Almost Persuaded

“Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” Acts xxvi. 28.

THE address of Paul before Agrippa is at once the model and the despair of the gospel preacher. Perfect in fact, simplicity, dignity and rhetoric, it also is the highest known instance of that perfect art in public discourse which conceals art. Some one in Rufus Choate’s hearing called this address, ‘’ Paul’s defence before Agrippa.”

^’ Defence,’’ said the great advocate, “why, sir, defence was not in Paul’s thought. His one purpose was to make a Christian of Agrippa, and he nearly succeeded.”

Addressing one who knew and believed the prophets, Paul grounds his appeal upon the prophetic testi-Thg perfect sermon.

Acts xxvi.
3f 27.

Acts xxvi.
6, 7, 22, 23.

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Acts xxvi. mony. The essential thing is that he shall move Agrippa from a mere intellectual belief in the prophets, to an actual and personal belief in Him of whom the prophets speak. For this purpose he boldly takes his stand upon the fact of the resurrection of Christ. If Agrippa comes to believe that, all his other difficulties must logically vanish, for if Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead, then His tremendous claims are authenticated; He is indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God. He chooses a two-fold method, the appeal to reason and the appeal to experience.

Acts ii.

The appeal
to reason.

Acts xxvi.
8.

The appeal to reason he condenses into a perfectly unanswerable question: “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?”

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by no means an incredible miracle if God is brought in. To say that all things are possible with God is to state a truism. But though Agrippa must admit that God could raise the dead Christ, it might still be a question whether He actually did. Paul meets this with his personal testimony. Paul knows that God raised Christ from the dead because he, Paul, has spoken with the risen Christ.

There is something equally simple and sublime in Paul’s confidence in the convincing power of his personal testimony. It is a well founded confidence, always. Truth has an accent, a convincingness, of her own. The great lack, the greatest lack, of present-day Christianity is the absence of a clear, definite, personal testimony, based on personal experience. The preacher who knows and believes the prophets, and who says none other things than those which the prophets and

The appeal
to experience.
Acts ix.
4-6.

The power
of testimony.

Acts i. 8.

John iv.
42.

Acts iv. 13.

John ix.
25.

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The uses of
vision.

Acts xxvi.
19, 20,

Acts xvi.
9, 10.

Moses did say should come,” who is in personal fellowship with the risen Christ, and who has a vital personal experience, will never lack fruit of his ministry.

But the heart of things here is Paul’s obedience to the heavenly vision. A ‘’ vision,” in Scripture, is essentially an unseen verity made real. The sinner to whom the cross becomes, even for a moment, an objective reality, has seen a heavenly vision. The saint who sees in Scripture a higher, sweeter, holier life than he is living, has had a heavenly vision. And visions are things demanding obedience. Never are they given for enjoyment merely. In a very real sense the whole story of every powerful and saintly life, every life which grows in saintliness and power, may be written in that one word, “I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.”