“No one is a more convincing advocate of the gospel than a man deeply in love with the Savior, his Word and his world. JD Wetterling is such a man, and writes with a passion for each that no one can miss, nor should.”
Dr. Bryan Chapell, President,
Covenant Theology Seminary, St. Louis, MO
“JD Wetterling has given us nothing less than the gospel in all its simplicity, beauty and glory. If this message is news to you, read this book and let God speak to your soul. If this is news you have heard a thousand times, allow yourself to hear it again, and let your faith be strengthened and renewed.”
Tim Challies,
uber God-blogger at challies.com
“JD has written a book that gives a solid foundation of truths on which to build your life. How to personally know God, how to walk with Him, and how to view all of life in the light of this – what more important issues can be considered? I highly recommend this book!”
Dr. Frank M. Barker, Jr., Pastor Emeritus,
Briarwood Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, AL
“Every believer should read it to be awestruck anew by the glorious salvation which is his through the grace of God; and every unbeliever should read it to be assured that this glorious salvation can be his through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who is the unspeakable gift of God’s grace. No one has explained the way of salvation more clearly than JD Wetterling.”
Dr. W. Wilson Benton, Pastor Emeritus,
Kirk-of-the Hills Presbyterian Church, St. Louis, MO
“No one...”
When Jesus says it, he means it
by
JD Wetterling
Published by JD Wetterling
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 JD Wetterling
Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are from the NIV (Holy Bible, New International Version ®, Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society, Zondervan Bible Publishers).
Published in paperback in 2006 by Christian Focus Publications, Ltd. Geanies House, Fearn, Tain, Ross-shire, IV20 1TW, Scotland, UK
Cover design, the blood-stained hand of Christ, by Danie Van Straaten
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Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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“Strange, my soul, is it not?
All men are negligent of their souls
till grace gives them reason,
then they leave their madness
and act like rational beings,
but not till then.”
(Charles H. Spurgeon)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again (John 3:3).
Chapter 2: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him (John 6:44).
Chapter 3: No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6).
Chapter 4: No one takes it [life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord (John 10:18).
Chapter 5: No one can snatch them out of my hand (John 10:28).
Chapter 6: No one will take away your joy (John 16:22b).
Appendix 1: The Things That Matter
Appendix 3: The Gospel in Brief
Preface
The world will never forget the tragedy of September 11, 2001, when 2,800 innocent people died in the twin towering infernos of the World Trade Center, my former home office in New York City. The visual images are so horrifying the human mind does not want to remember, let alone contemplate them. Yet one picture, of the many indelibly imprinted on my gray matter, refuses to recede from my conscious mind. It is a still photo of a man falling from one of the burning towers. He is just one of about seventy people who chose to jump to their death rather than be consumed by the fire. Just trying to imagine the thought process of that decision, in the chaos and terror of the moment, is so painful the mind refuses to process it.
The man in the photo, unlike the others that I saw, was not tumbling as he fell. I witnessed his fall real time and in the videotape as it was replayed that day. He was falling headfirst, straight down with perfect posture, arms at his sides with one knee bent as if he was about to take a step. That is not a normal way for the human body to fall. In my adventurous youth when I was learning to skydive, my body was all somersaulting ankles and elbows until I learned to fall in a controlled manner, and it was not straight down headfirst. The profile view of the man was not close enough to see his face, but there is a strong sense of serenity exuded by his body language just seconds before his instantaneous death. And that is what consumes me. Did he know his eternal destiny? Did he have the blessed assurance of his salvation? Were millions of us witnessing the death of a saint?
If so, it was the second time for me. My saintly mother, who was my mentor in all the important lessons of living and dying, breathed her last with a serenity that was an overwhelming witness to her faith for her assembled family. She was wired up and kept alive by the machinery of modern medicine and could not sing, but she mouthed all her favorite hymns we sang at her bedside. Her last whispered words to me were, “I am almost there.” I wonder if the falling man knew he was “almost there” and was in fact taking his first step into eternity with the Lord God Almighty, even as he fell.
Another thing about this tragedy I’ve pondered at length: many of those 2,800 people who were not instantly killed were trapped in the top floors of the towers. They had from thirty minutes to an hour in which imminent death was a certainty. We know from phone calls to loved ones that was so. We also know that there were a number of godly people among them who perhaps witnessed to them. As a novel writer I spend a lot of time trying to put myself inside the head of other people and inject myself into scenes I can only imagine. I wonder how many of them were spiritually born again in the last hour of their life. I want to believe many of them were. Hopefully those desperate men and women, knowing no other options remained, fought off the mental paralysis of fear and fell on their knees even as they felt the heat of the flames, the shuddering of the building and finally the floor giving way beneath them. I hope and pray they asked for forgiveness for their sins, begged a merciful God to admit them into paradise that day as they claimed the covering blood of Christ. In my experience as a combat fighter pilot I learned the wonderfully focusing effect that imminent death has on the mind. We can be sure those who prayed in their final hour had no problems with wandering minds, insincerity in their pleas for mercy or lack of intensity in their cries for salvation. God most likely gathered a number of his children in the last moments of the World Trade Center’s existence.
By God’s mercy, believers and unbelievers alike died with a minimum of pain, unlike the millions of people who suffer for long periods of time with the diseases that ravage humankind. But their greatest blessing was that they had the opportunity to get right with their Maker and Savior before they died. How many people today are banking on seeing death coming and getting prepared at the last minute? How many think they want to enjoy their life of sin and selfishness, have a deathbed conversion, then spend eternity in paradise? Dear reader, such depravity plays Russian roulette with your eternal soul. Many, both the damned and the redeemed, died instantly when the airliners hit the World Trade Center, but the wail of the damned will sound forever as they are eternally consumed in “the fiery furnace” (Matt. 13:42).
As a child I believed in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and Jesus Christ. Fifty years of life experiences, Bible reading, comparative religion studies including evolution theories, and I still believe in Jesus, now with an informed conviction – head knowledge and heart knowledge.
Some folks have never known him except as a common curse word. For others he disappeared from their worldview soon after Santa and the tooth fairy. If the polls are correct, a majority of people who call themselves Christian think Jesus has no more relevance than Santa. They are lost and oblivious to their “lostness.”
The latter category I call casual Christians. They know what is needed for salvation but just procrastinate when it comes to acting on it. Next Sunday I will go to church. ... As soon as I get past this big project at the office I will find time for daily devotions. ... I suspect the majority of souls in hell fall into this category. They simply put off asking God to change their hearts one day too long. A significant number of those who perished in the top stories of the north tower of the World Trade Center died not knowing what hit them. Those who die from terrorist bombings around the world do not see it coming. People die suddenly every day. In 2001, 41,730 Americans died in auto accidents, 93,000 in other accidents, 15,000 were murdered, 160,000 died from strokes, 700,000 died from heart disease, many of them instantly.
Life is uncertain, as the terrorist attack of 9/11 so graphically demonstrated. “No man knows when his hour will come” (Eccl. 9:12a) – the hour that God determined before we were born. The Psalmist says, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Ps. 139:16b). That same Holy Writ contains the only certainty there is in an uncertain world. In spite of so much evil, so much hatred and so little love for the God who made us all, there are some unshakable certainties we can cling to in this unstable powder keg called planet Earth.
This little book is an effort on the part of a sinner saved by grace to witness to the power of a handful of the most important of them. They are unshakable certainties that can, God willing, open your eyes to his truth, fill you with the peace that transcends all understanding, and show you the way to the unimaginable joy of life, both now and forever, with him.
One of my favorite newspaper columnists, the late Mike Royko, wrote, on the sudden death of his wife, “If there is someone you love and have not said it lately, do it now. Always, always, do it now.” In the same manner, if you have not asked God to change your heart, do it now. Always, always do it now. God willing, the following words of Jesus who saves can save you too.
Introduction
The Gospel of John contains six things certain and unshakable that can change your life. They are six sayings for the ages, six profound revelations of God’s truth from the Son of God’s own lips.
What Jesus Christ said counts forever. He is not a figment of someone’s imagination. He was a real figure in the history of mankind. We have more historical proof that he lived than for any other person of antiquity. The miracle of his resurrection from the dead, witnessed by hundreds besides his inner circle of disciples, capped a brief lifetime of miracles witnessed by thousands that verified he was who he repeatedly claimed to be – the Son of God. In his own words, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Unique among all religions, the historical Jesus Christ walked this earth for over thirty years and fulfilled over 250 prophesies made about him by a score of Old Testament prophets living and writing over the preceding fifteen hundred years. His own graphic prophecy of the horrible destruction of Jerusalem and its temple (Matt. 24, Luke 21, and Mark 13), that occurred just as he predicted forty years after his death and resurrection, could stand alone as irrefutable proof of his divinity. All who are truly born again acknowledge, as did Peter, his disciple, and Martha, his friend: “You are the Christ, the son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16 and John 11:27). When the Son of the Living God speaks, his words are not mere theory but fact, and it behooves all mankind to listen: “...my word that goes out from my mouth ...will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isa. 55:11).
This brief witness to Christ focuses uniquely on just six statements Jesus uttered that can profoundly affect anyone regardless of race, religion or lack thereof. The subject of all six sentences consists of two simple monosyllable words that are beyond argument in their clarity. Some parts of God’s Word are not easy for the human mind to grasp, but the subject of these six sentences is not among them. The subject of these unshakable certainties is “No one.” No one argues about what the phrase, “No one” means. “No one” means not one ... none … zero. It does not mean some. It does not mean a few. It means none, with no qualifiers, no exceptions, no divine loopholes.
These six factual statements are absolute truth, not relative truth, not true-today-because-I-feel-that-way-but-who-can-say-about-tomorrow. Absolute truth is an out-of-favor term among many today. In their blindness to things of God they refuse to believe that anything could be true yesterday, true today, true tomorrow, true in all circumstances everywhere and forever. That malady is called post-modernism. Sadly, the epidemic has spread even to those who profess to be believers. In a George Barna poll taken shortly after September 11, 2001, 68 percent of those who called themselves born again Christians did not believe in the existence of absolute moral truth. Something is alarmingly wrong here. A Christian by definition believes in the absolute moral truth of God’s word proclaimed in the Bible. Sadly, man is a master of self-delusion. He can hold mutually exclusive beliefs without a clue as to the peril of his position.
Jesus has a warning for these poor souls.
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers’ (Matt. 7:21-23)!
Holy Writ makes the concept of absolute truth crystal clear for those who have eyes to see and the most basic understanding of language. Thirty times in the King James Version of the gospels Jesus is quoted beginning a sentence with “Verily.” That means “truly.” A third of those thirty quotes he repeats, “Verily, verily,” for emphasis. He said, “…my words will never pass away” (Matt. 24:35). He said, “I am … the truth” (John 14:6a). Coming directly from the Son of God’s own mouth, that is as absolute as truth can get. The following unshakable certainties are absolute truth from the Son of God.
Chapter 1: The First Unshakable Certainty
No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again (John. 3:3b).
Something must happen before we can see the things of God and it is not a small thing. It is utterly decisive! Nothing short of a miraculous rebirth will give us the sight and insight we need to see God’s truth. Since the fall of Adam and Eve every man, woman and child has been unable by his or her own efforts to know God and is not even interested in looking for him (Romans 3:11). Until God does something big!
Jesus spoke the words recorded in John 3:3 during a private evening meeting with Nicodemus, a member of the ruling council of Israel. Sanhedrin membership was a position of great authority in first century Israel. It required a superior knowledge of the Law and the Prophets, what Christians today call the Old Testament. Nicodemus had seen Jesus perform some of his miracles and was determined to meet the man and learn more about him, yet apparently did not have the nerve to do so in public. When he found him he asked respectfully, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again” (John 3:3).
Nicodemus would have been familiar with the traumatic, life-changing religious experiences of Moses meeting God in the burning bush (Exod. 3:2) and Isaiah’s vision of God on his throne (Isa. 6:1 8), but he did not connect those momentous, life-changing events with what Jesus was saying. He was clueless but curious and his curiosity overcame his fear of appearing ignorant. He asked, “How can a man be born when he is old? …Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born” (John 3:4)!
Jesus responded, “…no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5).
By this he meant a spiritual rebirth. If we use the classic approach to interpretation of God’s Word we let scripture interpret scripture. The cross reference for this passage in my Bible sends me to Titus 3:5, where the Apostle Paul says, “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” In short, it is a spiritual rebirth, also known as regeneration of the heart, initiated by the Holy Spirit.
God said through the prophet Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:26).
The result of this spiritual rebirth is a radical change of character, to include seeing the world in a new way. We are given a worldview like God’s worldview, only varying in degree of understanding by a factor of one to infinity. We see things we did not see before, including the kingdom of God. We begin to see our sin as an awful insult to a Holy God – a radical change indeed.
God has blessed this unworthy sinner with a spiritual rebirth. I have unbelieving friends and a few family members who cannot for the life of them see what to me is as obvious as the nose on their faces when it comes to things of God. I wonder how they can be so blind (until I remember John 3:3) and they wonder why a reasonably bright guy like me can be so out-to-lunch about how the world works. When we hike the trails of this magnificent Blue Ridge wilderness cathedral at Ridge Haven where I live and work, they see trees and bushes and birds and blue sky and mountains. I see the most spectacular artwork by the infinitely creative hand of the Lord God Almighty. Friends from my fighter pilot days in Vietnam readily agree the supremely self-confident young throttle jockey they knew back then has undergone a radical change. In fact, a commanding officer that I had not seen in three decades, who had mellowed in his old age, politely observed, “I do not recall your being so much into spiritual things back then.” I am grateful to God he could see a difference.