By Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones.

3. The Great Fact of Prophecy ( Acts 2:14–36 ).

‘But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said to them, “You men of Judea, and all you who dwell at Jerusalem, be this known to you, and listen to my words: for these are not drunk, as you suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; and it shall come about in the last days, says God, I will pour out of my Spirit on all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: and I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come: and it shall come about, that whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” “You men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as you yourselves also know: him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: whom God has raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be held by it. For David speaks concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face; for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved: therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope: because you will not leave my soul in hell, neither will you suffer your Holy One to see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life; you will make me full of joy with your countenance.” <> “Men and brethren, let me freely speak to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us to this day. Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; he, seeing this before spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. This Jesus has God raised up, of which we all are witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he has shed forth this, which you now see and hear. For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he says himself, The LORD said to my Lord, Sit you on my right hand, until I make your foes your footstool. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God has made that same Jesus, whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” —Acts 2:14–36

The day of Pentecost was a most notable and vital day for the Christian church, and it was also one of the great turning points in the history of the world. Without understanding it, it is quite impossible to have any correct notion as to the character and nature of the Christian church and the Christian message. In Acts 2 we have the first sermon that was ever preached under the auspices of the church, and therefore it is of unusual importance.

I am calling attention to Peter’s sermon because we are confronted by the tragic fact that the world, speaking generally, is not interested in this message. That is particularly staggering since we now find ourselves in a world that we understand less and less. The other day I was reading an article in a learned journal that pointed out that toward the last quarter of the nineteenth century scientists had become exceedingly confident and optimistic. Even a great and sane man like Lord Kelvin did not hesitate to say that it was merely a matter of time before all the secrets of nature would be discovered. Discoveries and inventions had led men and women to believe that scientific research and endeavour held the key to unlocking the secrets of life. But the article went on to point out, quite rightly, that in a very short time indeed all such notions were exploded.

By what? Well, by further discoveries of science! The discovery of X-rays shattered nineteenth-century optimism and dispelled the idea that all the mysteries of the universe would soon be fathomed. The discovery of radium increased the sense of mystery, and then later research in the twentieth century on the nature of the atom and so on completely destroyed this optimism. The universe has become mysterious.

But apart from that, what is life itself? What is the purpose of it all? What are we doing here? And then, of course, there is death, that inevitable event toward which everybody is moving. What is it? What lies behind it? We are only here for a short while — threescore years and ten, says the Bible. Some are taken beyond that, yes, to ninety and even more, but death is bound to come.

So is it not amazing that, confronted by such ignorance about the universe, ourselves, life, death, and eternity, the majority of men and women will still not consider the only book, the only teaching, that gives us even a modicum of explanation and understanding? It is astounding that people in the world can still go on in their fatal optimism in spite of facts that are shaking their world, even in the face of their own discoveries, and even when confronted by the sort of event that is undoubtedly uppermost in the minds of all the people of this country at present. * But this is the truth that is before us, and I assert once more that the only help and guidance we have is to be found here, in the pages of the Bible.

When we come to the Bible, we come to something that is entirely different from what passes for Christianity in the minds of so many people, both with regard to the nature of the church and the character of her message. But because people do not know that, they are not interested in it, and so turn away from it. They are left to their own misery, disturbed by events, shaken for a moment when they stand over an open grave, but then rush away to take a drink or plunge into pleasure or watch television in an attempt to forget all about it. But it is foolish to dismiss these fears by brushing them away and turning your back upon them. Here is a message that asks us all to think and to face solid facts of history, and that is why I come back to it once more.

One reason that people very often give to explain why they are not interested in Christianity is that it can be understood and dismissed finally and completely — so they say — in terms of psychology. This argument takes many different forms. Some say, “You Christians claim to have religious experiences, and people like you have claimed this throughout the centuries. It used to be thought, of course, that all this was real, but now we know otherwise.” (Incidentally, with reference to Lord Kelvin’s confident assertion, which I quoted earlier, he was answered not only by the discovery of X-rays, but perhaps quite as much by the theories of Freud and his school of psychology.) The argument is this: “Of course, we are not all the same. We have different temperaments, and we react in different ways to the same set of facts. Furthermore, people’s own minds can produce things. People used to think there was a great God in the heavens. Of course, we have now discovered, as the result of psychological research, that there is nothing there at all, but people have conjured up the idea of some powerful father figure, some great being outside us. When they say there is a God, they are merely projecting their own feelings, their own sensations. And that is the essence of religion.”

We are asked to look at the science of the development of religions — the philosophy of religion, as it is called. And we are told that the further back we go in the story of the human race, and the more primitive people are, and the more superstitious they are, the more frightened they are of life. Primitive natives are always frightened of everything, and they tend to personalise everything. They hear a thunderclap and say, “Oh, there’s some great being up there who has just roared,” and they see a flash of lightning and add, “He struck some tinder or something.” And so they turn every natural event they do not understand into the work of a god. That is primitive man.

Then we are told that as societies develop and people become more sophisticated, religious belief becomes less crude. If we go up the scale, we find fewer and fewer gods, and eventually we arrive at the Jews who reached the topmost pinnacle, maintaining that there is only one God and that the others are not gods at all. But of course, the theory continues, even the Jews were wrong. They had advanced tremendously — it is a great advance to have only one god instead of dozens — but we know now that there is not even one God. And even the most intelligent people, not only the Jews but Christian people also, are still just doing the same old thing, objectifying their fears and phobias and putting them all together into a being, a person, whom they call God. To sum up, this is the sole explanation of religion, and of Christianity, which is a higher and modified form of the religion of the Jews.

That is the argument, and I am very concerned about this because I often find that Christian people do not know how to answer it; indeed, they have even lent their support to that argument. Back in 1935 I had the privilege of taking part in a summer school for ministers. One evening I was leading a discussion, and I was most interested to notice that certain men, who were arguing from the same position as I was, were almost giving me more trouble than the people with whom we were arguing. They got up one after another and said something like this (how often one has heard it!): “It doesn’t matter what you say, I don’t care what scientific evidence you produce, you can argue as you like, you can ridicule my Bible with your learning and take most of it from me, and maintain that science can prove this and that, but you will never take my experience from me.”

These men thought that in that way they were answering the scientists, but they were simply delivering themselves lock, stock, and barrel into the arms of the psychologists! “Quite so,” says the psychologist. “That’s exactly the trouble with you religious people. You shut your eyes to the facts. You say, ‘my experience,’ but of course we can explain your experience quite simply. Think of the man who says he has had an experience of God and has felt awe in his presence. Now if you were to psychoanalyse that man, you would probably find that as a child he was once terrified by his own father. He had done something wrong; so his father had reprimanded him very severely and perhaps struck him. This began to rankle and to build up until it became his idea of God.” That is the kind of response you may get when you base the whole of your position upon your experience. Yet so many Christians do that.

Do not misunderstand me. I believe in the objective validity of religious experiences. All I am trying to show is that you cannot base the Christian message on experiences because people explain them away like that. Sometimes they go further and say, “You say that the only explanation of these experiences is your Christian message, but of course we know something about the cults. We’ve heard similar things about Christian Scientists, for example, who claim that whereas they used to be worried and troubled, now, since they’ve taken up this teaching, they are no longer ill or worried.” So if you put the Christian case in terms of some wonderful experience you have had, or in terms of an appeal like “Come to Jesus and you will find a friend” or “Come to Jesus and you will get physical healing” or “Come to Jesus and you will receive guidance” or “Come to Jesus and you will discover peace and joy,” if you put it like that, you are just opening the door to a psychological explanation of your faith.

Or again, some people may say that though they are very glad that others have had these experiences of healing and deliverance from various troubles, they themselves have never been worried by such things. “I’m very glad that you are better than you used to be,” they may say. “I’m thankful for any kind of agency that can deliver people from their troubles. I think you may be wrong in your explanation, but as long as it makes you feel better, well and good, carry on. I’m obviously a different kind of person, and I don’t need what you’re talking about. Life is going very happily and smoothly. I have a good job, I’m earning good money, I have a wife and children, we have a wonderful home, there’s nothing that I desire. So when you come with your great stories and ask me to take this, that, and the other, the answer is, thank you, but I don’t need it!” And many people are in precisely that position.

The answer to all these comments is Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost. Why did Peter preach? It was in order to give an explanation. The people in Jerusalem were suddenly confronted by a group of men and women, some of whom they may have already known, and who were obviously very simple people — fishermen and others — who were suddenly entirely changed. Something astounding had happened to them, and the people of Jerusalem “were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue?” (Acts 2:7–8). Some said the disciples were full of new wine. The crowd was confronted by a phenomenon, an experience, a change in the lives of men and women. So the question was: What has done this? And in his sermon Peter gave the answer to that question.

Notice first of all that Peter did not just talk about his experience or say, “This is wonderful, and you people can have the same thing.” No, he said, “This is that which was spoken…” and he quoted a prophet, and then another prophet, and he expounded the Scriptures. In addition, he expounded the Scriptures in terms of certain facts. The whole of this sermon is a recital of facts and an explanation of them, put in this most interesting manner. Peter said, “This Jesus has God raised up, of which we all are witnesses” (v. 32). Indeed, he addressed them, saying, “You men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as you yourselves also know: him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: whom God has raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be held by it” (vv. 22–24). Peter pointed his listeners to objective facts and then worked out his great argument. And the essence is this: “You are asking what this is, and I can only explain it to you in terms of a person called Jesus of Nazareth. He is the sole explanation.”

“If you want to understand what has happened to us,” said Peter in effect, “if you want to understand this amazing phenomenon, you have to look at that person, Jesus of Nazareth.” So Peter told them about our Lord’s birth and His life, about His teaching and especially about His death on the cross, His burial in the tomb and then His resurrection and ascension. Finally, he explained this thing that had just happened on the day of Pentecost.

Now the apostle’s argument is that the events on the day of Pentecost would not have happened were it not for those facts. Were it not that our Lord had risen from the dead and appeared to His disciples, nothing would have happened. Peter was claiming that this Jesus of Nazareth is the only begotten Son of God and that such a claim is proved by His resurrection from the dead. So Peter gave a long quotation from David. He said that David had foreseen this event and prophesied it. David could not have been talking about himself because, said Peter, “he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us to this day” (v. 29), whereas Christ, having died, had been raised and had ascended to heaven from where, “being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has shed forth this, which you now see and hear” (v. 33).

Christ, said Peter, had sent down this power, even as He had promised He would. And that, Peter argued, was the sole explanation of what had happened to them. Now you will notice that Peter did not answer in terms of a theory; he did not make a psychological analysis; he did not try to explain it. He said in essence, “I have only one explanation, and it is Jesus whom you have seen and heard and whose miracles you have witnessed.”

So I say to you that it does not matter what your temperament is; it does not matter what your psychological makeup may or may not be. Like Peter, it is my task to remind you of certain historical facts. May I put it like this to fix it in your mind? This age may well be known as the age of Winston Churchill* —a fact of history. There has been an age of Cromwell; there was an age of Julius Caesar. These are facts — these people were historical personages. And Jesus of Nazareth is a historical personage. I am not trying to explain some experience or a theory. I start with certain events that have taken place and belong solidly to history. That was Peter’s argument. That was how he started his sermon. But he put it in a most interesting way. He put it in terms of this next element that I want to emphasise — prophecy. “This,” he said, “is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel” (v. 16), and then he proceeded to quote that prophet who had lived many centuries earlier.

That Jesus’ life and death is the fulfilment of prophecy is one of the main arguments in this sermon, and I want to show you its importance. It is very interesting to notice how these preachers repeated themselves. Much later on, when Peter came to write a letter and was talking about this great salvation, he said:

“Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come to you: searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not to themselves, but to us they did minister the things, which are now reported to you by them that have preached the gospel to you with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.” —1 Pet. 1:10–12

And in Peter’s second letter, when he reminds his readers that he is an old man, he says:

“I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though you know them, and be established in the present truth. Yes, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle (temporary dwelling), to stir you up by putting you in remembrance; knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle (temporary dwelling), even as our Lord Jesus Christ has shown me.” —2 Pet. 1:12–14

Peter’s body was but a tent (“tabernacle”), and he says in so many words, “I am going to put it off; I am going on to the realm of the spiritual.” So what was Peter reminding his readers of? Well, he says:

“For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto you do well that you take heed, as to a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the daystar arise in your hearts.” —2 Pet. 1:16–19

You see, the old man is saying, “I am going to die and shall not be with you much longer. So I want you to hold on to those things that you have heard, because you are living in a difficult world, and you are confronted by the world, the flesh, and the devil. You yourselves have to die, and I am thinking of your having an abundant entry into the everlasting kingdom of God when you come to die. The only way to have this is to hold on to the truth you have heard.”

But somebody may say, “Why should we believe it? On what grounds do we believe it?”

“Well,” says Peter in effect, “I am being a witness. I remember the day when this Jesus of Nazareth turned to James and John and me and said, ‘Come along, I want you to go with Me to the top of the mountain.’ So we went up, leaving the other disciples at the foot, and you know, I shall never forget it. There the three of us were with Him on top of this mountain, and suddenly the place was overshadowed by a bright, shining cloud; and as we looked at Him, He was entirely transfigured. He began to shine with an amazing luminosity — even His clothing was shining, and a radiance of heaven came into it. Two men appeared, speaking to Him — Moses and Elijah — and we heard a voice speaking from heaven saying, ‘This is my beloved Son: hear Him.’

“Now,” continues Peter, “I am an old man, on the verge of the grave, but I testify to you that I was there. I heard it. I am a witness to it, and so were my brethren, James and John. We heard that voice on the holy mount; we heard God speaking about this Jesus. You have not followed cunningly devised fables. We have not been telling you fairy tales. We have had to suffer for this, and I know that I am going to suffer again. He told me; he prophesied that I was going to die in a most extraordinary way.”

Jesus had predicted that when Peter came to die, he would be crucified (see John 21:18); and according to tradition he was crucified upside-down. So here is an old man who knows that is coming, and he says, “I tell you in the presence of God, I heard the voice.” But notice that in his letter Peter does not stop at that. The facts are there, and they are important, but he also says, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy.” “If you do not believe my testimony,” says Peter in effect, “if you do not believe my witness, then I have another bit of evidence — prophecy, verified prophecy.”

So at the end of his life Peter was, in a sense, preaching the same sermon as his very first sermon on the day of Pentecost when he reminded these people of Jerusalem, “…as you yourselves also know …This Jesus has God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.” But he also said, “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel.”

In his sermon in Acts 2, Peter quoted two prophecies in particular — the prophecy of the prophet Joel, and that of David who, because he was a man of God who was at times illumined by the Spirit, also prophesied and wrote his prophecies in the form of psalms. The apostle’s argument is that prophecy is a fact. These prophecies were written centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ. So it does not make the slightest difference whether you are volatile or quiet, whether you are an optimist or a pessimist. It is a solid fact of history that many centuries before the birth of Christ, various men wrote down, in documents that were preserved, prophecies about a person who was going to come. They gave the most extraordinary details concerning Him — details about His birth in Bethlehem, about His poverty, and about the character of His life. They told of His ride into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey, of the betrayal for thirty pieces of silver, and they predicted that He would be “brought as a lamb to the slaughter” (Isa. 53:7) and killed. They said He would die, yes, but that He would rise again and would ascend and send down the Holy Spirit. All of that was prophesied.

This is the basis of the Christian faith. I do not simply preach experiences to you. Thank God, I have had experiences, but I do not tell you what has happened to me. I do not talk about myself. With the apostle Paul I say, “We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord” (2 Cor. 4:5). That is why I never believe in just having people give their testimonies and say, “Come to Jesus and you will get the same thing.” No, no. My task is to hold these facts before you, the facts recorded in the Gospels and, behind them, the fact of prophecy.

But how do you explain prophecy? How did it come about that so many centuries before the events, these men were able to tell us about them in such detail? The answer is given by Peter in that last letter of his when he says, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation” (2 Pet. 1:20).

This means that none of God’s prophets ever wrote a prophecy that he simply conjured up out of his own mind or imagination. The prophet was not just a man who sat down and thought philosophically about life, trying with his insight to understand it, and then had a brilliant idea. A human being cannot by himself foretell facts. He can give theories, he can make a forecast, though it is generally wrong rather than right, but that is all. These men, however, were right, and right in detail. If they had told a one- time fact, you could say it was a coincidence, but there are dozens of details. It is extraordinary. How do you explain it? Peter said, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet. 1:21). That is the only explanation: It is God who was behind everything, revealing it, making it known, and that is what the prophets say. Read their words for yourselves. They do not say, “I’ve suddenly had a bright idea.” No, it is, “the word of the Lord came to me,” “the burden of the Lord,” “the Lord spoke to me.” They were given the words to say.

Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection were fulfilments of prophecy. This was the basis of Peter’s message, and I suggest to you that it is unanswerable. So let me summarise what it all means. First and foremost, it reminds us of the living God. He is not an abstraction. He is not a philosophic ‘x’ about which you argue and debate. No, no, He is a living God who gives revelation, gives knowledge, and imparts information.

Peter also made this striking point: In those revelations that God gave to the prophets, He was revealing that He has a great plan and purpose with respect to this world. That is the message of Christianity, and that is really why I am a preacher. It is because there is no other hope. Princes and lords may flourish, but then they fade. The great statesman dies; the great leader goes. There is an enemy that conquers all — death. Today is a historic occasion; it is a great day that will go down in history — January 24, 1965 — the death of Sir Winston Churchill. So let us look at history. What does it tell us? It tells us that great men arise, that they give an impetus to the human race and solve certain problems. But they die, and they leave us in a world of tragedy and pain.

Churchill said that he did not believe he had been called to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire, but he witnessed it, did he not? And that is the whole message of history. Men and women come, they strive, they cut great figures on the stage of history, then out they go, even the greatest of them, and the problems remain. I am not detracting from them in saying that. All honour goes to great men and women, but it has nothing to do with Christianity. The message of Christianity is that God has a plan and purpose.

In his sermon Peter, referring to the death of our Lord, said, “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” Notice the words, “the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.” That is what the Christian message is about. It tells us that the death of Christ on the cross was not an accident, that ultimately it was not even something achieved by men; it was part of the plan and purpose of God. So whatever your temperament, whether you are an optimist or a pessimist, whether you are mercurial or phlegmatic, with all your scientific and psychological knowledge, listen to this: The great eternal God who revealed the plan hundreds of years ago is carrying it out; and as part of His plan, He sent His Son into this world, even to the death of the cross.

And the object of this plan? It is to save. The end of the quotation from Joel is this: “And it shall come to pass, that whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (v. 21). Saved from what? Saved from eternal misery, which is the punishment we all so richly deserve from God, against whom we have rebelled and whom we have offended. And we are saved for a positive knowledge of God, for a new, a fuller life, an expanding life, a life that leads to glory everlasting. That is God’s plan, and that is what He revealed through the prophets all those centuries before the events. Isaiah said, “Comfort you, comfort you my people, says your God” (Isa. 40:1). All eyes would see God’s salvation.

And God would bring about this salvation by sending His Son into the world. The prophets had foretold that a baby would be born of a virgin in Bethlehem. He was coming — the Deliverer, the Messiah. They were to wait for Him. That was the message of the prophets.

God would send a Deliverer, but how would He bring about deliverance? Would it be by giving us an example, by saying, “Follow Me. Imitate that”? Thank God, that is not the message. Who can imitate God? It is easy for the philosophers to talk and write about it, but have you ever tried to do it? No, no, God’s Deliverer did not come merely to teach us; He did not come and tell us, “Do this, and you will save yourselves.” He knew we could not. It was because the whole world lies guilty before God that He came. “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). He came because man could not save himself.

This is the answer: “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.” God sent His Son into this world to bear the guilt of our sins. God punished our sins in His Son. It was God who contrived the cross. The cruel hands of men actually knocked in the nails, but it was by the predetermined counsel and foreknowledge of God. This was God’s way of saving in His Son and by His death; and to prove it, He raised His Son from the dead. Our Lord was big enough and strong enough to bear all our sin: “Whom God has raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be held by it.” Why? Because He was God the Son in the flesh and He could not die. He is divine; He is eternal. He rose, bursting asunder the bands of death.

And so Peter taught the people, and that is the Christian message — that all of us need to be delivered from the guilt and the bondage and the power and the captivity of sin, and that it is Christ alone who can deliver us. This is God’s plan, determined and purposed before the foundation and creation of the world.

And finally, not only has God a plan, but it is a plan that is certain; nothing can stop it. The Pharisees and Sadducees and scribes and all the others were against Christ. They all delivered Him up to death. He was a danger, a nuisance, and they regarded Him as a political agitator. “Away with Him,” they shouted. The unintelligent mob crucified Him, and they thought that was the end. But they did not know that even as they were hammering in the nails, they were carrying out God’s will. The God I preach to you can use His enemies, and He has often done so. They do not know what is happening, but He does. He used His enemies to carry out His own plan. Human malignity could not frustrate it. Our Lord’s enemies thought that when they crucified Him and saw His body taken to a tomb, that would be the end of Him, but it was not. Hell had let itself loose, man and devil had done their utmost, but God smashed it all. God raised Christ from the dead. He is over all, and He triumphed over all, even over all His enemies, even the devil and hell and everything else that was against Him. All are to be defeated: He has announced it by the Resurrection.

So the apostle says here, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God has made that same Jesus, whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (v. 36). It is a solemn thought that we are face to face with God. You may say, “I’m all right. I’m happy. I have all I want. It’s a wonderful life.” Yes, but how do you explain these facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth? Why did it happen? Why did it have to happen? Why did God send Him? Why was this God’s plan? You are a living soul, and this has happened in your world, and it has happened with respect to you, just as it has with respect to everybody else, because in spite of our differences, in one respect we are all the same: We are all sinners in the sight of God. “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10).

The issue cannot be evaded by talking about psychology and temperament and by quoting experiences. Every one of us is confronted by the fact of this Jesus of Nazareth. Yes, it is Sunday, January 24, 1965. Why? Not because Sir Winston Churchill died, but because Jesus of Nazareth was born and lived and taught and died and rose again and sent down the Spirit. It is 1965 A.D. — Anno Domini —the year of our Lord. That is what we must all face. It does not matter who you are. It does not matter whether you are able or whether you are lacking in talent, whether you are learned or ignorant. It does not matter what you have been or what your constitution is. Nothing matters except that you are a human being and that God sent His only begotten Son into a world of human beings.

So the question confronting you is not what you need, but who this person is. Why did the prophets write about Him, and, especially, why did God ever send Him to die? Has this got anything to do with me? That is your question. That is the way to face history. That is the way to face the history even of a great man. You do not just say, “How wonderful he was!” You say, “What has all this got to do with me?” You relate yourself to history, and that is right and good; we should all be trying to do that. But here is the supreme fact of history: Why Jesus Christ? Why Bethlehem? Why Golgotha? Why the tomb? Why the Resurrection? Why the descent of the Holy Spirit? Why the church? Why all these things?

Have you ever asked those questions? It is because men and women never face the fact of Christ and the fact of prophecy that they continue in the darkness and the misery of sin, not knowing where they are going, not understanding life, not ready to die, afraid of the eternal future. So today make use of history. Ask yourself this fundamental question: Who is this Jesus? And if you do that seriously, you will come to see that He has everything to do with you, for He came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). He came “to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). My dear friends, look at the facts, and especially this great fact of prophecy, of which the facts are a verification.