Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary: Collated from his Diary by Benjamin FunkKline, John
Religion
Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary: Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk
Kline, John
Kline, John, 1797-1864
WEDNESDAY, October 16. Visit the following named families, in nearly
all of which we find members of our Brotherhood. We first visit
Sowerwine's, then Joseph Coffman's, Sheets's, Jacob Good's, Absalom
Painter's and George Hoover's. At the last-named place we have night
meeting and stay all night. We are now in Henry County, Indiana.
THURSDAY, October 17. Meeting at Jacob Brunk's. Mark 1 is read. Then
to Peter Fesler's, where we have night meeting. Acts 3 is read. Stay
all night with Brother Fesler.
FRIDAY, October 18. Come to Middletown and get a letter from home.
Glad to hear that all are well, but sorry to learn of some deaths.
Leaving Middletown, we go eastward to Brother David Hartman's, in
Wayne County, where we stay all night. Raining all day, and in
afternoon it falls in torrents.
SATURDAY, October 19. Love feast at Brother Abraham Hoover's. John 1
is read. Stay all night at Brother David Hartman's. Clear and cold.
SUNDAY, October 20. Forenoon meeting. Acts 3 was read. I spoke on
verse twenty-second: Subject, "The Great Prophet." Meeting again at
one o'clock. I speak on Mark 1:27. Text: "And they were all amazed,
insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is
this? What new doctrine is this?"
The Jews could well ask the question set forth in the text: "What new
doctrine is this?" To them the teachings of Christ were all new.
Whilst he came not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill,
nevertheless his fulfillment of them was so spiritual, so essentially
holy, so pure in motive, so beneficent in act, that the Jews were
entire strangers to it: or probably better, it was strange and new to
them. Even Nicodemus, a ruler among the Jews, failed to perceive what
Jesus meant when he told him about the nature and necessity of the new
birth. Our Lord manifests something of surprise at the ignorance and
stupidity of Nicodemus. Such ignorance as Nicodemus exposes in the
presence of Christ appears to us as wholly inexcusable, when we look
at what had already been taught on the subject of a change of heart,
or regeneration, in the law of Moses and the prophets.
Enoch, the seventh from Adam, walked with God three hundred years, and
never saw death, for God took him. Did he walk with God in a fleshly
mind, or in a spiritual mind? Hear what Jesus and Paul say: "That
which is born of the flesh, is flesh," and Paul says: "Therein
dwelleth no good thing." "But that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit," and therein serve we the Lord acceptably. Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, Moses and Elijah are to-day in the heavens. Are they there in
the flesh? Nay, verily, but in the spirit; in the new nature which God
had implanted in them. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of
heaven."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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