DID A MORTAL JESUS DIE ON THE CROSS?
or
WHO DIED ON THE ACCURSED TREE?
Maurice M Johnson
Dallas Park series
August 16, 1959Now a dignified city preacher is not supposed to preach Sunday night without a coat. But somebody has my coat in his car, and he and the coat haven't come yet. So if you think I'm not a dignified city preacher, you're right.
Who wants to be one to make some reference either commendable or in adverse criticism if you want to to something I gave last night? Not to commend the speaker or necessarily to condemn him; certainly if it's commendable in the spiritual realm it'll be to the glory of God, not to my glory. Because I could never give any truth that is mine, so far as my being the creator of it or the originator of it. So all glory where glory belongs, all glory belongs to Him, "As it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord". But can you refer to something that you got last night, that you thought of today or at least can recall now that was helpful, that you believe was true, God honoring.
(comment from audience)
The truth, but not the instrument, human instrument that was used in that particular case in getting the truth to a drunkard. A drunkard actor in England many years ago in mockery reading one of George Whitfield's sermons, reading it in a liquor joint or some sort of a place where there was a drunk man too. Somebody else. You recall something I gave last night that you think was honoring to the Lord, helpful.
One of the reasons I ask for such testimony is that it might admonish you to give attention tonight with intention, intending to hear, to receive, and to be able to retain. Probably there are some of you that have been Christians for forty years, and it may be that you're an overgrown baby spiritually, because you believe that the preacher is the one that's supposed to study the Bible and he's had the special training and you've just attended preaching maybe as a sort of a form, religious ceremony, and duty, and you may like alt too often Roman Catholics and others, "Well you ask the preacher." "Well you meet Father so-and-so." I like to say, because it's true, that there isn't a priest or preacher on the face of the earth that can know anything for me and you, spiritually, any more than a butcher can eat for us. Christ said as recorded in John 8:32, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth 'it make you free". We must know for ourselves or we don't know. God forbid that we should remain as ignorant as we probably all are tonight, comparatively speaking. Paul said, "If any man think he knoweth anything, let
him be a foot, that God may teach him. We know ... we know nothing as we ought". But I'm going to wait a moment for someone else to refer to something that I gave last night.
(comment from audience)
Good. I said last night that there are no big men in the church of Jesus Christ. And I used this rather crude illustration. If I were to tell you, "If you would like to, come up at the close, I want to show you more closely my ... the index finger on my right hand. It's about four or five times as big as the finger, my index finger on my left hand, and it's growing all the time, getting bigger all the time." You probably would think, "'Why that fellow is a fool. It's ... his finger's not growing, it's swelling.'' Rut for one finger to be by far larger, many times larger than the other fingers on the ... on the same or corresponding hand wouldn't be a sign of growth, a sign of deformity, abnormality, or very serious illness.
And I was mentioning that there're not any big men in the church of Jesus Christ. Billy Graham's not a big man in the church of Jesus Christ. He's a big man in .. in modern Hollywood showmanship evangelism, and preaches some beautiful truth. I said he preaches some beautiful truth, and God blesses His truth, His own truth.
But I resent from the deeps of my soul all implications that any man on the face of the earth has had conversions to Jesus Christ. For instance I see this with increasing clarity and it's very helpful because I know it's God honoring, I know it's the truth, there hasn't been one si... when Billy Graham was here in Dallas, there wasn't one single person saved in the Billy Graham meeting, there wasn't one single person in Billy Graham's great mass meeting in London nor in Yankee Stadium in New York City or the Cow Palace, San Francisco, or the recent meetings in Australia, New Zealand, not one single person saved in those big meetings. Listen, there very probably were people whose bodies were in those meetings whose mind and heart got out alone with Christ. That's what they had to do in order to be saved. As Long as they were conscious of Billy Graham and conscious of the vast crowd, when there were crowds, they were not conscious of Jesus Christ the Savior. Everybody that was ever truly converted to God had to get alone with Jesus Christ.
Now when I began to see that clearly in the Word of God, then I began to have some holy hatred for the pageantry and the mob psychology and the Hollywood showmanship that is becoming more and more apart of what is supposed to be God's main evangelistic movement today. I don't believe it for a minute. If in order to worship God in Spirit and truth I've got to tune out beautiful sights, if in order to worship God in Spirit and truth I've got to get away from sense, then instead of it being a help for me to go into St Peter's Cathedral in Rome in ... or the Cathedral of St. John the Divine so-called that cost how many hundred ... cost $35,000,000 isn't it? most expensive individual meeting house in this nation, in order to worship the true God in Spirit and truth, if I were to go into the Cathedral of St John the Divine so-called, I would have to become oblivious of the $35,000,000 temple. Then what's the use of spending all that money for a cathedral if I've got to tune it all out and forget it in order to get alone with God.
That's why it is quite possible that some out here, and God grant that we all, would be more conscious of God while we're out here with nothing to distract us of an abnormal, unnatural, sensuous nature, at least very little, we're not planning on having it anyway. But that's not my subject tonight. Somebody else before I begin on this subject, "Who died on the accursed tree?" Was it a mortal Jesus? Now somebody else refer to something you got last night ... Go ahead, brother Todd.
(comment from audience)
That women are the ones who are God ordained and God enabled to conceive and bear children is because of the Word of God on that subject. "God spake and the world came into existence." We read that, "By His word the hinds do calve." By His word the hinds, that is the ... the cows bear calves by His word, God's word. And I brought out last night as brother Fife(?) said, l can just as surely ... l can just as surely bear a child, be a mother, or a man, I can just as surely bear a child as a woman can be a preacher in the church of Jesus Christ. It's just not God's order that's all. Now because God ... women have preached scriptures and God has blessed His Word didn't mean that God blessed the women as preachers at all, anymore as I said than ... than the drunken actor or Balaam's donkey.Let's bow our heads shall we, and if you will, those who will and can, sing with me as a prayer, "My Faith Looks Up To Thee".
My faith looks up to Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary Savior divine;
Now hear me while I pray, Take all my sin away,
O let me from this day be wholly Thine!
For Christ's sake our Father we ask, amen.My subject tonight is, "Did a Mortal Jesus Die on the Cross?" and sub-heading I put, I didn't put them in the newspaper advertisement but in this printed leaflet. First: The Seventh-Day Adventists, the "Jehovah's Witnesses", and I have that in quotation marks, the "Jehovah's Witnesses" so-called, Herbert Armstrong, and other no-hell cults say, "Yes, a mortal Jesus died". Second: is everlasting destruction cessation of being, annihilation? is that what punishment for the impenitent unbeliever will be, for him to be rendered non-existent, for him to be rendered annihilated, for him to be rendered extinct? Is everlasting punishment or is death extinction of being?
We often hear, I've Herbert W Armstrong a good many times and I've heard other false teachers bring out, "Death my friends is the opposite of life. Now you've heard most preachers," Armstrong will say, they'll say, and his son, and some of the young preachers that his college is hatching out in Pasadena, and the so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" and the Seventh-Day Adventists, when they're on the subject of punishment, they talk like this, "Now you've heard preachers say, maybe most of the preachers you've heard, maybe all you've ever heard before this, on the subject is that the wages of sin is not death but the wages of sin is eternal life in the lake of fire, boiled in oil. I read in my Bible," Armstrong says, "(Blow the dust off your Bible) I read in my Bible (Look at it yourself!) Romans 6:23, I read in my Bible the wages of sin is death not eternal life in the lake of fire.
I read in my Bible, "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.""
And then he'll go on to argue, often, that death is not only, he'll say, is the opposite of life but he makes life to mean existence, therefore death non-existence.. And that's catchy because it's kind of clever. And when people do not know what God's Word teaches, or even what the chemical analysis of ... of death is, they may think it's true since death and life are evidently opposites one to the other, that therefore death is non-existence because life is existence. But my dear friend, life is not existence period. This ground, this dirt, this gravel here exists, so does that tree. This is dead, that's alive, but one exists just as much as the other. Life is not synonymous with existence. All life exists, but not all existence is living.
We read in 1 Timothy 5:6, "She that liveth in pleasure is dead white she liveth." Now don't let some spiritual ignoramus and false teacher, text twister, make you think that that is a figurative use of the word 'death'. That's the way they
come back at me when I get to talk to them face to face, sometimes give them on the radio, and sometimes they write in. They'll say, "Now ..." they'll maybe try to deal with this passage, the one I just gave 1 Timothy 5:6, or maybe Christ's statement as recorded in Luke 1 for instance when he chose some of his disciples and one of them said, "Let me bury my father first". Christ said, "Let the dead bury their dead". Now these false teachers will tell you that the first occurrence of the word 'dead' is figurative. "Let the dead", figuratively speaking dead, "Let the figuratively speaking dead bury the literally dead".
My friend, that line of argument and that contemptible chatter proves one thing if it proves nothing else about those teachers: that they are rank and crude materialists. If the meaning of death, the literal actual meaning of death is only a relation... conscious relationship to this physical environment, then the materialists are correct. If spiritual death is only a figurative death, then there's nothing but figurative spirits and figurative spirituality and a figurative God. Did the Lord intend for us to understand that that man that could bury his dead father, this was referred to, described by the Lord as dead, "Let the dead bury their dead," did He mean to suggest that that man whom I'm calling dead that can conduct the funeral of his father, that man is figuratively dead. Figuratively dead to what? Undoubtedly He meant, "Let those that are dead to Me and My Father in heaven, let those that are dead to Me as the kind of the Jews who's calling men heralds of the kingdom." He said, "Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom".
Incidentally of course, maybe some night I'll take that up in more detail. Incidentally the Lord was of course saying, "Let the ... let the dead bury their dead but go thou and preach the kingdom". What would that mean? That would mean you'll go and break up funerals, because those to whom He was speaking, those whom He was just calling and commissioning He was going to empower to not help bury peoples' carcas, peoples' corpse, but to raise the dead. You remember? in Matthew 90 when He chose the twelve apostles as recorded there, including Judas, He gave to them power to heat all manner of sicknesses, all manner of diseases, and to raise the dead. Now for those who were commissioned and empowered by the Lord to raise the physically dead, for them to have gone out and helped bury them, would have been a strange contradiction of their divine commission and empowerment.
Of course these modern healers like Oral Roberts and A.A. Allen and their crowd, and Sister Kohl (?), somebody's sister here in Dallas, those healers don't raise the dead. Oh occasionally, I hear some of them say that they know somebody whose grandmother's first cousin's third husband's brother-in-law raised the dead over in China. But as far as evidential value is concerned, they don't have any corpse in their own meetings do they? I've been in a lot of them and I've never seen a casket brought in yet with a corpse in it. Have you? And I've never had a one of them, I've never heard of a one of them in my life say, "Let's go the cemetery. I'm going to raise some dead". They wouldn't have to pay any thing for newspaper advertisements or radio announcements if they just start that, and the people will begin to get a crowd for them, I'm sure.
But now back to this. Death. What is death? Well it depends in what sphere you're speaking, what death is. "Let him", "Let the dead bury their dead." But my subject immediately is, "Who died on the accursed tree? Was it a mortal Jesus?" The Seventh Day Adventists have to teach in order to get to their doctrine of ... of punishment that actually isn't punishment at all. Because with the Seventh Day Adventists and with the "Jehovah's Witnesses" and with Herbert W Armstrong and all the Universalists and some other cultists, I won't try to ferret them out now, that's enough, those that I mentioned teach that punishment, that physical death is cessation of being. The Seventh Day Adventists don't use that expression but they describe it later. They say "sleep", an absolutely unconscious steep. But when they get to the second death, it isn't steep it's extinction of being. So the Seventh Day Adventists also teach that death is cessation of being, is extinction of being, is nonexistence. Therefore they've got to have a Jesus who could die without deity ceasing to be.
And get this straight my friend, if there's any Seventh Day Adventists here tonight, you may believe far better that your cult teaches on this subject. The Seventh Day Adventists teach more truth than any rotten, antichrist cult on the face of the earth that I know anything about. Because they really do. I think there's some Seventh Day Adventists that are trying their dead level best to try to get out from under the awful false doctrine of Mrs. Ellen G White, their prophetess, but they can't do it and stilt be Seventh Day Adventists. However, the Seventh Day Adventists, listen, the Seventh Day Adventists teach that the Jesus who died on the accursed tree would have died anyway, would have died anyway. Because He was mortal. Herbert W Armstrong says that Jesus was mortal.
The word 'mortal' my dear friends means "dying". That's why we're told that the believer in Christ must put on immortality, because the believer in Christ now, we have the first fruits of the Spirit we read in Romans the 8th chapter. We have a new life already we're told in 1 John 5:12 and 13, we have everlasting life. We have a treasure, we read in 2 Corinthians 4:4 and 5, but it's in an earthen vessel. And so and 2 Corinthians 5, the Christian groans in a tabernacle that's mortal. Paul says there, "We're groaning"; in Romans 8 also. He said, "We who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan within waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body". Every Christian has everlasting, eternal life. But no Christian has immortality, not even Mary, the Roman Catholics to the contrary notwithstanding. Mary's dead just like my mother. Mary the mother of Jesus is still dead just like Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and Mary Magdalene, and your Christian relatives that have died. Mary's still dead, waiting the resurrection.
That doesn't mean that her inner being is in the grave. Ten thousand times no. "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." Christ said as recorded in Mat... in John 10:28, "Fear not him who can kill the body, but after that can do no more. But rather fear Him that can destroy both." The Seventh Day Adventists don't dare face that word 'both'. The so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" don't dare face that word 'both'. Herbert W Armstrong doesn't dare face that word 'both' in Matthew 10:28. I'll start again. Christ said, "Fear not him who can kill the body, but after that can do no more. But rather fear Him that can destroy both soul and body in hell."
What Armstrong does with that is a very foxy trick. He takes the word 'destroy' and begins to throw mud and Southern California devilish smog in the people's minds and ears that'll Listen to him and don't know any better, to try to make it appear, "Now you've heard that the penalty... that the wages of sin is everlasting conscious life in hellfire, but Christ said be afraid of him that can destroy both body and soul in hell". And he preys on people's ignorance of the meaning of the word 'destroy'. Did you know my dear friends that the word 'destroy' as it's used in the Bible never means to annihilate, it never means to render nonexistent. I read in the 2nd chapter of Hebrews and the 14th verse, that the Lord Jesus took upon Himself a form like unto His brethren, flesh and blood, made in the likeness of sinful flesh, Christ took upon Himself a form like unto His brethren that He through death might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil. Well has Christ already died? Yes. Is the devil destroyed? Yes. Has he ceased to be? No. I read in 2 Timothy 1:10 that it is now revealed through the gospel that Christ has brought' life and incorruptibility to light through the gospel and has abolished death. And the word in the King James 2 Timothy 1:10 for abolished is exactly the same word in the original Greek and in some translations of the Bible it's given the same as the word 'destroy' in 1 Corinthians. 15:26 and in Hebrews 10 that ... where Christ was to destroy the devil by His, Christ's, death.
My friends, death is already destroyed, the devil is already destroyed, and Christ came out of the grave with the keys of hell and of death. I'm worshipping and serving and preaching for the risen, living, death conquering, devil destroying Christ. The devil will never cease to he. Death will never cease to be. There will be no more death in the restored earth. There're be no more tears, no more sorrow, but there's going to be weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth somewhere. But it won't be on the new earth thank God. The same Bible that says that there won't be any death anymore or any tears on ... in one sphere, speaks of the weeping and the wailing and gnashing of teeth and where they'll have no death day nor night forever, and the smoke of their torment will go up forever.
The Bible nowhere teaches my friend that death is cessation of being. If death is cessation of being, then how could there be a resurrection? It couldn't he called a resurrection at all, it should he another creation. How could there be a resurrection of something that's gone out of existence? The Seventh Day Adventists do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Listen! The so-called "Jehovah Witnesses" do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Listen! Herbert W Armstrong does not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Not only that, the Seventh Day Adventists, though the word 'Advent' was given to them, they took it, Mrs. Ellen G White took it, no, William Miller before her in 1843 when he prophesied that Christ was going to come back visibly in 1843, then when he and some others got ready to meet Christ. Christ didn't come. William Miller made an appointment for Christ; Christ didn't keep William's ... Bill's appointment. And then Bill got to use the rubber of his pencil and found he made a mistake of one year, so he said it was 1844; made a mistake. He lost some of his followers, got some new ones before the year rolled around again, and again Christ didn't keep Bill's appointment.
I heard a story years ago about a colored preacher, and this is supposed to be true too, like William Miller's story's a fact, that this colored preacher prophesied that Christ was going to come in a particular year in a particular month in a particular day and he got a crowd of folks and they dressed in white, supposed to dress in white, and they got out on a hill to meet Christ at the appointed place, the place that the colored preacher had appointed for Christ. Christ didn't come and somebody asked the colored preacher a little later, "What about that? What are you saying now?" "I ain't saying nothing. If the Lawd done change His mind, ain't my fault." And so I'm not here tonight to apologize for the Lord or to tell you that He's changed His mind, my friend. Neither am I a prophet. I want to be and am a student of the Word of God, and I want to be a humble God fearing student and preacher of the truth of God.
Now watch. I said the Seventh Day Adventists do not believe in the resurrection of Christ. I said that Herbert Armstrong doesn't believe in the resurrection of Christ. I said that the so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" do not believe in the resurrection of Christ. Nobody who denies consciousness in punishment believes in the resurrection of Christ. Because the reason they don't believe in the consciousness of punishment, in conscious punishment after physical death, is because they have twisted the Scripture to try to make it mean that death is cessation of being. And if you believe that death is cessation of being, then when Christ died He ceased to be. Don't forget that my friend. When ... a thing that proves too much doesn't prove anything.
Suppose I were to tell you, "Well I drove from Ft. Worth here awhile ago, I started at 4:00, the sun was up, I started at 4:00, got out on the tollway," what do you call it?
(comment from audience) Turnpike.
Turnpike, thank you. "Got out on the turnpike, and the first entrance I could make Polytechnic in Ft Worth, and the first forty miles that I drove on the turnpike from Ft Worth here, the first forty miles was almost blinding because the sun was right in my eyes." Somebody would say, "Wait just a minute now. You said the first forty miles you drove on the turnpike? And you left Ft. Worth at 4:00 this afternoon? And the first forty miles you drove the sun was almost blinding? Just a minute, make up your mind. The whole thing isn't forty miles. And if you started in Ft Worth at 4:00 the sun was in your back." They'd say, "Fellow, you prove too much. So I don't think you proved anything to me, but that, you're a liar or awfully mistaken".
My friend, this argument about death being cessation of being and there no consciousment ... no consciousness in punishment is utterly subversive of the whole truth of the gospel. You ... when you ... if you think it's not important my friend to believe the Bible doctrine of consciousness in death and consciousness in punishment and consciousness in the take of fire, in hell and the lake of fire, if you think it isn't an important doctrine my friend, you say, "0h-h, now I don't agree with him on his doctrine of punishment, but he preaches the gospel." No man that denies consciousness in punishment can intelligently and consistently preach the gospel of salvation, because he's got no gospel, he has no Christ that died, he's got a fake Jesus. Herbert Armstrong says Jesus was mortal. Mrs. Ellen G White of the Seventh Day Adventists took upon Himself our human nature with all of the accumulated depravity of 4000 years from the fall of Adam to the conception of Christ in the womb of the virgin, "that Christ took upon Him our humanity with all of the accumulated depravity of 4000 years seeking and surging in His blood stream, seeking and surging to break forth like a tiger in a cage but in spite of bad blood and inherited meanness He conquered where He was weakest." That's Mrs. White's doctrine verbatim et literatum, Seventh Day Adventist prophetess.
Listen my dear friend, and you know one reason they use that? You know one reason they use that? is because of course (thank you very much; now you know I got a coat don't you) ... Now watch, the Christ that died on the cross my dear friend is the Christ of whom we read in the 2nd chapter of Acts and 13th chapter of Acts, "God ... it was impossible that God would allow His Holy one to see corruption". Well if Jesus of Nazareth was a mortal, had a mortal body, then He was already sinful as to His body, and He was not the lamb of God without spot and blemish, therefore He was not the Bible prophesied and foreordained sacrifice, nor was the one John the Baptist referred to when he said, "Behold the lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world", nor was He the one Peter referred to by inspiration when he said, 1 Peter 1, "We're redeemed not with corruptible things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Jesus Christ", precious blood, not the contaminated poison blood, mortal blood, with death already in the stream, "but we're redeemed with the precious blood of Jesus Christ", Peter said, "as of a lamb without spot and blemish who verily was foreordained from before the foundation of the world".
Who is your savior? There isn't but one. It's the immaculate savior. It's the savior who was "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sin", "who knew no sin", He's the one who said, "I am the bread from heaven", John 6 and that was be... I like to tell the Roman Catholics that. I said, "The Lord Jesus did say, "Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you." But He didn't say, "Eat a moon shaped wafer, and some wine, and as godless as a .... priest that says "hocus pocus" over it". In that same chapter, that ... the 6th chapter of John, that discourse where we read that verse, "Except ye eat My flesh and drink My blood you have no life in you", in that same discourse John 6 is a statement from the Lord, lips of the Lord, "I am the bread from heaven". He didn't say, "I'm the bread from a baker" or some nice dear old Roman Catholic Irish biddy woman's cooking pan, no. "I'm the bread from heaven. I'm the bread from heaven.""
What kind of bread? Was He the leavened bread or the unleavened bread? That was out the Passover feast that He said that remember. And at the pass... at the fast ... that was the year before the last supper. And then out the last supper, He said, took some bread, and He ... and what kind of bread do you think they had at that Israelitish, Jewish Passover? It was unleavened bread. They mustn't have any leaven. That means yeast, something that represented poison. They must put away all leaven, and it was unleavened bread you remember at the Passover. And He said, "This represents My body, this is My body", took the bread.
Now if His body was what the Seventh Day Adventists teach, if His body was what the J.W.s, so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses", teach about Him, and His body was what Herbert Armstrong teach, He should've taken the rottenest piece of spoiled, swollen up bread that He could find anywhere. With more yeast and more leaven than you could find anywhere. And to "This represents My body".
God help you to see my friend that I'm dealing with things with ... with directness and squarely hitting the thing with the Word of the living God, these false doctrines. I've studied them, maybe too much, but, I've studied them that I might know what the devil's doing in beguiling unstable ... stable souls. All over this country today people, preachers are giving up, even the Methodists, Baptists, Pr... Methodists have done it so long ago, boy oh boy. I don't know every individual Methodist of course. I used to be a Methodist preacher. The Methodist preachers and congregations in the main for years have done it. And the so-called "Christian Church Disciples", they're doing it more and more. And many of the Episcopalians are giving up the Bible doctrine of punishment. Don't let you let Herbert Armstrong, the Seventh Day Adventists, the so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" tell you that all the preachers preach a burning hell-fire. That's a lie. The preachers are fewer and fewer and fewer that are preaching the truth of the Word of God on the subject of punishment. That's why we've got today steeple-houses, memberships that are padded, the rolls are padded with hypocrites, counterfeits,
and the churches of today, what are they?How many people ... do you think it's anything like a scandal today to be identified going to the First Methodist Church in this city or the First Baptist Church or the First Presbyterian, the First Christian? Why you're ... it's a mark of gentility. It's a mark of distinction to be a member of one of the "nice" churches. Do you think Christ, if He were here, would be welcome in these places? My friends, Christ didn't come to establish steeple-houses and memberships that a hypocrite can join. Christ came, and He said, "Up on this rock I will build My church". And it's composed of all saved souls who have come to Jesus Christ fleeing the wrath to come. "God so loved ... as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man he lifted up that whosoever believeth in Him might not perish but" ... you say, "What are you going to do with that word 'perish' preacher?" Well I'm going to deal with it in a minute. John 3:14, "God ... As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up" like a snake on a pole" that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life. God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved. He that believeth on Him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already because he bath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God," John 3:14-18. John 3:36, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on the name of the Son of God hath everlasting life, he that believeth not shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth," present tense, "the wrath of God abideth on him."
The 10th chapter of Hebrews, "He that despised Moses' law," back here in the days of Moses, "he that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses". What kind of death was that? It was stoning to death. First the guilty party was brought out and his guilt was established in the mouth of two or three witnesses before the camp of Israel and then he was to be stoned to death if he was pronounced guilty and the offence was that. "He that despised Moses' law," I'm quoting Hebrews 10:25 (sic), "he that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses," now that was quite a disgraceful death, and certainly death wasn't it, to be brought out before your whole company of Israel ... of fellow Israelites and be pronounced guilty, and then the stones started, and you were stoned to death, "of how much sorer punishment suppose ye shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and has counted the ... and the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified", or set apart. When Jesus Christ died on the accursed tree my friend, He tasted death for every man. How could He do it if He had a mortal body? How could He do it?
The Seventh Day ... the so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" in their book "What Has Religion Done?" say and ... and they teach it from Russell's first book, the Sev... the so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" teach; they ridicule the idea that Jesus of Nazareth had a human nature and a divine nature. They say he was not a "religious hybrid". They use that terminology. He was not a "religious hybrid", partly human and partly divine; He was just human. And they teach that the human Jesus died ... you ask a so-called "Jehovah Witness", "You believe that Christ died on the cross?" They'll say, "Yes". I've asked them many times and many places. "You really believe that Jesus Christ died?" "Why certainly." "You believe that Christ who died ... that Christ died and rose again for your sins according to the Scriptures?" "Yes." I say, "Then you're not a so-called "Jehovah's Witness"". "I certainly am." "Well then you don't know their doctrine." "Oh yes I do." I say, "You believe that Christ died? Christ? Christ? And the same one who died rose again?" "Well a ... now well a ... now a ... Jesus the man died." Now that's their teaching, Jesus the man died.
If you think I don't know what I'm talking about you try to get one of the J.W. peddlers or preachers to meet me in this park in joint discussion and I'll set aside a time next week, or I'll see to it the rent's paid on a bigger ... on a bigger meeting ... a bigger auditor... an auditorium rather with more seats in it somewhere else if I could get one of them to meet me in public discussion, one of the so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses". I've challenged Herbert Armstrong over and over again, and can't even get a reply from him in a letter. And I've been on the same radio with him out in Cal... but anyway, back to this now, back to this.
"Do you believe that Christ died?" l asked the J.W.s. They say, "Yes". Ask the Seventh Day Adventists, "You believe that Christ died?" "Yes." "And the same one who died who rose again?" Sometimes they'll say yes at first to that. I say, "Wait a minute. Was Jesus of Nazareth Christ in all-l-1 the fullness that that title ever means? "Well-l-l, now wait a minute a ... He ... He ... He ... He ... He was ... He was a man ... He ... He was a human, not perfect, but He was just a human." Then you press them and they say, "Was He perfect? Was He ... did He have a deathlessness in His bloodstream? or was He already mortal?" And their doctrine of punishment and death and destruction forces them to teach that the one who died with a crown of thorns on His head, that that one was already mortal, He already had a depraved nature, and He would have died anyway.
My friend, He could ne... the Christ of the Seventh Day Adventists and the Christ of the J.W. ... the J.W.s and the Christ of Herbert Armstrong couldn't die for anybody. He'd as well go to a man in the death cell at Huntsville and he's to be executed the 1st of September we'll say. And you've just been found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to be electrocuted, we'll say, or asphyxiated, whatever it is, we'll execute him, and you're put into a death cell next door to this guy will be killed in September, and you say, "Will you please die for me?" And he says, "Listen, I've got to die for myself. I can't die for anybody else. And you can't die for me. I got to die for myself."
Let me repeat it my dear friends. The Christ of these cults that I'm talking about, couldn't die for anybody. He already had death in His bloodstream. But that's a false Christ, a fake Christ, an antichrist. Christ said while He was on earth, I repeat, "I am the bread from heaven". Did a bunch of filthy leavened bread come down from heaven? I mean in the figurative sense. Christ said, "I am the truth". What kind of truth was He if He died and stayed dead? Don't forget that the Seventh Day Adventists teach that when Christ came out of the grave He had a sinless immortal body but He had a mortal body before.
Now maybe some of you are saying, "How in the world can you believe that Jesus of Nazareth, Christ, had a mortal body and then ... an immortal body, and then died?" Listen my dear friends, if you try to rationalize the death of Jesus Christ you'll sooner or later try to rationalize His conception and birth, then you'll try to rationalize His whole life, and then you'll try to ... I mean by that, try to comprehend with your peanut brain the seven oceans of divine truth on the subject.
My friend, Jesus Christ is a revelation. The book of Revelation is ... it reveals Him as He comes back in His glorious grand finale and consummation hack to earth. But as to who Jesus was when He was on earth, it's a revelation. You remember? John the Ba... I mean, Simon Peter confessed that Jesus was the Christ and Christ the Son of God, and Christ said to him, "Blessed art thou Simon Barjona, flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee", that is, as to who this Jesus of Nazareth really is, that this isn't Jesus of Nazareth with an illegitimate ... an illegitimate child whose father was Joseph and so-forth. "Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of the living God." Christ said, "Blessed art thou Simon Barjona, flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven. And I say unto thee that thou art Peter and upon this rock," the rock of Christ of course Himself. "For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid which is Christ."
(Yes, thank you.)
Now watch again please. Do you believe that the one who died on the cross (thank you) gave His life. I repeat, if Jesus of Nazareth had a mortal body, then He couldn't give His life acceptable to God who demanded a perfect sacrifice. That's why ... He told Israel, "Don't you bring a thing that's flea bitten". And the lambs that were offered had to be without spot and blemish. Imagine saying they typified a spotted, speckled, mortal Jesus.
The Seventh Day Adventists come back sometimes and say, "Then you don't have a Jesus that can be tempted in ail points like as we. l read in my Bible in Hebrews that Jesus was tempted in all points like as we yet without sin. Now how could He be tempted if He didn't have a nature, fallen nature like you and me?" I come back and say, "Listen" ... First time I ever heard that, and it was in Glendale, California, the second strongest Seventh Day Adventist colony in the nation at that time. I lived in the middle of them for seven years and had lots of fine times with them, fine from my standpoint. But the first time I ever heard that argument, it really put me back on the heels as it were. The preacher said he'd been a missionary in South America, medical missionary for 36 years, an older fellow, old enough to be my dad anyway then. And he said, "Then you don't believe in a Jesus that was tempted in all points like as you?" I said, "I do." "How could He be tempted in all points like as you if He didn't have our weak fallen nature? There would be no temp..." And I said ... and I didn't know what to do with that at first, but it wasn't long before I was able to meet that. And now I'm ready to meet any of it, thank God.
I said, little bit later I said, "Listen. When did you and I and all human beings after Adam and Eve become sinners? Did we become sinners because we sinned?" My friend, there's not a person in Dallas tonight that's a sinner because he sinned. There never was but one man and one woman that became sinners because they sinned, Adam and Eve. And so we read in Romans the 5th chapter that, "By one man's disobedience", look, "by one man's disobedience many were made sinners".
That's why some of you hypocrites, if there are any such here, that's why some of you hypocrites have been kidding yourself successfully in your own eyes for quite awhile. Asked if you're a Christian, "Well I ... I never robbed a bank". Maybe you didn't in a certain fashion. "I a ... I never murdered anybody. I a ..." And you pick up some bank robber and stand him against the wall and get up and say, "See, I stand pretty good according to him". You pick ... "I'm, I'm not a drunken bum". You pick up some poor old alcoholic and hold him up against the wall and stand by him, "Don't you see, I'm not so bad". And you compare yourself with human beings. Listen, my dear friends, compare yourself with Jesus Christ and find out whether you're a sinner.
Well anyway, it's revealed in the Word of God that "there's no difference, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God". When did we sin? We sinned in Adam, and then began sinning when we were born. Little babies sin. Little babies sin. A crabapple tree before it ever had any crabapples on it is a crabapple tree. Why? Because in the sap it's got nothing in the way to make fruit but crabapples. Whether it ever bears a crop on the outside or not, it's a crabapple tree. A sinner's a sinner because he's a born a sinner. Adam and Eve were sinners because they committed sin. That's what the Word of God teaches.
Now watch. "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by the obedience shall many be made righteous." Now, since you and I fell in Adam, we were made sinners because of Adam's fall, then when we read in Hebrews that the Lord Jesus ... "that we have a high priest that can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities seeing He was touched in all points like as we yet without sin", we want to find out when we became sinners. Adam and Eve didn't become sinners because they ... were tempted and fell in their mortal depraved nature, they were tempted and fell in their innocent God created nature. And so the Second Man came to be tempted in all points like as we.
When were we tempted? In the garden of Eden. That's where we fell. We fell in Adam. And so here's Adam sinless and Eve sinless and innocent when they are tempted with the three forms of temptation: all that's in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. But when Eve saw that the tree was pleasant to the eyes, we read in Genesis 3, lust of the eyes, and good for food, lust of the flesh, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, lust of ... pride of life, she took of the fruit.
We read that the devil tempted the Second Man in that great period of temptation in the wilderness recorded in Matthew the 4th chapter. The devil tempted the Second Man to turn the stone into bread, lust of the flesh, to cast Himself... to get all, the kingdoms of the world from the hands of the devil by just bowing down and worshipping the devil, the lust of the eye, and to cast Himself down from a high place before all the people in the court, the temple court, the pride of life. The devil tempted the Second Man in the same three forms, lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, the pride of life.
And so the first man was without sin when he was tempted and fell, the Second Man was without sin when He was tempted and didn't fall. And so our blessed Savior didn't have to have a depraved sinful nature in order to he tempted in all points like Adam and Eve were tempted when they fell and we fell in them. That's why Christ said, "Whatsoever is born of flesh is flesh. You must he born again". God help you to see, if you've never seen my friend that you're a lost sinner because you're born wrong. You were conceived wrong. David, David said, "Behold I was shapend in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me".
And the only reason little babies that die in infancy don't go out into a Christless eternity is because the Second man perfectly atoned for the sins of the first man. That's Why little babies are just as safe when they die as infants innocent, not having become responsible before God, and when they die as infants they're just as safe as the perfect life laid down in sacrifice of the Second Man could make them.
And that's why the only people who go to a Christless eternity are those who reject Jesus Christ. Nobody has ever gone to hell from Dallas for drinking hard liquor or committing murder or committing adultery or robbing a bank. Nobody has ever gone to hell from anyplace for those things. The only thing that will de... consign anybody to eternal torment is a personal rejection of the Second Man and what He did on the cross. That's brought out very clearly in John the 16th chapter. The Lord Jesus the night He was betrayed said to the disciples before He went to the cross, "It's expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away the Comforter will not come. But if I depart I'll send Him unto you. And when He's come, He'll convince the world, or convict the world, of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, of sin because they believe not on Me, of sin because they believe not on Me".
Oh-h-h, what a criminal thing it is the way preachers have confused that issue, and made people think they're not so had if they'll quit drinking liquor, they're not so bad if they'll quit shoot... playing marbles for keeps, they're not so had if they'll ... i f they'll join the church and get baptized with water, not so had if they'll pay their tithes or something, not so bad ... Herbert W Armstrong said, "You're going to be destroyed with the most horrible plagues that the world has ever known unless you send your tithes to Box 11?, Pasadena". Now I have that in my briefcase right here in one of Armstrong's magazines. If there's any Armstrongite here I dare you to come up and let me prove to you. You're going to he destroyed my friend. According to that I'm sure going to be bombed because I haven't sent any tithes and I don't plan on it to Box 111, Pasadena. Yes sir. And yet people by the thousands are falling for that stuff because Armstrong is a glib talker, and he's taking advantage of peoples' ignorance. Ignorance of a lot of Baptists, ignorance of a lot of Methodists, and a lot of Presbyterians...
Now what I preach, believe and preach about how to be saved, is what I heard from a Methodist preacher in Ft Worth, Texas., in ... when was it? ...when I was twelve years of age, and made my first decision publicly for Christ. So far as I know I preach the same plan of salvation that my grandfather, a circuit-riding Methodist preacher, preached down here in central Texas, my mother's father, a circuit-riding Methodist preacher.
The old fashioned Baptists, the old fashioned Methodists, and all, preached that Jesus Christ was the Savior and that you had to come to Him by faith like the thief on the cross, and that when you were sin-sick and would come to Him with empty hands and sing in your soul anyway, "Just as I am without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me. 0 Lamb of God I come, I come". And that Christ said, "Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out". I believe that same gospel.
But my dear friends, in the churches with their ... with their organizations and their institutionalism and their highly trained preachers and highly salaried preachers and all of the fol-de-rol and the fungus growth and the mistletoe and the parasites in organized religion today, the preachers can't afford to teach their people. They've got too much to do. And they can't afford to get into real Bible teaching because not very many of people today want to hear the Word of God taught. They want to believe that maybe they're somehow going to miss hell or that there ain't no such place. And then be decently respectably religious.
But to study the Word of God today as Christians ... who wants to study? Well some of you ... you're out here and I hope you'll come back. I hope that you recognize that I'm giving things that I couldn't have gotten quickly, and I'm giving things that are of course not popular. They don't cater to your personal like of yourself, they don't kid you, they don't compliment you. I'm not giving a thing that will make anybody think more of himself tonight. But I know what I'm giving will make us think more of Jesus Christ if you receive it and believe it and more desirous to study His Word.
Who died on the accursed tree? Listen my friend, the "I am" died. You say, "That's a contradiction of thought". No it isn't. Not if you understand what death means. Death never means annihilation. I repeat, death never means cessation of being, death never means extinction of being. Death means separation. A chemist will tell you, a physicist will tell you if he knows his stuff... (pardon my language), that when one dies physically not a single chemical element has ceased to be that was properly united in his body making him a man, functioning as a man. If an atomic bomb were to strike me tonight ... well for instance the Japanese that were bombed out of physical existence, as to human beings, in Japan a flew years ago. Not a one them ceased to be. Every chemical element that made their bodies and their minds and so forth was still in existence, though not together functioning as men. Death is separation.
That's why the Lord Jesus said, "Let the dead bury their dead". "Let those that are dead to Me bury those that are dead to their physical environment." That's why He had Paul write, "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth". There are a lot of busy corpses going up and down the streets and in the ballrooms and the cocktail. lounges and sitting before TVs and some of them listening to preachers tonight, "dead in trespasses and sins". That's another passage, Ephesians the 2nd chapter, "dead in trespasses and in sins". What a place to die. Christ said, "Except you believe that I am, you'll die in your sins". Already dead once, going to die twice. We read in the book of Jude about those that are twice dead. How could you die twice? If death, means cessation of being, how could you cease to be twice?
But my friends, you can be separated ... we're born into this world separated from God, born in sin. And if you deliberately reject Jesus Christ who said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh to the Father but by Me", if you deliberately reject the one who said', "I am the way ... I am the door. By Me if any man enter in he shall be saved and go in and out and find pasture". When the Masons say, "Now you've got to believe in a supreme being but you don't have to believe in Jesus Christ in order to be a Mason". And maybe the Most Worshipful Master in a particular lodge, branch, he may be a Jew or a Unitarian or otherwise, doesn't believe in Jesus Christ at all. I have two brothers that are Masons. Both of them claim to be Christians too. They don't want to talk to me about it. But anyway, the Masons say and all the Modernists in the world ... in religion today, and of course the Buddhists and the Moslems and the Jews in religion, say you do not have to come (thank you very much), you do not have to come to and through Jesus Christ in order to know the true God.
Last summer when I was here in Texas (I'm living in California after 35 years, a native of Texas though), when I was here last summer, I saw a squib in the Dallas News about a Moslem meeting in S.M.U. A Moslem meeting in S.M.U. Oh-h the S.M.U. Methodists daddies and all are certainly broad and mite considerate aren't they? Moslems. History gives us some of the bloodiest pages ever written about the Mohammedans, Moslems, the Mohammedans forcing people by their butcher weapons, you know, to become Moslems or killing them. Moslem religion. "But don't the Moslems believe in God?" In the Word of God we're told that gods of the heathen are idols. There are gods many and lords many, but there's one God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is one Savior. Christ said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, If any man climb up in the sheepfold any other way than by the door, the thing's a thief and a robber".
Every February now for several years since the Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and a Jewish rabbi and a Catholic priest got together in Washington and organized the National Conference of Jews and Christians. Mr. Hughes, Chief Justice Hughes was an Episcopalian I believe; maybe Presbyterian, got together with a Roman Catholic priest and Jewish rabbi and they were the moving spirits in organizing the National Conf... Council of Jews and Christians. What kind of Christian will come together on a religious fraternal basis with a Roman Catholic and a Jew, an anti-Christian. But since that time in February they ... we have in the high schools, you know, all over the country; I've checked up in a good many different places, in the high schools we'll have a team: a Jewish rabbi, Roman Catholic priest, and a so-called Protestant preacher come and show the spirit of American freedom of religion and fraternalism. My friend, that isn't American at all, that's Athiestic. That's sworn and deliberate and avowed antichrist. Christ said, "He that is not for Me, is against Me". "He that honoreth not the Son", what? "honoreth not the Father".
My friends, for people to claim to believe in Jesus Christ and then tell Him to shut His mouth, "Shut your mouth, I want to talk in Your name". That's what happening all over this country. Preachers all over this country that get their living by pretending to be Christian ministers. And they're actually saying it louder than if they would say it with their vocal cords, "Shut Your mouth Jesus Christ! I want to talk in Your name! And I'll twist Your words". My dear friends, Christ isn't a figurehead. Christ didn't come into the world to play Santy Claus for some gold grabbing, covetous, proud people. Christ came in the world to do something for you and me that nobody else in all the universe could do for us! He came to die! He said, "No man can take My life. I have power to lay it down and to take it up again".
Oh-h-h, the magnificence and the majesty of the death of the Son of God. The so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" don't believe that for a second that Christ had power to lay it down. Why everything about Christ died and stayed dead according to the "Jehovah Witnesses". Everything about Christ, Jesus Christ that died on the cross stayed dead according to the Seventh Day Adventists. Now they don't consistently teach it, but it's the rotten heart of their doctrine, because they are determined to get rid of the Bible doctrine of punishment. That's the reason for the Seventh Day Adventist cult. That's the reason for "Jehovah's Witnesses" so-called. That's the reason for Armstrong's outfit. It's to get rid of the Bible doctrine of punishment. And in order to do that of course they've got to get rid of the Bible doctrine of salvation. So they have no Christ, they've got an antichrist I mean, not the Christ of the Bible.
What did Christ mean when He said, "No man can take My life! I have power to lay it down and take it up again"? Don't forget that my friend. I've been disgusted with myself when I've looked back at times when I've talked with the so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" and let them tie me up for awhile with their clever sophistries when I would say, "Do you believe that Christ died?" "We certainly do." "And you believe that Christ died for your sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures?" "We certainly do." And I've let them get by with that statement instead of saying, "Wait a minute! You teach that the Jesus who died was a human being, no more, no less, and that there was no bodily resurrection of Christ at all. That the one who died ..."
They use this as an illustration, they say, "Now Christ, the Bible says, "Christ gave Himself a ransom for all to be testified in due season."" They say, "Now suppose you were guilty of traffic fines, traffic offenses, and the fine's twenty dollars. And you can't pay it. And I go down to the traffic court and I put a twenty dollar bill down. I put a twenty dollar bill down at the traffic court to pay for your fine. I ransom you, otherwise you would go to jail. I ransom you out of jail. I put that twenty dollar bill down. Do you think that I could come back in three days and pick that twenty dollar bill back up again?" They say, "That's what your clergymen have told you Christ did. That He made the ransom, that He paid the ransom, and then three days later went and collected it again". Now that's ... they use that over and over and over again.
And of course, if they taught that all the time, it would be obvious then that they do not believe in the resurrection of Christ. Because they believe in the death of one character known as Jesus and a resurrection of somebody that couldn't have been raised because he didn't die. Don't you see. My friend, there's no resurrection if Christ ... accepted was the one who was ... who was crucified and buried.
Again Christ. said one day, "destroy this temple, and in three days I will", what? "I will raise it up again". And some of the Jews around there said, "Why it took forty years to build this temple, and you say you can raise... destroy it and build it in three days?" But this He said speaking of His body. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again." My friend, there's no gospel of salvation to people who deny that Christ, the eternal I am, died. You say, "How could the eternal I am die?" Again I say, what's your definition of death? When Christ cried on the cross, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani", which being interpreted is, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" He died. He died for our sins before He surrendered, gave up the ghost. He died for our ...
My friends, the wages of sin isn't physical death. Abraham died, the friend of God. David, a man after God's own heart, died. Mary the mother of Jesus died. Mary and Martha and Lazarus died. Paul the apostle died. My dear Christian mother died with the name Jesus on her lips over in Ft Worth when I was a 16 1/2 year-old boy. Physical death isn't the penalty for sin. It's separation from God.
I'm ashamed to say that most of my Christian life I have... in thinking of the death of Christ and the sufferings of Christ, I thought primarily of the suffering that was occasioned by the nails being driven through His hands and His feet and the crown of thorns mashed on His brow, His beard plucked out, for we read in Isaiah prophetically it was going to he and was, and I've thought of the agonies when the sword pierced His side, and the crown of thorns on His brow.
My friends, those were not essentially the penalty for sin. Where do you read in the Bible that the wages of sin is to have your fellow man pull your beard out and drive nails through your hand? Where do you read in the Bible that the wages of sin is to have a crowd of ... of sinners mash a crown of thorns down on your brow, and spit in your face, and strike you with a reed after they mocked and they crowned you? Those are not the penalties for sin. Those are the horrible evidences of sinful hearts. He bore our sins in that sense. When you say, "Lookee yonder. That's what man's capable of doing. Look! That's what the best men on earth against ..."
That's what you and I have done, every single one of us, has had a part in spitting in the face of Christ. Maybe some are doing it tonight. And the reason God hasn't stricken you, stricken you dead my friend is because 1900--odd years ago outside the walls of Jerusalem Jesus Christ bought a whole dispensation of grace for Christ rejecters. And He's letting the sun and the rain fall on the just and the unjust alike, and He's waiting. But Peter was inspired to say, "God isn't slack concerning His promises as some men count slackness", referring to God's punishment, "God isn't slack concerning His promises as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish". God's wafting and waiting and waiting, but wait till the day of grace comes to an end. Then will men cry for the rocks and mountains to fall on them and hide them from the face of God. Today you can come while the day of grace .... while we read in Romans the 5th chapter that grace is now reigning. That means undeserved goodness. Undeserved, unmerited favor.
The Roman Catholics say you've got to do and don't and do and don't. You talk about an obstacle course. Any of you fellows here ever in the Marine Corps? heard more about the obstacle courses that the Marine trainees had to go through. They had to climb fences and go through water and barbed wire and others of you in the artillery had to ... were told, "Now listen, you crawl out there so many hundred yards and while you're crawling, these boys over here are going to be shooting four feet from the ground. Now you stay down four feet or else". Obstacle courses. Why Roman Catholicism has got more obstacle courses between the poor sinner and the gates of Peter (wherever that is you know). They've got more obstacle courses of do and don't and do and don't and do and don't and quit and quite and don't eat meat, and eat meat and give, and pay and pray and then go to purgatory, and be burned for awhile. And they never tell you how long you got to stay there before you get purified enough to get out. And that ... the reason they do that is because they want you bums to keep on paying the priest for your grandma. What kind of a person are you if you know that your grandma's down there in those horrible fires and you keep on buying alot of tobacco and don't give more money to have masses. Shame on you.
But my friend, the plan of salvation from heaven was wrought out 1900-odd years ago when Jesus Christ the Lamb of God appeared outside the gates of Jerusalem, "Once in the ends of the ages", literally we read, "hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." And that's why John the Baptist was inspired to say, "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world".
Have you ever said what came to me grippingly a few months ago for the first time in my life. I just thought of it this way, "Listen. Look yonder. Yonder go my sins. Everyone of them! There they go. The penalty. The filthy pollution. There they go!" "Where they going?" "A lamb's bearing them." "Who?" "The Lamb of God. He's taking them away! away! away! away!" Can you sing that chorus, Raymond, start that, "All my sins are taken away"? You don't know that. Oh-h, that's a good one. I wish you knew that.
(Raymond King from audience "All my sins are gone"?)
All my sins are gone.
(Raymond leads audience in singing)
All my sins are gone,
All because of Calvary;
Life is filled with song,
All because of Calvary;
Christ my Savior lives, L
lives from sin to set me free ...Got it a little bit high ...
... Some day He's coming ...
... We'll have to start it again some time. But lets start it right now again lower. Can you sing, start it, Raymond?
(Maurice Johnson leads in singing)
All my sins are gone,
All because of Calvary;
Life is filled with song,
All because of Calvary;
Christ my Savior lives,
Lives from sin to set me free,Thank God,
Some day He's coming,
0 wondrous blessed day,
All, yes, all because of Calvary.Mabe we can get together tomorrow night and practice that. That's a beautiful truth and beautiful chorus.
A little bit more and I'm going to let you ask some questions and we'll close tonight. said awhile ago that the Seventh Day Adventists do not believe that Christ was raised from the dead. And I also said that there's some Seventh Day Adventists, people in the Seventh Day Adventists, that believe a whole lot better than the cult teaches on the subject. But the cult itself does not believe, the doctrine will not allow people to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because the one who died was mortal: "Had the accumulated depravity of 4000 years seeking and surging in His bloodstream to break forth like a tiger in a cage, but in spite of bad blood and inherited meanness He conquered where He was weakest." And so that one, thank God, wasn't raised. Aren't you glad that that kind of Jesus didn't come out of the grave? Aren't you glad there's not. somebody in heaven with the ... with the accumulated depravity of 4... brother Clayton, aren't you glad that your Christ in heaven doesn't have the accumulated depravity of 4000 years in His veins?
(answer from audience) Amen.
Well my friend, the one that's in heaven is the one that was on earth. I said a moment ago that the Seventh Day Adventists do not believe in the resurrection of Christ. They can't with their doctrine of death and punishment. The Seventh Day Adventists ... the so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" do not believe in the resurrection of Christ. They can't with their false doctrine, as to who Jesus was and what death is. Herbert Armstrong doesn't believe in the resurrection of Christ. He can't with his horrible false doctrine as to the mortality of Jesus, what death is, and so forth.
Now, I'm going to say this, the Seventh Day Adventists do not believe in the second coming of Christ. I started to say that awhile ago and I got as fir as the word 'Advent' and brought out that Mrs. White took the word 'Advent', William Miller got it rather I said, the Advent movement, Mrs. White added 'Seventh Day' to the cult and made it the Seventh Day Advent. And the 'Advent' there refers to Christ's second coming. The Seventh Day Adventists do not believe in the second coming of Christ. Why? Because it would be the coming for them of another Christ. Not the same one who was here on earth. So it's not the second coming of Christ at all. It's another Christ that they're looking for. Herbert W Armstrong doesn't believe in the second coming of Christ because the first Christ was mortal and so forth, and whatever ... and the Christ would not be the same one. The so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" do not believe in the second coming of Christ, either past or future, because the Christ that they pretend to believe is ... came back in 1914, wasn't the Christ that was on earth at all.
Now my friend, God help you to see that what I'm giving you, though they may sound sharp and may sound horrible conclusions, I have proved that they come from the Word of God as a result of the Word of God examining these cults. And I challenge anyone here tonight to raise a question that I can't answer on (anything I've raised, I mean) regarding these cults.
And let me remind you please once more of that passage that is surpassingly beautiful in Acts the 2nd chapter, similarly a part of it quoted by Paul in Acts 13. In Acts 2, Peter by inspiration gives it; in Acts 13, Paul by inspiration gives it. Concerning the death of Jesus Christ "it was impossible that God would suffer His Holy One", not his unholy mortal Jesus, "but it's impossible God would suffer or allow His Holy One to see corruption". Well he already had it according to the Adventists, he already had it according to the Seventh Day Advent, the "Jehovah's Witnesses" so-called, and Herbert Armstrong; he already had corruption. Hah. He was born with it, he lived with it, and died with it. But thank God that's an antichrist, not the Christ of the Bible, not my Savior. And the same truth Paul brings out, I repeat, quoted from Psalms, brings it out in Acts 13.
Now I'll read you one more passage and I will stop. The Christ ... oh, I must give you this a little bit. Christ on the cross died, he didn't cease to be; He was separated from the Father. You say, "How could the eternal Son of God be separated from the Father?" how could he be born without a human father? Now could he have spoken the world into existence? What is life? There isn't a scientist on earth tonight so far as I know, I've read recently from a lot of them and quoting others that scientists still say, "The secret of life still eludes all scientific investigation. We don't know what life is." Therefore, nobody knows what death is. I can give you the divine definition, "He that has the Son of God, bath life, he that hath not the Son hath not life". Walking corpse, trying to keep ahead of the undertaker a little bit longer. Walking corpse, "dead in trespasses and sin", because you're dead to God. You're dead to that for which God intended man to be. And you're out of the way, lost.
When Christ died on the cross, it was as miraculous as anything that ever happened that God has told us about in his Word. he didn't cease to be. Imagine! The one who said, "I am the bread of life" ceasing to be. "I am the way" ceased to be, "I am the life" ceased to be. "I am the door" ceased to be. "I am the resurrection and the life" ceased to be. My friend, that's anarchy, that's absurd, and utterly antichrist. Christ in all of his regal deity died. And that's why in his death he destroyed him that had the power of death, Hebrews 2;14.
One other passage now and I'll let you ask a question if you want to and I'll try to answer it. From the 4th chapter of Ephesians, and I wish I had the so-called New World Translation. I forgot to bring it tonight. 1 have it in Ft Worth but I didn't bring it over tonight. I'd like to read their ... that's the so-called "Jehovah's Witnesses" translation you know.
By the way, Herbert Armstrong's coming out with a new translation l understand. he's been telling the people now ever since he started a few years ago, "Blow the dust of your Bibles". Now he's going to say, "Blow your Bible away and get mine". he's got a new translation, see. It's not ... but it won't be out for awhile. You'll have to put up with the ... with the one you got. And send your tithes to Box 111, Pasadena, and you'll be all right until that new one comes out. All these cults have to get out a new translation sooner or later.
Ephesians the 4th chapter. We want to read there about who it was that died, and who was raised. Ephesians the 4th chapter, and beginning at the 7th verse.
Unto every one of us, Christians, is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended, what is it but that. he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?
Doesn't sound like He ceased to be does it? Doesn't sound like non-existence or cessation of being does it? No, He descended, He descended into the lower parts of the earth.
He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fulfill all in all.
"He that descended is the same that ascended." In other words, "Christ died, was buried, and rose again"; "Destroy this temple and in three days I'll raise it up again." "No man can take My life. I have power to lay it down and take it up again.
Do you believe in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ? If you don't, and you believe He died for your sins according to Scripture, Paul says that's the gospel, 1 Corinthians 15:3-5.
Tomorrow night I'll refer to that when I bring out that the Campellites, and the Mormons, and the Seventh Day Adventists too, the Roman Catholics, and Jesus Only Pentecostalists, teach that you got be baptized in or with water in order to obey the gospel. And I'll bring out God willing tomorrow night, and if it rains us out I'll have the subject the next night probably, I'll preach on ."Saved By Dry Baptism" tomorrow night. And I'll bring out that the trouble with the Campbellites, falsely called "Church of Christ", the trouble with the Campbellites when they teach that to obey the gospel means or includes getting dunked in the water, the trouble with them is they don' t know what the gospel is.
When I'm driving down to this city, on a street in this city that has traffic lights, and I came up to an intersection and I find a green light turning red just before I get there, I know that I must ... in order to obey the traffic lights in that case, I must quit doing what I've been doing. I must stop. Then standing there awhile directly I see the red light change to green, and on it I see a word "Go". I know then that to obey the traffic light means to do what I haven't been doing. So I don't know what it means to obey the traffic laws until I know what the traffic laws, in a given case, are. Is that right?
Nobody can know what obeying the gospel means if they don't know what the gospel is. Paul said, "I delivered unto you the gospel that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, and rose again from the dead the third day according to the Scriptures". Now when you obey that, God saves your soul. But to obey that means to hear it submissively. And in that case it's to hear what somebody did for you, you see. To obey the gospel means to hear submissively what somebody did for you, did in your place.
I hope you've all obeyed the gospel. Christ is coming back one time "in flaming fire taking vengance on them that know not God and who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." Why shouldn't God send out into a Christless eternity those who reject His dear Son in His glorious and victorious death in our place.
What's your question? I don't claim of course to have covered everything in the Bible on this subject or the subject that I touched, but I don't claim to have deliberately dodged anything nor to have distorted... Have you a question? You've been very gracious and I appreciate very much the hearing you've given me. We'll close in a moment. Come back if you can tomorrow night, all of you.
By the way, let me read the subject that I expect to speak on the rest of this week. Tuesday night God willing, "The Devil's Two Lies", "The Devil's Two Lies", "Do all no-hell cults and all saved and lost denominalists believe these two lies? What are the Devil's two lies?" I promise you by the help of God this will be very clarifying Bible study. Wednesday night God willing, "God's Two Men", "God's Two Men". It'll be teaching evangelism that I'll be doing by the grace of God. Thursday night, "God's Gracious Gift Versus Religion's Devilish Gamble". In other words, is salvation a fact or a chance? And Saturday night God willing, Saturday night, or Friday night., "God's Unbreakable Book", and I'm going to be working, I've already done some work, I'm going to be working on a illustration that will be as simple and helpful to you, some of you, probably as you've ever seen in your life. Maybe it'll be some of the most helpful, unanswerable illustrations of the truth, "God's Unbreakable Book". And Saturday night God willing, "God's Two Words", "God's Two Words".
Now before we go, have you a question on the subject tonight, "Did a mortal Jesus die?" or "Who died on the accursed tree?" Anybody a question? If you think I was unfair in anything that I stated that the Seventh Day Adventists or the J.W.'s, so-called "Jehovah Witnesses", or Armstrong teaches, say so and let me try to make it plainer or correct it if ... acknowledge it if I was wrong. I'm sure I wasn't but I'll let you have the chance, you see. Anybody a question?
Well you ask God, you that are Christians, ask God to keep on your mind the truths, not necessarily that they were new to you, but the truths that you need most surely to build you up. Maybe to have opportunity to put feet to it tomorrow, and I wonder if you're afraid to invite people to come out to the meeting, invite them with enthusiasm, afraid lest somebody will think you're a Johnsonite. My friend, have I given what Maurice Johnson spun out of his depraved imagination tonight? Or have I given some of the beautiful truths from God's Word? I hope you appreciate I've given some of the beautiful truths from God's Word. And truths that expose the subtle lies of false cults..
Let's stand shall we and bow our heads.
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