Christ said, “I most solemnly assure you” indicating the certainty of a conversion experience to all who hear His Word, believe and respond. Here are the chief exclusive and verifiable facts taught in the Bible, and how Christ may be found personally.

Verily, verily I say unto you: he that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life.

Our title is ‘why we should believe in Christ the Lord.’ We want definite things. When I was young I wanted definite things. It seemed to me that the Christian faith was very vague, it was a complete misconception, but that’s how things seemed to me. It was vague, indistinct, full of things which couldn’t be verified, couldn’t be proved – and of course we want things which are real, which can be verified; we want real things, tangible things.

And yet there’s nothing more real or tangible than the Christian faith; there’s nothing more verifiable than the Christian faith. It’s just amazing, and I think back of my own experience years ago; it’s amazing how wrong we can be about these things, and how we can get all the wrong impressions, and I’m going to think just for a short while this evening about this verse and the revelation of God to the human race.

These are the words of Christ: ‘Verily, verily I say unto you: he that heareth my words.’ Now that doesn’t mean much to us: ‘verily verily’; it was much more meaningful in Jacobian times, in the times of the King James translators. It was an expression that was common to ordinary people; now it lacks meaning. It is what you might call the double amen: ‘amen, amen, I say unto you’ – that’s what it is literally, ‘truly, truly’ would be a better way of expressing it in modern times, so that doesn’t have much of a ring about it, it hasn’t got any edge to it. It’s difficult to know how you could best translate it today. I think the phrase adopted by the great Bible commentator William Hendrickson is probably the best way of expressing it, and he would translate it ‘I most solemnly assure you.’