Pleasure & Profit in Bible Study Part 2

PRINTING THE REVISED VERSION.

Suppose some one had said that when we had a revised version of the New Testament, it was going to have such a large circulation--men reading it wherever the English language is spoken--the statement would hardly have been believed. The new version came out in New York on a Friday--on the same day that it was published in London. Chicago did not want to be behind New York. At that time the quickest train between the two cities could not accomplished the journey in less than about twenty-six hours.

It would be late on Sat.u.r.day afternoon before the copies could reach Chicago, and the stores would be closed. So one of the Chicago daily papers set ninety operators at work and had the whole of the new version, from Matthew to Revelation, telegraphed to Chicago on Friday; it was put at once into print and sold on the streets of that city next day. If some one had said years ago, before telegraphs were introduced, that this would be done, it would have been thought an impossibility.

Yet it has been done.

Notwithstanding all that skeptics and infidels say against the old Book, it goes on its way. These objectors remind one of a dog barking at the moon; the moon goes on shining just the same. Atheists keep on writing against the Bible; but they do not make much progress, do they? It is being spread all abroad--silently, and without any blasts of trumpets.

The lighthouse does not blow a trumpet; it goes on shedding its light all around. So the Bible is lighting up the nations of the earth. It is said that a lecturer on Secularism was once asked, "Why can't you let the Bible alone, if you don't believe it?" The honest reply was at once made, "Because the Bible won't let me alone."

CIRCULATION OF THE BIBLE.

The Bible was about the first book ever printed, and to-day New Testaments are printed in three hundred and fifty-three different languages, and are going to the very corners of the earth. Wherever the Bible has not been translated, the people have no literature. It will not be long before the words of Jesus Christ will penetrate the darkest parts of the earth, and the darkest islands of the sea. When Christ said, "The Scriptures can not be broken," He meant every word He said.

Devil and man and h.e.l.l have been in league for centuries to try to break the Word of G.o.d, but they can not do it. If you get it for your footing, you have good footing for time and eternity. "Heaven and earth shall pa.s.s away, but my Word shall not pa.s.s away." My friends, that Word is going to live, and there is no power in perdition or earth to blot it out.

What we want to-day is men who believe in it from the crown of their heads to the soles of their feet, who believe the whole of it, the things they understand and the things they do not understand. Talk about the things you understand, and leave the things you do not. I believe that is one reason why the English and the Scotch Christians have got ahead of us, because they study the whole Bible. I venture to say that there are hundreds of Bible readings in London every night. You know there are a good many Christians who are good in spots and mighty poor in other spots, because they do not take the whole sweep of the Bible.

When I went to Scotland I had to be very careful how I quoted the Bible.

Some friend would tell me after the meeting I was quoting it wrong.

CHAPTER V.

Fulfilled Prophecy--Unexplored Country--Babylon--Tyre--Jerusalem--Egypt--The Jew.

I KNOW nothing that will upset an honest skeptic quicker than _fulfilled prophecy_. There are very few Christians who think of studying this subject. They say that prophecies are so mysterious, and there is question about their being fulfilled. Now the Bible does not say that prophecy is a dark subject, to be avoided; but rather that "we have a more _sure word_ of prophecy, whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the daystar arise in your hearts." Prophecy is history unfulfilled, and history is prophecy fulfilled.

When I was a boy I was taught that all beyond the Mississippi river was the great American desert. But when the first pick-axe struck into the Comstock lode, and they took out more than one hundred million dollars'

worth of silver, the nation realized that there was no desert: and to-day that part of the country--Nevada, Colorado, Utah and other western states--is some of the most valuable we possess. Think of the busy cities and flourishing states that have sprung up among the mountains! So with many portions of the Bible: people never think of reading them. They are living on a few verses and chapters. The greater part of the Bible was written by prophets, yet you never hear a sermon preached on prophecy.

Between five and six hundred Old Testament prophecies have been remarkably and literally fulfilled, and two hundred in regard to Jesus Christ alone. Not a thing happened to Jesus Christ that was not prophesied from seventeen hundred to four hundred years before He was born.

Take the four great cities that existed in the days when the Old Testament was written, and you will find that prophecies regarding them have been fulfilled to the letter. Let me call your attention to a few pa.s.sages.

BABYLON.

First regarding Babylon--"And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when G.o.d overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces; and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged." And again: "The word that the Lord spake against Babylon and against the land of the Chaldeans by Jeremiah the Prophet. Declare ye among the nations, and publish and set up a standard; publish and conceal not; say, Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodach is broken in pieces; her idols are confounded, her images are broken in pieces. For out of the north there cometh a nation against her; which shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell therein; they shall remove, they shall depart, both man and beast."

"Because of the wrath of the Lord it shall not be inhabited, but it shall be wholly desolate; every one that goeth by Babylon shall be astonished, and hiss at all her plagues." "How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken! How is Babylon become a desolation among the nations! I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art taken, oh Babylon, and thou wast not aware; thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against the Lord."

A hundred years before Nebucadnezzar ascended the throne, it was foretold how Babylon should be destroyed, and it came to pa.s.s. Scholars tell us that the city stood in the midst of a large and fruitful plain.

It was enclosed by a wall four hundred and eighty furlongs square. Each side of the square had twenty gates of solid bra.s.s, and at every corner was a strong tower, ten feet higher than the wall. The wall was eighty-seven feet broad, and three hundred and fifty feet high. These figures give us an idea of the importance of Babylon. Yet nothing but ruins now remain to tell of its former grandeur. When Babylon was in its glory, the queen of the earth, prophets predicted that it would be destroyed; and how literally was it fulfilled!

A friend going through the valley of the Euphrates tried to get his dragoman to pitch his tent near the ruins, and failed. No Arabian pitches his tent there, no shepherd will dwell near the ruins.

NINEVEH.

Now take Nineveh. "And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a gazing-stock. And it shall come to pa.s.s, that all they that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste; who will bemoan her? Whence shall I seek comforters for thee?" Now, how are you going to cover the city up? "I will cast upon her abominable filth." How are you going to cast abominable filth upon the city? And yet for 2,500 years Nineveh was buried and an abominable filth lay upon her. But now they have dug up the ruins, and brought them to Paris and London, and you go into the British museum, and there is not a day except the Sabbath but what you can see men from all parts of the world gazing upon the ruins. It is just as the prophets prophesied. For 2,500 years Nineveh was buried, but it is no longer buried.

TYRE.

Then look at Tyre: "Therefore thus saith the Lord G.o.d; Behold, I am against thee, Oh Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up. And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus and break down her towers; I will also sc.r.a.pe her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea, for I have spoken it, saith the Lord G.o.d, and it shall become a spoil to the nations." Coffin, who was correspondent of the Boston _Journal_ during the war, went round the world after the war was over in '68. One night he came to the site of old Tyre, and he said the sun was just going down, and he got his dragoman to pitch his tent right over by the ruins, where the rocks were sc.r.a.ped bare, and he took out his Bible and read where it says, "It shall be a place for the spreading of nets." He said the fishermen had done fishing and were just spreading their nets or the rocks of Tyre, precisely as it was prophesied hundreds and hundreds of years before.

Now mark you! When they prophesied against these great cities, they were like London, Paris and New York in their glory, but their glory has gone.

JERUSALEM.

Now take the prophecy in regard to Jerusalem: "And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it saying, If thou hadst known, even thou at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace: But now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compa.s.s thee round, and keep thee in on every side." Didn't t.i.tus do that? Didn't the Roman Emperor do that very thing? "And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation."

I have read of two Rabbis going up to Jerusalem, and they saw a fox playing upon the wall; one began to weep when he thus looked at the desolation of Zion. The other smiled and rebuked him, saying that the spectacle was a proof that the Word of G.o.d was true, and that this was one of the prophecies which should be fulfilled--"Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it." It was also said that Jerusalem should be as a ploughed field. This prophecy has also been fulfilled. The modern city is so restricted that outside of the walls, where part of the old city stood, the plough has been used.

EGYPT.

Now take the prophecies regarding Egypt: "It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations; for I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations."

Now, mark you! Egypt was in its glory when this was prophesied. It was a great and mighty empire, but for centuries it has been the basest of all nations. They have not got a native prince or king to reign over them.

The man that is reigning over them now is not an Egyptian, but he is some foreigner, and so it has been.

THE JEWS.

Then, again, the prophecy of Balaam with regard to the Jews has been already greatly fulfilled. "Lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations. Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth _part_ of Israel?" The Jews were not to be reckoned amongst the nations. There is something in this people's looks and habits that G.o.d continues to perpetuate, just, as I believe, to make them witnesses in every land of the truth of the Bible.

The race has remained all these centuries separate and distinct from other nations. In America there are all kinds of nationalities. Take an Irishman, and in a generation he will have forgotten his nationality.

So, too, with the Germans, Italians, and French; but the Jew is as much a Jew as he was when he came over one hundred years ago. See how the race has been persecuted, yet the Jews control the finances of the world and can not be kept down. Egypt, Edom, a.s.syria, Babylon, Persia, Rome, and all the leading nations of the earth have sought to crush out the Jews. Frederick the Great said, "Touch them not, for no one has done so and prospered." The people are the same now as they were in the days of Pharaoh, when he tried to destroy all the male children. The prophecy is fulfilled--G.o.d has made the nation numerous and united. The time is coming when G.o.d will reinstate the Jew. "For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a King, and without a Prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim." Are they not without a King, without a nation, and without a sacrifice? Are they not scattered among the nations of the earth, a separate and distinct people? and they do not bow down to idols. Their last King they crucified, and they will never have another until they restore Him. He was Jesus Christ, as inscribed upon His cross, "The King of the Jews."

OTHER PROPHECIES.

We see how it was prophesied that Eli should suffer. He was G.o.d's own high priest, and the only thing against him was that he did not obey G.o.d's word faithfully and diligently. He was like a good many nowadays.

He was one of these good-natured old men who don't want to make people uncomfortable by saying unpleasant things, so he let his two boys go on in neglect, and did not restrain them. He was just like some ministers.

Oh! let every minister tell the truth, though he preach himself out of his pulpit. Everything went all right for twenty years, but then came fulfilment of the prophecy. G.o.d's ark was taken, the army of Israel was routed by the Philistines; Hophni and Phineas, old Eli's two sons, were killed, and when the old man heard of it, he fell back in his chair, broke his neck and died. So with King Ahab, taking the sinful advice of Jezebel. Naboth would not sell him that piece of land, so they got him out of the way. Three years afterwards the dogs licked Ahab's blood from his chariot in the very spot where Naboth's had been murderously shed.

CHAPTER VI.

Text Preaching and Expository Preaching--Peter and Paul at Jerusalem--Oratorical Preaching

HERE is a word of counsel for young men who have their eye on the ministry. If you take my advice, you will seek not to be a text preacher, but an expository preacher. I believe that what this country wants is the Word of G.o.d. There is no book that will draw the people like the Bible. One of the professors of the Chicago University gave some lectures on the Book of Job, and there was no building large enough to hold the people. If the Bible only has a chance to speak for itself, it will interest the people. I am tired and sick of moral essays. It would take about a ton of them to convert a child five years old. A man was talking of a certain church once, and said he liked it because the preacher never touched on politics and religion--just read nice little essays. Give the people the Word of G.o.d. Some men only use the Bible as a text book. They get a text and away they go. They go up in a balloon and talk about astronomy, and then go down and give you a little geology, and next Sunday they go on in the same way, and then they wonder why it is people do not read their Bibles. I used to think Charles Spurgeon was about as good a preacher as I ever knew, but I used to rather hear him expound the Scripture than listen to all his sermons.

Why is it that Dr. John Hall has held his audience so long? He opens his Bible and expounds. How was it that Andrew Bonar held his audience in Glasgow? He had a weak voice, people could hardly hear him, yet thirteen hundred people would file into his church twice every Sabbath, and many of them took notes, and they would go home and send his sermons all over the world. It was Dr. Bonar's custom to lead his congregation through the study of the Bible, book by book. There was not a part of the Bible in which he could not find Christ. I preached five months in Glasgow, and there was not a ward or a district in the city in which I did not find the influence of that man.

A REMINISCENCE OF DR. ANDREW BONAR.

I was in London in '84 and a barrister had come down from Edinburgh. He said he went through to Glasgow a few weeks before to spend Sunday, and he was fortunate enough to hear Andrew Bonar. He said he happened to be there the Sunday Dr. Bonar got to that part of the Epistle of Galatians where it says that Paul went up to Jerusalem to see Peter. "Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days." He let his imagination roam. He said one day he could imagine they had been very busy and they were tired, and all at once Peter turned to Paul and said, "Paul, wouldn't you like to take a little walk?" And Paul said he would. So they went down through the streets of Jerusalem arm in arm, over the brook Cedron, and all at once Peter stopped and said, "Look, Paul, this is the very spot where He wrestled, and where He suffered and sweat great drops of blood. There is the very spot where John and James fell asleep, right there. And right here is the very spot where I fell asleep. I don't think I should have denied Him if I hadn't gone to sleep, but I was overcome. I remember the last thing I heard Him say before I fell asleep was, 'Father, let this cup pa.s.s from me if it is Thy will.' And when I awoke an angel stood right there where you are standing, talking to Him, and I saw great drops of blood come from His pores and trickle down His cheeks. It wasn't long before Judas came to betray Him. And I heard Him say to Judas so kindly, 'Betrayest thou the Master with a kiss?' And then they bound Him and led Him away. That night when He was on trial I denied Him." He pictured the whole scene. And the next day Peter turned again to Paul and said, "Wouldn't you like to take another walk to-day?" And Paul said he would.

That day they went to Calvary, and when they got on the hill, Peter said, "Here, Paul this is the very spot where He died for you and me.

See that hole right there? That is where His cross stood. The believing thief hung there and the unbelieving thief there on the other side. Mary Magdalene and Mary His mother stood there, and I stood away on the outskirts of the crowd. The night before when I denied Him, He looked at me so lovingly that it broke my heart, and I couldn't bear to get near enough to see Him. That was the darkest hour of my life. I was in hopes that G.o.d would intercede and take Him from the cross. I kept listening and I thought I would hear His voice." And he pictured the whole scene, how they drove the spear into His side and put the crown of thorns on His brow, and all that took place.

And the next day Peter turned to Paul again and asked him if he wouldn't like to take another walk. And Paul said he would. Again they pa.s.sed down the streets of Jerusalem, over the brook Cedron, over Mount Olivet, up to Bethphage, and over on to the slope near Bethany. All at once Peter stopped and said, "Here, Paul, this is the last place where I ever saw Him. I never heard Him speak so sweetly as He did that day. It was right here He delivered His last message to us, and all at once I noticed that His feet didn't touch the ground. He arose and went up. All at once there came a cloud and received Him out of sight. I stood right here gazing up into the heavens, in hopes I might see Him again and hear Him speak. And two men dressed in white dropped down by our sides and stood there and said, 'Ye men of Galilee, why stand Ye gazing into heaven? This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.'"

My friends, I want to ask you this question: Do you believe that picture is overdrawn? Do you believe Peter had Paul as his guest and didn't take him to Gethsemane, didn't take him to Calvary and to Mount Olivet? I myself spent eight days in Jerusalem, and every morning I wanted to steal down into the garden where my Lord sweat great drops of blood.

Every day I climbed Mount Olivet and looked up into the blue sky where He went to His Father. I have no doubt, Peter took Paul out on those three walks. If there had been a man that could have taken me to the very spot where thy Master sweat those great drops of blood, do you think I wouldn't have asked him to take me there? If he could have told me where I could find the spot where my Master's feet last touched this sin-cursed earth and was taken up, do you think I wouldn't have had him show it to me?

ORATORICAL PREACHING.