John 8:21-27

ALARMING PREDICTION AGAINST THEM

John 8:21-27. “Then He again said to them, I go, and you shall seek Me, and you shall perish in your sin; whither I go, you are not able to come.” The prophetic eye of Jesus saw the awful calamities coming on those people, when they would perish miserably by sword, pestilence, and famine, doubtless many of them seeing their awful error when too late. “Then the Jews said, Whether will He kill Himself? because He says, Whither I go, you are not able to come; and He said to them, You are from beneath, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” Those people, both preachers and members, solidly believed themselves to be the true people of God. Here the Infallible Teacher informs them that they are from beneath; i. e., not only unacquainted with God, but actually in the hands of Satan, and led captive at his will. “Therefore I said unto you, that you shall perish in your sins; for if you may not believe that I am He, you shall perish in your sins.” This is a most solemn and sweeping abnegation of all human hope without Christ. John the Baptist had preached to those people three years previously, telling them, in words of heaven- born eloquence, winged with celestial lightning, that this Jesus is the veritable Christ of prophecy, Redeemer of Israel and Savior of the world; actually pointing Him out, introducing Him to them, and inaugurating Him into His official Messiahship by the rite of baptism. These three years they have been taking counsel of the devil, imbibing unbelief, hardening their hearts, and stiffening their necks against the truth; not only sealing their own doom, but, by precept and example, leading the multitudes in the way of death. “ Then they said to Him, Who art Thou? Jesus said to them, That which I tell you from the beginning, I tell you now. I have many things to speak and judge concerning you.” He knew that the judgment of the quick and dead would devolve on Him in the last day. “But the One having sent Me is true; and whatsoever things I heard with Him, these I am speaking to the world.” What a wonderful blessing is the gospel of Christ, as, having lived in heaven from the dawn of creation, in the very bosom of God, He then spoke on earth precisely what He heard from His Omniscient Father! “They did not know that He was speaking to them of the Father.”