1. I must warn you: The story you are about to hear tonight is not in the Bible which is precisely the point I hope you'll go home pondering!
2. Illus: May I read a poem to you?
   1. I predict you have never heard this poem in your life.
   2. Illus: It may not be a great classic for those who are connoisseurs of great poetry though I must say that it makes a most classic and careful point so I invite you to see if you can pick up the point quickly in this poetic piece entitled, "The Calf Path" composed by Sam Walter Foss (why even his name doesn't sound very Shakspearean!).

      One day, through the primeval wood,
      A calf walked home, as good calves should;
      But made a trail, all beat askew,
      A crooked trail as all calves do.
      
      Since then two hundred years have fled,
      And, I infer, the calf is dead.
      But still he left behind his trail,
      And thereby hangs my moral tale.
      
      The trail was taken up next day
      By a lone dog that passed that way;
      And then a wise bellwether sheep
      Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep,
      And drew the flock behind him, too,
      As good bellwethers always do.
      
      And from that day, o'er hill and glade,
      Through those old woods a path was made;
      And many men wound in and out,
      And dodged, and turned, and beat about,
      And uttered words of righteous wrath
      Because 'twas such a crooked path.
      But still they followed do not laugh 
      The first migrations of that calf,
      And through this winding wood-way stalked,
      Because he wobbled when he walked.
      
      This forest path became a lane
      That bent, and turned, and turned again;
      This crooked lane became a road
      Where many a poor horse with his load
      Toiled beneath the burning sun,
      And traveled some three miles in one.
      And thus a century and a half
      They trod the footsteps of that calf.
      
           . . . . .
      
      Each day a hundred thousand rout
      Followed a zigzag calf about;
      And o'er his crooked journey went
      The traffic of a continent.
      A hundred thousand men were led
      By one calf, near three centuries dead.
      They followed still his crooked way,
      And lost one hundred years a day;
      For thus such reverence is lent
      To well-established precedent.
      A moral lesson this might teach,
      Were I ordained and called to preach;
      For men are prone to go it blind
      Along the "calf paths" of the mind,
      And work away from sun to sun
      To do what other men have done.
      
      They follow in the beaten track, 
      And out and in, and forth and back,
      And till their devious course pursue
      To keep the path that others do.
      But how the wise old wood gods laugh
      Who saw the first primeval calf!
      Ah! many things this tale might teach,
      But I am not ordained to preach.
      

3. Wise old poet, ...isn't he?....because that is precisely what happened in the tale we share tonight "When History Played a Trick on Us" one little meandering away from the divine pathway of truth just a stumbling little calf-like mistake but today centuries later nearly the whole world follows that wandering, zig-zagging calf path!
   1. A path strangely and mysteriously contrary to the bright and shining pathway in this Book.
   2. A crooked little path that crept into the church that Jesus built, that Jesus left behind.
   3. What are we talking about? How could it have happened? How DID it in fact happen?
   4. Tonight the story.
      1. When history wasn't his-story.
      2. A story that proves Jesus' words true right here in the Gospel of St. Mark 7:5-7 (p 975).
      3. Look out hold it right there! Jesus is issuing a grave warning: When it comes to worshiping, be on your guard for how easily, how deceptively can the traditions and commandments of man infiltrate and replace the commandments of the eternal God!
      4. If you're not careful, Jesus declares in verse 8, you can actually allow the traditions of man to lay aside the commandment of God.
      5. All it takes is one wandering calf off the pathway of truth, and pretty soon one after another after another will follow, until A BROAD HIGHWAY OF ERROR HAS REPLACED THE SURE COMMANDMENT OF TRUTH!
   5. Was Jesus right?....tonight "When History Played a Trick on Us."
   6. But before I tell you the tale, I must share with you briefly how the tale was discovered.
      1. The outline of history, of course, has always been available.
      2. But in l975 a young Protestant enrolled in the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and became history....the first Protestant in its four centuries of history as a university.
      3. His doctoral research focused on unearthing the details of this tale we share tonight.
      4. When his research was completed, he was awarded his degree summa cum laude (Latin for with highest honors) with the imprimatur of the church in Rome that granted his degree, along with a commendation from the late Pope Paul VI.
      5. Dr. Samuele Bacchiochi is now a professor of history and theology here at Andrews University.
      6. Sam is an Italian friend of mine as well as a parishioner here in our congregation.
      7. I have reread 300 pages of his dissertation (the English translation I should say), and what I share with you now tells the tale and trick of history.
4. Any study of the history of the early church soon ends up in the boiling caldron of three explosive ingredients, three volatile constituencies that were thrown together and as a consequence ended up writing this sad tale. --What are the three? The Jewish nation, the Roman empire, and the newly formed Christian Church.
5. Let's take the Jewish nation first.
   1. The history of this great spiritual people is one of mingled ecstacy and heartache.
      1. Raised up by God on a fertile strip of land beside the Mediterranean, the kingdom of Israel was intended to become home-base, headquarters for God to shine the glorious truth about Himself to a world steeped in darkness and superstition.
      2. But by and large, over the centuries, Israel failed to fulfill this high calling.
      3. They would swing back and forth on the pendulum of apostasy between an idolatrous attraction to the foreign gods of the nations around them on the one hand, to a dead religious formalism on the other, with only brief periods of true spiritual revival sprinkled in between.
      4. God sent prophet after prophet who passionately appealed to them to repent and follow true righteousness.
      5. But by and large, they rejected these appeals.
      6. Finally, God sent them the promised Messiah His own Son, Jesus Christ. And they rejected Him as they had done the prophets.
      7. And when God in pain and sorrow granted their wish to be freed of His leadership and guidance, THE TRAGEDIES OF NATIONAL COLLAPSE BECAME HISTORY and their fertile land became the stomping grounds for the armies of world empires.
   2. By the first century AD the Jews were under the iron thumb of Rome.
      1. Now I must tell you, the Romans displayed high regard and respect, generally, for the Jews and their unique system of national worship.
      2. In fact, Rome granted high status to the Jewish religion, calling them a RELIGIO LECITA....a licit or legal religion allowed to flourish in the empire.
   3. But there was a fly in the ointment: And that was the intense nationalistic patriotism of the Jews.
      1. They couldn't stand the occupying Roman administrators and armies.
      2. And who can blame them?
      3. illus: There isn't a one of us who would peacefully tolerate a foreign power occupying our neighborhoods and villages and cities and land.
         1. How do you think we'd feel if alien soldiers were patrolling our communities?
         2. Some of you know very well what it feels like tonight!
      4. So let's not be too hard on the Jewish nation for how would we feel? WE'D BE BOTH FURIOUS AND AFRAID AND FEELING VIOLATED AND BETRAYED....
      5. So you can understand the Jewish hatred of Rome.
   4. And it was that nationalistic hatred that precipitated and fanned the fires of rebellion and revolt.
      1. During the time of Christ the political mileau was fairly quiet.
      2. But in the late 60s AD a violent uprising broke out against Rome.
      3. And with its iron-clad fist, Rome sent the armies of Titus thundering against the Holy City of Jerusalem.
      4. The citizens held out long, through barbaric atrocities, but in AD 70 Titus broke the resistence of Jerusalem and sacked its golden and marbled edifice, its holy temple.
      5. Illus: The entire city was razed to the ground in fact in June I visited a site in Jerusalem archaeologists have discovered with actual burned timber remains of an opulent mansion, along with the skeletal remains of a woman's arm found in the entry way.
   5. And that was only the beginning of a cycle of armed Jewish revolts and crushing Roman responses that spanned 70 years.
      1. It is estimated by historians that between 65 and l35 AD when Jerusalem was twice sacked, more Jews died violently in Palestine than all the American servicemen who died in WWI, WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined (if I can put it in the context of my own homeland).
      2. At least 2 million Jews were killed during this period
   6. Then came a young Jewish guerilla fighter named Barkokeba, a militant messianic figure many Jews had been looking for to lead them in massive revolt against Rome. And this time the Roman empire countered with a furious, take-no-prisoners vengeance.
      1. Dio Cassius writes that after the sacking and razing of Jerusalem in l35 AD "All of Judea became almost a desert."
      2. Wiped out, decimated, gone.
   7. But it was not only militarily that Rome sought to destroy the Jewish people.
   8. Illus: Emperor Hadrian (ll7-l38 AD) after the Barkokeba rebellion subsequently decreed new political and fiscal policies against the Jews.
      1. First, HE PROHIBITED ANY JEW UNDER THE THREAT OF DEATH TO SET FOOT IN THE NEW ROMAN CITY REBUILT OVER JERUSALEM.
      2. Secondly, he outlawed the practice of the Jewish religion...it was now a religio illecita.
      3. Thirdly, he outlawed the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath.
6. There they are, ladies and gentlemen two explosive ingredients in the cauldron of the early history of our AD world the Jews and Rome-------enter now the third ingredient in this boiling cauldron of history and change.....Christianity, the Christian church.
   1. I remind you that the cradle of Christianity was Judaism.
      1. The exploding growth of the church in the book of Acts is the story of Jewish men and women and children becoming convicted that Jesus of Nazareth was who He said He was...the Messiah of God, the eternal God come down in human flesh, Immanuel...God with us.
      2. And not only the citizens of Jerusalem, by the thousands by the way, were joining the fledgling church....so were large numbers of another group let's read the chronicled report in Acts 6:7 (p 1057).
      3. Clearly the infant Christian church exploded with the growth of Jewish citizens and Jewish clergy who flocked to follow the risen Christ.
      4. And you can be certain that these new Jewish Christians immediately went to work on their friends and families and neighbors declaring the Good News of the Gospel of Christ.
      5. Which is why the church grew literally by the thousands there in Judea.
   2. At the risk of repeating myself, this is a vital point to lock in right here: Christianity was a Jewish movement in the beginning...starting with the disciples of Jesus.
   3. As far as the Roman empire was concerned, they were all one and the same...Jews and Christians... just a bunch of fanatical religious zealots.
      1. After all, the Christians worshiped on the same day as the Jews...the 7th day Sabbath.
      2. They worshiped in the same places as the Jews, the neighborhood synagogues, unless of course they were expelled by angry Jews.
      3. Illus: As far as Rome was concerned, they were one and the same which is why Acts 18 describes what Emperor Claudius did in AD 49 (p 1072), Acts 18:1,2 two Jews who had converted to Christianity were expelled with all the rest! In Rome's mind they were all one and the same.
      4. But that was hardly the case in their own minds, because while Rome thought them the same, no Jew or Christian ever confused their separate identities....
         1. The Jews were convinced that the Christian church was out to destroy Judaism.
         2. And the new Christians were convinced that Judaism without Jesus was a bankrupt system in the end.
      5. Which is why in the book of Acts wherever the Christians went they ran into strong resistence, sometimes violent, at the hands of Jewish antagonists.
   4. But not only from the Jews and now the plot thickens the Christians were under increasing pressure from the Romans.
      1. For a while Rome ignored the fledgling new sect of Christians.
      2. But along comes Emperor Nero, whose wife, Empress Poppea Sabrina, converted to Judaism in 62 AD Nero himself is a friend of the Jews and soon he turns on this growing movement of Christians with a vengeance!
      3. Illus: And when Rome was torched in the night, Nero sprang on the Christians in Rome as his scapegoat cause.
         1. And Christians were persecuted without a thread of mercy.
         2. Covered with pitch and lighted up as human lamp posts, they lined the boulevards of the Imperial City, their smoldering bodies a testimony to Roman rage.
      4. illus: I have stood with hushed awe beneath the towering arches of the Roman Coliseum and gazed on that arena where the masses gathered to thrill at the slaughter of hapless Christians who refused to worship the emperor as god.
      5. The blood of Christians ran like a crimson river through the first centuries of the church's history (as it still does in certain documented segments of the world tonight).
   5. So you can understand the quiet horror the early Christians felt when their spiritual cousins the Jews were ruthlessly smashed and declared a religio illecita (remember Emperor Hadrian's outlawing of the practice of Judaism?).
      1. In an empire where the pagans all think that Jews and Christians were the same, please note it carefully that THE PRESSURE WAS MOUNTING AGAINST THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
      2. "After all, don't you people celebrate the same Sabbath.
      3. "You've got to be the same...after all, don't you worship on the same day?"
      4. THE PRESSURE'S ON....
         1. When you're walking down the street and attending your place of worship on the Bible Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, the very same day that the people of God had been celebrating since creation....
         2. Don't you think there was a little pressure on you......?
         3. After all, look who else goes to church on this day?
         4. AND WE ALL KNOW THAT THE JEWS ARE AN ILLEGAL RELIGION....they rebel against the emperor....and I'LL BET YOU DO, TOO.
   6. Absolutely, ladies and gentlemen....for the church...the pressure was on ....do anything you can to distance yourself from the illegal Jews.
   7. And so it is that by the second century (the last book of the Bible, Revelation, was completed by the end of the first century)...by the 2nd century Christians around the empire began a concerted effort to seek reconciliation with the emperor and differentiation from the Jews.
      1. We are loyal citizens of the empire.
      2. And we are NOT JEWS.
   8. So much so, that by the second century we find early Christian writers producing "a whole body of anti-Judaic literature...condemning the Jews socially and theologically." (Bacch l78)
      1. And so it was that pressure began to mount upon the Christians who were worshiping on the Bible Sabbath, the seventh day, just as the Jews did.
      2. More and more Christian writers began to distance themselves from the Sabbath.
      3. Until one author, Justin Martyr (l00-l64 AD), went so far as to suggest that the seventh-day Sabbath was "a brand of infamy imposed by God on the Jews to single them out for punishment they so well deserved for their wickedness." (Bacch. l84)
      4. No word now about the gift of a day from the Creator in which to celebrate our friendship with Him!
      5. Now in a devastating condemnation, the Sabbath is declared a divine punishment upon the Jews!
   9. Like the poem at the beginning....slowly but surely a new path was being carved in the forest of history...a crooked calf path...over which in the end almost of all of Christendom would end up following and tramping.
7. Now I must tell you that the historical records reveal that in fact THIS DRASTIC CHANGE DID NOT HAPPEN OVER NIGHT.
   1. The Christian church in the city of Rome soon became the dominant church in the empire with her influence extending far and wide.
   2. And interestingly enough, it was the Church in Rome that instituted a Sabbath fasting....in memory of the death and burial of Jesus.
      1. In fact the FAST BEGAN AT NOON ON FRIDAY AND EXTENDED UNTIL 4 A.M. ON SUNDAY.
      2. Once the fast was over Sunday morning, the Roman church declared a day of feasting and celebrating in commemoration of Christ's resurrection.
      3. After all, Jesus rose on SUNDAY and their pagan neighbors worshiped the SUN on SUNDAY so why not celebrate the SON of GOD on SUNDAY?
      4. Through that subtle shift in emphasis, even though they celebrated both the seventh-day Sabbath and Sunday the first day, the church was able "to wean" (Bacc) its followers away from what was now regarded as the Jewish Sabbath.
      5. Why even the celebration of the Lord's Supper was forbidden on the Sabbath!
      6. illus: Now look it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you were a child and your house became foodless and quiet for over 24 hours on Saturday but filled with joyful music and scrumptious food on Sunday, which day would you naturally gravitate toward?
   3. AH THE PRESSURE IS ON.
   4. And under pressure....in a desperate effort to differentiate themselves from the forbidden Jewish religion.... historical research conclusively reveals that the Christians of the 2nd and 3rd centuries...abandoned the Sabbath of Jesus and the apostles and the NT Church...they couldn't stand the pressure and persecution any longer.
      1. "We are NOT JEWS, so leave us alone!"
      2. And eventually they were.......left alone.......
      3. All alone....on the calf path.
8. But the fact remains that those later Christians could've chosen Thursday or Friday or even Wednesday instead of celebrating Sabbath on Saturday as they had been doing.
   1. Anti-Judaism created the desire to substitute a new day of worship, but it did not determine the specific choice of Sunday.
   2. Why Sunday?
      1. Enter now out of the forest of history a new emperor.
      2. His name, Constantine.
      3. A man with political savvy.
      4. It's the 4th century now...and his empire is in trouble.
      5. This band of vagabond Christians has grown into an empire-wide movement, even with three centuries of ruthless persecution.
      6. Two major constituencies now: pagan Romans and Christian Romans.
      7. So how shall they live together amicably?
      8. And so in March, 32l AD, Constantine makes a calculated political decision and issues an empire-wide edict that the day of the Sun would be a day of rest....
         1. Not a religious day of rest.
         2. But a day for all citizens to refrain from work.
         3. A day, no doubt, to build harmony and peace throughout the empire.
      9. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em.
      10. And soon it was that Constantine himself was baptized a Christian....legend even has it that he marched his armies through a river on one occasion...and declared them all baptized too.
   3. It was a masterful stroke, and it brought comparative unity and quiet to the empire.
      1. For by the 4th century, the Christians in the west had officially declared their day of worship to be the day of the Sun....SUNDAY...the day the Sun of Righteousness arose from the dead, was how they defended it.
      2. And of course their pagan neighbors were already worshiping the SUN on SUNDAY, so what a convenient blending of pagan and Christian truth!
      3. Peace at last for all...
   4. BUT IT WAS PEACE AT A PRICE....
      1. And when in the middle of the 4th century the church convened a council at Laodecia, then at last was the official stance ratified in the words:

         "Christians shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday, but shall work on that day; but the Lord's day they shall especially honor and...if possible, do no work on that day." (Finley 64)

      2. Just a wandering calf in the forest...but when the centuries passed...the path had been ground into the forest floor of history and almost all of Christendom followed.
   5. The more pressing question is: Shall you, shall I?
   6. And upon whose authority shall we follow the calf path?
      1. Illus: Shall it be Bishop Eusebius, the high ranking Catholic leader during Constantine's reign?

         "All things whatsoever that were prescribed for the [Bible] Sabbath, we have transferred them to the Lord's day, as being more authoritative and more highly regarded and first in rank, and more honorable than the Jewish Sabbath" (Quoted in J. P. Migne's "Patrologie" p 23, 1169-1172)

      2. Illus: By whose authority shall we follow the calf path? Shall it be the authority of The Convert's Catechism, the instructional book for those who join the Roman Catholic Church?

         "Question: Which is the Sabbath day?" "Answer: Saturday is the Sabbath day." "Question: Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?" "Answer: We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday."

      3. Illus: By whose authority shall we follow the calf path? By the authority of Cardinal James Gibbon?

         "You may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday."

      4. Illus: Then why does Rome venerate Sunday? The Catholic Encyclopaedia answers:

         "The church, after changing the day of rest from the Jewish Sabbath of the seventh day of the week to the first made the Third Commandment refer to Sunday as the day to be kept holy as the Lord's Day." (V 4, p 153) [it says 3rd instead of 4th because the Catholic Catechism dropped the 2nd commandment, forbidding graven images, and consequently divided the 10th commandment into two parts in order to still get ten commandments]

   7. But if the Catholic Church claims to have changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, why do most Protestant churches also worship on Sunday?
      1. Good question, and one that Catholics also ask.
      2. Illus. In his book, the Faith of Millions, the late Rev. John A. O'BRIEN, former professor at Notre Dame University, writes:

         "But since Saturday, not Sunday, is specified in the Bible, isn't it curious that non-Catholics who profess to take their religion directly from the Bible and not from the Church, observe Sunday instead of Saturday? Yes, of course, it is inconsistent; but this change was made about fifteen centuries before Protestantism was born, and by that time the custom was universally observed. They have continued the custom, even though it rests upon the authority of the Catholic church and not upon an explicit text in the bible. That observance remains as a reminder of the Mother Church from which the non-Catholic sects broke away like a boy running away from home but still carrying in his pocket a picture of his mother or a lock of her hair."

   8. Now I ask you tonight, Shall we follow the calf path of man or the fourth commandment of God? [screen]

      "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God....For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." Exodus 20:8-11

   9. I REPEAT: WHOSE AUTHORITY SHALL WE FOLLOW?
9. But then, does it really matter....this difference between tradition and truth...between human custom and divine command?
   1. Illus: Aristotle in 300 BC made the following scientific observation and wrote it down in his journal: "The spider is a small animal which has six legs."
      1. That declaration was accepted as truth for 1700 years, until somebody else counted the legs of the spider in 1400 AD and discovered that it has eight legs!
      2. THEY HAD TO REWRITE THEIR BOOKS, WHEN SOMEBODY RECHECKED THE EVIDENCE!
      3. For 1700 years nobody challenged the great Aristotle, and so his false count, his false step down the calf path, was followed mindlessly by all those behind him!
   2. illus: Hippocrates, that great progenitor of medicine long ago, believed that the way to save a dying human was to "bleed" the poisons out of his system.
      1. And so he did....opened up a hole in a vein ...and let the patient bleed and bleed.
      2. Sure enough the patients bled the poisons were drained along with the life!
      3. Hippocrates, in whose name physicians through time have taken their professional oath, the Hippocratic oath.
      4. George Washington, the first president of our nation, was bled by his physician, who followed the lead of Hippocrates, which in the end only hastened the president's death.
      5. Does it matter whom you follow and the tradition you believe?
      6. Ask any practicing physician today and she will tell you...it matters indeed...it can be the difference between life and death.
   3. Ladies and gentlemen, just because something has been believed and practiced IN ALL SINCERITY by those who have gone before DOES NOT THEN MAKE IT TRUTH OR RIGHT.
      1. Because you can be sincerely wrong.
      2. You can also be dead wrong sincerely but dead wrong Mr. Hippocrates and Mr. President Washington.
      3. Sincere but dead.
      4. BECAUSE SINCERITY CAN NEVER BE A SUBSTITUTE FOR TRUTH.
      5. Illus: Jesus Himself declared at the beginning of our lecture tonight, [screen]

         "In vain do you worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men."

      6. Human sincerity can never be a substitute for divine truth.
   4. AND WHAT IS THE DIVINE TRUTH?
      1. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy."
      2. It is the truth of the God of the universe who came down to this dark spot in the cosmos to create the human race in His own image.
      3. So eager was He for our friendship that not only did He give us life, but He also gave us a day in which to celebrate our friendship with the LORD OF ALL LIFE.
      4. From the beginning to the ending of the Bible, God's gift of the seventh- day of the week, the seventh-day Sabbath, is His gift of love to every man, woman and child who has ever lived.
      5. A solitary day, the seventh day, that still declares GOD'S RIGHTFUL AUTHORITY IN OUR CIVILIZATION AS OUR CREATOR AND OUR RE-CREATOR.
      6. A day in time to forever remind us that God is not Somebody to be afraid of, He is Someone to be a friend of!
      7. And when He stretched out His arms on Calvary's crimson tree, then we saw the truth the LORD OF THE SABBATH is the LORD OF SALVATION.
      8. You can't have one without the other.
      9. SAME LORD, SAME SABBATH, SAME SAVIOR, SAME SALVATION.
   5. Follow the calf, follow the cross, follow the crowd, follow the Christ.
      1. Two separate pathways.
      2. But only one of them is the way of Jesus.
      3. Which way will you choose?
   6. Illus: My friend George Vandeman, founder/speaker of the It Is Written telecast, in his little classic, A Day to Remember, told the story of that winter's night when a Roman legion was encamped in a little lakeside town in France.
      1. Forty spiritual heroes, unwilling to renounce their faith in Iesous Christos, were sentenced to die out on a frozen lake.
      2. Banded together in the biting, benumbing cold, they began to sing.
      3. The stern proud Roman commander, on watch from his comfortable, fireside tent, heard their chant:

         Forty wrestlers, wrestling for Thee, O Christ,
         Claim for Thee the victory
         And ask from Thee the crown.
         

      4. Strangely moved by this unusual testimony, that hardened legionnaire, so accustomed to cursing and frantic pleas for mercy, listened intently in the night.
      5. These were men of his own company who had angered the emperor by their faith in this foreign Lord these were his forty heroes MUST THEY DIE?
      6. He moved out into the cold darkness, gathered more driftwood from the shore and stoked the roaring fire even hotter and brighter with the hopes that the inviting warmth in the frigid night would compel his men to give up their foolish faith and rejoin the emperors legions.
      7. But no, his ear was greeted with the chant from across the ice:

         Forty wrestlers, wrestling for Thee, O Christ,
         Claim for Thee the victory
         And ask from Thee the crown.
         

      8. Then suddenly the song changed "Thirty-nine wrestlers, wrestling for Thee, O Christ "
      9. And in that moment as the chant still hung in the icy night air, one of the condemned staggered up the frozen bank and collapsed in a heap beside the roaring fire.
      10. The song of forty was no more one of the heroes had turned coward.
      11. On the shore, clearly outlined against the fire, stood the legionnaire commander strange stirrings surging in his breast.
      12. When suddenly his soldiers witnessed him take one more gaze at the pitiable specimen crouched on the ground before him, then throwing off his cloak, before they could stop him, he raced down the banks and across the midnight ice to the frozen prisoners, casting back his words, "As I live, I will have your place!"
      13. Moments later the chant, with a fresh note of triumph, wafted back through the cold to the soldiers upon the silent shore:

          Forty wrestlers, wrestling for Thee, O Christ,
          Claim for Thee the victory
          And ask from Thee the crown.
          

   7. Follow the calf, follow the cross, follow the crowd, follow the Christ.
      1. Two separate pathways.
      2. But only one of them is the way of Jesus.
      3. The calf path of the first day or the Jesus path of the seventh day?
      4. Which way will you choose?
      5. Only one of them is the way of Jesus.
      6. Which way, which Day, will you choose?

Further Study:

Discover Guide - Can The Majority Be Wrong?     (Lecture Study Guide from Discover Bible School)

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