LINCOLN'S POCKETS

John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln point blank at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. In Lincoln’s pockets were two pairs of spectacles, a lens polisher, a pocketknife, a watch fob, a linen handkerchief, a brown leather wallet containing a five-dollar Confederate note and nine newspaper clippings, including several favorable to the president.

They gave those items to his son, Robert Todd, and they became like relics, staying in the Lincoln family for more than seventy years.

HAIL CAESAR!

March 15, 44 B. C.: Julius Caesar suffered 23 stab wounds at the hands of some of the senators of Rome. As he collapsed and died, having pulled his toga over his face, he had in his hand a scroll handed to him on his way to the meeting of the Senate, a scroll he had tried several times to unroll, but was interrupted every time.

Too bad. A man who was privy to the assassination plot had thrust the scroll into Caesar’s hand. Inside was a warning of the coming assassination.

CHILLING STORY

There’s a chilling and dramatic account in the New Testament about a man whose desire is to get a warning to those closest to him. The man can’t do it, but he thinks there’s someone who can, and, in desperation, he pleads his case.  He has turned into something he was not-- a concerned evangelist.

His warning is all about being separated from God forever. The problem is that he already is, and eternally so. But the ones he wants to warn aren’t in his place or condition.

He sees Abraham and Lazarus “afar off,” in a place of bliss and fellowship with God. His suggestion is dramatically desperate: Please, send Lazarus back from the dead to warn my brothers so they don’t end up where I am, in a place that’s real, terrible, and final." He reasons that if a person would be allowed to return from the dead with an important warning about the reality of a place of eternal separation, his brothers would be compelled to listen and would accept the Messiah and escape his fate. 

SOUNDS REASONABLE

To us, that makes sense. We love the dramatic and we know that would have an impact for the good. But would it? History says otherwise. One did come back from the dead and what did the religious leaders do? Did they accept Jesus as their long-awaited Messiah?

No. What did they do? John 10:12 tells us. Take a look at it.

WHY NOT?

But the question remains, why wasn’t the request granted? It was because the man’s loved ones had already been warned by the scrolls which were able to “make them wise unto salvation.” (II Tim. 3:15) They have access to a Bible; they’re literate, as were most back in that day, and Lazarus back from the dead would only say the same thing the Bible says. If they don’t believe the scrolls, they won’t believe him because he and the Bible would deliver the same message of faith alone for salvation.

TWO POCKETS

We might call what we’ve looked at “A Tale of Two Pockets.” In Lincoln’s pockets that dark night at Ford’s Theater were the temporary trivial tidbits of the world. In Caesar’s pocket was a dire warning of doom, but distracted, he never read the scroll. 

Did you know that 90% of the world’s literate population, thanks to dedicated missionaries, now has at least a portion of the Book that’s able to make them wise unto salvation? In America, we’ve had the Bible in our pockets for generations, dating back to colonial days.

But we find too many who are distracted, spending their lives filling their pockets with the temporary trivial tidbits of life. The distractions, innocuous and morally neutral in and of themselves, run the gamut of sports, travel, politics, elections, raising and providing for the kids, you name it, we can be distracted from the Book by it. And the evil half of the supernatural universe is constantly at work snatching away the gospel from them “lest they hear and believe.”

Speaking of pockets, like the commercial asks, “What’s in your pocket?”