VICTORY OVER THE DRAGON, THE BEAST, AND THE FALSE PROPHET

A SERMON

Preached on Sunday Morning February 19th, 1865

By Mister JAMES WELLS

At the Surrey Tabernacle, Borough Road

Volume 7 Number 324

“And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.” Revelation 16:13

WE are assured that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable;” and it is with the humble hope of saying something profitable that I have a desire to speak this morning from these words, especially as they stand connected with the subject, we had in hand last Lord’s day morning. You will perceive in our text here is a trinity of adverse powers, the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet, and you will also observe that here are their minions, that “I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.” And then we have, also, in the next verse, which I will not touch upon this morning, because I intend, if I am spared, having a sermon upon that verse, in the next verse we have set before us the fourfold mission of these unclean spirits.

The verse presents itself, then, in a threefold form. First, here is a trinity of adverse powers to be met.

First, then, I notice that here are three adverse powers; but I notice these powers with this chief object, namely, to set before you the way in which each of these powers has been, is, must be met and overcome. Suffice it to say, then, that the dragon, as you are aware, signifies an embodiment of Satan: whatever man, or whatever system, may be the representation of Satan, the word “dragon,” when used in this figurative sense, is an embodiment of Satanic power. And the people of God, in ages gone by, have had those experiences of encounter with these tyrannical powers that you and I are strangers to, and therefore cannot enter precisely into what their feelings were. Let us, then, take a threefold view of the dragon, or view this adverse power under three different circumstances, and let us see how in each case the people of God overcame. And in so doing you will find that I have nothing this morning, in one sense, new to say to you, for what I shall say upon overcoming the adversary will rather be a kind of illustration and confirmation of what the Lord has done for us in bringing us already on to the vantage-ground of victory. Now you are aware that Pharaoh is called a dragon, and he stood in the way of the salvation of the Israelites; and we see how that dragon was overcome, we see how God overcame him. Let us, instead of taking the history, take Isaiah’s comment upon it: “Awake, awake, O arm of the Lord; are you not it that cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?” So, the Lord so wounded Pharaoh by overturning him and his host in the Red Sea, as to complete the salvation of his people. Let us, then, I say, here view the arm of the Lord as setting forth spiritually the Lord Jesus Christ. Hence it is said of him, that he was to destroy him that had the power of death. The object of Satan was to hinder the Savior accomplishing the salvation of man; and did Satan prevail? Did the dragon prevail? No, he did not prevail the Lord Jesus Christ did prevail, and did put sin away by the sacrifice of himself; and Jesus Christ did, by the victory he wrought over Satan, put it out (and here I wish you to be clear upon this point), Jesus Christ did, by the salvation he wrought, put it out of the power of the enemy ever to lay anything to the charge of any one of his people; so that the salvation that he wrought is that described by Isaiah when he said that “Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation, shall not be ashamed or confounded, world without end.” “Therefore,” says Isaiah, “the redeemed,” he takes a redemptional view of this victory; that which in the 15th chapter of Exodus is called a victory, where the Lord had triumphed gloriously; so we will take a salvational view, a victory view; Isaiah takes a redemptional view, “And the redeemed shall return”, it is because they are redeemed; “and shall come to Zion”, come to that order of things where the Lord has commanded the blessing, even life for evermore; “and everlasting joy shall be unto them.” What poor, besotted, benighted creatures we are, nine-tenths of our time! what poor, carnal, dead, helpless worms of the earth. Everlasting joy by the redemption of the Savior set before us, and yet sin within us, and ten thousand temptations, seem to hinder us from being attracted by that everlasting joy. Why, what can equal it? What can you find in the universe to set by the side of a fulness of joy, unmixed with sorrow; joy that is never to end, that goes on through endless ages? “Everlasting joy shall be upon their head; they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.” Thus, then, if we would overcome the adversary, it must be by the complete salvation of Jesus, by faith in that salvation, by the victory he has wrought, by the redemption he has wrought. See how nicely Isaiah and the apostle Paul accord in their testimony. Isaiah says of the redeemed that they shall come to Zion, and everlasting joy shall be unto them, sorrow and sighing shall flee away; and the apostle Paul says of this same Redeemer, that “he has entered into the holy of holies, having obtained for us eternal redemption.” See how nicely the two accord. Thus, then, if you and I would stand on the vantage-ground of victory against the great enemy of our souls, we see it must be in the same way that the ancients did, namely, by the salvation of Jesus Christ. Thus, then, I think it is clear that Satan has ever aimed to hinder the salvation of men. Not only did he aim to hinder the Savior from accomplishing salvation, but when we were in our state of nature, was it not the work of Satan then to keep us there if possible? When we were called by grace, was it not the work of Satan to try to turn us aside, and make us seek salvation where he knew salvation could not be found, and to set us to seek redemption where he knew redemption could not be found, and to set us to seek victory where he knew victory could not be found? And if the Lord had not watched over us to this day, we might have sought and never known wherein salvation was, or wherein redemption was, or wherein victory was. And when we did know the way, when the Lord did reveal to us the way, was it not then the work of Satan to stand at our right hand to resist us when we stood before the angel of the Lord, that is, Christ? for Christ is the angel, the messenger of the new covenant. When we were brought there for the first time, and saw there a hope, Satan stood at our right hand to resist us; and so he would to this day if the Lord had not stepped in and said, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan; is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” Thus, then, we overcome the dragon in his trying to hinder our salvation; we see where the victory is. John might well sum it up in these beautiful words, “This is our victory, even our faith;” precious faith; a divine persuasion of what Christ has done to save the soul; a divine persuasion of the victory he has wrought, a divine persuasion of the eternity of his redemption, and the infinite ability of his blood to redeem from all that stands against us; it is this that puts Satan down under our feet, and gives us the victory.

Again, the second position of the dragon is to hinder our coining into that state of eternal safety, and salvation, and certainty, where there is not the least danger; that is another part of the work of Satan, to hinder us from that. Just notice his position. First, he tries to hinder the salvation of our souls; and not unto us, but unto our God be the honor that the enemy is defeated, and that we are delivered. Now, says Satan, I must try and keep them in the dark concerning the safety. 27th of Isaiah, “In that day the Lord, with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.” The sea there I apprehend to mean, figuratively, the world. But where is the dragon now? Hear what is to come. “In that day sing you unto her, A vineyard of red wine. I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.” Ah, the dragon does not like this to be known; he knows, as soon as a sinner gets into such a vineyard as this, he himself must go. “I the Lord do keep it.” I let out the other vineyard to husbandmen, but this vineyard I keep; I, myself, keep it; I, Jehovah, do keep it. And to show that he keeps it carefully, “I will water it every moment.” “I will water it;” there is none can hinder him; and “lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.” Hence, when the black horse of a dark religion, perhaps referring especially to Catholicism; they seem fond of darkness and of black, when the black horse went forth, he that sat on him having “a yoke” in his hand, as it ought to be rendered, instead of “a pair of balances,” there came a voice from the midst of the four living creatures, namely, the midst of the tabernacle, where the mercy-seat was, saying, “Hurt not the oil and the wine,” nor the corn; nor could they; for the Bread of life Satan can never injure, and the wino of a Savior’s blood Satan can never injure, and the oil of God’s grace Satan can never injure. Thus, then, the dragon would hinder us from coming into this safety. Oh, my hearer, what would our religion be if it were not a religion of safety, if it were not a religion of certainty? And when this is known that the Lord thus keeps it, and waters it every moment, and keeps it night and day, how it endears the Lord! Why, the Christian may indeed be, in the right sense of the word, and ought to be, in the right sense of the word, the most lofty-minded man upon the earth; he ought to be the most noble-minded man upon the earth; he ought, in one sense of the word, in the holy sense of the word, to be the proudest man upon the earth, he ought. The Christian should say with David, “My soul shall make her boast in the Lord.” Boast you of your riches? Alas! they make themselves wings and fly away. Boast you of your health? Alas! it is very uncertain. Boast you of your worldly achievements? Alas! they are but shadows. Boast you of your worldly pleasures? Alas! they have all the dregs of death at the bottom. “My soul shall make her boast in the Lord.”

Again, the third position the enemy takes is this; after trying to hinder our salvation, and he himself being overcome by that salvation, and then trying to hinder the revelation of this safety we have in the Lord, where the Lord is our keeper, and where he waters the work every moment, and keeps it night and day, and will take care that no final hurt shall come to it, according to the dear Savior’s own testimony, as though he had his pure mind upon this very scripture in Isaiah, when he said to his disciples, “Nothing shall by any means hurt you;” I will see that your troubles shan’t hurt you, I will see that none of your sufferings shall ultimately hurt you; “Nothing shall by any means hurt you;” here the dragon is defeated again. Now, says the dragon, there are several of them got into the city; I am now rather driven to quarters, 1 will take another position. So he sees the church clothed with Christ and he sees her walking in the moonlight of the gospel, and he sees her to be crowned with the twelve stars, or the fulfilment, as we have lately said, of the truths of the gospel, and he sees her aiming to bring forward that very Jesus Christ by whom she has acquired all this, so that she wants other people to be clothed as she is clothed, she wants other people to walk in the same light that she walks in, she wants other people to be crowned with the same glory, she wants other people to dwell in the same heaven. It is very liberal of her, it is true, but I will destroy that, I will, if I can. And so, he stood before the woman to devour this mystic child, that is, to devour the gospel, to swallow up the gospel, to stop the gospel; and it is wonderful to what an extent, in human appearance, the adversary succeeded. Only see, from the fifth century down to the time of Luther, what dark ages they were; how the poor people of God, age after age, were by this dragon driven about into the caves and dens of the earth; and their sufferings, even the very reading of their sufferings, is enough to make one’s blood run cold, and enough to make one’s hair stand on end. It all displays, on the one hand, the cruelty of the devil; on the other hand, the power of that grace that could sustain them. And therefore, he tries to destroy the gospel. And how did the people overcome him? Why, the dragon fought hard; he employed his angels, his messengers, and he fought hard against the gospel, “but they prevailed not; neither was their place found anymore in heaven.” The Jewish heaven Satan could get into, but the Christian heaven he cannot get into. The Jews had a life that Satan could destroy; but the Christian has a life in Christ, that Satan cannot destroy. The Jew had a holiness, consisting in his own consecration, which Satan could tarnish and destroy; but the Christian has Christ for his sanctification, a holiness that Satan cannot destroy. The Jew had a righteousness, that righteousness consisting in his own personal conformity to the law, which Satan could destroy; but the Christian has a righteousness in Christ, which Satan cannot reach. The Jew had a happy land which Satan could take and did take possession of; but the Christian has an inheritance which Satan cannot take possession of. The Jew had a temple, into which Satan could get, and turn it into a den of thieves; but the Christian has a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, into which Satan can never enter. Thus, if you contrast the Jewish heaven with the Christian heaven, you will at once see what the meaning here is. It was said of Satan, that he was cast down, and there was no place found for him any more in heaven, because the Christian heaven is spiritual, is in the hands of Christ, and is in Christ, and is out of the reach of Satan. But although it is true Satan cannot reach us there, yet he can reach us in our persons, he can reach us in our circumstances, he can reach us in our families, and he can reach us in the world; and so the church fled into the wilderness, but Satan pursued her there; and the remnant of her seed had to travel through the wilderness, and Satan pursued her there, to persecute the remnant of her seed. Thus, they overcame, then, by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, loved not their lives unto the death. And so, the saints rejoiced in the victorious power of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, then, the dragon, in trying to hinder our salvation, was defeated; in trying to hinder the revelation of that safety we have in Christ was defeated; and in trying to hinder the church from shining forth in her eternal glory, for she shall shine forth forever with a light above the brightness of the created sun, there Satan also is finally cast down, to rise no more. Mark the significant words; “neither was their place found any more in heaven.” Satan reached you in the first Adam, reaches you in self, reaches you in circumstances; he may reach you when you come to die; he will know then that he has but a little time left; “the last enemy to be destroyed is Death and Satan may set in then; but his time then will be very short; then, when the soul once departs, he can reach you no more. He cannot reach us now as we stand in Christ, but only as we are in this vale of tears. So much, then, for one power, the dragon.

Now we will, secondly, come to the beast. What are we to understand by the beast? We are to understand it to mean a wild beast. Its body is said to be like a leopard, and its feet like a bear, and its mouth that of a lion, to show that we are to understand it in the highly figurative sense; and the beast generally means the main body of the people, that are governed by the dragon; the body said to be like a leopard, because of the great variety of peoples that make up this one wild beast; the feet to be like a bear, because the dragon employs the power of the people to pounce upon the poor saints of God; and the voice to be like that of a lion, to denote the thunders, either of the Vatican, or of the Czar, or of Mahomet, or any other tyrannical power, when they have thundered out laws against the truth of the most high God. My chief concern is to set forth how the saints of God overcame the beast; how they overcame the main body of people, who were bond-children, wild, enemies to God’s truth, like Ishmael their proto-type, despisers of God’s truth. 13th of Revelation. This wild beast should be got up into such a shape and form, and become so popular and so general, which is the case now in some civilized countries, as you know, Spain, Portugal, Austria, and a great measure so in France; but there, I think, the beast is rapidly losing his power, as the emperor is all but a Protestant; but a word upon that by-and-bye. How do they overcome him? Ah, hear, O heavens! and be astonished, O earth! at that mercy that has entwined our best affections about that which forms the very essence of victory over the beast. Now, just notice the language, and then I will leave you to draw your own inference what kind of people they are that are to overcome the main body of the people constituting the wild beast. 8th verse, 13th chapter, of this same book, in which chapter you have an account of the beast with many horns, to denote the various powers, and many crowns, denoting the various successes. “All that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Ay, then, it is these election people that will not be led by the beast; it is these election people, then, that stand out from all the rest; they are the men that will not follow the spirit of the day, the fashions of the world, the opinions of the many. They are a people that see that their salvation originated in the sovereign pleasure of their Maker; in the sovereign mind, settlement, and decisions of the most high God; that their names were registered as citizens of the celestial world before time commenced its course; they are brought to see this and to know this, and they bring in this, and they say, Away with all human intervention, human interposition, human importance, and human doings; they stand fast against the whole. The parchment is unrolled; they rejoice that their names are written in heaven, and they disdain to acknowledge any religion but that of which God is the direct and immediate source, author, maintainer, object, substance, strength, and end. Ah, say you, it says, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world;” it does not say their names were written from the foundation of the world, for I just opened my Bible, and looked at that verse, and it merely says the Lamb was slain, does not say their names were written then. Very well, then, if you have opened your Bible and looked at the 8th verse of the 13th chapter, you just open your Bible again, and just peep at the 8th verse of the 17th chapter, and just read that, and you will find there that all the deficiency is made up. “And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder,” that is, admire and follow the main body, the fashion of the day; “whose names were not;” past tense, you see, “written in the book of life from the foundation of the world.” In the one case Christ is slain from the foundation of the world; in the other case their names were written ever since he was slain, from the foundation of the world. Are you satisfied? If you are not

I am. That is the way the beast is overcome. So, it really seems, then that we shall never really overcome the religions of the world, any more than we shall overcome the irreligious of the world, unless we bring in the sword of eternal election, and with that sword cut our way through hosts of devils, while they fall before the word. Thus, then, they overcame the dragon in the way I have described; we overcome the beast by the great truth of electing grace. Leave that out, then of course you must bring in something to fill up the chasm; and Satan will find plenty to fill it with; bring in your duty-faith, that is one layer; free-will, another layer; universal charity, another layer; a little piece of priestly absolution that is another layer; and so he will bring in layer upon layer, forms such a mountain, There, he says, get up on there; that is the place; how firm you will stand there! Ah, I should like to try it first; it is rather boggy not rocky, rather sandy, rather dangerous, Baxterian sand, Fuller’s earth, Popish mire, afraid to stand there. It does very well for those that know not their need of a better standing; the man that has never been thrown down by the law will never feel his need of a gospel standing. Says one, “He brought me up out of the miry clay, set my feet upon a rock.” Bring in the sword of election, then it cuts all this off, cuts the sinner off from all hope and help, places him upon the rock of truth, the Rock of ages, fixes his standing there; ah, he may rejoice there, as an inhabitant of the rock: “Let the inhabitants of the rock sing: let them shout from the tops of the mountains.” So, they overcame the beast. Now in all solemnity and earnestness, as a dying man, which I feel I am, in all earnestness I do believe, though I have not now time to stop to amplify it, that without a right understanding, and without a right reception of, and without a supreme love to, this great truth of eternal election, I believe no man without that is really separated from the spirit of this world. The Savior says, “You are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” Now mark the point of separation, “I have chosen you.” It is eternal election stepped in; and if your faith does not lay hold of that, and you have a spirit of hostility to absolute and eternal election, I only say this, I will speak carefully; it does require care, that I would not be in your shoes for all the world, to live and to die ignorant of or hostile to the great truth of eternal election. Notice the Savior’s language upon the same, “If it were possible, they should deceive the very elect.” “The election has obtained it, and the rest were blinded.” Thus, then, we must overcome the beast in his leopard form, bear form, or lion form; in whatever shape or form the various religions of the world may appear, it must be by this reception of eternal election. Thus, much for the dragon and the beast.

I now come to the false prophet. By the false prophet we are not to understand, of course, any one man in particular of any one age whatever. Mahomet was a false prophet, we have no doubt of that, and the word of God declares that many false prophets shall come; but by the false prophet perhaps we are to understand the term here mystically. That there is a body of error in the world no Christian will deny, and that body of error may well be called a false prophet, and that body of error has many servants to promote it. But I will, in this part, give you the false prophet negatively; not positively, but negatively, and that will show how the false prophet is to be overcome; that is to say, I will give the true prophet, and that will bring before us the fact, that whatever is not in accordance with the true prophet must be a false prophet. I think that will be the more profitable way of handling this part of our subject. What is the true prophet? I will take the words of Elijah; so that 1 will not, on these tremendous matters, give any theory oi mine; God forbid that I should; God forbid that anyone that hears me this day, or any other day, should ever be led to lean upon anything but Gods own word. Now Elijah said, and of course the testimony he bears concerning others as a body, that will bear the reverse concerning himself, “They have forsaken your covenant; they have dug down your altars: I only am left”, he was in public, though there were seven thousand in private, he did not know of that, who had not bowed the knee to Baal, “and slain your prophets Now a true prophet, one mark of a true prophet, is that he comes in the spirit of God’s covenant. The covenant that God made with the Jews was, as you are aware, as the word of God declares, a shadow of good things to come. A true prophet, therefore, the man that is sent of God. comes in the spirit of the new covenant. “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel; I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people; I will forgive their iniquity and will remember their sin no more.” The prophet that does not come in the spirit of this new covenant is not a true prophet. Thus, I thought it was better to give you what was not a true prophet by giving you what is a true prophet, than to wander away into the various mazes of systems in the world. Well, we here, at the Surrey Tabernacle, with all our sister churches throughout the world, have lived now for a great many years, and hundreds of our dear brethren and sisters have gone home to glory, in the bond, life, purity, certainty, and blessedness of the new covenant. When I am about you, some of you, and hear you speak, and see some of your letters you write to your friends sometimes, you don’t think I see them, you speak in your letters of the new covenant, of the liberty of the gospel, and it does my heart good. I can say with John, I have no greater joy, next to my own salvation, than to hear that my children walk in the truth. And he who does not come in the spirit of the new covenant, as a new creature taught of God, led into this covenant, is not a true prophet. He may preach Jesus Christ as much as he likes, if he does not preach the covenant to which Jesus Christ belongs, of which he is the Mediator and the continual and eternal Priest; if he does not do this he does not come in the true spirit of the gospel; and while it is not for me to label any man for hell, I only say this, I cannot receive such. So that, to my mind, one test of a true prophet is his coming thus in the spirit of the new covenant “Forsaken your covenant.” Let me come home, Christian, to your secret feelings; do you not find in your own mind a clinging to it more and more? When you read the declamatory and threatening parts of God’s word, do you not sometimes think, Ah, bless God for a better covenant, where there are promises without threatening’s, where there are provisions without conditions, where everything is safe where all my salvation is sure? And do you not lookup sometimes with an eye of sympathy, love, adoration, to Jesus, and say, Blessed Jesus you have gathered together all the bitters that belong to me; you have drunk the bitter cup; you have fulfilled a broken law; you have taken the broken covenant out of the way, you have nailed it to your cross; you have triumphed over all that was against me; and by what your infinitely precious blood has accomplished my soul is brought up out of the pit wherein there is no water, and I shall enter at the last into possession of all the glory that God has for me, and there shall I join with all the saints to sing, “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and has made us kings and priests unto God.” Then Elijah also says, “Dug down your altars.” That man that lowers the atonement of Christ, in order to make way for a little creature doing; that man that lowers the intercession of Christ; that man that does not set the atonement forth as being infinitely more able to save that sin and Satan are to destroy; that man that does not set the intercession of the Savior in the certainty of its prevalency, after Jesus Christ has said, “I know that you always hear me;” the man that does not set forth these things we ought to deal with as a false prophet; that is to say, have nothing to do with him, not in these matters.

What an infinite mistake to suppose that in a sermon or two you have said all that can be said of the atonement of Christ! Does not God himself declare the mystery is great? “Great is the mystery of godliness; God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit.” How was Christ justified in the Spirit? Why, by doing exactly what he was commissioned to do; by finishing the work he was sent to do, and so became worth preaching to the Gentiles; no use to preach him to the Gentiles but for this; no, not the slightest. Another sign of a false prophet is this, “They have slain your prophets.” Look at the name of the great Huntington; the greatest preacher that England ever knew, except the apostle came over here, I cannot say whether he did or not, but apart from that, William Huntington was the greatest, the deepest, the most powerful preacher this metropolis ever knew; and yet, how his name is hated in the professing world. You shall not be in any company of the slipshod, bandbox, men-made professors of the day, but if they come to the great Huntington, they are sure to say something against him; if they can think of any faults of his youth, they will rake them up, dwell upon them: for my part I should shudder to do so; I should be afraid to do so. So, the professing world still slay God’s prophets. We have none now conspicuous enough for the world to take much notice of. Here have we been, up in this corner, out of sight, so many years that you have kindly hidden your minister, that of course he is not much noticed. Ah, that Wells, he is not important enough to notice; he is up in a corner there, with a few people, all quiet. I should have been slain long before this, as it were; I do not mean, bless the Lord, literally, because the enemy has not that power now, but I mean as far as words can do it. So that whenever you find men, however pious, however zealous, that their zeal is more red-hot, heated seven times hotter, against high-doctrine people than any other class of people, that is a dark mark against that man. Elijah was a free-grace man; all the prophets were free-grace men; the apostles were all free-grace men, all of them. And therefore, the man that is an enemy to such men as the great Huntington, not but what I differ from Huntington in some things, of course I do, and abide conscientiously by that difference, but that does not make me ignorant of the greatness of the man. He has written twenty volumes, and those volumes will go on, generation after generation, generation after generation; and you may depend upon it, they may try where they may, they will never get William Huntington’s volumes out of the world while the world stands; and one tried soul and another tried soul will read them; they will never be able to overturn him; there he is; he will remain a preacher for a long time. I recollect, before I had the slightest idea of the ministry, there was a sort of bandbox professor where I was, and he said, “Oh, I am afraid you will be very uncharitable, like that Huntington.” Never heard his name before. And he said, “I will lend you a curious book of his.” He lent me the book. Well, this book contained Mr. Huntington’s experience, depth of soultrouble very few go through, and his deliverance. Well, I met this man next day; he said, “Dear me, I am so sorry, I lent you the wrong book.” “Ah,” I said, “I thought you had; I sat up till two o’clock this morning reading it, just my own language.” “Ah,” said he, “it is the ‘Bank of Faith’ I meant to lend you; I did not mean to lend you the other.” “Ah,” I said, “the Lord did though.” And so, the Lord says, “If a prophet be deceived, I the Lord will deceive that prophet.” And I said, “the Lord meant you to lend me that one; you meant to lend me the other; but the Lord meant you to lend me that.” And he said, “Can’t you bring it back tonight?” “No,” I said, “I cannot; I will read this one first, and you can lend me the other afterwards if you like.” So, then, it is a sign of a false prophet if we stand at all opposed to those essential matters, to those that stand clearly out for the new covenant.