John 8:37-47

SATANIC PATERNITY OF THE UNREGENERATE

John 8:37-47. “I know that ye are the seed of Abraham; but you seek to kill Me, because My Word has no place in you.” How sad the condition of those preachers and people when Jesus, looking through them, actually saw them full of repellency and diabolical antagonism to the truth! N.B. You will find it so in many Churches nowadays, I awfully fear and doubt not. “Whatsoever things I saw with the Father, I speak; therefore you indeed are doing the things which you heard with your father.” This arouses in those shrewd, cultured priests an awful suspicion that He is impeaching their claim to the Abrahamic paternity. “They responded, and said to Him, Abraham is our father. Jesus says to them, If you are the children of Abraham, you did the works of Abraham; but now you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has spoken to you the truth which I heard with God. Abraham did not this. You are doing the works of your father. They said to Him, We have not been born of fornication; we have one father, God. Then Jesus said to them, If God were your Father, you would love Me with Divine love; for I came out from God, and I go back; for I have not come from Myself, but He sent Me. Wherefore do you not know My speech? Because you are not able to hear My word.” What a profound significance! His words were then ringing in their ears! Yet He said, “You are not able to hear My word.” The mystery is readily solved. The soul has the five senses i. e., sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch just like the body. When the soul is dead, as in the case of all the unregenerate, the senses are all dead with it. A dead man has eyes, but they are dead; ears, but they are dead; smelling organs, but they are dead; a tongue, but it is dead; nerves, but they are dead. Now these preachers, Church officers, and members, in whose physical ears His sweet, eloquent, melodious words were ringing, heard them plainly with their bodily ears, yet He certifies to them, “You are not able to hear My word.” This is the reason why they rejected it: His utterances were deep, rich, spiritual truth, and they were spiritually dead, so they never heard them; they rang in at one ear and out at the other, the dead soul within knowing nothing about the message of life which had resounded in their mortal ears. How signally does this penetrating truth apply to the fallen Churches of the present day, both ministers and members, as well as to this wicked world! What is the remedy in that case? An avalanche of importunate prayer, that the Holy Ghost may quicken them into life, in which case their spirit will hear and understand the glorious spiritual truth of the gospel. Deficiency of prayer explains multitudes of failures on the part of holiness preachers and workers. As a rule, it is painfully deficient. Shall we not wake up to the fact that we waste our ammunition on dead game, if we do not pray down the Holy Ghost to quicken them into life? “You are of your father the devil, and you wish to do the lusts of your father.” This tells an awful secret, which everybody ought to know, smashing the silly Universalist dogma now ringing from the Protestant pulpits; i. e., the Divine paternity of the wicked.

You see from the very words of the Savior that it is not so. Preachers, standing in their pulpits, address their audiences as the “children of God,” when in all probability nine-tenths of them are the children of the devil, having never been born from above. Divine life was lost in the fall, and is only regained in regeneration. Consequently all the unregenerate, whether never converted or backslidden, as you see from the plain words of our Savior, here addressed, not simply to the uncouth rabble, but to the preachers and Church members, all the unregenerate are the spiritual children of the devil till quickened into life by the Holy Ghost. “He was a murderer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth, because the truth is not in him.” How is the devil a murderer? He murders all the souls that follow him, beginning with the destroying angels, and sweeping down the terrestrial ages, deluging hell with the fallen millions. “When he may speak the lie, he speaks of his own, because he is the liar, and the father of the same. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me.” Those people, like the fallen Churches of every age, were deluded by Satan's lies, making them believe that they were saved when they were lost, in order to blind them and lead them down to hell. Humanity is uniform in all ages. So is Satan, sin, religion, salvation, and God the same now as in our Savior's time. You must not shove aside these awful truths uttered by our Savior and leave them with the scribes and Pharisees, when they apply to the present generation as pertinently as to them. The world is girdled with Churches today Pagan, Mohammedan, Papal, and Protestant standing spiritually precisely where our Savior's audience, backslidden members of the Jewish Church, stood, so deceived and led away by Satan's lies, making them believe that they are Christians and on their way to heaven, while they are sinners and on their way to hell, that a preacher coming among them and telling them the truth, as Jesus did, shares the same fate i. e., is rejected and persecuted; while a false prophet coming along, and helping Satan to keep them blindfolded till he can dump them into hell, is received like an angel, remunerated, honored, and applauded as a man of God, such as all Churches need. Lord give us all the light, help us to be true, like Jesus, and abide our destiny! “Which one of you convicts Me concerning sin? If I speak the truth, why do you not believe Me?”

“Convict” here is the very word descriptive of the condemnatory sentence of a criminal judge, as Jesus defied men and devils to convict Him concerning sin. Good Lord, help us all so to speak the truth and walk in His footprints that we can challenge the powers of earth and hell! His own Church fell out with Him and killed Him because He told them the truth. If He had preached falsehood, they would have received Him with enthusiasm. Satan's people love lies and fatten on them, preparatory for a barbecue in hell, when devils will devour their flesh and drink their blood. “The one being of God, heareth the words of God. Wherefore do you not hear? Because you are not of God.” Lord, help us to preach the same gospel that Jesus preached, fearless of men and devils! Here you see the reason why the truth has always been so unpopular. In this case, Satan had the Jewish Church with him, in addition to the wicked world. So few people in this world are of God, comparatively with the multitudes in Satan's kingdom, deluded by his lies and led captive by his caprice, that the truth in every age has found but few adherents, Jesus falling a victim to the cruelty of the fallen Jewish Church, so duped by Satan that they loved lies and hated the truth, and two hundred millions of martyrs following in His track, sealing their faith with their blood. When the present holiness movement becomes popular, it is ruined.