always hunts an obscure passage.

Which reminds me of the Mormon missionary that was traveling, and somebody said, you believe in a plurality of wives, how do you do with that passage that says let a bishop be the husband of one wife? He said that means at least one. He had it explained anyhow. Well, heresy always hunts obscurity, and false teaching always hunts the difficult text.

You see, my brethren, it is like if I were to take you to my farm, if I had a farm, and I would say to you, now here you will find apples and peaches and grapes, and here are watermelons and cantaloupes and sweet potatoes. And I would name 15 or 20 edible fruits or vegetables or grains and say, now this is all yours, take over. And I would come back a month later and find my guests half starved, and when I would say to them, what’s the matter, you look undernourished? They would say, well, we are undernourished because we have found a plant that we can’t identify. There is a plant behind the old oak stump back there near the end of the far field just over the hill, and we have spent one month trying to identify this plant.

But I would say, you’re starving, you look sick, you’ll get TB. What’s the matter with you? And they would say, well, we’re worried about this one verse, this one plant. And that’s exactly what a lot of God’s children do. They starve themselves to death knee-deep in clover because there’s one little old plant back of a stump in the rear end of the field that they can’t identify.

And heretics always starve you to death while they worry you to death about that one obscure passage of Scripture. So I’m going to root out this passage in order that nobody will come and worry you with it and say that they know what it means and therefore try to prove that you’re wrong.

Now, what this verse doesn’t teach, or these verses does and do not teach, they do not teach universalism. You know universalism is the belief in the restitution of all fallen beings to a state of blessedness. Some of them believe only in the restoration of all human beings to blessedness, not only Christians, but all human beings finally to blessedness.

Then there is another kind of more exhaustive universalism which teaches not only the restitution of all human beings, but the devil and all the fallen angels. They’re very generous and take in everything, every human and every creature that has fallen and sinned against God.

Now this is a dream born of desire. And this universalism, the teaching that every moral creature would finally be saved, is a dream born of desire. And it springs from humanitarian motives, no doubt. Humanitarian feelings within the breast lead us to desire the salvation of all, but it is not taught in the Scriptures. The Bible specifically states that except we repent we shall all likewise perish. And it pictures us a hell where the devil and his angels are, and where all that are not found in the Book of Life are finally consigned.

So, the teaching of the Bible is definitely not universalism. And whatever this passage teaches, which I have read in your hearing, it does not teach universalism. And second, it does not teach a second chance.

Now the Russellites, I do not call them Jehovah’s Witnesses because I do not want to soil that Holy Name by identifying it with any false teachers. But the Russellites teach that there is a second chance. They say that everybody that dies will have a chance in the future world. And then if he turns down that chance, he will be annihilated. He will cease to be.

When a sinner dies, he sleeps in the earth, body and soul, in a state of deep unconsciousness. And then when the resurrection comes, he will be raised and given another chance. If he turns down that chance, then he will be annihilated and cease to be, and there will be no hell. Now that is what the Russellites teach. And of course they will hold up in passages like this.

But this error thrives on difficult texts. It cannot stand the full white light of the Bible. It cannot stand the teachings of Jesus. It cannot stand the book of Romans. It cannot stand the book of Hebrews. It cannot stand the book of Revelation. It cannot stand the four Gospels. This heresy cannot possibly stand up under all the light of the Bible. It is a night-blooming plant and blooms in the shadows of human thought. But as soon as we turn the whole Bible loose on it, it withers and dies.

Now what it does mean? It means that there are lost souls, which the Scripture calls spirits in prison, them that are dead. And some of these in the passage are identified as being the earth’s population at the time of Noah’s flood. They heard the message preached and they denied or refused it, rejected it. And the result was that they perished along with their evil deeds at the coming of the flood.

And it teaches us that these all went to the place of the dead; Hades in the New Testament, Sheol in the Old, the place of the dead, and that Christ’s body, when He died, lay three days in Joseph’s new tomb. But that His spirit was not in His body, but separated temporarily from His body. And in that spirit, He went and preached to the spirits that were in Hades, the spirits in prison.

Do you remember the Apostles’ Creed that we used to quote it around here sometimes, but we’ve sort of quit. We all believe in the Apostles’ Creed. It says this about our Lord, that He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born to the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. And the third day, He arose again from the dead.

Now that’s the way we Protestants have it. But the old Apostles’ Creed reads like this, that Jesus Christ was born to the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, and descended into Hades. And the third day, He arose again from the dead.

Now that was only saying what Peter said here, and what Paul said, as we’ll notice later. That when Jesus Christ’s spirit was free from the crucified body, that spirit did not lie quiescent or hover over the tomb. Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son, in His spirit, had a work to do. And so the work He had to do was to go, descend into hell, that is, descend not into the fires of hell for punishment, but descend to the place of the dead, and there preach the word to those that had died, and whose spirits were confined there.

And so, He preached the soundness of Noah’s position, and He told them why judgment had come, and He justified the ways of God to man, and explained what had taken place, in order that they might know that they were being treated as intelligent beings.

Always remember, brethren, that God treats every human being as an intelligent being. You may not be as bright as Einstein, but you’re morally intelligent, and God will never violate your intelligence. And He never means that you should simply shut your eyes and gulp and swallow what’s ever given to you. He means that you’re an intelligent, moral being, and therefore He will not violate your intelligence, nor will He treat you like a moron.

There’s a certain healing evangelist who goes up and down the country, and when anybody comes, he says, they’ve got a demon in them, and he wants to pray for the demon to go out. He tells everybody in the congregation, now don’t you open your eyes and look, for if you do, the demon will go on you. That kind of intimidation, that kind of trickery.

Why the average magician who does tricks for money on a stage wouldn’t be so cheap. That if Jesus Christ is casting out devils and healing the sick, I don’t dare look lest the demon will jump on me. Where do you find that in your Bible? Where is that in the New Testament? Where is that any place within the confines of the Word of God? Nowhere. That’s cheap trickery. And I’d have no hesitation to look in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, I never did anything in a corner. I never did anything with people’s eyes shut. I never had to do anything and hide. All religious activity should be an open book. Everything from the treasurer’s receipt book up and down the scale in the church of Christ should be open to the eyes of mankind.

And there’s never any place in the Bible where God treats me as if I didn’t have good sense. So that even the spirits that were in prison, even those who died and are in the place of the dead, our Lord went to them in His spirit and preached to them and explained how things were, in order that justice might be done.

You take an ordinary English or American court, something like this goes on. The evidence has been heard. The jury goes out and deliberates. They come back in. They pronounce the defendant guilty. And the judge says, will the defendant please rise and face the court? The defendant rises and the judge says something to this effect. Mr. So-and-so, the evidence has been heard, and a jury of your peers have decided from the evidence that you have been guilty of such and such a crime. Before you are sentenced, is there anything you want to say?

In other words, we’re about to sentence you, but we’re not abrogating your intelligence. We’re not treating you like a robot. You are an intelligent human being, and you’re able to judge us. And if we as a judge and jury are wrong you, you’ll judge us. Therefore, we want to clear this whole matter up. Have you anything to say? Usually, they don’t have.

But if there was anything that this intelligent sinner could say to the judge, the judge would give it respectful consideration. For in theory at least, American and English courts are not going to railroad a man to the electric chair nor to prison. They’re going to do it according to the rules of justice, with all the gears showing and all the processes open before the eyes of mankind.

So, God says that all the wicked were swept away by a flood and hurled to the place of the dead, and they will never see the blessedness of heaven or know God. But we’re not simply going to sweep them out as if they were inert bits of filth, they’re human, they’re intelligent, they’re moral creatures. They’re capable of exercising judgment on their own right.

And therefore, the everlasting Son of God went before the spirits in prison and preached to them there. Preached to them though they were living and because they were spirits, they were alive in their spirit. They had sinned in the flesh, and they were to be judged for the days they lived in the flesh. And their whole heart said, amen, to the judgment of God.

Now, my brethren, if you don’t believe this, let me give you some Scripture to show why Christ descended into the place of the dead, into hell, as it says. Ephesians 4:8-10. Turn to that, if you will, for a moment. It says, wherefore, he saith, when Christ descended upon high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto man. Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all things that he might fill, all things.

We are told here that when Jesus Christ’s body lay in the grave, His spirit went to those captives in the place of the dead and preached release to them. And when He arose, He took with Him all the redeemed spirits of ransomed men that had been shut in the place of the dead, Hades.

You remember, Jacob said, I will go down unto Sheol, Hades, down unto Sheol, mourning for my son. And when Samuel the dead man came back from the dead, he came up out of the earth. But after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and after Christ had taken the redeemed ones with Him to heaven, to the place of Paradise, Paul said, I was caught up into Paradise, to the third heaven. It was no longer down, but up.

The Lord Himself, the Lord of life and glory, had taken His ransomed ones out of the place of the dead. But that place of the dead contained not only the redeemed ones, but it contained also those that were not redeemed, separated, however, by a gulf, a great gulf that was fixed. Lazarus and the rich man explain that. When the rich man died, he went to the place of the dead. And when Lazarus died, he went to the place of the dead, this time Abraham’s bosom, with a great gulf fixed between.

So, when our Lord descended after His death, He descended into Hades. He took all in Abraham’s bosom with Him up to heaven and left the rest there. But in doing it, He explained it and preached in His spirit to all those that were in the place of the dead.

Now, if that isn’t enough, let me give you Philippians 2:9 & 11. Wherefore, God also hath highly exalted Jesus, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth. And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. So that not only those in heaven and those on earth, but those in hell are forced to confess with their tongue that Jesus Christ is Lord. And this they do to the glory of God the Father.

So, you see, my brethren, that passage that Peter gives us here doesn’t teach universalism. It teaches only that Jesus Christ, our Lord, while His body lay in the grave, went in the spirit to Sheol, the place of the dead. There He preached deliverance to the ransomed, and judgment to the lost, took His ransomed ones with Him and left the lost for the judgment of the Great Day.

But everyone, those under the earth and those on the earth, and all creatures everywhere, admit that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. This Jesus Christ, our Lord, is not going to rule over any that do not willingly submit to His rule. He will not enforce His rule over one human being or one moral creature.

But he will force from the unwilling tongues of even lost ones the fact that He’s right. True and righteous are thy judgments, O Lord, will be the only text in hell. The only text in hell, and I’m not sure it won’t be cut in tablatures of that terrible place. True and righteous are thy judgments, O Lord.

In order that that might be known through all the three worlds above and on the earth and beneath, there had to be a declaration of the whole just plan of God to those that are dead as well as those that live. But there is not one sentence, not one phrase, not one word, not one letter in the Bible that teaches that Jesus ever preached the gospel to the dead and said, come unto me. He said, Come unto me to the living. But he never preached a gospel of redemption and gave an invitation and said, Come.

It is appointed unto men once to die and after that, the judgement. The preaching to the dead was done in order that the dead, as well as the living, the lost as well as the saved, might know how true and just and righteous our God is, and how impeccable is His character, how holy are His ways, and that He doeth all things well.

Now, I admit that this is not the kind of a message to send you out with moist eyes, but you need to hear this, and we needed to know this, so the next time someone comes pushing your doorbell with a phonograph record to play to you, you will be able to smile and say, I know what the Bible teaches. Thank you. Goodbye. Quietly close, never slam it. Don’t slam it. That’s not nice. Christians never slam doors. But close it rather crisply, I would suggest, because their false teachers are growing, and their numbers are growing by leaps and bounds.

Last month we had in Chicago our 57th annual missionary council. We had about 1100 of us. Last summer when I was preaching at Keswick, out in the east, we were held up 45 minutes getting through Lincoln Tunnel. You know why? The traffic was so heavy on the road, and you know why it was so heavy on the road? Jehovah’s Witnesses were gathering at Yankee Stadium. 100,000 strong! After 57 years of missionary enterprise, we get 1100. They had 100,000 present.

So you need to know these things even if they don’t bless you at the time, so you will have a shield of truth to raise against the fiery darts of error.

Father, bless Thy Word. We pray Thee that Thou wilt help us to see how wondrous are Thy judgments and Thy ways past finding out, to receive with bowed heads and reverent minds the hard, obscure things as well as the easy, plain things.

We thank Thee, Lord, that the easy, plain things outnumber the others perhaps a thousand to one. Bless Thou the word given this morning, for Jesus’ sake. Amen..

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“The Book of Jude“

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“The Book of Jude”

Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer

July 3, 1955

I want to talk on that book of Jude this morning. Bringing again after the passing of some years a bit of attention to this little, but powerful book. Now the man Jude, a brother of Christ, had planned to write an encouraging letter just as you might sit down to write your friends a letter of encouragement. He had planned it dealing with what he called our common salvation. But he said it became necessary rather as he was moved, impressed by the Holy Ghost to write something else altogether. An unpleasant circumstance had risen which forced him to write quite another kind of letter from the good encouraging letter that he had planned. Certain men had crept in unnoticed. Now those men were personally men of evil lives. They were and had been foreseen and condemned by the Lord Himself when He was with them. And they taught doctrine that was contrary to the Christian faith. Now he writes to arouse the victims of these teachers to contend for the truth.

Now, I want to talk just a little because I want my emphasis to fall elsewhere, but a little about this false teaching. Not naming any false teaching specifically, and I do not use this because I think there’s any false teaching here. We have had amazing success under God in the last years in keeping from our fellowship, those who would subvert us. They just don’t feel healthy around here. The atmosphere is not wholesome and they don’t stay very long. So, this is general rather than specific, but because it is for the whole church of Christ, it certainly is also for us.

Now, what do we mean by false teaching? Well, it means teaching that things are otherwise than they are. Now, things are, both physical things and spiritual things are. They are and you can put a period after that. And when we have discovered or had revealed to us the facts about them, either things material or things spiritual, then we are morally required to acknowledge those facts, and to make our teaching conform to them. That’s also very simple that I almost apologize for saying it. But it is the broad framework upon which everything else must hang, that things are as they are whether we like them or not, that’s the way they are. God made things and things are. Physical material things are and Spiritual things are.

Now, it is our business to find out how they are. Accept them as they are and then make our teaching conform to them as they are. Now that’s rather simple, isn’t it? Now, correct doctrine then is of vital importance, because it is simply the teaching of things as they are. There are five there and I say that’s five, ten over there and I say that’s ten. It is July, what’s today? The third, and I say it’s July 3. That doesn’t take genius, that’s just stating things as they are. This is Chicago, Illinois, not Memphis, Tennessee. This is Chicago, Illinois. This is July, not August, this is the third not the ninth. This is 1955, not 1957. This, these are this country is the United States of America. Not some other country, not England not any of the Scandinavian countries.

And so, telling the truth about things is simply finding out what they are and then conforming my statement to their facts. Now it’s so as spiritual truths. When a truth has been revealed in the book of God, our business is to find out what that truth is. And then in all of our teaching, conform to that truth. Not edited, not change it, but let it stand just as it is. It is the truth of

God declared as it is and don’t try to change it. It would be ridiculous of me to try, by some twist of logic or sophistry to make this to be August when it’s July; to make it to be the ninth when it’s the third; to make this to be winter when it’s summer; to make this country to be Canada when it’s the United States. Truth is just as it is. God Almighty has made the world to be a mathematical universe. And He runs all things according to mathematical laws. And He has a moral world which runs according to moral laws as exact and as unchanging as mathematical laws. So non-conformity to the truth anywhere brings disaster. Let an engineer be wrong about a position, and let him build according to that wrong concept and his building will collapse around him. Let a navigator be wrong about something and he will run on a rock and his old ship will shudder as it runs onto a sandbar or a rock and will settle in the water and sink out of sight because a mistake has been made. The man has not gone according to truth. Non-conformity always brings disaster wherever it may be. And the vastness and hugeness of the disaster depends upon the high-level or low-level of the facts we have before us.

If I started with a compass that was backwards–we were driving the other day in Mr. McAfee’s car, and we went west all the time. No matter which way we turned the compass said west. There was something wrong with the compass. Now, that didn’t do us a great harm, because there were markers and we didn’t go according to that. But if there had been something serious and we’d had to know when our lives depended upon it, we might have left our bones someplace, because a compass went wrong. And so, non-conformity, failure to stay by facts as they are, will bring disaster if we depend upon it.

Now, false teaching is the falsifying of data. It’s falsifying of data about God, ourselves, sin, and Christ. First of all, any false teaching must begin with the wrong concept of God. You can put that down in the back of your Bible or the back of your memory, that any false teaching of any sort, must begin with a wrong concept of God. It can’t be otherwise. Nobody who holds a right concept of God can go very far wrong in anything else. And all the basic, great mistakes that have been made, the great fundamental errors have all rested down around the concept of God. Men are not willing to let God be what He says He is. They’re always trying to change God and trying to make him to be other than what He is. God is, and we better accept Him as He is. God is, and the angels want Him to be what He is. God is, and the elders and saints and heavenly creatures want Him to be what He is. We’d better want Him to be what He is too, and conform to what he is. Any structure that is crooked, or any foundation that is crooked, will bring the structure down in time. It will either sink or it will collapse or lean or fall over, but it will not stand long. Or if it does, it will lean as the leaning tower there in Italy.

Now God–of all the foundations–God is the most important, because God is God and made the heaven and earth and all the things that are therein. And it is a great error, it would be a great error for a man or a woman to go a lifetime thinking they were talking to the God of heaven and earth and find that they were talking to a god which they had confounded out of their own imagination. It would be a tragic calamity to the human spirit for me to pray a lifetime and preach a lifetime about a God that wasn’t the true God at all, but some other god which was a composite of ideas drawn from philosophy and psychology and other religions and superstitions. No, God is what He is. And we had better learn what God is and then conform our teachings to God. If we take away any of the attributes of God, we weaken our concept of God. We do not weaken God, but we weaken our concept of God.

Christian scientists have taken all the justice and judgment and hatred of sin out of the nature of God and they have nothing but a soft God left. There are those who have taken love and grace out and have nothing but a God of judgment left. There are those who have taken away the personality of God and have nothing but a mathematical God. That’s the God of the scientists. All these are false, inadequate conceptions of God.

While God is a God of justice, He’s a God of grace, and while He’s a God of righteousness, He’s a God of mercy. While he is a God of mathematical exactness, He is also a God that could take babies in His arms and pat their heads and smile. He is a God that could forgive and a God that does forgive. So we had better make the study of this Bible of ours, the business of our lives, to find out what God is.

And then conform our views to God, and then ourselves. That’s this second thing where we make a mistake in any kind of false teaching, because any wrong idea of God is bound to give us a wrong idea of ourselves. Some people approach God through science, through the study of anthropology. But anthropology without theology is bound to arrive at an error at last, bound to arrive at the dead end street. You and I can only explain ourselves in the light of the doctrine that God made us out of the dust of the ground and blew into our nostrils the breath of life. And so, man became a living soul.

Science has discovered many things about God, but they have not discovered it in context. They have not begun with God and reasoned down to His world; they have begun with the world and tried to reason up with God and stop short of finding God, and the result is only tragic to everybody. If a man is wrong about God, he’s bound to be wrong about himself. If He’s wrong about the artist, he’ll be wrong about the picture. If he’s wrong about the potter, he’ll be wrong about the vessel. If he’s wrong about God, he’ll be wrong about the creature. So, while multiplying scientific facts all around about us, men are wrong because they have left God out and say in their heart, there is no God. Or if there is a God, He’s a god of mathematics and laws, but not the God as the Bible makes Him out to be. That is all wrong.

If you believe you’re any better than God says you are, you’re in error. If you believe you’re any different from what God says you are, you’re in error. You have falsified the data or somebody has falsified the data and made you a victim. No, no, my brother, believe about yourself what God says about you. Believe you’re as bad as God says you are and believe you’re as far from him as God says you are. And then believe in Christ who can come as near to Him as he says you can. And accept what He says about you as being true.

My friend, you cannot know truth about yourself unless you first know truth about God. You came from the hand of God, and back to God you must go for better, for worse, for judgment, or for blessing. And until we take God in and understand God, and let God be what He claims to be, and believe about ourselves what God says about us, we’re believing false doctrine.

Then there’s sin. Now sin cannot be understood until we believe in God and believe what God has said about ourselves. Sin is that intrusive phenomenon, that ever present, ubiquitous phenomenon. There it is, hate and lying and dishonesty and murder and crime and injustice, necessitating law and police and jails and galluses and locks and graves. There are those who would deny it, and of course that’s falsifying the data. There are those who would rename it and they’re falsifying data. There are those who would treat it as a disease and they’re falsifying data.

God says that it’s a breaking of the law. God says it’s a rebellion against His will. God says that it’s a nature inherited from our fathers and mothers. God says that it’s an act against the faith and love and mercy of God. God says it’s rebellion against the constituted authority of the Majesty on high. God says it’s iniquity and personally chargeable to the one who commits it. God says the soul that sinneth it shall die. And we had better believe about sin what God says about sin or we will be falsifying the data. And falsified data in spiritual things is more terribly wrong and will bring more terrible consequences and falsifying data in material things.

The doctor who miscounts a number of, or the amount of that which he gives a patient may kill the patient. That would be only to destroy a body. The preacher who misjudges or miscounts the truth concerning sin and man and God will damn his hearers which is infinitely more terrible. Truth concerning God means that I must accept God’s sovereignty, God’s holiness, God’s justice, God’s grace, God’s love and all that the Bible says about God. Concerning myself, it requires that I must believe in myself as a fallen image of God, one who once bore His image, but fell.

Now, the fourth is Christ Himself. For if I do not have the right concept of God and of myself and of sin, then I will have a twisted and imperfect concept of Christ. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my honest and charitable conviction, that the Christ of the average religionist today is not the Christ of the Bible at all, but a manufactured Christ, a Christ painted on canvas, a Christ drawn from cheap poetry, a Christ of the liberal and the soft and timid person, a Christ that has not in Him the iron and the fury and the anger, as well as the love of grace and mercy, He had who walked in Galilee. If I have a low conception of God, I have a low conception of myself and if I have a low conception of myself, I have a dangerous conception of sin. And if I have a dangerous conception of sin, I have a degraded conception of Christ.

So, here’s the way it works. God is reduced and man is degraded and sin is underestimated, and Christ is disparaged. No wonder Jude said the terrible things that he said. And I recommend, that some of you that are so nice you’re no good, I recommend you read the book of Jude once. I recommend you read that book of Jude. Get your teeth filed to a sharp, eating edge. Get your teeth into something. Dare to believe something, and dare to stand for God. This awful day of so called tolerance. This awful day when men are ready to believe anything.

No, my brethren, you and I are not called to smile and smile and smile. We are called sometimes to frown and rebuke with all longsuffering in doctrine. We must contend, but not be contentious. And we must preserve truth, but injure no man. We must destroy error, but not harm people. Where men were wrong in other days, they contended and in contending became contentious. They tried to preserve truth, and so to do it they destroyed those who held error. All this is wrong. Let us preserved truth, but injured no man. Faith of our fathers we will love, both friend and foe in all our strife and love Thee too; to preach Thee too as love knows how, to kindly deed and virtuous life.

Now in closing, here is what he says to us. He says in verse nineteen, these be they. Let’s pity them. Let’s be sorry. let’s pray for them. Let’s weep over them. Let’s turn away from them, these be they. Verse twenty, but ye beloved. Now he’s come to his own, the true believers in God and Christ, but ye beloved. Then He gives them four or five things to do. I will pass swiftly over them. Building up yourselves in your most holy faith. Are you these days building up yourselves? Have you read a book of the Bible through recently? Have you done any memorization of Scripture texts or Scripture these days? Have you sought to know God or are you looking to the radio for your religion? Or have you a Bible and do your study it? Build up yourselves in your most holy faith? That’s one.

Praying in the Holy Ghost. I do not hesitate to say that most praying is not in the Holy Ghost. The reason we do not pray in the Holy Ghost is because we do not have the Holy Ghost in us. No man can pray in the Spirit, except his heart is a habitation for the Spirit. It’s only as the Holy Ghost has unlimited sway within us that we’re able to pray in the Holy Ghost, and I do not hesitate to say that five minutes of prayer in the Holy Ghost will be worth more than one year of hit and miss praying that isn’t in the Holy Ghost. Pray in the Holy Ghost.

Third, Keep yourselves in the love of God. Be true to the faith, but be charitable to those who are in error. Never feel any contempt for anybody. No Christian has any right to feel contempt, for contempt is an emotion that can only come out of pride. So, let’s feel no contempt. Let’s be charitable and loving toward all while we keep ourselves in the love of God.

And then looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of course, that is the second coming of Jesus. Looking for Jesus Christ’s coming. The mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ that is coming. Wonderful isn’t it that His mercy will show itself at His coming? Even His mercy will show itself then as it did on the cross as it does in receiving sinners, as it does impatiently looking after us Christians and it will show itself at the coming of Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

And then, verse 22, some have compassion making a difference, and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garments spotted by the flesh. There’s a charge that we should win others, that we should do everything in our power to bring others to Christ, saving them with fear, pulling them out of the fire. Wesley all his life referred to himself as a brand plucked from the burning. He never called himself anything else than a brand plucked from the burning. He knew that he was on fire already with the hot flames of hell when Jesus Christ grabbed him out of the fiery pit and extinguished the fire by His own blood. And Wesley became Wesley. And he never dared to rise and think of himself as a great Oxford man or a great genius. Always He thought of himself as a brand plucked from the burner.

So now we look forward to Jesus Christ’s coming, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here was what the old silk weaver said about it. He says, a few short lines from Terstegen. There is a balm for every pain in medicine for all sorrow, the eye turned backward to the cross and forward to the morrow. That’s what Paul said, that ye do show forth the Lord’s death till what? Till He come. There’s a balm for every pain, medicine for all sorrow. Some of the old saints in days gone by called the communion service, the medicine of immortality. And we couldn’t follow them in every one of their beliefs, but that I think they were right. The medicine for all sorrow, and I turned backward to the cross and forward to the morrow, the morrow of the glory and the song, when he shall come. The morrow of the harping and the palm and the welcome home.

Meantime, in His beloved hands are our ways. Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to Thee? Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to the liberal? Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to the dead church? Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to those who have chosen to walk in the low shadows of Christianity? Never! Dare to contend without being contentious. They are to preserve truth without hurting people. Dare to love and be charitable and there, meantime in His beloved hands are our ways and, on His heart, the wandering heart at rest, and comfort for the weary one who lays his head upon His breast.

Thank God for the old silk weaver who walked with his Savior and was not, for God took him. So let us think of the medicine of immortality today. Let us by the grace of God, with charity for all and hatred toward none, but determination to be loyal to truth if it kills us. Let us put our chin a little higher and our knees a little lower. Let’s look a little further in to the throne of God where Jesus Christ sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Let us be courageous, but tender; severe, but kind. Let us pray in the Holy Ghost and keep ourselves in the love of God and build ourselves up in the most holy faith and win all we can until the day of the glory and the song. Amen.