18 ¶ If the world hate you, ye know that it hated
me before it hated you. 19 If ye were of
the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world,
but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. 20 Remember the word that I said unto you, The
servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will
also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.
21 But all these things will they do
unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken unto them, they
had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin. 23 He that hateth me hateth my Father also. 24 If I had not done among them the works which
none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated
both me and my Father. 25 But this
cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law,
They hated me without a cause.
Regardless of how well you get along with people who do not
know Christ the simple fact is that many will hate you simply because you are
His. The world systems and the people who slavishly follow them cannot bear the
thought that they need a Saviour or that Christ is that Saviour. The same goes
with most church organizations. Churches, particularly conservative ones,
fundamentalists, are often run by control freaks who simply want to establish
their own cult where their own convictions will be followed as if their own
words came right from God’s mouth.
The key issue that makes the rest of the world angry is
Christ’s claim to deity, to being God in the flesh. Although, we have seen that
very clearly stated in the Gospel According to John there are some things you
will hear and read the world doing to show their contempt for Christ. Some will
deny that Jesus ever said He was God or the Messiah or the Christ, which is
obviously not the case if you read the gospels and the rest of the New
Testament writings. Others will attack the Bible, particularly the last major
Bible version before man’s worship of his own intellect and reasoning ability
became predominant in the period of time called The Enlightenment. Even others
will attack this particular gospel, The Gospel According to John, because it
presents Christ so clearly as God in the flesh. This Bible version, more than
almost any other, uplifts and glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ as God and the
world and Satan cannot tolerate that.
The world can love Gandhi and King and Christ, if He is
nothing more than a great teacher who was martyred for His beliefs. The world
can adore Buddha and Mohammed and extol the virtues of Hegel, Nietzsche,
Schopenhauer, Kant, Hume, and Marx. The world will list any of the so-called
great teachers as an avatar sent to teach mankind truth. “The Coming One” of
Alice Bailey’s new age doctrine adopted by the editors of the New King James Bible in Matthew 11:3 put Jesus in that list. So did
the Satanist, Madame Blavatsky, who in her The
Secret Doctrine insisted that Christ and Satan/Lucifer are the same individual
since Satan was to her the Saviour of mankind like The New International Version
in Isaiah 14:12 and Revelation 22:16.(22) Even Islam will venerate Christ as a great
one.
But, the world cannot tolerate Christ as God and will hate
you for insisting on it. Speaking specifically about the religious elite that
had Jesus in their crosshairs He tells His disciples that what they have done
and will do to Him the disciples should expect to receive the same, whether it
be good or bad. The evil things that await the disciples are done to them
because those who do them do not know the God of the Bible, who is their
Creator .
The world has no excuse and cannot claim ignorance of Christ
as He is the most talked about personage in history. There is more evidence of
Christ from historical documents than there is of any other person in history. The
Bible has been printed in hundreds of millions of copies in hundreds of
languages and missionaries have traveled the length and breadth of the earth. Certainly,
the Jewish elite of His time had no excuse. Finally, He states that those who
hold Him in contempt hold God in contempt. If a person does not believe in
Christ, he does not believe in God. It is that simple and that exclusionary.
All faith traditions are not equal. There is truth and there are lies. All
those who worship Allah, venerate Buddha, sacrifice in a Hindu temple, extol
the genius of Marx, or imagine a soon-to-arrive avatar sent to lead mankind
into a glorious age are deceived and deceivers themselves, and liars.
John 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting
life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of
God abideth on him.
John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the
truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Acts 4:12 Neither is there salvation in any other: for
there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be
saved.
In verse 25 Jesus alludes to the Psalms. Jesus uses the
phrase, “the law,” to include to the Psalms as He did in 10:34.
Psalm 35:19 Let not them that are mine enemies wrongfully
rejoice over me: neither let them wink with the eye that hate me without a
cause.
Psalm 69:4 They that hate me without a cause are more
than the hairs of mine head: they that would destroy me, being mine enemies
wrongfully, are mighty: then I restored that which I took not away.
(22) Lucis Trust, pamphlet adapted from Alice Bailey, The Reappearance of the Christ, 1947. http://www.lucistrust.org/en/service_activities/world_goodwill/world_goodwill_literature_on_line/the_coming_one, & H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine , 540. http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd-pdf/SecretDoctrineVol2_eBook.pdf
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