III

JOHN: THE MAN OF TEMPER

"THERE was

"THERE

a man sent from God whose name was John." There have been many such men he was the first of a long line of noted religious leaders. John the Baptist and John the "Beloved Disciple," John Chrysostom, John Huss and John Wyckliffe, John Calvin, John Knox and John Wesley, John Milton and John Bunyan! They were all men sent from God and each one bore the name of John. How well the world knows that name! More babies have been named for St. John than for any other saint or sinner in the whole history of the race.

The name is common now and it seems to have been common also in the first century. It is not the general belief of scholars to-day that a single man, whose name was John, was the "Beloved Disciple" and the author of the Fourth Gospel, the

writer of the three letters ascribed to "John" and the author of the book of Revelation which stands last in our Bible. It is commonly believed that there were at least three different Johns who had a part in all that. The reasons for that belief of New Testament scholars are too many and too intricate to be of general interest.

(I would go one step farther—I would say that

there were at least three different Johns in this one man whose character and conduct I wish to study with you here. First, there is the John of legend and of art, who has been portrayed as a mystic, quiet and modest, gentle and tender. He has been made almost effeminate—a kind of companion-piece to Mary the Mother of our Lord. His face and his heart have been made to appear as fine and as soft as the face and the heart of a woman. The artists have painted him almost uniformly without beard and with a delicacy of feature quite out of drawing for a really masculine disposition.

This you might say is the conventional John,

the John of the stained-glass windows and of the art galleries, the John of religious poetry and of polite society. And this whole portrayal, in my judgment, goes wide of the mark. It shows us an apostle who might have been, but who never

was.

In the second place, there is the real John of the Four Gospels. Here is another type of man altogether! He and his brother were called by their associates "Boanerges, the sons of Thunder." There was something powerful, electric, startling about him. He was a child of the storm.

There were times when he was hot and terrible in his outbursts of feeling. When the weather was sultry, his blood boiled-in his early life it boiled at least once a week. There were days when he roared and was troubled. He could upon occasion show himself a whirlwind of enthusiasm or a tornado of wrath. He did just that repeatedly. So far from being a placid, passive, milk-and-water sort of man, he was a man of violent temper.

Read the record-here are the facts! Jesus

and His disciples were once were once on their way to Jerusalem. It came to pass that they entered just at nightfall into a village of Samaritans. These Samaritans refused him entertainment overnight "because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem." He was a Jew, and the Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. The Samaritans would not allow him to sleep in their town overnight because he was a Jew.

When James and John saw this bit of rudeness, they said: "Shall we call down fire? Shall we call down fire from heaven and burn them up, as Elijah did?" They had Scripture for it—"as Elijah did." There was the Old Testament precedent for such action. This man of temper was ready to burn up a whole town because it offered an affront to his Master in refusing him entertainment overnight.

Jesus rebuked him- "Ye know not what spirit ye are of! The Son of Man has not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." And so they went on to another village which would receive them.