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would have had to give them a chapter and it might have been out of place. And what did the congregation think of the change? The first comment was from a man of prayer who whis pered, “Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.” Behind the chapter and its brimming message it was not difficult to hold the Cross so high and so clear that even the tips of the holder’s fingers did not show. The church of this generation is famished for exposi tory preaching. A text is not enough; the sheep will pound the Word in larger portions, and in an illumina
tive style, “though he build his church in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.” The Institute may well thank God for its leader. From without the doors, we have watched the Bible Institute of Los Angeles for the past ten years, and speaking for many of the pastors at least, we would say that that great institution is on a sounder and saner basis today, than we have ever known it before. In its widening circle of influence, no doubt hundreds of its students will go forth into all the world with one all-consuming ambition to “GIVE THEM A CHAPTER !”
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Jude’s Certain Men B y R. E. N eighbour (in “The American Baptist")
T HE statement, “ Thy testimonies are wonderful" is nowhere more strikingly true than in the Book of Jude. No photographer ever made a better likeness and no scientist with his X-Ray ever made a truer photo graph than the Book of Jude makes concerning "Certain Men . " , Jude is in reality a preface to the Book of Revelation. Jude is apostate Christendom manifested; Revelation is apostate Christendom judged. Jude describes con ditions preceding the coming of the Lord for His saints; Revelation describes the curse which follows. The Epistle as a whole is a needed warning concern ing certain men who are false teachers, mockers, and who are to arise in the last days. This js established beyond a doubt by comparing two passages in Jude with two passages in Second Peter. , Fifst; Jude’s Certain Men are false teachers. In Jude we. read: “Certain men have crept in un awares . . . denying the Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ." In Second Peter we read: “There shall be false teachers among you who privily shall bring in dam nable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them." The identity is complete. The Certain Men are false teachers. , Secondly : These Certain Men are to arise in the last days. In Jude we read, “Remember ye the words which were spoken before o f the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who shall walk after their own ungodly lusts" (Jude 17-18), In Second Peter we read: “That ye may be mindful o f the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and. o f the commandment o f us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour; knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise o f His coming?” (3:2-4). , These Scriptures suffice, for they are conclusive. The Certain Men are indeed false teachers, mockers, scoffers. The Certain Men are to arise in the last days. In Jude, therefore, the trend and the end of twentieth- century apostate teachers is given in detail. ' I f any should question the import of the words, “last days)" let them remember that the expression refers to
the days which close this age and immediately precede the Lord’s coming. The parallel passage in Second Peter tells of the judg ment that the day of the Lord, when He comes “as a thief in the night,” will bring upon these mockers who deny His coming. In Jude, not only is the same warning given, but the little epistle assures those who contend for the faith, that they shall be presented faultless “before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.” As the apostasy which began in the days of the apostle Paul ripens into the last days, the Certain Men of the Book of Jude become more and more plainly prominent. Should the reader object to the strong and stirring statements which follow, let him remember that the Lord strenuously condemned the Scribes and Pharisees of His day—they were the ripened product of apostate Judaism. No marvel, then, that the most condemnatory language of the epistles is to be found in this little book, which pronounces God’s judgment against the ripened product of apostate Christianity. Jude presents apostate teachers gone to their full length, and therefore, gives no uncertain sound either in descrip tion, in condemnation, or in the clarion call to contend earnestly for the faith. These certain men are “ungodly . . . turning the grace o f God into lasciviousness." The charge against them is not personal lasciviousness, but making the grace of God lasciviousness. God’s grace reaches down to the vilest and lifts him up through re demption into perfect legal whiteness—bloodwashed, he is ready for audience with God. These men have turned from grace—men are not to be saved by the blood of the Cross, but by social regenera tion and by “exerting their own manhood,” “cultivating their own better self,” “lifting themselves above them selves.” The critic who seeks to relegate to obscurity the di vinely penned story of creation in Genesis, and to enforce his theory of evolution with its “origin and endless capa bilities of the species” and its “unlimited time to make the variations produce new forms,” and its “inherited effects of use and dis-use,” and its “natural selection,” is ungodly —turning the grace of God into lasciviousness. The evolutionist, when he says that man “fell upward, not downward,” that man has evolved from a jelly-like protoplasm to the splendor of God, denies the grace of God.
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