John 1:1-5 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.… A memorable hour arrived in the history of a youth belonging to an honourable French family in the second half of the sixteenth century. Though scarcely fifteen years of age, he had been led by blind guides to unbelief, and the dragon's teeth, sown on an unguarded field, had already begun to produce their destructive harvest. His godly father, deeply concerned for his salvation, placed a New Testament in his room, and offered the silent prayer that he might take it and read it. The son did so. His eye rested accidentally upon a passage which, according to his own words, so affected him that he "suddenly felt the Divinity of the subject, and, together with the majesty, also the power of the words that so infinitely surpassed the flow of all human eloquence. My whole body was convulsed," he continues, "my soul was confounded, and I have been so affected this whole day that I have scarcely been conscious of my own identity." It was not quite twenty-five years after this remarkable event that he was preaching the Gospel of the Reformation at Antwerp, while the light from the blaze of the funeral pile which was consuming his companions in faith shone against the windows of the hall where he preached. And when the pestilence that raged in Leyden in 1602 numbered him among its victims, it was universally acknowledged and lamented that a shining light had set. This young man was the celebrated Professor Francis Junius, and the passage which was the power of God to his salvation was John 1:1. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.WEB: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. |
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