Acts 1:15-26

SUICIDE, SUCCESSION AND DOOM OF JUDAS

15-26. Now Peter, in his recognized seniority, proceeds to have the vacuum created by the fall of Judas Iscariot supplied. The prophecies here quoted predicting the treason of Judas, did not necessitate him to perpetrate the atrocious crime. You must bear in mind that God is not tied to the prophecies, but the prophecies to God. The prophecies are in the past tense, from the simple fact that they are histories in anticipation, seen by the Omniscient Eye, with whom all events in all ages are present. Christ came into the world to die, a substitute for fallen humanity. If Judas had never been born, Jesus would have died a ransom for a lost world just the same. In Acts 1:17 we learn that Judas received a lot of the apostolic ministry. We can not conclude that our Savior ever sent out a sinner or a devil to preach His holy gospel. John 6:70: “Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” If you will notice the gospel harmony you will find these words were spoken after about two years of the apostolic ministry had passed away. Unfortunately, Judas was the apostolical treasurer and financier, a very dangerous office. The love of money fought Jacob with desperation twenty years, and would have conquered and sent him to hell if he had not triumphed in the Peniel experience after that memorable night of prayer, when the love of money and all other phases of depravity were sanctified out of him. We doubt not but poor Judas has an alarming ministerial following at the present day. Could you uncap the bottomless pit and look down upon Judas, doubtless you would see him surrounded by multiplied thousands of preachers and church officials who were ruined by the love of money, sold out their Lord for filthy lucre, and made their bed in hell. Jesus condemns the hireling shepherd and says he will play the coward when the wolf comes. No wonder Satan's wolves at the present day are making awful havoc, slaying, devouring and scattering the Lord's sheep when a hireling ministry is the established order of all ecclesiasticisms. Judas sold Jesus for fifteen dollars. Many a preacher nowadays sells Him for fifteen hundred, and not a few for fifteen thousand. I seriously doubt whether any other apostle has a larger ministerial following than Judas. Reader, beware of filthy lucre; it sent an apostle to hell! There is no disharmony between Matthew and Luke as to the suicide of Judas, and their dissimilarity of phraseology but clinches the argument in favor of the veracity of both, as there is no probability that either had seen the record of the other. The statement in E. V. that Judas repented is not correct. When man repents in the true Bible sense, God always forgives, because a genuine repentance is the work of the Holy Ghost and the infallible antecedent to a free pardon. If Judas had repented, he would have been forgiven and saved. The Greek word does not mean repent, but “flooded with remorse,” an actual prelude of hell torment, so utterly intolerable as to precipitate him into suicide. For the same reason millions besides Judas have hurried to end their misery by suicide, a stratagem of the devil to expedite their damnation. Amid this horrific and unbearable remorse, Judas, seeking in vain to rescind the contract, throws down the money in the temple and runs away off to a rugged precipice beyond the deep valley of Hinnom [pointed out to me by my guide when I was there in 1895] with furious expedition, gets hold of a rope too weak to bear his robust, corpulent, Jewish body, ties it round his neck, swings off from the precipice, the rope breaks, he falls precipitately on the great rocks beneath, bursting in twain, as the Greek says, with a great noise, all of his internal organs gushing out. Thus he dies a most horrible death, weltering in his own blood. The popular superstition recognized the spot on which he fell as polluted, and, in modern parlance, haunted and unfit for human occupancy. Hence, they satisfy the proprietor by paying for it with Judas's money which he had thrown down in the temple, and erect on it a sepulcher for the interment of the homeless and friendless dying at Jerusalem.