Fundamental Or Instrumental?

Where the ordinary man speaks of “the end of the world,” the Bible knows no such phrase. There never will be an end of the world as far as the Scriptures are concerned. God divides time up into ages, periods where He is testing men out under a certain kind of revealed truth. We are not tested today by what Moses said to the Jews, but we are tested by what Christ Jesus has spoken. The Holy Ghost in our age is convincing the world of sin “Because they believe not on Him.” We are judged, in this our day, as to whether we accept the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Our age is having the opportunity of accepting the Gospel message, and it will close with a judgment like every other age has closed.

The Millennium is the new world, the next age. The sting of the serpent, the howl of the lion and its bite and its roar, poverty, injustice, misery, and all those things that have come from the curse are to be lifted by the presence of Jesus Christ in this world when He comes back to reign as King of kings and Lord of lords. This coming Millennial age is the only one that is specified in the Scriptures in years—a thousand years. Then that period closes and there is a new heaven and a new Earth, a regenerated Earth. When the purification by fire comes in the old order perishes and a new order springs up; but there is no doing away with the world.

I call your attention particularly to the first two verses of the chapter: “And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus 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.”

Here are two verses thrown over against each other in contrast, and in these verses is contained a marvelous and wonderful truth. These men came out of the temple, they looked at the grandeur of it, its gorgeous outlines, its marvelous architecture, and truly it was a masterpiece of architecture. I understand that millions were spent in beautifying this temple by Herod the Idumean, in order to win the approval of the Jews. You could see from away outside the city, the shining gold, the real gold with which it was overlaid. It was a most magnificent building, even though the Jews were subject to the Roman government.

Imagine this marvelous piece of architecture. Its very plan had been given by God. It was, then, divine architecture. Here were the Holy of Holies, the sacrifices, the priests, the law; here gathered the twelve tribes of Israel; here were the covenant and the promise; here were the open Scriptures and the scribes to keep carefully and to record in minute detail even the jot and the tittle of that which God had given to them. Here was this outlay, not alone of men, but of God.

These disciples boasted of it. To them it seemed that Jesus had not been saying enough about the temple. Probably some had said to them,” If that man were of God, He would talk a lot more about the temple than He does.” But Jesus was dealing with the fundamental and not with the instrumental.”

A fundamental is a very simple affair; the instrumental may be very complex. The fundamental of an automobile is very simple. It is simple this: gasoline will explode in a cylinder when ignited by an electric spark. It doesn’t make any difference what kind of a piston you have. You have a container; the electric spark ignites the gasoline in this container, forcing up a piston with each explosion, and machinery hooks up the “kicks.” The fundamental is the explosion and its laws, all else is instrumental and machinery. You may have a square cylinder or piston, and I, a round one. You may hook up this fundamental explosion one way, and I, another. You may have one kind of a windshield, and I, another. You may have one kind of a seat, and I, another. You may have one kind of wheels, and I, another. You may have hard rubber tires, and I, pneumatic. These differences are all instrumental, but we can, neither of us, change the explosive fundamental.

According to this kind of a description, a Ford is an automobile. If the fundamental of an automobile is not working, you haven’t an automobile at all. You may have a “Prince Albert” limousine, all trimmed up lovely, and even have a vase with a little flower in it, and have curtains that look dandy; but if this limousine is thirty miles out from town and the fundamental not working, then you haven’t an automobile, but a little parlor on the roadside. The fundamental is the thing that has to work. That is why they like a Ford; the fundamental is so steady. It may look and rattle all sorts of ways, but it gets there all the same. The fundamental works in fine style. If the fundamental does not work, why do you care what you have?

Christ Left Out

The great trouble with men today is that they do not see the difference between a fundamental and an instrumental. If Jesus Christ is not in it, the people in the church haven’t a church; they just have a house to sit in. If a man without an indwelling Christ calls himself a Christian, he is an empty sepulchre full of dead men’s bones, a deception to himself and a deception to the age in which he lives. The fundamental must be working. It is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Otherwise, as Jesus said to the Jews, “your house is left unto you desolate.” There you sit on the roadside; you may have a real genuine experience of a real Christ in your heart. O, have this Christ within, working for you!

If a man has an automobile that is working, he knows that it is working. If you have a real Saviour, He works. The best evidence we have of knowing that an automobile is working is that the scenery changes. It isn’t just the shaking of the thing. There are many who think that if there is just a little emotion going on, some witnessing, and they enjoy church and religion, they have the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. If the spiritual scenery is not changing day by day, I would go back and find a real Christ that draws the soul forth from glory to glory. Get your fundamental right; the instrumental may be what you please. I part company in a minute with that man who denies the blood of Jesus Christ and His power to save. When he goes on talking about being saved by his work and his efforts, etc., we are as far apart as the poles. It is “Christ in you the hope of glory.” It is not your patterning after Christ; it is Christ in you, exploding as it were, driving you, and lifting you, and being your life. He searches and tries the heart, and the scenes are changing, and “old things pass away, and all things become new.” This is fundamental.

In our text is this magnificent outside affair, the temple. It was not a fundamental about which these men were talking; it was an instrumental. These disciples discussed the outside. They felt Jesus ought to appreciate more this outside structure. They had heard the terrible things He had been saying to the Jews of that generation, calling them a generation of vipers, whited sepulchres, full of dead men’s bones. It may be they thought Christ was going too far. So they wanted to show Him the architecture of the building. They point to it and said, “Have you noticed the building?” Christ then turned the question on them, “Do you see all these things? What do you want to show me about these things? These stones, and beautiful gold work, and the marble? Ah, you think you have seen something. Do you see these things? Not one stone shall be left upon another.”

“Why, what is the matter? Hasn’t it been constructed properly? What is the matter with the building?” The answer is: the fundamental is wrong, not the architecture. That building was constructed to contain God and for His worship. Its constructions and ceremonies all pointed to Christ, their Messiah. The Messiah, Jesus Christ, the Son of God should have been openly accepted by this people and let into His temple. Christ was the whole fundamental for which it was built. The lamb was being slain; here was Christ, the real Lamb. The veil was hanging there typifying the veil of His flesh that was to be ripped on Calvary, that God might come to man, and man go to God through the breaking of His flesh and the spilling of His blood for sin. Shekinah glory? Here it was in the person of Christ, “for in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead.” The Holy of Holies? Here He stood transfigured in the mount. The temple? Here it was, the Tabernacle of God, God incarnate.

Christ was shut out of His temple and refused His place, and He said, “There shall not be one stone left upon another.” The fundamental Christ was not here accepted in His own temple. Judgment must fall. The age must close. They had been given a temple as type of a real coming man, the temple of God. They refused Him. They rejected the fundamental, all the instrumental must come down.

“Do you believe He is coming back again,” I am asked, “that men are coming down and governments are coming down, and the wrath of God is coming on this Earth?” Yes, this is God’s world, and men have thrown Him out, absolutely put Him out of His own temple. Look at the late world war [World War I], the like of which has never been seen in the world’s history. Think of 900,000 British young men, not out of the insane asylums, not from the poor house, not diseased, but the flower of the generation—900,000 youths, the best breeders of their race, the pick of the country—900,000 of them are over there dead today. One million six hundred thousand of the best that France had, dead today. Two million of the best that Germany had, today dead. Our boys sleeping there in the soil alongside the others; and crape on the door of the worlld! Men gather together to write a document of peace and make a treaty for world peace and never once mention the name of God in that treaty! I do not care how good your treaty is, it is coming down, for this is God’s world, and men have left God out. It is Himself who has the right to reign.

Do you see all these things, or do you see only the good things of men? I am not saying that men are not doing good things today. I am not saying that men are not doing splendid things today, but they are utterly, absolutely useless in solving the problem, for they are leaving God’s Son out as King of kings and as Saviour. The fundamental is absolutely wrong!

Take your salvation. You may be considered tonight by your wife a good husband, by your children a good father, and you, mother, may be considered a good wife and mother, but I say to you, my friend, that no one can look at the human temple without knowing it should be a temple for God. Your architecture as mother, father, sister, brother is not under discussion. All that is instrumental. The fundamental question of salvation is: Does Jesus Christ occupy His rightful place in your human temple made for Him and by Him?

There are millions on Earth who have said, as He knocked at the door, “I am good enough, I am as good as anybody else.” You are coming down. You have defeated absolutely that purpose of God for which you were planned. You are running your own little world, and your little flag of Bolshevism flies over your head as you say, “I’ll run my life to suit myself.” Your life is coming down. “Every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall declare to the glory of God that he is both Lord and Christ.” He is not only the Saviour of the world, but He has the right to your absolute obedience to Him. I care not if you are as handsome as Apollo or if you are the most beautiful woman in the world; you are coming down unless He, who came down and took your place in your lost condition and in your awful agony of sin on Calvary, becomes both your Christ and Lord. You are coming down. There will not be one bone left upon another.

The text is the only declaration of Christ to that age. Jesus Christ goes on to tell the Jews what the signs of His coming will be, and of the approach of that time when he is coming at the close of this, our age, to judge the world.

The Wisdom Of Men

Man might have stood around after Jesus died in AD 33, or along about AD 46, while the disciples were there, and talked about this resurrected Christ, and said in derision, “I see the temple still stands;” or in AD 50, “The temple is still standing.” I can imagine hearing some of the higher critics of those days—non-believers—say, “You heard Him. It’s still up.” Someone might have gone up to it and tried to shake it, saying, “It seems pretty steady.” But in the years AD 70, everything happened that He said would happen, and just as He said it would happen. The whole city went to the ground, and there was not one stone left upon another.

All prophecy in the Word of God is always, actually and literally, fulfilled, and the one word of the Scripture is FULFILLED, FULFILLED, FULFILLED. The temple came down just as Jesus said it was coming down. It doesn’t make a bit of difference to me if all the highbrows tell me that the earth is coming to a fine end. I am listening to a God who has given us an authoritative word. This Word does not depend upon the word of scholarship. A “highbrow” is a person educated beyond his intelligence. We have fewer scholars in the world today and more highbrows than ever. The greatest philosophers the world ever knew had intellect above their education. Socrates had no education, but he had a mighty intellect.

It was not very long ago that some of the scientific men who wanted to contradict the Bible did not like the statement of the Word of God that men’s lives were getting more nervous, more diseased, and shorter in length. They went ahead to contradict the Word of God. They said, “The trouble is here. The ages of the men in the Bible have been measured by lunar years. Every time there was a change of the moon, that was a year, and therefore this fellow, Methuselah, his age is recorded as many times too long. This old fellow lived just a portion of the time named.” That sounds good. That sounds like a piece of education. They had found out there was such a thing as a lunar year—it is mighty close to the other thing spelled “loony.” They never had horse sense enough to try it out on the list of people God named. According to their theory, some of the most important men of Scripture had grandchildren when they were eight years old. “When he was forty, he begot so and so,” is equivalent in their theory to saying, “When he was ten years old he begot so and so.” They were educated, but they had no sense.

Down in Atlanta, a colored* fellow who had a little bit more education than most of the negroes was drawn into court. The judge’s coachman, who lived in the same neighborhood, was also brought to court and put on the witness stand. The judge said to his coachman, “You live next door to this man?”

“Yes, sir, he lives in my ward.”

“Is this fellow a smart man?”

“He’s the smartest man; he knows more things than anybody around us.”

“You don’t believe this man is smart?”

“Yes, sir. That man has brains, and is full of information.”

“What is the matter with him?”

“Judge, he is just such a fool.”

We have an age that has a lot of education, but they are “such fools.”

Look at the people to whom Jesus was talking. They had the Pharisees, the scribes, the Sanhedrin, fellows reading the Scriptures, carrying on their church worship, talking about the lamb, about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they did not have sense enough to see Christ, while He was there, as God. The greatest trouble of our age is the false idea that somehow by a gathering of knowledge a man’s horse sense increases. We need something in our colleges that will teach a man horse sense.

I have a friend in the educational department of the Westinghouse corporation. He told me this: “We get all kinds of boys here, all educated, but very few of them have any sense. I am the fellow who has to invent ways to find out whether they have any sense or not. Every electrical engineer ought to know how much a cubic inch of copper weights. He must know this to figure out resistance and what current copper can carry. Every one of them does know it to a decimal. That is one of the things they have to carry in their brains. They have that information, but I try to find out if they have any sense. I bring a fellow in, I take a piece of copper in size about 5x7 inches and one inch thick. Lying on the table will be the scales, and protruding from a book, a little ruler. I say to that fellow, ‘I’ll give you a minute to tell me what that copper weighs.’

“‘Well, but—’

“‘Hurry up. Your time is going.’

“‘Well, but—’

“‘Time’s up. Your minute is gone.’

“He did not have sense enough to stick that copper on the scales or measure it and figure it up. They get information out of books, but if you have the information, and cannot put it into practical action, what good is it going to do you?”

We have a bunch of highbrows—all kinds—races that have gone down, kings that have gone down into the dust of ages. We have just come through a great world war. What does it mean to the nations of the earth? Absolutely nothing! Education? There is no man statesman enough to meet the present situation; no ruler understanding the time in which we now live, from God’s Word. We shall never have peace until the Prince of Peace comes into this world to reign.

I asked my friend if he had any boys in his classes who met these practical tests. “Sure,” he said. “We take the children of these Italians, Lithuanians, Letts, Polish, Russians, give them their schooling at night, and I never put a test yet to one of these who will not ask, Can I use that pair of scales?’ or ‘Can I take that ruler?’ Every one of them does it. They are used to shifting, used to making a thing practical and making it count for something.”

What good does your information about history do you? What good does it do if you do not know Jesus is coming? You might just as well have lived in Solomon’s time. There is just one advantage in your living today; you have a chance to wake up to this age and its coming judgment because of its refusal of Jesus Christ as the Saviour of men.

The Bible’s Vindication

During the entire period of this war, I have stood in my pulpit and preached the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and told events before they happened, and haven’t missed a single count. Not through any wisdom of mine, but it is as easy to read from the Word of God as A, B, C. Read in the 22^nd Psalm, a perfect description of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, a psalm that was written hundreds of years before crucifixion was known, and hundreds of years before Christ was crucified. The very words He uttered, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” are there. The very description of the crucifixion is there, even to this: “They pierced my hands and my feet,” “and upon my clothes did they cast lots.” It also tells about the soldiers wagging their heads as they passed—a perfect picture of Calvary written hundreds of years before God sent His Son to die.

This Book stands or falls, not upon the scholarship of our time, but upon fulfilled prophecy. If this Book made a statement of something that was going to happen, did it happen? If it did, then it is God’s Book.

Man preserves the past. That is fine. We keep a mummy for a long time. That is wonderful. We thought it was fine when we got to preserving beans and grapes and peaches in jars. We gloated when man reached the place where he could take a picture and preserve his face. Now we have a Victrola that holds the human voice. Man preserves the past, and it is a marvelous thing. I am not contradicting the greatness of man. The very fact that he is as great as he is is all the more reason for his judgment in refusing Christ.

God shows His greatness in preserving the future. He foretells events. He writes them out in the Bible ahead of time. He says Christ is coming back, and men and nations are coming down. Two-thirds of the whole Bible is the utterance of this one great, glorious, wonderful teaching of Jesus in earthly power and dominion, ruling and cleaning up this rotten, dirty, filthy Earth. A glorious clean-up with the Sapolio of heaven, all prophesied and promised and guaranteed in the Word of God.

Yes, the Lord Jesus told them their temple was to come down. They were to come down with it, for they had turned from the one of whom Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah all wrote. The prophets told of His first and second coming. They told that He was to be born of a virgin in the city of Bethlehem, that He was to live, suffer, and die. God never brought Him first to the Gentiles, but to the Jews, who ought to have known the details of His life. They turned Him down. That is why God has chastised them and made them outcasts and never has allowed them to get together. The most talented race on Earth is the Jews. Stick them down into the dirtiest ghetto and they will educated their children and their children will soon own the banks and your business. They have occupied very great offices on Earth, even to the premiership of Great Britain. They are sculptors, poets, statesmen, soldiers and yet they have not the power to get together. Why? God put the scatter stuff in them.

Just now, according to the teaching of the Word of God, they should go back. This is the time. Right in the hour when nobody could expect it and before the armistice was ever thought of, in the midst of an awful travail of nations, reeking with blood—in the midst of all that, Jerusalem, was taken and the land was open once again to the Jews. They have gone back to raise the flag over there and raise the walls of a university. The Bible said this would come to pass, as it has. For what purpose is this race among us? God placed them here to His glory and praise as an absolute proof of God and His covenant-making power with men. He cast them off, but He will gather them before Christ returns.

Yes, God has shown what He can do by preserving the future. The validity of the Word of God is proven in fulfilled prophecy. What God said would come to pass has already come to pass, and you can trust Him to bring to pass everything else that He has spoken. Daniel not only prophesied about his own time, but he also wrote about our day, the end time. The whole sweep of history is told ahead of time in the vision of the great image with the golden head. Everything that he told Nebuchadnezzar came to pass. Everything that he told Belshazzar came to pass. God gave him a vision of the end time, our time. There hasn’t been one jot or one tittle that has ever been contradicted by history.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who hung on Calvary, will one day break through the clouds of glory and be back here in this world. Our God will be among us. We are not orphans. It is not a delusion; it is not a fad; it is not fiction. It is the most deep and fundamental and philosophical fact. That God became man and is back in the glory with a glorified body, and that someday He is coming to be the King and the Head of a new race on this Earth was prophesied, some of it has been fulfilled, and it will all be fulfilled.

I am an optimist. I am a pessimist as to the fact that this race is going down and this present world system and generation are going to pieces. I have no sympathy or faith for the evolution of man; my hope for man is the death, the ascension, and descension of the Son of Man and Son of God, a Savior, a King.

Do you see these things, or do you pick up your magazine and see only the building, the temple, called man? These things are for you to behold. What are you going to do? What manner of men ought we to be if this Christ of Calvary was God, if this Christ of the resurrection was the Son of God, and if He is coming again? What about the philosophy of life?

The building is coming down. The period and length of man’s life is growing less. There has been a great deal of work done to save the lives of babies. But after a while it was discovered that in spite of this, the years of life were diminishing. There are not so many now as twenty-five years ago who live to the one hundred year mark. God has another plan, and that is for His own rejuvenating work in Jesus Christ, who is coming back to this world. Christ is after a new creation through the workings of his victory over sin, wrought out on Calvary. The old Adam race is dying out, the new race in Christ, as its Head, is being born daily wherever the Gospel is preached and will reign with Him over this Earth when He comes back. Yes, the temple’s going down, a new temple of everlasting life is going to be ushered in to the praise of His glory and to the everlasting honor of His glorious grace.

God Coming To Earth

The god of philosophy does not exist. The God of this Bible has always been the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost; the Three in One, the One in Three. “Can’t I believe in God,” asks someone, “without believing in Jesus Christ?” You cannot think of His character or find out anything about Him without Jesus Christ. Jesus is the revelation of God. Jesus Christ is the exhibit of God Himself. “It pleased God (the Father) that in Him should all fulness dwell,” and “In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead bodily.” Every quality of deity was in Christ Jesus.

The Christ who is the new Head and returning King is God. He is Creator. He stood there by the water’s edge and fed five thousand men with five loaves and two small fishes. The God that broke off the stars and threw them out is the same God that was standing there breaking the bread and fish. He stood there at the tomb of Lazarus, and called, “Lazarus, come forth,” and Lazarus came forth.

It is the same God who said to Nathanael, “I saw you while you were under the fig tree,” miles away. And Nathanael looked at Him and said, “You are the Messiah; You are God!” Nobody could see Nathanael that far but God. He is the All-Seeing One. And He said something else to Nathanael, “Behold an Israelite, indeed, in whom is no guile.” He knew him. He knew his character. He looked at his soul. Nathanael knew he was God. Discard every other God on Earth and all the other philosophies—Jesus is God, Emmanuel, God with us.

And now this Christ who died and rose has come with the Holy Ghost to be Christ within us, the hope of glory. It is Christ in us in the new birth. It is Christ who is the resurrection. Mary said she knew there was to be a resurrection, so did Martha. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Ah, brothers, you speak of a world to be redeemed. He is this world’s redemption. “How can you believe this?” someone asks. It is not “how,” it is “WHO.” How can I believe in this glorious work of a new world? This Person has been among us, and He is coming again. This One that walked by the water’s edge and fed the multitude can come here and handle the food question; this One who called Lazarus from the dead can handle the death situation; this One who bade Peter walk to Him on the water can handle ships and commerce. This glorious Christ is coming back to the world again! Are you in Him? Is He in you? God help you to know Him. Our every “How?” is answered by this blessed “WHO.”

“Two women shall be working at the mill. One shall be taken and the other left.” Where did you get your idea of a whole world regenerated or Christianized before Christ comes? Surely not out of the Bible. Hear more Scripture: “There shall be two sleeping in a bed. One shall be taken and the other left.” “Two ploughing in the field; one taken and the other left.” He is going to catch away those that have become a new creation in Him by the work He did on Calvary, and those that have been regenerated and born again; not saved by character and works, but by faith in what He has done for them they are made one with Him. O the magnetic power that pulls from cross, pulls men to Him. He pulls to Himself these new temples out from among the old temples, when “not one stone shall be left upon another.”

In Pittsburgh, a great electric flat iron swung around, but it was a dead thing. The engineer turned on the power. Soon he had it high enough to turn it over some rails. As I watched, I saw the rails begin to jump up and down. Dead rails! More electricity was sent into the magnet over the rails and every rail on that car jumped up. There was an affinity between that big flat iron and the rails. When the Lord Jesus returns, we will likewise be caught up out of the old falling temples.

Men warned Rome and Greece, but she came down. God is warning our age, but she is coming down. We are going up! I do not know what particular attraction it is, but He is coming down far enough, 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...and so shall we ever be with the Lord”—a new race, a new Head, and we are part of Him. What is the attraction? Your character is what takes you? No. It is His life in you.

I was raised in Colorado, and in the fall, along would come the plough and loosen all the ground where the Greeley potatoes were growing. We would grip the potato tops and pull them up, and everything attached to the potato vine came with it—all the big potatoes and the little potatoes too. Some of us are little potatoes, and some of us are big ones, but just as sure as we are attached by a new birth to Him, the living vine, we will be with Him. He cannot go off and leave me behind because I have Him in my heart. I am in Him a new creation. Are you in Him? Are you depending on your goodness and character? This is a new kind of being, by faith in Him a new creation.

“I do not see how God can tell ahead of time about the temple and about this age of unbelief,” you may be thinking. If you used your horse sense you would understand. People are doing it right around you all the time. How can I tell that things are going to pieces? How can God tell? Here is an illustration. A delightful society lady has a little son, Johnny. They have an old family physician who helped to bring her into the world, and also helped to usher little Johnny into life. One day, Johnny is ailing and does not want to go to school. The doctor is called in about nine o’clock, takes a little squint at Johnny and says, “Come over here and let me look at you in the light.”

“It hurts my eyes,” Johnny objects.

That symptom does not mean much to you, but it means a great deal to the doctor. Some of these happenings in the world mean little to you, but if you knew this Word, they would mean much. The reason you do not know is that you do not want to know; and the reason you do not want to know the Word of God is because you do not want to know God. If you knew Him, you would love His Word and love His appearing. He says He is going to appear to those who love His appearing.

Come here, Johnny,” says the doctor. He takes hold of Johnny, and we hear the lad exclaim, “Ouch, it hurts.” Then a thermometer is stuck into the little fellow’s mouth, the doctor looks behind his ears, looks at his tongue and decides, “We will go into this little room now.” Turning to the mother, he adds, “You have always been a brave girl, no brace up. Johnny has the smallpox and I will make arrangements to have him isolated at once.”

“Why doctor, he has not got the smallpox!”

“Oh, but he has. Your opinion has nothing to do with it.”

“But, doctor, we never had any dirty disease like that in our family.”

“You have it now, and I did not give it to him, he got it himself.”

Do not blame the doctor; do not blame God for the accidents of men. You have never let Christ in to allow Him to have His way. If you go down, do not blame Him. He is willing to come in now and possess you, but do not blame Him if you do not let Him in. It is not His fault. Think of the pathetic pleadings of Christ when He knew the symptoms. It was not with harsh words that He said every stone was coming down; for He went outside the city and wept over it, crying, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,...how often would I have gathered thee even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.” How many times He would have come into your heart and pulled you to Himself and kept you in His love and fellowship. But what? Not, “Ye could not,” but “Ye would not.” Oh, the pathos of the loving heart that beat for you on Calvary! Why do you not let Him have His way? Man, why do you not have a Christ who is God? Why do you not turn things over to Him?

“Johnny is not going to have a dirty disease like that,” this mother says to herself. I am preaching the Christ of Calvary, and you say I am behind the time. The doctor was not behind time, he was ahead of time.

“I do not like this old fogy school,” fretted my lady. “I am going to have somebody from the modern school. There is a fine young physician with whom I played cards the other day and he is so lovely. He has three or four diplomas.” Highbrow! I am not kicking about education, but I am averse to anything that is a substitute for brains and real thinking. Haven’t men said that history repeats itself? Then why has not someone asked, “Why is God repeating?” If I were a teacher and told you George Washington was the first president and repeated it three or four times, I would do it for a purpose. If God is repeating lessons, He is doing it for a purpose, that you may see the scrap-heap that has gone down, and then see that it went down because it did not take Christ. Modernism, if it has real education, should interpret history; but it seems to have another kind of an idea—scrapping God and putting truth out of commission.

The modern physician comes in to see Johnny. “I guess he has one of those children’s diseases, perhaps the measles. Wrap him up warm,” is his verdict.

“Oh, doctor, you are such a comfort,” gushes the mother. “I love a man that gives comfort like that.”

“I hate a man who preaches hell fire,” we sometimes hear. I went to pieces on the world’s modernism. They took my Jesus away from me in college, and they took my Bible and made it a thing of error and foolishness to my poor immature brain. I wandered in the darkness, but, bless God, eight years ago, I found Christ in reality and a living Book. I found something God had said, and did not have to take the word of man.

It is not easy to preach the truth. It seems peculiar that modern fellows cannot see that men and women are disgusted with them. If I were trying to make it easy for you, you would not be here tomorrow to listen. If I tried to “salve” you down, you would know in your heart that I was lying. You know “the wages of sin is death.” All the “pussyfoot” preaching in the world cannot change that.

Someone knocks at the door of Johnny’s home, and as the mother opens the door, a foot inserted in the opening prevents its closing. “What do you want?”

“I represent the City Health Department, and I want to come in.”

“You cannot come in.”

“But I am partly in, and want you to open the door. I have an order to take your child to the detention hospital.”

“But there isn’t a thing wrong with him except a few red spots,” objects the mother.

Johnny goes, however, and her heart is nearly broken over the parting. She goes to the detention hospital and is permitted to see her boy through the window. The young doctor is not there, he only had a theory. There lies the little lad covered with ulcers, the fatherly physician standing over him—yes, the old standby.

Christ died for the smallpox of sin. That same Christ hung on Calvary to purchase a cure, and He is coming again to undertake the task of cleansing and ruling this world, Himself to be King of kings and Lord of lords.

How did the doctor know it was smallpox? That is a doctor’s business. Now, my friend, are you going to say that if the doctor knows smallpox is going to break out because of certain symptoms, God Almighty does not know what is the end of sin and what the working out of it in the nations is going to be.

Do you see the buildings of men? This is man’s day. He is running fast to his finest finish in unbelief. Oh, can you say to the blessed Lord as He asks, “See ye not all these things?” “Yes, Lord, I see these things. They are ‘things,’ but, oh, dear Master, I see Thee!”

 

Editor’s note: The term “colored” was once commonplace in the American society of Mr. Rader’s day. The term was complex in meaning; however as used here, it was not meant in a derogatory manner.