So spake that a great multitude believed

"Starting in Hebrews, the kingdom writers of the tribulation epistles placed emphasis on their readers  reading the book," explains Michigan preacher Tom Bruscha. "They're going to be left with a Bible in the last days.

"In Exodus when God is telling Moses to write a Book that's the beginning of the Bible. Moses began to write God's Word about 1,500 B.C. That's actually 2,500 years after Creation. That's 2,500 years after Adam and Eve, so that's a long period of time.

"The first 2,500 years man had God's Word passed down verbally. Noah's Flood came about 1,500 years after Creation. By the way, I'm talking in generalities, plus or minus 60 years, just to make things simple.

"Prior to the Flood, man lived up to 969 years. Genesis 5:5 tells us Adam lived 939 years. That's 570 years before the Flood. You find out Noah's father, Lamech, knew Adam for 56 years. He knew Adam's son, Seth, for 168 years. Noah was born just 14 years after Seth's death.

"What does that mean? Verbal communication, passing down God's Word, was first, second and, at worst, third-hand revelation. These men, because man lived so long, were passing down the Word of God.

"For those first 2,500 years there was also another revelation they had. Psalm 19: [1] The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

[2] Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
[3] There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.
[4] Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun

"They're learning something as they look up in the clouds at night. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. They're line--you know, someone says, 'That's a good line,' meaning a statement is being made. Their line has gone out through all the earth.

"They were able at that time to look up and read God's Word in the stars. The next 500 years after the Flood is when the Gentiles changed the truth of God into a lie and the message that was in those stars was then lost. That revelation early man had, they changed that into a lie. Romans 1 declares that for us. The 'they' in the passage is early man.

"Verse 25 says, [25] Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

"Romans 3 begins, [1] What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? [2] Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.

"God took His truth that man's perverted, raised up Abraham and then, in that next 500 years, the oracles of God were given to the nation of Israel. By the time you come to Moses, God is now telling Moses to write these things in a book. Over the next 1,100 years God gave man the Old Testament."

*****

I Thessalonians 2:13 says, [13] For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.

"You see how important it is to have that attitude about the Book you're holding in your hand?" says Jordan. "By the way, that is a great verse about where they got God's Word. When you hear the Scripture, there's the idea of a 'received text.'

"That term didn't just come out of the air. The Elzevir brothers didn't just invent that term in 1624 when they published their Greek text. That was a term that came out of the Scripture. That was a Bible term about people's attitudes about the Word they had.

"They didn't receive it as the word of men; they knew it was God's Word. When you think about how God's Word was passed down to you, you're not thinking about it being preserved through history the way men preserved Shakespeare or Homer.

*****

"As a young preacher there's a verse that meant an awful lot to me and has all through the years. I worked in the Mobile Rescue Mission back in the mid- to late-'60s and that's where I started preaching.

"The first five years I preached was in the mission and I was privileged to preach anywhere from 10-15 times a week. When I was at Mobile College in the ministerial association with all the preacher boys (60-70 guys studying for the ministry) some of these guys were just dying to preach and I'd say, 'Well, come on down to the mission and I'll let you preach anytime,' but I couldn't get them to come. They wanted to go preach in a church.

"I was preaching so often that it was not a startling thing for me to preach. But one of the things  you'd do in the mission is preach the gospel to lost people primarily, and I noticed that Brother Reynolds, when he would preach, he'd preach maybe only 15-17 minutes. He was ill and not in good health and he had to sit on a stool and hold onto the pulpit. But he would preach and this verse was the verse that described his preaching to me:

Acts 14:1 says, [1] And it came to pass in Iconium, that they went both together into the synagogue of the Jews, and so spake, that a great multitude both of the Jews and also of the Greeks believed.

"When it says they 'so spake,' Paul says in I Corinthians 2, '[1] And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.

"Paul's saying, 'I didn't come in with good words and fair speeches. I didn't use my education.' Paul was a advanced-degree rabbinical scholar. He knew all the 75-cent words. He said, 'I didn't come with all the big talk. I didn't come blowing smoke down your pipe. I came doing one thing, determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I just wanted to preach the gospel of the grace of God to you and nothing else mattered.'

"I used to watch people come to the mission and I'd watch Brother Reynolds get up in front of a group of 50-60 men, most of whom we'd never seen before, and in his physical infirmity, he'd preach to them and see 8, 10, 12 guys trust Christ.

"When I say that, I don't just mean walk an aisle and shake a preacher's hand; I'm talking about men that I would deal with and sit down and talk to them about what they understood and what they were doing and see them really, genuinely get saved.

"Then I'd watch in the evening meetings after Brother Reynolds had gone home and we'd have churches come, and they'd use all the techniques and all the psychology and all the other stuff, and maybe one or two would respond out of a group of 100.

"I used to ask myself, 'How can Brother Reynolds preach to the smaller group of 50-60 guys just there for lunch and see a harvest, and these other guys preach and have all the bells and whistles and entertainment, and just see a little handful?'

"That verse right there in Acts 14, I'd say, 'You know, I got to figure that one out,' and I studied Brother Reynolds for all those years and got to know him, and what I wanted to learn from him was, 'They so spake that a great multitude believed . . . '

"You know what I discovered? When Brother Reynolds would preach, he'd have something of a little outline. One of my favorite messages that he would preach, one that I used to preach on the street, had three points. No. 1 was 'heaven's greatest testimony': 'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.' No. 2 was 'the first greatest tragedy': They rejected Him and took Him out and crucified Him. No. 3 was 'man's greatest trust': 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.'

"Now, that's pretty much the gospel, isn't it? And in between there, Brother Reynolds would quote about 15-20 verses from memory; he'd just look at you and give you the verses one right after another.

"A lot of times you'll hear me preach and I'll string verses together. I learned to do that watching Clyde Reynolds do that.

"I learned that when he preached, all he was using was the power of God's Word and it would penetrate dark, hardened hearts in a way that all the other stuff never did.

*****

"Paul 'so spake.' He took that Word and made it the issue. And when he praised the Thessalonians, he said, 'Pray that my ministry of preaching the Word wouldn't be the object of all this interference and that the Word of God may be glorified; that we could so speak that a great multitude would believe.'

"The hindrance to the free course of the Word was going to come from unreasonable and wicked men. He was in Acts 18 when he wrote that from Corinth; he'd already had some experiences the Thessalonians knew about.

"When Paul goes into Thessalonica and some people get saved, Acts 17:5 says, [5] But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.

"You see that? It says they 'moved with envy.' There's a spiritual, sinful, wicked motivation. It says they 'took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort.' They reached out to a bunch of characters of ill-repute; they literally reached into the criminal underworld and gathered a company and 'set all the city on an uproar . . .'

"When he says they were unreasonable, that means they weren't people you could sit down and reason with. They were not people who were going to think the thing through with you. They were wicked. Their unreasonableness came from their wickedness.

"Through the years that verse has proved itself over and over, because you'll discover that people are out to resist the ministry and it will make no sense to you. When you find people being unreasonable, you'll find there's something sticking them and it's going to be some sin. The wickedness, the envy, causes the unreasonableness.

"When God tells Israel, 'Come now, let us reason together,' Paul says '[1] I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

"There is a reasonableness to God's grace, to the gospel, and when people are unreasonable, what you have to learn is that reasoning with their unreasonableness isn't going to get you anywhere. That's why arguing the science, or the philosophy, to people--arguing on their terms of unreasonableness never gets you anywhere. There's a wickedness in the heart that has concluded . . .

*****

"When I graduated from high school I was working at the mission and I actually wanted to go to Moody Bible Institute. Brother Reynolds was a graduate of Moody, the secretary of the mission was a graduate of Moody.

"I would have come to Chicago and gone to Moody in the late '60s had I been able to but my dad was ill. He had a rare blood disease and I couldn't go up there and leave him in the sick condition he was in with only my mother to tend to him, and so I didn't have the opportunity to leave.

"So I went to Mobile College (now Mobile University), which was only 3-4 years old (Southern Baptists started it) and it was a good school. Brother Reynolds sat me down after I was accepted and said, 'I want to give you two verses for you not to forget while you're at college.'

"They were Proverbs 18:1-2: [1] Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom.
[2] A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.

"It's through desire, so that you might discover what you want. A man 'having separated himself,' means,  'I'm going to get a higher quality of life. I'm going to be one of the elite.'

"He 'seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom.' Is that a good thing to do? All wisdom? A fool does that. You remember that verse in Romans 1: 'Professing themselves to be wise they became fools.'

" 'The fool hath said in his heart there's no God.' A fool, someone who professes himself to be wise, hath no delight in understanding but that his heart may discover itself. He studies and tries to get wisdom and understanding for one thing; he wants an alibi to do what he wants to do.

"I remember reading that verse and thinking, 'Wow! I got to be careful.' Can I tell you that people don't reject God's Word out of intellectual honesty. They reject God's Word out of moral corruption. They become fools because they think they should be God.

"Paul says, 'I want you to pray for me because the people I'm dealing with out here are unreasonable and wicked.' And then he says, 'For all men have not faith.' Duh! That's sort of like a sarcastic backhand.

"You read the commentaries and they do all kind of stuff about that phrase. You know, when you just read that, that's just plain sarcasm. Paul says, 'They're unreasonable and wicked because they don't have any faith!' "

(new article tomorrow)