Is That Old Man Dead — Leonard Ravenhill

Paul’s Call to Spiritual Maturity

Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 3, reading from verse 1 into verse 9. 1 Corinthians 3, verse 1 into verse 9. And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.

I have fed you with milk, and not with meat. For hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye yet carnal. For whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?

For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos. Are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believe, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.

So then neither is he that planteth, nor he that watereth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth, and he that watereth are one, and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor.

For we laborers together with God, ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building. One of the greatest forgotten preachers, at least in my judgment, was a man by the name of Henry Varley. He was a preacher, and on one occasion he gave birth to a phrase that has become a kind of spiritual classic.

Maybe like lots of preachers, if he could have withdrawn the words when he'd said them, that words are like arrows, when you've shot them they don't come back immediately. Maybe he would have withdrawn the statement, but this is what he said, the world is yet to see what God can do through one man who is totally committed to Jesus Christ.

I'm sure he was wrong. But it so happened that there was a young man listening, he wasn't well educated, didn't do anything more important than sell shoes as a matter of fact, but he said in his heart, if the world has not seen a man totally committed, a man that will give spirit, soul, body, mind, faculty, will, his ambition and everything to Jesus Christ, I'll be that man.

He didn't sound any trumpets, beat any drums, sign any paper. It was a secret prayer, it was a secret commitment that he made to God. Afterwards, as you may know, he became famous as D .L. Moody. They used to laugh at him because when he was in England he certainly couldn't speak English.

He said Daniel in one, without any syllables, and Jerusalem he called Jushem, but he had one of the greatest revivals in history. The world is yet to see. Do you mean to suggest that Varley was right, that Jesus Christ had waited nearly 2 ,000 years to see of the travail of his soul?

I would suggest that right at the beginning of the Christian Church there was a man who qualified for that wonderful designation, and he was the Apostle Paul. He didn't kiss the world a tearful goodbye.

He wasn't always suggesting, you know, God got a great bargain when he got me. You know, like some fellows, you don't know what I gave up. I might have been the head of the Prudential. He might have been in jail too.

But the Lord got a lot when he got me, you know. No, no, no, there was nothing like that about it. He didn't say, well, of course, I could be a greater scholar than Gamaliel, I've got everything going for me.

Herodotus has been called the father of historians. And he says that in the Temple of Heracles, the altar fires were kept burning 24 hours a day. And if one of the many slaves could run away from his master, he would run to that temple and maybe wake up the sleepy priest there and say immediately, brand me.

And he would say to him, brand you with what iron? There's a branding iron to this God, there's a branding iron to the other God. How do you want branding? And he would select the God whose brand he wanted to bear.

And the priest would put the branding iron in the fire, and just as you brand cattle, he would take that hot iron and put it on the hand of the man, and he would wince as his hand was branded, and then he'd lift up his foot and have his instep branded, and then he'd slip down his toga, and he'd have the base of his neck branded.

And after a day or two, he might go down the road there, and as he went down, the old master would be there. And he might say to another slave, there's Aristarchus. You go after him and bring him back, because after all, he's my slave.

And Aristarchus would go back to the master, and the master would begin to tell him what he would do with him, how he would punish him. The man would listen for a moment, then all he would do, instead of answering, he'd raise his hand and show the brand.

He'd raise his foot and show the brand. He'd bear his back and show the brand. Then the former master would begin to blaspheme, maybe, and curse him, and say all kinds of things. And finally he would say, I've got no rights to you.

You're branded in the name of your God. You must serve him. You feet are in the way of your God. Walk after him. Your mind is branded for your God. Think about him and serve him. Thank you. Think about your God and serve him.

Paul’s Identification With Christ

And Paul uses this very figure at the end of his letter to the Galatians. He doesn't say it with a sob. He doesn't say, I've given up a magnificent career. I could have been a great high priest and lived ostentatiously.

He says, henceforth, let no man trouble me. I've there branded in my body the marks of Jesus Christ. In the language of the hymn writer, he says, let my hands perform his bidding. Let my feet walk in his way.

Let my eyes see Jesus only. It wasn't a sentimental, emotional uplift when he said, the things of the earth have grown strangely dim. He says, what things were gained to me? My pedigree of the tribe of Benjamin, of the seed of Abraham.

Everything I had, I count them as damned that I may win Christ. And he found in him. And at the end of that same epistle, he says, God forbid that I should glory. You want to swagger around? You want to say you have an earned PhD, that you're distinguished and you have won a lesson, he says.

You're not going to get me boasting such silly language. Oh, thank you for singing that hymn tonight. When I survey the wondrous cross, there's a fifth verse that I have to give our good friend. It isn't in any book except the ancient Baptist hymn book.

And of course, there's a man that sang it. It isn't ancient. But in the old hymn, there's a fifth verse. And the fifth verse says, his dying crimson like a robe, spread o 'er his body on the tree. Then am I dead to all the globe, and all the globe is dead to me.

Perhaps we'd better not sing it if it's not true. But Paul says here in the fourteenth verse at the end of this chapter, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross, in the cross, in the cross. You remember Sir John Bowering?

He was a Unitarian. He didn't believe in the blood. But one day he looked at an old ruin there over in the Orient. Twice that city had been sacked by the invader. Every other building had been destroyed, but there was the gable end of an old church with a cross, and around it all the ruins.

Unitarian that he was, he said, in the cross of Christ thy glory, towering o 'er the wrecks of time, all the light of sacred story gathered round its wrecks sublime. Paul says, God forbid that I should glory, except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified to me, and I am crucified to the world.

I'm quite sure I can make a guess that none of us ever saw a crucified man. Crucifixion was a Roman holiday. Once a man got a cross on his back, you knew one thing, he wasn't coming back for sure. You knew that immediately that man was riveted to that cross, he lost every right that he had.

He had no social rights, he had no other rights. Immediately they pinned him to that cross, he'd lost all his rights. And he might have terrorized the neighborhood, he might have raped a thousand, a hundred women, he might have done this, that, and the other, but once he got on that cross, he lost all his rights.

And I could say to somebody, you get a rock and try and knock out his right eye, and I'll try and knock out his left eye. You could throw filth on him, you could curse him, you could tantalize him, you could get him angry, but there he is pinned to the cross.

He has no retaliation. All people like to go to a crucifixion, particularly if it was a man like Barabbas that had terrorized them. He's getting his just desserts. Let him taste hell before he gets there.

And yet Paul says, I glory in the cross of Jesus Christ by which the world is crucified. I suggest instead of seeing three crosses, one where Jesus is crucified and the two thieves, you see the cross on which Jesus is crucified.

We see the cross in which the world is crucified. We see the cross on which the Apostle Paul is crucified. Because repeatedly he says, I am, not I was. You see the great temptation, if you made a decision this week to give Jesus Christ your all, the perpetual temptation to the believer is come down from the cross and save yourself.

The other man made the same vow, he's already rescinded his vows. He said he'd pray so much he's already forgotten to pray. He said he would fast. He said, God give me tears for a lost world. He said, let me fill up the sufferings of Christ.

And that's what Paul did. You see, there's one baptism, you can go to all the ecumenical things you hear, but there are some things you'll never hear in a charismatic meeting. One is a message on the judgment seat of Christ, and I've never heard any of them talk about being crucified with Christ.

Or filling up the sufferings of Jesus Christ. It's an ecstatic experience where you're always happy and singing. But my dear friend, if you're going the way he went, you have to go the Via Dolorosa too.

You have to go to your Gethsemane, you have to go to your crucifixion. Who wants to die? Ah, we'll say, Lord, I want your resurrection life. You can have it, die. But there is no other way to resurrection life.

Paul says, I'm crucified with Christ. Let no man trouble me, he says. Forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus, by which the world is crucified to me. I never switch this thing on.

By which the world is crucified to me, and I unto the world. No, you could go to a crucifixion at night, and you could have your fun. You could do a bit of target practice on that poor helpless victim, and he couldn't retaliate.

And as soon as the sun began to sink, everybody beat it to the city to get through the door, and get through the gate back into the city for safety. And if there were a thousand or ten thousand people there at the cross, at six o 'clock at night, you can be sure there was nobody there at six o 'clock in the morning.

The first visitors to the cross were the vultures. They came and rested on the arms of the cross. They came to have breakfast off the man that may not be dead yet. They might pull out his eyes one by one, and reach down their beaks.

I remember seeing some vultures in India, and they were as tall as I am. They had a wingspan of about 20 feet. They keep their necks there in their horrible wings, and then when they stretch them out, they have a neck this length with no feathers.

They look terrible, and they have huge beaks. As I saw them, and they were on a cemetery wall, and I thought about the visitors to the cross, pecking the eyes out, disemboweling the man. They'd hardly started ripping his body open, and the blood running out before the dogs came out of Jerusalem, they were lapping up the blood.

And Paul says the world is crucified. You see, people would go see a cross or a crucifixion at six at night. They wouldn't go in the morning. You'd never lose the vision. It would make you sick and nauseated and give you a nightmare.

The man there was just one bloody shapeless gnat. He had been crucified. They'd been screaming in his agony as the animals and the birds, the dogs would jump up and bite his feet, and the vultures would be stooping down and ripping his body, and he still was alive.

And he'd be screaming as though he were in hell itself. Nobody wanted to go through such a nauseating thing. You'd be nauseated, you'd vomit, you'd be sick, you might even lose your mind. Now that's the picture Paul says.

When I look at the world, it's crucified to me. It has no more attraction than a man who's disemboweled. Let me ask you tonight, do you see the world like that? Has it still got some fascination for you?

It's easy to sing all the vain things that charm me most, but how much of the world is the pulling at you tonight, in this materialistic age in which we live? And Paul says not only the world is like that, but I'm like that to the world.

They say, Paul, you idiot. Why don't you modify it? You don't have to be so extravagant. What man in history ever lived as recklessly as this man? It all began on that Damascus road when, just as the infant Christ was going to be destroyed by Herod, the infant church was going to be destroyed by the Apostle Paul.

He was carrying there inside of his toga, he was carrying a word of authority, that if he found anybody of the name of Jesus Christ, he could put them to death. And he reckoned on everything and everybody except Jesus.

The Damascus Road Encounter and Christ Living in the Believer

I'm going by that Damascus road, Jesus slipped off his throne and confronted him. I'm glad he didn't meet a preacher, that might have been the end of him. I'm glad nobody gave him the four spiritual laws or he might have got off on the wrong foot too.

I'm glad nobody said, will you sign a decision card? He says, on that Damascus road there shone round about me and them that journeyed with me alight. They all saw the light, but he says on the second occasion, I only heard the voice.

I don't care how much light you get, but you hear that voice once and it will shatter your life forever. You'll either go that way and obey him or you'll go that way and disobey him. But he says, I heard a voice.

You remember on the Isle of Patmos, John says, I turned to see the voice. God says repeatedly, my sheep hear my voice. On that Damascus road, he says, God revealed himself to me. And then God flung him on the backside of the wilderness and he says, God revealed himself in me.

Ah, God has revealed himself to many of us as he revealed himself in you. If you stand up and say, I'm saved, you'll get by. You go to a Pentecostal church, say, I'm saved, and have my baptism, they'll say, hallelujah, praise the Lord, that's great.

Fine. Go to a holiness church, say, I'm saved and sanctified, and everybody, amen, brother. That's the thing. I suggest the next time, whether you go to a Baptist church, a Pentecostal church, a Nazarene, any other church, you don't use these double phrases.

You just stand up as sweetly as you can and say, Christ lives in me. Maybe before you get down, your wife will pull you out and say, George, when did that happen? So that's what it means if you're a Christian.

You're not a Christian because you believe in the virgin birth. The devil believes in that. He witnessed it. You're not a Christian because you believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus. Satan saw that.

Satan is about the most fundamental person around. He believes this book from cover to cover. He has to. Could you stand up right now, if your whole family were here, or folk from the workshop, and say sweetly, honestly to God, Christ lives in me.

The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God. I say, it began on that Damascus road, Christ revealed himself to me, he says, and now Christ revealed himself in me. You see, on that road, he did not sign a card or meet a preacher.

There was not just an emotional ride. Remember, this man is not a drunkard. He's not a sex pervert. He's the most moral. He's got a, he's a man of impeccable morality. He's a genius. He's a scholar. He's learning all the wisdom of the Jews.

He's of the tribe of Benjamin, the seed of Abraham. He's got everything going for him. And yet, on that Damascus road, he needed Christ. Do you ever read the, uh, you read the third chapter of John, sure enough.

You read the fourth chapter. In the first chapter of John, you have a man that came to Jesus by night. In the fourth chapter, you have a woman that came not at midnight, at midday. The man that came to Jesus had impeccable morality.

The woman that came at midday had no morality. Wouldn't you have thought Jesus would have taken a disreputable prostitute and said, you must be born again? And yet he said to the most distinguished scholar of the day, a member of the Sanhedrin, you need to be born again.

You see, we argue sometimes as though you're to try and make a man feel he's the rottenest, wickedest man outside of hell, and secretly you're lusting and doing. No, there are some perfect gentlemen who are not Christian.

I don't believe the first argument God has with a man is that he's bad. The first argument of God with a man is not that he's bad, but that he's dead. In trespasses and in sins, I know some men who are not saved, and I admire them much more than lots of saved men I know, particularly businessmen.

Saved businessmen? But I know men who are not Christians, and they're far more gentlemanly and honest and upright. This man on the Damascus Road is no twisted, perverted, sex perverted, drug addict, or wife beats, or anything.

No sirree, he is a perfect gentleman, he's a perfect scholar. And on that Damascus Road, he exchanged his life. I gave Christ my life, he gave me his. Because, he says, it's not I, but it's Christ that liveth in me.

It was not only an exchange life he had, it was an explicit life. Once he fell in love with Jesus, everything focused on Jesus Christ, and from that day until he died, he never did anything. He said, this one thing I do.

If ever you can find it, there's a poem by F. W. H. Meyer, it has about 36 stanzas, it's a fantastic poem. I once had it and I loaned it and gave it to somebody, I don't know why, I'd like to get it back.

But he has a fantastic poem on the Apostle Paul, and he says, then with a rush, the intolerable craving shivers throughout me like a trumpet roll. Oh, to save these, to perish for their saving, to die for their life and be offered for the more.

You see, this man got totally intoxicated with Jesus Christ. He exchanged his life. It was not only an exchange life, it was an explicit life, this one thing I do. It's not only an explicit life, it was an exciting life.

He says, I wrestle with wild beasts at Ephesus. It was not only an explicit life, it was an expensive life. He says, I count all things but done. It was not only explicit and expensive, it was an extensive life, because I'm sharing it with you tonight and sharing it again through his epistle.

You know, there is no evidence that I can find in the scripture that the Apostle Paul ever backslid five minutes out of his outrageous life. There was nothing that Jesus did that Paul didn't do. Jesus raised the dead, Paul raised the dead.

The gifts and anointings of the Spirit of God were upon him. And after he's wrestled with wild beasts at Ephesus, after he's combated the intellectuals of the day, after he's stood up against principalities and powers and delivered people from the devil and raised the dead, and he's left behind him a trail of blessings, everywhere have gone he's had triumph.

And yet, some 35 years after all this has happened, when most of us would be satisfied, Paul says this, not that I have a wonderful record, not that I've surpassed everybody else in ministry, but after raising the dead and doing the miraculous and writing epistles, he's still saying that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering.

Oh yes, God worked a miracle in this man. He's a supreme example in my mind of a Spirit-filled believer. He's got everything. You'd like his power, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you like power to raise the dead?

Wouldn't you like his peace in the midst of all the turmoil that he had? Because he said, none of these things move me. You need a bit of grace to say that when you've been lashed to a whipping post, 195 times lashed, and your back's like a plowed field.

It's poise. None of these things move me. He'd just come out of jail. He's been hanging on a piece of wood in the Mediterranean for 36 hours, washed up and down. He says, none of these things move me.

Notice what he said. He said, none of these things move me. He never said, none of these things hurt me. He was a human being. They hurt him, but they didn't move him. He was so wedded to the will of God.

He says, I've got something in me, and all the whips you have will never whip it out, and all the threats you have will never threaten it out, and all the waters you have will never wash it out, and all the prisons you have will never starve it out.

Christ lives in me. I have eternal life. I have eternal power. Oh yes, he had power. Ye shall receive power. The Holy Ghost coming upon him, and the Holy Ghost came upon him there. Where? Away, when he was hidden there in God's university of silence, where he takes all his great men.

You'll never be a great man till you get lost in the quietness. The best thing some of you preachers could do would be take a year off and live with God alone in a hut somewhere, and find out what he's saying about today and what he wants you to do.

You remember there was a moment in his life when he was exalted and taken into heavenly places. I was in a place one day, and over the meal table the man said to me, Have you read my wife's book? I said, No.

What did she write on, cookery or something? My wife is the woman that went to heaven and stayed for seven days and came back. I said, That's great. Yeah, she went to heaven for seven days. And when she came back she was alive, and she went round the bed in the bedroom for another seven days.

She never ate, she never drank. She was just pirouetting on her tiptoes round the... Well, I didn't say, I didn't say she wasn't. I said, I've got news for you. He said, What is it? I said, I'll tell you this, brother.

Once I get inside that pearly gate, Gabriel won't get me back on this dump. Brother, once I get up there and I see the King in his glory, you wouldn't get me back if you gave me Westminster Abbey to live in, to preach in, and Buckingham Palace for a pastorium and six Rolls-Royces.

She's written a book on her experience. I've got news for you. The only genuine man I ever knew... Oh, it's like a woman to do that. Here's a man that went up into the third heaven, and the Lord said, Keep your mouth shut.

You can't say a word about it. And he shared everything else about his suffering, about his agony, but he never shared a thing about going into the heavenly places. When I get to heaven, I'm going to ask him.

So if you see me talking, keep your nose out of it for a while, will you? I'm going to get on one side and say, Paul, what did you see when you had that vision up there? As I said the other night, you'll never be anything without vision.

You can read all the theology you like, but vision will break your heart. A vision of him will blind you to every other vision. All of them things that charm me most and help me lead. What did he see?

Did he see a picture from the incarnation to the consummation? Did he see what Isaac Watts wrote just before John Wesley's day? Did he see Jesus Christ? As Isaac Watts put it, Jesus shall reign wherever...

Did he see the kingdoms of this world becoming the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ? Did he see... Is this the thing that motivated him? There were night and then the devil should turn his feet out of the way.

Threaten him, he'll laugh at you. Put him in prison, he'll get out anyhow. When he was out of prison, he fasted. When he was in prison, he starved. Make a hell of beans difference to him. He'd heard a call.

He'd seen a vision. He had a commission. The world is perishing. If it takes my life to fill up his life, well, here you are, God, take it. I sincerely mean I want to know when I get to heaven, what did God really reveal to him on that Damascus, in that experience of being in the wilderness for those years?

And it takes you a bit of grace to stay there for years. Did he see the kingdoms of this world becoming the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ? Did he have a vision, something like John? For after all, that revelation is a fantastic book.

You can read it. And if you have a heart of stone, it won't move you. But when I walk through revelation and I see it, hear it, he shows me the glory of heaven. I stand back in amazement and in tears.

And the next moment he shows me the edge of hell, where men are going to burn forever and ever. Paul was no swivel chair theologian, trying to get a special degree to stick on the wall of his office and get proud.

He had a heart. He had a brain. He was unquestionably a genius. But God got hold of him. From the crown of his head to the sole of his feet, I bear branded in my body. And I have no rights of my own from here out.

The Gospel, Conversion, and Paul’s Mission

I'll tell you what he did do when he came out of that experience. I'll tell you the Holy Ghost that had regenerated him. The Holy Ghost had anointed him. The Holy Ghost conceived in him. He became spiritually pregnant.

And he got all these epistles there in his nature. They were going to be borne out afterwards. That's why he wrote these epistles. Just as in natural birth you have conception, gestation and birth. He had the same thing, I'm absolutely sure, in the spiritual realm.

He had conception. The Holy Ghost brought illumination. He had gestation. This man hasn't got a little briefcase with half a dozen sermons in and 20 double knit suits and alligator shoes. This man's got a concern for lost men and women.

He knows that men will perish without God and without hope. And there's no price too great for him to pay. There's no situation he won't tackle. I remind you again, he began in the ancient capital of the world, Tartus.

He finished up in the military capital of the world, Rome. He went to the intellectual capital of the world, Athens. He went to the religious capital of the world, Jerusalem. He came to this immoral capital of the world, Corinth.

This Holy Pestle, where he confronted men here. He's meeting the incipient Gnosticism of the day. These people who said you can have salvation by human wisdom and human genius. Paul was the most profound theologian that ever lived as far as I'm concerned.

And I'd be a bit nervous about it if he didn't know so much. Because you see afterwards when he writes to this same church in the second letter, what chapter 5 verse 15, he says, if any man. Boy, that's a scope isn't it?

Any man anywhere at any time, if any man being Christ. I don't enjoy going around the world. I don't enjoy mission fields for lots of reasons. Because they repulse me, particularly leper colonies and other places.

But I get a great kick out of in this sense. When somebody says this man is the most diabolical man, he was demon possessed. And I couldn't tell you the atrocities he's committed. And you see a gentle little man and he comes and says, sorry.

I'm sorry I was so full of wickedness, but Jesus saved me. We need to get a gospel like that back again in the day in which we live, don't we? Hebrews 7 to 7 25. He is able to say to the uttermost and the gutter most and the mutter most.

I say Paul never faltered. There was no hill he couldn't climb. There was no burden he couldn't lift. There was no suffering he couldn't endure. He says I don't care what comes. If I fill up his sufferings, all right.

It is the way the master went should not the servant tread it still. Dare I ask for an easy passage? I lost my rights to myself. And he set out to turn the world upside down. Sure on that Damascus road it blinded him he said that.

It blinded him in more senses than one. It blinded him to all the alluring fascinating jewels of a materialistic world. A world full of scholarship. The world of the Greeks. The world of the mighty Roman Empire with its machinery and devilry.

The world of the Jews who thought they had a monopoly on God. And here he is the most devout distinguished Jew of all. And he gets a radical revolutionary experience of the grace of God. And then he signs it all off.

He says I'm a debtor. I will tell you if you claim to be born again I care not who you are. Whether you've an earned Ph .D. or were saved this week. You're a debtor from here out to a lost world. You're a debtor to take a message to men and women who are dead in trespasses and in sin and tell them you have the answer to their problem.

So he goes on his pilgrimage. Let's leap over some of it. Let's go back say a minute into the 17th chapter of Acts. He went there to the intellectual capital of the world. Went down Main Street. He saw temples to strange gods and he said he was in the sleepy Elizabethan English he was stirred.

But it says in the Amplified he was angry. I don't know what it's saying nowadays. People with false religion will do much more for it than you do and I do. Who claim we're the only gospel that can save men.

Some of you easygoing preachers that pad your folk. And as long as they come to church 11 to 12 Sunday morning and an odd hour Sunday night and Wednesday night that's all you are. That's not the Christianity of the New Testament.

Paul makes it very clear I'm the bond slave of Jesus Christ. I have no right. He went to the intellectual capital I say. He saw the streets and there was there were shrines to strange gods and temples and he was angry in his spirit.

Oh yes. Because you see they'll go on pilgrimages on their hands and knees sometimes for miles. They'll sit in the baking sun. They'll sit on a bed of spikes. They'll do a hundred things that look so unreasonable.

But you see they're trying to get merit from their God. We're not as extravagant. We coddle our bodies. We look after this perishing piece of clay that we have not that we should abuse it. Paul was angry.

He was angry in the investment of money they put in those shrines. He was angry that they could be twisted. He was angry that they could be blinded. He was angry that they could be drawn to destruction.

He went on Mars Hill where the scholars met. The epicureans, the poets, the philosophers, the smart boys. They looked down their noses and said what will this babbler say? And they discovered he was a smart boy.

He'd got straight A's in every subject. They came up with proper history. He came up with their history. They came up with poetry. He came up with their poetry. Came up with philosophy and he counted.

He said certain of your poets, certain of your philosophy. Oh this boy's read everything. And they listened to him until he came to the miracle that Sir Ambrose Fleming said is the supreme miracle of the ages, the resurrection.

And he began to tell them about one called Jesus who died and he took the sin of the world and he rose again and they said you crazy lunatic. What do you mean a man rose again from the dead? What you mean is that men hounded him to a cross.

No sir, he said, no man taketh my life from me. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up. And he took the aggregate sin of mankind, not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain, could give one guilty conscience peace or wash away one stain.

But Christ the heavenly lamb took all our sins away, a sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they. And they said there's the door, get out. And he came from the intellectual capital where they worshiped learning, to the immoral capital where they worshiped less, to the place where they glorified in the brain and pursued it, to the place where they looked over bodies and lusted after them.

And when he lost the battle there, because there's no epistle of Paul to the Athenians, he came to Corinth. An old German commentator, I used to have some of his commentaries but there was too much Greek in them for me.