A CLEAN SWEEP

THE GOOD NEWS BULLETIN

JESUS WHAT A SAVIOUR

By Billy Sunday

“And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call huis name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins” MT.1: 21.

Times have changed in many ways. In centuries past names had a grater personal significance than today, They meant, or stood, for something, and this is still the case among Indians and other people who are living in a primitive way.

In mining, military and lumber camps nearly every man has a nickname that indicates some peculiar trait of character. Usually a man’s nickname is closer to the real man than his right name. All of our family names today had their origin in something that meant something.

There are 256 names for the Lord Jesus Christ, and I suppose this is because He was infinitely more than any one name could express. And His name shall be called Wonderful.

“His name shall be called Wonderful.” Let s look into it somewhat and see whether He was true to this name, which was given to Him eight hundred years before He was born. Does the name fit Him? Is it such a name, as He ought to have? Wonderful means something that is transcendently beyond the common. People say that the Yellowstone Park, Niagara Falls and Grand Canyon of Colorado are wonderful because there is noting else like them. It was Wonderful that the Red Sea should open to make a highway for Israel, and wonderful that the sun should stand still for Joshua. Let us see whether Jesus was true to His name. And His name shall be called Wonderful.

His birth was wonderful, for no other ever occurred that was like it. It was wonderful in that He had but one human parent, and so inherited the nature of man and the nature of princes and King of kings, and yet His birth was not looked forward to in glad expectation as the birth of a prince usually is—in royal palaces, and celebrated with marked expressions of joy all over the country. There was no room for Him in the inn. He had to be born in a stable and cradled in a manger; yet angles proclaimed it with joy from the sky to a few humble shepherds who, in sheepskin coats, were guarding the flocks.

Mark how He might have come, with all the pomp and all the glory of the upper world. It would have been a great condescension for Him to have been born in a palace, rocked to sleep in a golden cradle, fed with a golden spoon, and to have the angles come down to be His nurses. But He gave up all the glory of that world and was born of a poor woman, and His cradle was a manger.

Think what He had come for. He had come to bless, not to curse; to lift up, not to cast down; to seek and to save that which was lost; to give sight to the blind; to open the prison doors and set captives free; to reveal the Father’s love; to give rest to the weary; to be a blessing to the whole world; and yet there was no room for Him. No room for Him, the Saviour of humanity; the Christ who was crucified to save poor sinning, blaspheming, miserable sinners. He came to do that, and you have no room for Him in your Heart. You don’t like my preaching. You are a child of the devil.

The wise men f the east were led to Him by a star, but as soon as His birth was known, the king of the country sought His life, and ordered the slaughter of the innocents at Bethlehem.

His character was wonderful, for no other ever has approached it in perfection. It is wonderful that the greatest Character ever produced should have come out of such obscurity to become the most famous of all history. That such a time, and such a country, and such a people should have produced Jesus Christ can be accounted for on no other ground than His divinity. I said to a preacher friend: “What made the greatest impression upon you while there?” “Nazareth,” he answered, “and for this reason: The same kind of people are living there today as in the time of Jesus, and they are about the worst specimens of humanity I have seen anywhere—lazy, ignorant and wicked. And to think of Jesus coming from such a people is to me a sure proof of His divinity. Had I not been a believer in divinity before going there, I would have to believe it now.”

His life was wonderful. Even His enemies could not bring against Him any graver charges than the He claimed God for His Father, and that He would do good on the Sabbath day. Not the slightest evidences of selfishness or self-interest can be found in the story of His life. He was always helping others, but not once did He do anything to help Himself. We are always helping ourselves and doing little to help others. He had the power to turn stone into bread, but went hungry forty days without it.

While escaping from His enemies who were determined to kill Him, He saw a man who had been blind since birth, and stopped to give him sight, doing so at the risk of His life. He never sought his own in any way, but lived for others every day of Hiss life. His first miracle was performed in a far-away hamlet to save a peasant’s wife humiliation. He had compassion on the multitude and wept over Jerusalem, but He never had any mercy on Himself.

And His name shall be called Wonderful, Wonderful! Oh, its strange how you can sit there with a heart like adamant and refuse to let Him come into your life. You have no sense, that is all.

Wonderful for the way in which He taught; for its simplicity and clearness and adoption to the individual. You do not find Him seeking the multitude, but He never avoided the individual. And His teaching always was adapted to the comprehension of those whom He taught. It is said that the common people heard Him gladly, and this shows that they understood what He said. He put the cookies on the lower shelf. No man needed a dictionary when He preached. Every man-ignorant or learned—understood the Sermon on the Mount. He illustrated His thought and made plain His meaning by the most wonderful word pictures.

I like to see a man preach so all can understand him. We are told that without a parable spake He not to any man. He made people see things and see them clearly. It is wonderful that this humble Galilean peasant who may never have gone to school a day in His life should have made Himself a teacher of teachers for all time. The pedagogy of today is modeling after the manner of Christ closer and closer every day. They called Him Wonderful. I say the originality of Jesus is proof of His divinity. The human mind cannot create anything in an absolute sense. It can build out of almost any kind of material, but it cannot create. There is no such thing as out-and-out originality belonging to a man. You cannot imagine anything that does not resemble something you have previously seen.

I admit you can take a cow and a dog and a horse and a sheep and make out of them enough animals to fill Noah’s ark, but you must have the cow and the dog and the horse and the sheep for the beginning. There is said to be nothing new under the sun.

Hid teaching was wonderful in what He taught, as much as in the way He taught. He taught that He was greater than Moses. Think of the audacity of it! Making such claims as that to the Jews, who regarded Moses as almost divine!

Think of the audacity of a man standing before us Americans and trying to make us think he is greater than George Washington was. He declared that He fulfilled the prophecies and the Law of Moses, and the only effort He ever made to prove His claim was to point out the works that He did. The first thing the imposter always does is to over prove his case. Jesus never turned His hand over to try to convince His enemies that He was the Christ

Jesus taught that all men would be lost who did not believe in Him. I have seen multitudes of saved people, but I have yet to see one who did not get his salvation through believing in Christ. We have a lot of stargazers and a lot of fools in all ages of world history. Oh, there is more than one fool born every minute. The world is full of fools. Every man or woman who will not accept Jesus is a fool.

Find a place in the world that comes nearest to being like Hell itself, and you will find it filled with those who are haters of Jesus Christ. Find the place in this world that is most like Heaven, and you will find it filled with those who are in love with Jesus Christ. You can’t argue it. Go into saloons, gambling halls, the places nearest Hell on earth and there you will find the people who hate Jesus Christ. I were running a glue factory in Hell and the devil would bring your old carcass, I would tell him I couldn’t use you because I don’t have a deodorizer and disinfectant enough.

Jesus foretold how He would die and when He would die, It was wonderful that He should have been betrayed into the hands of those who sought His life by one of His trusted disciples, and wonderful that He should have been sold for so low a price. Wonderful, too, that He should have been condemned to death in the way in which He was, by both the religious and civil authorities, on the testimony of false witnesses, in the name of God, when all the laws of God were defiled in the trial.

That was the only way, though. That He was tormented and tortured before being sent to the cross, and that He should have been put to death also was wonderful on the day of the Passover, thus Himself becoming the real Passover, to which the Passover lamb had pointed.

The great publicity of His death was also wonderful. It is doubtful if any other death ever was witnessed by so many people. Hundreds of thousands of people were in Jerusalem, who had come from everywhere to attend the Passover. The sky was darkened and the sun hid its face from the awful scene.

A great earthquake shook the city, and the dead came out of their graves and went into the city, appearing unto many, and the veil of the temple was rent from the top to the bottom. And remember that up to that time no eye had been allowed to look beyond the veil except that of the high priest, and then only once a year, on the great Day of Atonement.

He had foretold it to His disciples. Always saying, whenever He spoke of His death, that He would rise again on their third day. Yet every one of them seemed to forget all about it. No one of them thought of going to the sepulcher on the morning of the third day, except the women, and they only to prepare His body more fully for the grave. Womanhood has been on the firing line.

This proves how fully they abandoned all hope when they saw Him dead. Some left the city, for we are told that of two who went to Emmaus. The manner of His resurrection was God-like. No human ever would have imagined such a scene. Had some man described it in the way in which he thought it should have occurred, he would have earthquakes and thunderings and a great commotion in the heavens. A sound like that of the last trump would have proclaimed to all the terrified inhabitants of Jerusalem that He was risen.

An angel rolled away the stone from the mouth of the sepulcher as quietly as the opening of the buds in May, and the women who were there early found no disorder in the grave; but the linen cloth in which they had tenderly robed His body were folded neatly and placed tidily.

And then how wonderful were the recorded appearances after the resurrection, again so different from what man would have had them. He appeared to every one of His friends; but not a single one of His enemies got to see Him. I know that the story of the resurrection is true, because none but God would have had things happen in the order that they did. Had the story been false, Jesus would have been made to go to Pilate and the high priest and to others who had a part in His death, to prove that He had risen.

He’s a wonderful Saviour, too, because He can save so quickly. Quicker than you think, He can give you life. It is only look and live. As quickly as you can come, He receives, and as quickly as you can receive a present you have been wanting for years, you can have salvation. “Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.” To “as many as receive him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.” No need for taking much time about that.

How do you account for the crowds at this tabernacle day after day, night after night? They are wonderful. God sends people here. His Spirit moves them to come.

And now I come to the last evidence that He is true to His name, and that is: He is a wonderful Saviour because He saved me. There is nothing that can be so convincing to a man as his own experience. I do not know that I am the son of my mother, but I know that I am a child of God. I do not know that I have been in a natural way, but I know that I have been born of the Spirit.

And now let me ask you this: Has this wonderful Saviour saved you? Do you know Him as your Saviour? Have you ever given Him your case? When the proof is so overwhelming that He does save and has been saving for centuries, and that none ever have been saved, or ever can be saved except through Him, is it not remarkable that anyone can be indifferent to the claims of Jesus Christ?

We—and that means you people of Omaha—have lived in drunkenness, adultery and deceit. It is wonderful how He is saving you now, how He has saved so many during the weeks of this campaign, how He has sent drunkards home sober, and reunited so many husbands and wives.

You see His wonders. It will be past understanding indeed if you do not surrender to Him.