Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest
Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest
Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest
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Apostles hail the Lord’s brothers a happy welcome into the apostleship of their Lord, and honor<br />
James, the elder of the two, with the pastorate of the Alma Mater Church at Jerusalem.<br />
SUICIDE, SUCCESSION AND DOOM OF JUDAS.<br />
15-26. Now Peter, in his recognized seniority, proceeds to have the vacuum created by the fall of<br />
Judas Iscariot supplied. The prophecies here quoted predicting the treason of Judas, did not<br />
necessitate him to perpetrate the atrocious crime. You must bear in mind that God is not tied to the<br />
prophecies, but the prophecies to God. The prophecies are in the past tense, from the simple fact that<br />
they are histories in anticipation, seen by the Omniscient Eye, with whom all events in all ages are<br />
present. Christ came into the world to die, a substitute for fallen humanity. If Judas had never been<br />
born, Jesus would have died a ransom for a lost world just the same. In verse 17 we learn that Judas<br />
received a lot of the apostolic ministry. We can not conclude that our Savior ever sent out a sinner<br />
or a devil to preach <strong>His</strong> holy gospel. John 6:70: “Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is<br />
a devil?” If you will notice the gospel harmony you will find these words were spoken after about<br />
two years of the apostolic ministry had passed away. Unfortunately, Judas was the apostolical<br />
treasurer and financier, — a very dangerous office. The love of money fought Jacob with desperation<br />
twenty years, and would have conquered and sent him to hell if he had not triumphed in the Peniel<br />
experience after that memorable night of prayer, when the love of money and all other phases of<br />
depravity were sanctified out of him. We doubt not but poor Judas has an alarming ministerial<br />
following at the present day. Could you uncap the bottomless pit and look down upon Judas,<br />
doubtless you would see him surrounded by multiplied thousands of preachers and church officials<br />
who were ruined by the love of money, sold out their Lord for filthy lucre, and made their bed in hell.<br />
Jesus condemns the hireling shepherd and says he will play the coward when the wolf comes. No<br />
wonder Satan’s wolves at the present day are making awful havoc, slaying, devouring and scattering<br />
the Lord’s sheep when a hireling ministry is the established order of all ecclesiasticisms. Judas sold<br />
Jesus for fifteen dollars. Many a preacher nowadays sells Him for fifteen hundred, and not a few for<br />
fifteen thousand. I seriously doubt whether any other apostle has a larger ministerial following than<br />
Judas. Reader, beware of filthy lucre; it sent an apostle to hell! There is no disharmony between<br />
Matthew and Luke as to the suicide of Judas, and their dissimilarity of phraseology but clinches the<br />
argument in favor of the veracity of both, as there is no probability that either had seen the record<br />
of the other. The statement in E.V. that Judas repented is not correct. When man repents in the true<br />
Bible sense, God always forgives, because a genuine repentance is the work of the Holy Ghost and<br />
the infallible antecedent to a free pardon. If Judas had repented, he would have been forgiven and<br />
saved. The Greek word does not mean repent, but “flooded with remorse,” an actual prelude of hell<br />
torment, so utterly intolerable as to precipitate him into suicide. For the same reason millions besides<br />
Judas have hurried to end their misery by suicide, a stratagem of the devil to expedite their<br />
damnation. Amid this horrific and unbearable remorse, Judas, seeking in vain to rescind the contract,<br />
throws down the money in the temple and runs away off to a rugged precipice beyond the deep valley<br />
of Hinnom [pointed out to me by my guide when I was there in 1895] with furious expedition, gets<br />
hold of a rope too weak to bear his robust, corpulent, Jewish body, ties it round his neck, swings off<br />
from the precipice, the rope breaks, he falls precipitately on the great rocks beneath, bursting in<br />
twain, as the Greek says, with a great noise, all of his internal organs gushing out. Thus he dies a<br />
most horrible death, weltering in his own blood. The popular superstition recognized the spot on<br />
which he fell as polluted, and, in modern parlance, haunted and unfit for human occupancy. Hence,