PARABLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD

John 10:6-18

Verses 1-5 of this same chapter seems to teach that the one huge sheepfold symbolizes the entire human race. The Good Shepherd, who symbolizes Jesus, calls His own sheep out of the sheepfold and leads them to His own pastures. These verses seem to teach that Jesus separates His own sheep, symbolic of the Church, from all the other sheep, symbolic of the world, that are left in the sheepfold.

Verses 7-9 teach that only those sheep; that is, the Church who hear the voice of the Good Shepherd can be saved and can go in and out of the door which symbolizes the Savior. This seems to teach that while the Church is in the world, only the Church can hear the Good Shepherd and go out through the door to His pastures while the rest of the sheep must remain in the sheepfold.

In verse 10, the thief symbolizes the Devil who comes to destroy and kill the sheep that remain in the sheepfold; that is, those who remain in the world. The sheep who hear the Good Shepherd's voice always go through the door to His pastures and escape from the thief.

The interpretation of Jesus' statement in verse 10, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly," is quite problematic. By His use of the word "they" in the first part of His statement, did Jesus mean the entire sheepfold, or did He mean just the sheep that He leads out? If the second "they" indicates those whom Christ gives the more abundant life which is the Church, then what does the first "they" indicate? The Church possesses far more than just life. The Church possesses the abundant life of Christ Himself. Did Jesus mean by the first "they" that He would eventually give life to the entire sheepfold?

In verse 11, Jesus definitely teaches that He gave His life not just for His sheep, but for the entire sheepfold. Jesus' teaching here accords with His teaching in John 12:47. But the question remains: Does Jesus save only His sheep, or does He eventually give life to the entire sheepfold? I John 5:11-12 seems to teach that the life which Jesus gives is the same as eternal life. These verses mean perhaps that Jesus meant by His first "they" that all His believers receive His life, but that only some of His believers enjoy the more abundant life.

Verse 12 seems to refer only to the sheep that are left in the sheepfold. The word "hierling" symbolizes all false teachers and false religions. The word "wolf" symbolizes the Devil. According to verse 5, the Good Shepherd always provides protection for His sheep. This means that the sheep that the wolf catches and scatters can only refer to the unbelieving sheep left in the sheepfold.

Verse 14 can only refer to the Church which comprises Jesus' sheep.

According to John 3:16-17 and 6:51, the sheep of verse 15 can only refer to the entire sheepfold; that is, the world.

However, the word "fold" in verse 16 seems to refer only to the Church, and the rest of this verse refers to the Gentiles to whom the gospel will go, and some of them will be added to the Church.

In verses 17 and 18, Jesus prophesies about the gospel which will save His Church. Jesus assures His Church that He possesses the necessary power to endure every sin of mankind on the cross, and that He also has the power to raise Himself from the dead to justify and save His Church. He further assures His Church that mere men cannot kill Him. He will voluntarily give His life and take it again for the life of His Church.

The Ninevah Revival

    Why was the revival needed?

 If we fundamentalists strictly believe in the inerrancy of God's Word, then let us pay close attention to excatly that which the Word teaches. Jonah 4:2 tells us precisely why God sent this revival to Ninevah. God sent this revival because He is loving and gracious. He wanted to save this generation of Ninevites. The prophet Nahum tells us that God destroyed Ninevah approximately 150 years after Jonah for the sin of apostasy. God did not save the generation of Ninevites before this 150 year window of grace, nor did He save the generation following. Why this particular generation? God does not tell is in detail why.

Who did God use as an instrument of revival?

The Bible plainly states that God used Jonah as His instrument of revival. God's will was to save these Ninevites. The book of Jonah relates that God accomplished His will despite the hardness of the human heart or the freedom of his will. There can be no doubt that the Bible teaches the freedom of the human will because Jonah chose to try to run from God instead of going to Ninevah. If Jonah had not been free, as the Calvinists teach, then he would have been compelled to go to Ninevah despite his hatred for them. Jonah hated the Ninevites because they were a very cruel people who had destroyed thousands of Jonah's people, the Israelites. Jonah was afraid they would repent, and he wanted them to be destroyed. When Jonah finally got to Ninevah and preached, he became angry because they repented and God saved them. The fact that these cruel, idolatrous people were saved bears testimony to the fact that God can and will save anyone no matter how hardhearted they may be. Perhaps, this is the very reason God saved these Ninevites. God wanted to show everyone who reads His Word that He will accomplish His will to save no matter what any sinful man may do.

  What did the revival center upon?

According to God's Word, this revival centered on nothing less than God's will to send this revival. There was no praying for revival. There was no preacher willing to do God's will. There was only God's will. Even after God had severely punished Jonah, causing him to change his mind, Jonah still had rebellion in his heart even as he preached. Jonah got angry with God because the Ninevites repented, and he went out of the city to the east, lay down in the hot sun, and wished to die. Jonah never got right with God in this life, and yet God showed tender love and care for him. This story constitutes a message for all true believers. God loves us and has saved us from our sin despite our sin, heresy, or even faithlessness. II Timothy 2:13. God may punish us, but "He will never leave us or forsake us." Hebrews 13:5.

How can we apply the revival to our own spiritual condition today?

In the third chapter of II Timothy, the Apostle Paul prophetically describes the conditions of the world "in the last days." The Apostle Paul did not blame the Church for the evil conditions of the last days. Jesus severely criticised the Laodicean church in Revelation 3:14-19 for their lukewarmness, but He did not blame them for the evil conditions of the world. In the tenth chapter of the gospel of John, Jesus taught that He knows all of His sheep, and His sheep know Him. This truth makes it manifestly and logically impossible for any souls to go to hell because the Church failed to get the gospel to them. This teaching makes the preaching of the gospel necessary for the salvation of souls, and this cannot be true. The salvation of souls rests solely on the finished work of Christ and has nothing whatsoever to do with the obedience or disobedience of the Church. Jesus taught the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20 in order to provide rewards for Christians who would obey Him in getting the gospel message to the world. But Christian obedience has nothing to do with God providing salvation for any believer. Salvation has been provided by Christ alone. 

God provided caring rewards for Jonah because he obeyed God and went to Ninevah. But had Jonah refused to obey God even after being severely punished, this would not have stopped the Ninevah revival. God would have simply sent the revival some other way, and the Bible would have recorded that other way. 

Parable of the Vine and Branches

                                             John 15:1-17     

Jesus gave this parable as an illustration of how His Father would separate the Church from the world. Jesus is the true vine; that is, the life giver, and His Father is the husbandman; that is, the One who planted the Vine in the world.

The branches represent the people of the world. The fruit represents the life and good works of the Church. Those branches that symbolize the people of the world who will not allow the life of Christ to flow into them to give them life and fruit, the Father cuts them off, and they die and are burned. The life of Christ flows into the branches that represents the Church and supplies the Church with life and fruit. God even purges the sins of the Church so that it can produce even more fruit.

In verse 3, Jesus informed His disciples that they were clean because they had received His Word. Jesus meant that these members of His Church would be washed clean of sin by His blood through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Living Word. Since God is eternal, He often spoke in His Word of works He would do as if He had already done them, and in a sense, He has already accomplished all of His eternal purposes. John 17:4 provides a perfect example of the eternal sense of God's Word.

In verses 4 and 5, our Lord taught that His life was absolutely essential to the life and fruit bearing powers of the Church. In verse 3, Christ alludes to His shed blood which is essential for the cleansing of His Church. In verses 4 and 5, Christ alludes to His resurrection which is essential to the eternal life of the Church. 

Our Lord does not teach in verse 6 that a saved person can lose his salvation. By the phrase, "If a man abide not in me...," Jesus simply meant those branches that never received life from Him in the first place.

In verse 7, Jesus did not mean that a believer could ask God for whatever he wanted, such as riches, and get it. Verse 8 clarifies verse 7. Jesus meant that the Church could ask God for whatever it needed to bear fruit and spread the gospel, and God would supply that need. But these verses also mean that sometimes God will give an individual believer something for which he has asked. 

Verses 9-14 do not mean that those who fail to keep Christ's commandments will lose God's love. God absolutely loves everyone. Christ meant, as verse 11 shows, that Church members who separate themselves from the world, obey Him, and live for Him will be certain to experience constant fellowship with Him, feeling that special love and joy that comes only from the Holy Spirit. Believers who backslide into sin do not feel God's love except at times when God rebukes them and chastises them.

In verses 15 through 17, our Lord teaches that He considers the members of His Church to be His friends and not His servants. However, the friends of the Lord will serve Him because they love Him.

The phrase in verse 16, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you...," does not mean that God has predestined those who will be saved and those who will be lost. Both John 6:37 and 1:12 deny this Calvinistic interpretation. This phrase simply means that no one can get saved except by the sacrifice of Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit. For example, it is possible that a person could sincerely repent and call on God for Christ's salvation, but if God chose not to save him, he would not be saved. But according to John 6:37, God never does that. God has promised that whosoever sincerely repents and puts his faith in Christ will never be denied salvation. John 6:37 and 1:12, as well as other scriptures, guarantee the freedom of the individual to obtain Christ's salvation through sincere repentance and faith.

Jesus ends His parable with a commandment that His followers love each other. Jesus bases His commandment on verses 9 and 12 where our Lord provides His Church with the awesome assurance that He loves His Church to the same degree that His Father loves Him. The grace of God is truly amazing. 

On Reconciliation with God

At the moment of salvation, God looks into the believer’s future and sees him as fully restored to fellowship with God in spirit, soul, and body. God can see the believer’s future reconciliation because He never fails to save the repentant sinner, and He never fails to sanctify the believer in spirit, soul, and body. John 6:37; II Corinthians 3:17-18

However, in actuality God never reconciles the earthly body of the believer, not in salvation or sanctification. The earthly body of the believer must die as a result of sin, return to dust, and be separated from God forever. Genesis 3:19.

But this fact does not mean that the body of the believer will be lost forever. God will recreate the bodies of every believer and reunite them with their recreated souls and spirits at the Rapture of the Church. At the moment of salvation, God recreates the spirit and soul of the believer and reconciles him to God, but not his earthly body which retains his sinful nature. Nevertheless, God will reconcile every believer in recreated spirit, soul, and body at the Rapture of the Church. II Corinthians 5:1-5.

This begs the question. Does the recreated body of the believer need to be washed in the blood of Jesus since his sinful body never becomes so washed? One must consider this question in light of salvation by grace. At the moment of salvation, the "born again" experience with God, God recreates the spirits and souls of believers. God does not remake the old sinful spirits and souls. God fully recreates new spirits and souls. God washes away the inner sinful nature of man by the blood of Jesus, so that He can recreate a new inner nature. This same process would apply at the Rapture of the Church. The blood of Jesus will wash away the sinful flesh of all believers so that God can recreate the believers with perfect spirits, souls, and bodies with whom He can fellowship with forever. II Corinthians 5:17; I Thessalonians 5:23; I Corinthians 15:50.

All of this explains that which Jesus taught in John 11:26 about how believers never die. The earthly bodies of believers die because they are not believers. When a believer gets saved, God recreates his soul and spirit, and in addition, God recreates a new body for him which He keeps in heaven until He delivers it to the believer at the Rapture of the Church. II Corinthians 5:1-5.

On Redemption by the Blood of Jesus

   

According to Leviticus 17:11, the life of man and beast resides in the blood. Even though a person can die without shedding his blood, nevertheless, when the heart stops beating, the blood stops flowing and carrying life to every cell in the body, and the person dies.

Sin has corrupted man's life and blood and causes his death in body, soul, and spirit. In Leviticus 17:12, God commanded all mankind to never eat blood because that would symbolize the willful partaking of sin itself.

The blood that flowed in the veins of Jesus was pure and holy blood with no stain of sin whatsoever. Thus, the blood of Jesus contained the power of an everlasting life. The blood of Jesus was the holy life of God Himself while He was on the earth. When God the Father allowed Jesus to be nailed to the cross, He also allowed the devil to throw all of mankind's sins at Jesus because the devil thought that the terrible suffering those sins would cause Jesus would break Him, cause Him to sin, and in this way, the devil could kill God permanently. What the devil had tried to do by tempting Jesus, he was then trying to do by force.

But Jesus beat the devil at his own game. Jesus willfully took all of the sins of mankind upon Himself on the cross, and His holy blood washed all of them away. When the Roman's soldier's spear pierced Jesus' side, every drop of blood and water left in Jesus' body flowed out. Every sin had been washed away.

Those who believe that Jesus did this for them possess the everlasting life of a resurrected Christ. The power of sin only caused a temporary, three-day death of God. Since the body and blood of Jesus was wholly united with the life of God, and the life is in the blood, then when Jesus became kosher on the cross, He died.

During this three day period, Jesus ascended to heaven and applied His shed blood to the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies in heaven. His Father saw this, and He was satisfied that Jesus had accomplished a perfect act of pure love. Jesus had sacrificed His own blood and life to rescue mankind from sin, death, and hell. The Father could accept such an act of pure love because there could be no sin in it whatsoever. Because of the self-sacrifice displayed in the love of Jesus, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were reunited in the resurrection of the spiritual body of Jesus with the power, through the Holy Spirit, to wash away the sins of believers with the holy blood of Jesus and impart to them the everlasting life of God. In this way, the everlasting life of the believer depends on the perfect life of Jesus, His holy shed blood on the cross, His burial and descent into hell to take away our sins, and His resurrection to give us His everlasting life. I Corinthians 6:11; Hebrews 9:12; I Corinthians 15:1-4; I Peter 1:18-19; Revelation 1:5.

Is the Mind Merely Material?

A camera cannot take a picture of itself unless it happens to be taken by the use of a mirror. In such a case, the mirror must reflect the light image of the camera back to the camera in order for the camera to get a picture of itself.

By the same token, the brain cannot register an image of itself unless it projects a consciousness outside of itself which will reflect an objective picture of the brain back to itself. Is such a consciousness spiritual or merely physical?

The film inside the camera must rely on the reflected light image in order to capture a picture of the camera. Both light and mirrors are physical objects.

But is this true of a consciousness projected by the brain? Similar to film in a camera, the power to capture the reflected image of the brain inheres in the consciousness projected by the brain. Consciousness captures the image, not the brain.

But how can one know about this projected consciousness unless one is conscious of it? Since images adhere to consciousness alone, then consciousness must possess the innate power to project another consciousness by means of which it is conscious of itself. This provides the basis of self-consciousness. But in order for one to know that one is self-conscious, one must project another consciousness, and in order to know that, still another. If the finite mind had the requisite power, this process could go on to infinity.

This begs the question: Is infinity real or an illusion? Infinity must be real, otherwise, we could have no consciousness of it. One may object that we can be conscious of many things which are illusions. Strictly speaking, this is not true. The truth is that we cannot be conscious of anything except that which is real. All illusions are merely false combinations of real things gleaned from experience. All true combinations are real. This means that consciousness must be that very necessary power of the universe that causes its objects to be real whether physical or abstract. 

Is infinity a false combination or a true one? Infinity must be real because it encompasses everything of which we can be conscious, as well as everything of which we are not conscious but could be, as well as all possibilities.

Since we can be conscious of information, then it has to be real. Information cannot be material. Consciousness recognizes that information adheres to the arrangement of objects, such as letters, and not to the objects themselves. A message within an arrangement cannot be a material thing.

Since consciousness of infinity must be a part of infinity, and every part of infinity has to be equal to the whole, then Infinite Information must be real. Since Infinite Information must be real, then so must an Infinite Mind.

Baptist History from the Founding of America to the Present

There can be no doubt that the idea of freedom of conscience must be logically connected with freedom of speech, for whatever a man thinks in his heart he should be free to express. Thomas Jefferson did not write his own ideas into the First Amendment to the Constitution. He obtained these ideas of freedom of speech and religion from the true history of Christianity and western civilization as preserved by the independent, Bible-believing churches that have existed since the time of Christ.

True historians have recorded these facts as being an essential part of western history. One such example being the existence of a free-state in the ninth century called Teprice in Armenia which granted freedom of speech to all its citizens. Teprice was established by the Bible-believing Paulicians and lasted for 150 years. Although the Paulicians and other Bible-believing peoples were called many different names by their enemies, they all preserved the same basic, Biblical ideals of freedom of conscience, separation of church and state, and the autonomy of the local assembly of believers in Christ. These ideals were incorporated into the Constitution of the United States and are still maintained by the independent, Baptist churches of America to this day. 

Recommended Readings:
The Trail of Blood by J.M. Carroll
American Foundations Laid by the Baptists by Ted Alexander
The Collegiate Baptist History Workbook by James R. Beller
The New Testament Church by David W. Cloud
These books can be obtained from any Christian Bookstore.