Join us as we celebrate the impact of language and the global spread of the gospel through listener stories and testimonials from around the world. From the first international language production in Spanish to its incredible impact, hear compelling stories that testify to the transformative power of faith. Explore how the holy radiance of God challenges us to confront the dilemma of bringing together divine holiness with human imperfection.
The foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to Through the Bible. Did you notice the sunrise this morning? Well, Dr. J. Vernon McGee is going to tell us about his favorite sunrise in Monument Valley, Arizona, as we learn how to step into the light of God’s Word. We’re still early in our study of 1 John, and in a special introduction, Dr. McGee ties what we’re learning to this time with our last study in the Old Testament book of Jonah. It’s a fascinating comparison. Here’s Dr. McGee.
SPEAKER 04 :
Now, that resurrection was, as the Lord Jesus said, as Jonah was, so I’ll be. And he came forth from the grave. He was delivered for our offenses, but he was raised for our justification. And therefore, life is something that you live every day. It comes to us a minute at a time. God never gives us a whole day in a minute. He just doles it out to us. And that keeps us down here not very long, even at that, in this world. And it’s down here that we are to live this life. Now, John is going to talk to us about living that life, the resurrected life of Christ. And by the way, I hear very little emphasis upon that today. It’s all a psychological approach to the Christian life. And though psychology may illustrate it, but that’s the only place in the world it can be brought in. We do not live according to some psychological principle. We are to live according to some Bible principle. And that Bible principle is God. Very, very important. So now, in this little book, we’re going to see that that resurrected life that comes to us through what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us. And today, you and I have to do with a living Christ. Paul says, though we knew him after the flesh, we know him no longer after the flesh. The Jesus that walked here 1,900 years ago, he’s gone. He died. He rose again. He’s at God’s right hand, and let’s make contact with him. For it’s in him that we have life, and we have it more abundantly. And he says in this epistle, he that hath the Son hath life. And let’s keep our eyes fixed upon the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Don’t make a disaster of the Christian life. Live it according to the word of God.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, that’s the gospel in a nutshell. It’s only Jesus’ resurrected life in us that’s worth living. Well, Greg Harris is here with me, and we’ve got some great stories to share from listeners to our first ever International Through the Bible Language production. Do you know what that was? Are you asking me, Steve?
SPEAKER 03 :
Sure. I hope as president of Through the Bible, I should know. But anybody who’s listened to you for any length of time knows it has a special place in your heart, and it is Spanish in Latin America in particular. And 52 years ago, July of 1973, so just a few weeks from now, we’ll celebrate 52. 52 years of not only our first language, which remains one of the most impactful in the world, but also it started this avalanche of what God has blessed us with now over 250 languages around the world.
SPEAKER 02 :
The reason I really appreciate Spanish is because God used that language really in a very significant way in the life of Dr. McGee. Prior to us going into our first language, Spanish, Dr. McGee was at best a skeptic getting this thing into all these different languages. And the Spanish listeners, and because of the way the Holy Spirit moved in them and their response was so great, it pivoted our ministry like no other language has done since that time.
SPEAKER 03 :
And the great lesson of that story where Dr. Paul Freed, the founder of Translator Radio, kind of badgered Dr. McGee to get it translated, and he said, I don’t know, Paul, I’m not sure about that. He said, you don’t need to have a ton of faith. If you just step out with a little bit of faith, God can and certainly will bless it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, and the fruit, which we love to share with you, is evident in front of us. So let’s get right to those letters. Here’s the first one. This is a greeting from Liz in El Salvador. Thank you for such a beautiful ministry of taking the word of God to every corner of the planet. I have always listened to you, but for the last two years, the first thing I have done every morning is to put on the program. I want to do the five-year study and then do it again and again. Way to go, Liz. I ask God to bless this ministry and the lives of those who are a part of it.
SPEAKER 03 :
And if you’re a supporter of the ministry, if you pray, if you give, if you share, the very fact that we get so much support allows us to keep offering it over and over and over again. That means we’re now in our 11th five-year cycle in Spanish right now. Just think of the faithfulness and how it impacts people that want to come back to us. So let’s go to Colombia where Sandra shares. Thank you all for your efforts so that we can understand the Bible. Currently, I am going through a great trial, a criminal complaint by false witnesses. I’ve been in this process for four years. You have accompanied me and helped me to forgive and to live confidently in God, believing in his promises, knowing that the light of his truth shines and that he judges my cause. Knowing the truth helps me to feel free despite what is going on around me.
SPEAKER 02 :
Such an encouragement. Here’s another testimony from Columbia. This is from Taki who tells us, “…may God bless you greatly and strengthen you in the midst of this fallen world to continue to relieve and comfort the brethren in the faith throughout the world. What interests me most about this program are the teachings, which is medicine for my soul because they nourish my spirit. It is the best blessing I have ever received.”
SPEAKER 03 :
And Steve, this type of response from a language that we started over half a century ago, and just like English, we just keep repeating the five years, and God keeps using it, and this gives us the courage and faith to do this in all of the new languages that God allows us to get into. Amen.
SPEAKER 02 :
Let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, you have been so faithful as we look specifically at the Spanish language of Through the Bible, the translation, how you have chosen to glorify yourself through this ministry and through the Spanish language. Our prayer, Lord, is that that would continue today and it would continue on until you return, as was Dr. McGee’s desire. All to your glory, Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Now here’s Dr. J. Vernon McGee with our study of 1 John 1 on Through the Bible.
SPEAKER 04 :
Now, friends, we do return back to this very marvelous epistle of 1 John, and I’m sure you’ve already made the discovery that it’s similar to the gospel of John in that the language is simple and actually Just to read it, you feel like maybe you’re getting everything. But when you begin to dip into it, you find out that you’re dealing with that which is profound and that only the Spirit of God can make these things real to us. We have seen in this epistle, that John said that he was a witness of the Lord Jesus. He heard, he saw him, he gazed upon him for three years, and then he handled him. He was flesh and blood, and then after his resurrection, he was flesh and bone. John says, I know he was a human being, and I also know that he was God. Now, he says, I’m writing these to you so you can have fellowship with him and with the Father and with us. And the purpose of this epistle is that you and I might share together these things, and that the Spirit of God might make real to us the Lord Jesus and God the Father in such a way that our fellowship indeed might be beautiful, might be sweet, might be lovely. Now, we are presented, though, with a real problem here. He has already said that He’s done this, that we can have fellowship and that our joy might be full. And our joy would naturally be full if we could have fellowship with Him, sharing the things of Christ. But here’s a hurdle to get over. Actually, John faces up to a real dilemma that every child of God recognizes. And that is this, that God is holy. The very possibility of man having fellowship with God is one of the most glorious prospects that come to us. But immediately our hopes are dashed to the rocks when we will face up to this dilemma. And the dilemma is this, verse 5, I’m reading, This then is the message which we’ve heard of him, and declare unto you that God is light, And in him is no darkness at all. And that means God is holy. And we know man is unholy. Now, how can this gulf be bridged between a holy God and between a wonderful Savior and Vernon McGee? Because the bridge would have to be a long one. It’s over a very steep and deep canyon. What a difference is here. And how can we bring God and man together? That was the cry of Job. Oh, that there were days that just could put his hand in the hand of God and put his hand in my hand and bring us together. And Amos said, how can two walk together except they be agreed? God has said, my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways. As the heaven is as high above the earth, so are my thoughts and my ways above yours. So how is a sinful man to walk with God? God is light, and he wants to put that down here at the very first. He puts down this great axiom. In fact, it’s a definition of God. And we have divided this epistle according to the three definitions that are given in it. God is light. This is first. God is love. That is second. And God is life. That is third. We’ll see all three in this epistle. Now, how in the world are we going to have fellowship with God? It looks as if that we are going to have to do one of two things. We’ve either got to bring God down to our level, or we’ll have to bring man up to God’s level. And you can’t do either one, yet men have tried it, and John shows the impossibility of the first one. And so he puts down this great axiom or definition of God. God is light. He’s pure light. Now, science today, so I’m told, is not quite sure what light is. Is it just an energy or is it really something? Does it matter? What is light? Oh, the source of light’s one thing, but when you turn the light on in your room and it was dark over in the corner, now it’s light. What do you mean? What’s happened? What is it that went over in the corner and drove out the darkness? Or did it drive out the darkness? Because when that source of light goes off up in the ceiling, well, it’s dark back in the corner again. So, what is light? Well, when you say that God is light, it reveals many facets. about the person of God. You don’t cover the total spectrum of the attributes of God, but I want to say this. When you say God is light, you’re saying a great deal. First of all, light speaks of the glory, the radiance, the beauty, and the wonders of God. Have you ever been up of a morning to see the sun come up like a blaze of glory? I was with a friend. We camped on the edge of Monument Valley up in Arizona. Beautiful spot. We slept there that night and sleep in bags. And when I wake up the next morning, he was standing there and the dawn was just breaking. You could see those two mittens there that stand up as so many other monuments in that valley. And I said to him, what are you doing so early? And he made this statement. He says, I am watching God move. create a new day. What a thrill it was to be there and watch God create a new day. The glory, the radiance, God is light. All of a sudden, the sun peeped over the horizon, and then it came marching over in a blaze of glory. And I must confess, it got pretty hot that day. But what a sunrise that was. And I have several pictures of that, slides that I made at that time of that glorious sunrise. Now, there’s another thing about light. Light is self-revealing. Light can be seen, that is, the light here in my studio where I broadcast. I see the light up above, but I notice it diffuses itself. It illuminates the darkness. It’s self-revealing. It lets me see my hands here. And I notice one of them. I’ve been handling books this morning. I’m going to have to take it out and wash it. And if it hadn’t been for the light, I wouldn’t be able to see that. Light is self-revealing. And then light reveals flaws and impurities. Whittier put it like this. Our thoughts lie open to thy sight and naked to thy glance. our secret sins are in thy light of thy pure countenance. And as Dr. Chafer used to put it, that secret sin down here is open scandal in heaven because our sins are right there before him because God is light. And then it speaks again of the purity of God, the white purity and the stainless holiness of God. God moves without making a shadow because he’s light. He’s pure. The light of the sun is actually a catharsis to this earth. It not only gives light, it cleanses. It’s a great cleanser. Many of you ladies put a garment out in the sun. actually to clean it, to maybe get an odor out. The sun is a great cleansing agency. This speaks of the purity of God. God does not make a shadow. We saw that back in Hebrews. He doesn’t make a shadow at all. Now, we have here another thing, a fifth thing. Light guides man. It points out the path. Light on the horizon lead man on to take courage and to keep moving on. God is light. Now, let me go to the other extreme. Darkness is actually more than negation of light. It’s not just the opposite of light. It actually is hostile to light. It is the light, the holiness of God in opposition are actually in direct conflict with evil and with chaos in the world. Now, we are presented with the dilemma. I’m a little creature down here, filled with sin. You want to know the truth? Totally depraved. Without the grace of God for salvation, why, I would be nothing in the world but a creature that’s in rebellion against God and with no good within me at all. God has made it very clear to man that he finds no good with him. Paul says, there dwelleth within me, that is my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing. And he says again, there is none righteous. No, not one. None that not only have any innate goodness, but they’re in rebellion against God. And he goes on to tell us that also about that rebellion that is in the human heart today because he says the carnal mind is enmity against God. It’s not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So we are living in a world today that is in rebellion to Almighty God. God is holy. I’m a sinner. Saved by grace, yes. But how am I going to have fellowship with him? How am I going to walk with him? Well, men have attempted to do this in three different ways that are presented here. Two of them are wrong. The first method is to bring God down to the level of man. Now, will you listen to him in verse 6 here? If we say that we have fellowship with him, now, this is something we say. This is not true, but we say it just the same. And there are a lot of people saying it. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie. And do not the truth. Did you get the thing that John said there? Rather blunt, don’t you think? He said, we lie. It’s not a nice thing to call another man a liar. But John says that if you say. that you have fellowship with him and you’re walking in darkness, that is in sin, you are lying. Now, I didn’t say that. I’m too polite to say that to you. John said it. You know, and we always think of John being that little ladylike apostle, carried his handkerchief in his sleeve. And I don’t know how that rumor got around that he is that type of a man, except during the Middle Ages, there was an artist that painted him with pearls. And I wouldn’t be that artist for anything in the world. He looked like some sort of a hippie, curls. And the idea got around because they call him the apostle of love. Our Lord never called him that. He called him a son of thunder. And that’s just the opposite of love, by the way. And so he says that we lie. And I wouldn’t want to be that artist to come into the presence of John someday. If John and that artist meet at the corner of Glory Avenue and Hallelujah Boulevard in heaven, I tell you, that artist is going to know what thunder and lightning both are, because I think John’s going to level with him. What is the big idea, given the worldly impression that I was somehow another sissy-type individual? He’s a great big two-fisted, rugged fisherman, and he says that if you say that you are having fellowship with God and you’re walking in darkness, you lie because God’s light, God’s holy. And today we hear so much of Sin among Christians. Somebody said to me the other day, it was headline material here in Southern California, that one of the cults has some members actually committing adultery. I don’t know whether it was a rumor. I don’t know whether it’s accurate or not. But I don’t know that the paper would have risked a lawsuit unless they had some basis for saying it. And they said it. And it was a cult. And they talk about what a wonderful level of life they’ve arrived at. They keep the law and all that sort of thing. But one of the Ten Commandments is thou shall not commit adultery. Now, they would try, of course, to explain that away in some fashion. May I say to you, friends, if you are going to walk with God, you’re going to walk in light. And if there’s sin in your life, you’re not walking with him. Somebody says, well, there’s sin in my life. I know there is. All of us have that in our lives. And how are we going to walk with God? Well, we’re going to find out next time. But you can’t find out by bringing him down to your level. If we walk in the light as he’s in the light, and that means the light, now the word of God, because that’s where We get the light of God as in His Word. We have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin. Now, here is something that’s important to see. It is not primarily how you walk. It’s where you walk, because you can actually walk in darkness and think that you’re all right. I went squirrel hunting several years ago, and I was holding meetings in my first pastorate up in Middle Tennessee, a place called Woodbury. A doctor after the morning service came to me and asked me, would I like to go squirrel hunting? I said, there’s nothing I’d rather do. So he brought by a shotgun after lunch, picked me up. We went out to his farm, parked in the barnyard there, and we went down the branch there. And there are two hills, one on one side, one on the other. And we had good hunting. We came to where there was a fork in the creek. And he said to me, I’m going to take the right fork. You take the left one. Come around the hill and come back to the barnyard. We’ll meet there. In the meantime, it looked like it was going to rain. And it had drizzled once or twice and stopped. And when I started out by myself, it started drizzling again. And I kept going. And I made the turn around the hill. I noticed quite a few caves there. And it just kept drizzling. In fact, the matter is, it was sprinkling. And I saw it was going to get wet. So I crawled up. in one of those caves, the largest one that I could find. And I was sitting up in the dark, up in the cave. I sat there for, I’m sure, 30 minutes. I got cold and decided I better have a fire. So I pulled together a bunch of leaves and I put a match to them. And then I looked around in the cave and I found out I wasn’t alone. I’d never been in a place where there were as many spiders and lizards as As they were in that cave, and over in the corner, there was a little snake all coiled up, and he was just looking at me. Now, friends, I’ll tell you, I got out of there. I worked on the assumption that possession is nine-tenths of the law, and since they had it ahead of me, it belonged to them. So I got out of there, and I proceeded down and really got good and soaking wet. But I wasn’t going to stay up in that cave. Now, the fact of the matter is, I was sitting up there in comfort for 30 minutes. But I was sitting in darkness. When the light came on, I saw the surroundings. Now, actually, today, there are multiplied numbers of Christians that are sitting in churches across this land. They’re sitting in a pew on Sunday mornings. And they’re not hearing the word of God. And as a result, they’re sitting there in darkness. They’re hearing some dissertation on economics or on politics or on the good life or doing good and do the best that we can. Believe me, I tell you, liberalism had pretty well sewn down America, making us think we’re the greatest people in the world because we were so sweet and nice and good. May I say to you, multiplied numbers have been sitting in darkness and they’ve been comfortable. Of course, they’re comfortable. But if they would get in the light of the word of God, they would see that they were sinners and that you can’t bring God down to man’s level. You can’t do that. That’s not the way you’re going to be able to walk with God. Now, we’re going to see he’s provided a way for us to walk, but we’ll have to wait till next time to see that. So until then, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, God’s word is amazing, isn’t it? Join us next time for more great teaching by Dr. McGee and 1 John. Until then, remember, we always love hearing from you. So send us a note in the feedback section of our app or email BibleBus at TTB.org. And when you’re in touch, would you let us know where you listen to Through the Bible? It could be a radio station. It could be an app. It could be Alexa or some other way. Not only do we want to know so that we can make wise ministry decisions with the resources God has entrusted to us, but if you listen on a local station, that info is very important to us. So let us know that next time you contact us. Now as we go, may God bless you as you walk in His light and love. Through the Bible exists to take God’s whole word to the whole world. And we invite you to stand with us with your faithful prayer and financial support. Where will God’s word go today?
