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lived. His influence upon domestic life, His influence upon social life, His influence upon industrial life, His influence upon political life. It would be foolish to com pare that o f any other man, or that o f all other men together; with His. Other men have had as many or more followers than He, but vtiiat is the quality -of the influ ence o f these men? Go to Turkey and note the influence o f Mohammed; go to India and Ceylon and Japan and note the boasted influence o f Buddha; go to China and note the influence o f Confucius. No, Christ has had an incomparably Divine influence upon men o f all succeeding generations. Now, as already 'seen, if Jesus Christ was not Divine He was a blasphemer and an impos tor. Is it conceivable that an arch impos tor should have such an incomparable influ ence over men in all the relations o f life. The question needs no answer, it answers itself. * 4. Christ’s claim to be Divine is sub stantiated in the fourth place by His res urrection from the dead. W e have not time tonight to go at length into the argument for the truthfulness of the gospel stories o f Christ’s resurrection from the dead, but the argument is clear and conclusive. In my book, The Bible and Its Christ, I have taken up the argu ment for Christ’s resurrection and shown how it is impossible for any honest man to study the argument for Christ’s resur rection and come to any other conclusion than that Jesus really rose from the dead as is recorded in the four gospels. Now the mere fact that one rose from the dead would not necessarily prove him to be Divine, but when one claims to be Divine and is put to death for making the claim, and before dying asserts that God will raise Him from the dead and thus endorse His claim, if then God actually does raise Him from the dead at the appointed time, certainly God does by that act in a most unmistakable way set His seal to the claim, and in this way God has in fact set His seal to Jesus’ claim to be Divine. As Paul puts it in the Epistle to the Romans, Jesus
Christ was “ declared to be the Son o f God with power by the resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1 :4). All these things taken together are my first reason for believing Jesus Christ to be Divine, because o f His own claim to be, and the way in which He substantiated this claim, by His character, His miracles, His influence, and His resur rection. The argument is a compound one, composed o f seyeral strong strands, and when these strands are woven together there results an argument that it is abso lutely impossible to break. II. I believe Jesus Christ to be Divine because of the teachings of the Bible beside His own. The Bible is the W ord o f God. I have given on many occasions my reasons for believing the Bible to be the W ord o f God. (See book The Bible and Its Christ). The argument for the Divine origin o f the Bible is unanswerable. The Bible is the Word o f God and therefore true. Whatever the Bihle says about Jesus Christ is the truth about Jesus Christ. But the Bible in the most unmistakable terms declares Him to be Divine. The Bible ascribes Divine attri butes to Jesus Christ, it attributes Divine works to Him, in the New Testament }t applies passages to Jesus which in the Old Testament are spoken o f Jehovah, it couples the name o f the Lord Jesus with the name o f God the Father in a way which it would be impossible to couple it with any finite being with that o f the Deity, and it demands for Him Divine homage and worship. John tells us that his whole purpose in writing his Gospel was that men might “ believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son o f God; and that believing” they might “have life in His name. Paul tells us “that in the name o f Jesus every knee” shall bow, “o f tilings in heaven and things on earth, and things /wider the earth, and that every tongue” shall “confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory o f God the Father.” He is quot ing here a statement made in the Old Tes tament o f Jehovah (Isa. 45:21-23). In Rom. 9:5 Paul unhesitatingly declares that
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