King Agrippa Makes His Decision

This is our Understanding the Scriptures segment, we are in the Book of Acts chapter 26, and we’re going to pick up with verse 27.“King Agrippa, (This is the apostle Paul speaking) believest thou the prophets?I know that thou believest.”“Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.”“And Paul said, I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds.”“And when he had thus spoken, the king rose up, and the governor, and Bernice, and they that sat with them:And when they were gone aside, they talked between themselves, saying, This man doeth nothing worthy of death or of bonds.”“Then said Agrippa unto Festus, This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar.”

Dave:

Well, let’s go back, Tom, where you began, verse 27, King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets?And I was talking about these debates, and Tom, I have maybe mentioned, I don’t remember whether I have or not, but I’ve mentioned that I have read a lot of books by creationists, for example, debating creationist versus evolution, and many of them by outstanding Christians, Christian leaders, evangelicals, and one thing that I have noticed, they never refer to prophecy.I can’t fathom that because the God of the Bible, Isaiah:46:9Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me,
See All... and 10 says I will tell you what’s going to happen before it happens, and when it does you will have to acknowledge I am God, and this is my Word.So, this is the great proof that God gives, not, Well, there’s got to be a first cause, you know.And I can give you all kinds of reasons: DNA, it’s a language with rules, it spells it all out, how that little tiny single cell can build a body with a hundred trillion cells.I mean it’s fantastic, it’s encoded only certain protein molecules can decode it.It takes protein molecules to decode something that hasn’t even been written, and without the writing protein molecules couldn’t exist because it tells how protein molecules can exist.Which came first, the chicken or the egg?I mean, we can go on and on, but that’s not really going to get us anywhere with these guys.But what they cannot, and I’m going to use this in my debates coming up, so I’ll find out.What is the Hindu going to say about this?What is the Muslim going to say about this?You have no prophecies for Muhammad.You have no prophecies in the Bhagavad-Gita, or the Hindu Vedas, they are unique to the Bible.And so Paul is putting his finger on this, and you remember—I keep going back to certain very important verses:Romans chapter 1, Paul says, I’m an apostle separated unto the gospel of God which He promised before by His prophets and the Holy Scriptures.Here it is all laid out, where the Messiah would be born, when He would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, I mean all the details, detailed prophecies that cannot be explained away!Now that proves that this is God’s Word. That proves that God exists.No matter how else you might want to try to argue it, that proves that God exists.Okay.So, Paul is referring to the prophets.Agrippa, believest thou the prophets?He’s trying to reason with Agrippa.Agrippa, you know—if we went back to the previous verses which we had in our last program, he’s talking about what has happened.This Jesus--that He should suffer.The prophets, you crucified Him.Well, the prophets said he would be crucified, long before crucifixion was ever known on this earth.So, Agrippa, do you believe the prophets?It foretold all of this.Now on that basis, Agrippa, you are going to have to admit this is true, and you are going to have to make a choice, a rational choice.And that’s when Agrippa says: Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.

Tom:

Dave, let me jump in and bring this up to today.Prophecy is not popular today.O, there are some people who are attracted to the idea of it, but I wouldn’t submit that one of the turnoffs of this for King Agrippa is the same turnoff that we see today.We’ve been talking for weeks about the emerging church. They have a low view of prophecy.In past programs we have talked about Rick Warren and his Global PEACE Plan, and his book, The Purpose Driven Life, which takes another low view of prophecy.And it seems to me, both the emerging church, Rick Warren and perhaps Agrippa, they have an agenda.All right, and when you say prophecy and certain things are going to happen that God has His plan, and He’s telling us ahead of time what is going to take place, well, if that doesn’t conform to my agenda, Dave, I’m not so sure I want to go there.If I’m trying to establish the kingdom on the earth, okay, and we’ve seen it, Reconstructionists, we’ve seen the Kingdom Now, people who want to establish certain things, they say, wait a minute, this doesn’t conform to prophecy, God says this certain thing is going to happen.And you’ve said it over and over again, people who are trying to set up the kingdom, whether wittingly, and I would say most of it unwittingly, they are really working for the Antichrist.Even before he comes, they are setting up his kingdom.Well, prophecy will clue you in on that, and it won’t work with your own agenda.

Dave:

Yeah, well Tom, you could be right, I mean, Agrippa has an agenda of course, he wants to stay king, and he does not want to become a Christian because it would be too costly.You can’t remain king to a Christian, they might crucify him.So you have to weigh the issues here.Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.We have a hymn that we sang when I was a boy.I don’t know whether you ever sang it, Tom.

Tom:

As a boy, Dave.

Dave:

No, not as a boy— I mean since you became a Christian.You maybe didn’t pick it up in any of today’s evangelical circles because they’ve thrown out the old hymns almost entirely, and they were powerful.They’ve got some new stuff, and I won’t go off into that, and I don’t think they are quite up to par with the old writers who really knew God deeply.They were not just some young convert who can twang a guitar.

Tom:

Looking for a gig—well not all.

Dave:

Some are very sincere.But anyway, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian, we have a hymn that came from that:Almost persuaded now to believe, Almost persuaded Christ to receive.Seems now some soul could say, Go spirit, go thy way.Some more convenient day, on thee I’ll call.Almost persuaded, harvest is past. Almost persuaded doom comes at last.Almost cannot avail, almost is but to fail.Almost the bitter wail, almost but lost.That’s King Agrippa.King Agrippa, Paul has laid it out, you know the prophets, you say you believe them, you cannot deny it. They all point to Jesus as the Messiah.You’re almost persuaded, and you know, Tom, I believe that people are conscious in hell in the lake of fire.I believe the real flame, the real torment is they are naked before the truth, the justice of God and they know they have no excuse, and that’s going to haunt Agrippa--almost, almost.Agrippa, you could have become a believer. You could have spent eternity with Christ in heaven andyou wouldn’t do it because you traded a brief popularity on this earth for eternity with Christ.

Tom:

Dave, again, as you mentioned in our earlier segment, the mystery of iniquity. It’s unfathomable.

Dave:

Tom, when we get into a discussion of free will, and it’s all through the Bible, free will offerings 17 times in the Old Testament, and the Calvinists say, oh come on now, you can’t explain—I mean, why do some people believe and others don’t believe?The only explanation is that God planned that some would be in heaven.And people ask me, well tell me, why does one person believe and not another person?I say, ask them, they made the choice.We can’t explain it. It’s a mystery of the will of man that’s interesting.