20
The Fundamentals 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.” Who is he who dares to say: “Ye believe in God, believe also in Me” ? He ventures thus to speak because He is the Father’s Son. Man’s son is man: can God’s Son be anything less than God? Elsewhere in this Gospel He says: “I and the Father are one”. The fourteenth chapter reveals the Lord Jesus as completely at home in the heavenly cbmpany. He speaks of His Father and of the Holy Spirit as Himself being one of the utterly holy Family. He knows all about His Father’s house with its many mansions. He was familiar with it before the world was. Mark well, too, the exquisite touch of transparent truthfulness: “If it were not so, I would have told you.” An ear-witness alone could have caught and preserved that touching parenthesis, and who more likely than the disciple whom Jesus loved? As we leave this famous chapter let us not forget to note the wondrous words in verse 23: “If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and WE will come unto him and make our abode with him.” This saying can only be characterized as blasphemous, if it be not the true utterance of one equal with God. On the other hand, does any reasonable man seriously think that such words originated in the mind of a forger ? “Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice”, and surely that voice is here. 3. When we come to chapter 17 we pass indeed into the very inner chamber of the King of kings. It records the high-priestly prayer of our Lord, when He “lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour is come, glorify Thy Son that Thy Son 'may also glorify Thee.” Let any man propose to himself the awful task of forging such a prayer, and putting it into the mouth of an imaginary Christ. The brain reels at the very thought of it. I t is, hbwever, per-
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker