HELLENISTS AND HEBREWS
1. Do not forget that the gospel began among the Jews exclusively, the Gentiles having nothing to do with it; hence the Christian Church, originally like the Jewish, was purely Judaic. With the roll of a century, it underwent a radical somersault, eliminating the Jewish and incorporating the Gentile element. “Grecian” in E. V. leads to the conclusion that they were Gentile Greeks, which is incorrect. They were Jews, native and proselyte, who spoke the Greek language and used it in their synagogue worship in contradistinction to other Jews [doubtless nearly all native], who spoke the Hebrew language, using it in their synagogues. It was natural to recognize a degree of preference for these native Jews and pure Hebrews, though, doubtless inadvertently, holding them in a degree of estimation above the Greek-speaking Jews, largely proselytic; hence the complaint that the Hellenistic widows were neglected in their daily ministration. Christian widows, unencumbered with families at that time, got filled with the Holy Ghost, turned preachers, being eminently useful as soul-savers; thus devoting all their time, with no means of support, they lived on church charities. What a pity in this respect, the church of the present day does not go back to first principles! How eminently useful our unencumbered holy widows would be if thus utilized, preaching the gospel in family circles, mission-rooms and on the streets. Dr. Carradine, in his last pastorate in St. Louis, used them much to the glory of God and the salvation of souls, recognizing the policy of the Apostolic Church. At this time the Greek language [spoken by these Hellenistic Jews] was the language of the world, having through the Alexandrian conquests reached all nations and become universal. While reading the Old Testament, we all see the hand of the Almighty on the Jews, but intuitively drift to the conclusion that it was not on the Gentiles. In this we are egregiously mistaken. The difference is that we have the inspired history of the Jews and not of the Gentiles. B. C. 32, Alexander, a youth of one and twenty years, succeeded his father Philip on the throne of Macedonia, a small country in northern Greece. Finding but thirty-five thousand dollars in the royal treasury, and thirty-five thousand men in the army, the first transaction of his regal administration was to divide out the money equally among the soldiers, giving each man a dollar apiece. Observing that the young king left himself moneyless, a bystander asked, “Now, king, what have you left for yourself?” The sanguine youth responded, “My hopes.” “What are your hopes?” “Why, that I shall conquer all the world.” At that time the Persian Empire reached from India to Ethiopia, containing a hundred and twenty-seven States, nearly all of the known world which was sufficiently important to appropriate, except Greece, which, though small, had simply proved too heroic for the Persian conquest, even under the leadership of Xerxes, with his two million and five hundred thousand warriors, the largest army ever mustered on the globe. Alexander succeeds in inspiring his little band with the same paradoxical hope of conquering all the world. Consequently he invades the great Persian Empire, is met by the royal army on the plains of Granicus. A terrible battle ensues, leaving forty thousand Persians dead on the field, while Alexander didn’t lose a man. This stunned the mighty Persian monarch and woke him up to recognize in the young Grecian no child at play. Great preparations were now made, feeling sure they would capture the impudent youth with his audacious followers and settle the matter once for all. Alexander meets them on the plains of Issus. where an awful battle is fought, lasting three days. One hundred thousand Persians are left dead on the field, while Alexander’s loss was simply nothing. This awful defeat sent panic throughout the Persian Empire. King Darius gives the matter personal attention. An innumerable army is rendezvoused from the one hundred and twenty-seven States of the Empire. The sons of royalty from the diversified kingdoms encourage the army with their personal presence. King Darius is on hand, commander-in-chief. The powers of earth are combined against the paradoxical foe they find in the haughty young Grecian. They meet on the plains of Arbela, which, I trow, proved the greatest battle the world ever saw. It lasts a solid week. Rivers of blood deluge the fields. Mountains of the dead accumulate. Three hundred thousand Persian warriors are left dead on the field. The Greek is everywhere triumphant. Darius flies for his life, his vast army utterly demolished and disorganized. Alexander overtakes the fugitive monarch on the banks of the Indian Ocean. Darius now pleads for his crown, proposing to Alexander that they divide the world half and half. Alexander points to the sun, then in his noon-day glory. “Do you see that sun? Could the world endure two suns? You know they would burn it up. So this world can not have two kings. I must have it all.” Now, account for the fact that this boy of one and twenty, with no money and a handful of men, conquered all the world and wept because he couldn’t find another one to conquer. God was in it. This wonderful Greek language, the finest the ages ever knew, the culmination of that climacteric Greek learning in which they excelled all nations, astonishing the ages with their achievements in poetry, oratory, philosophy and the fine arts, thus eclipsing all the nations of the earth and becoming the honored teachers of the young kings resorting thither from every land and clime to learn wisdom at the feet of the Greek philosopher. Why these great wonders? God, through these poets, orators, philosophers and scholars, was manufacturing the Greek language, the beauty, precision, and vivacity of those mechanism is the riddle of modern scholarship. God thus prepared it His chosen vehicle, in which to preach the gospel to every nation. He gave Alexander the conquest of the world that he might turn over every government on the globe to the cultured Greeks, who established their wonderful language in the learned circles of every nation under heaven, thus through these wonderful providences preparing the world for the reception of the gospel. Again we have the significant fact that in the early centuries of the Christian era this wonderful language was taken out of the mouths of all nations like the Hebrew of the Old Testament at an earlier day, lest the nations of the earth might corrupt them. Therefore we have the inspired archives of the Hebrew and Greek kept in their pristine purity, locked up in these dead languages, whither we can all go and find the unadulterated truth as it is in Jesus, and transmit it to the world. Oh, the wonders of the divine administration!

ORDINATION
6. “Whom they placed before the apostles, and praying, laid hands on them.” Here is all the ordination you can find in the New Testament. It is very simple, and I see much of it among holiness people in my peregrinations. The Lord’s elders, bishops, deacons and saints gather around the dear ones, whom the Holy Ghost has called to go and work in His vineyard, lay hands on them, pray, bless and send them forth. There is but one qualification specified in the New Testament for a Christian worker, preacher, officer, and that is, to be filled with the Holy Ghost. In the E. V. prominence is given to the church ordination, through mere courtesy to the Episcopal Church, under whose auspices the translation was made. You will find as a rule where the E. V. uses the word ordination, it is not in the Greek. We have no objections to the word if used in this same, primitive New Testament sense, designating the gathering of the saints around the candidates for the Lord’s work, and praying for them with the imposition of hands.

7. “And a great multitude of the priests were obedient to the faith.” Here we find, much to our encouragement, that amid the sweeping victories of the Pentecostal revival, a large number of the regular preachers got religion. Good Lord, save us from the Satanic humbuggery that would recognize preachers as Christians simply because they are preachers. I wish it were true in case of half of them, and the other half, too. But, working in the clear light of God’s Word, Spirit and providence, we are forced to the concession of many unconverted preachers. Of this number, not a few have been truly converted, but grieving the Holy Spirit, rebelling against sanctification, becoming secular and popular, have sunk into a grievous antinomian spiritual death. Lord, make us useful in the conversion of preachers, as well as other people. God forbid that at the devil should get the dear preachers.

10. “And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke.” Oh! what a contrast we here have between the wisdom, intellect, learning and resources of the world and the wisdom of God! Here, with the greatest intellectualist and scholar the world could produce, surrounded by a platoon of preachers, one humble, uncultured layman proves more than a match for them all; as the Holy Ghost says they were “unable to resist the wisdom and spirit with which Stephen spoke.” See the whole crowd with their mighty leader, Saul of Tarsus, put in total eclipse and literally snowed under by a solitary layman. Therefore, to their ineffaceable shame, they resort to bribery, raising up false witnesses that they may bring an accusation against him. Stephen preached the perfect sufficiency of Jesus, His vicarious atonement and cleansing blood, received and appropriated by the Holy Ghost, of course relegating the types and shadows of the Mosaic dispensation to bygone years, no longer significant because superseded and verified by the great Antitype. This they construed as inveighing against the law of Moses. This notable history has a thousand parallels at the present day. We can not preach the perfect sufficiency of Jesus only and the omnipotence of the present Holy Ghost in full salvation and the perfect sufficiency of God’s Word, doctrinally, institutionally, legally and every other way, without at least indirectly reflecting on the human institutions and bogus legislation of fallen ecclesiasticisms. Then they cry out that we are inveighing against the church, whereas we are defending the church of God with all our might, precisely as Stephen did, when they charged him with disloyalty to the church and killed him for it. He was the first martyr, leading the way and showing the people how to die for the truth. Two hundred millions have followed in his bloody track, like Stephen, dying under charges of disloyalty to what carnal preachers call the church, as they did in case of Stephen. If they had the co-operation of the secular arm these defenders of what they call the church would kill us this day, as they did Stephen and the mighty host of his successors. Beware of the clamor of church loyalty! That is the very shibboleth that piled the rocks on Stephen, fed the martyrs to the lions and burnt them at the stake. It is impossible to be loyal to God and disloyal to His church. When they talk to you about loyalty to God, open your Bible and shout Amen! When they talk to you about loyalty to the church, look out! that is the old hackneyed cry of persecution, from Stephen down to the present day.

15. “And all who were sitting in the Sanhedrin, looking upon him, saw his countenance as the face of an angel.” Now, remember, that the popular preachers, standing at the head of the churches, persecute Stephen unto death. Why did they not desist when they see the very glory of God radiant in his countenance? The solution is very simple, they did not have the discernment of the Holy Ghost, hence they mistook the very glory of heaven radiant from his countenance for his own mean, stubborn, self- willed, contrary spirit, which convinced them the more that he deserved to die for disloyalty to the church.