heaven as our Advocate. In his Gospel there are only two chapters in which the word “believe” does not occur. With these two exceptions, every chapter in John is “Believe! Believe!! Believe!!! ” He tells us in 20:31, “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that, believing, ye might have life through His name.” That is the purpose for which he wrote the Gospel—“that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God: and that, believing, we might have life through His name” (John 20:31).
Turn to 1 John 5:13, he there tells us why he wrote this Epistle: “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God.” Notice to whom he writes it “You that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.” There are only five short chapters in this first Epistle, and the word “know” occurs over forty times. It is “ Know! Know!! Know!!! ” The Key to it is Know ! and all through the Epistle there rings out the refrain—“that we might know that we have eternal life.”
I went twelve hundred miles down the Mississippi in the spring some years ago; and every evening, just as the sun went down, you might have seen men, and sometimes women, riding up to the banks of the river on either side on mules or horses, and sometimes coming on foot, for the purpose of lighting up the Government lights; and all down that mighty river there were landmarks which guided the pilots in their dangerous navigation.
Now God has given us lights or landmarks to tell us whether we are His children or not; and what we need to do is to examine the tokens He has given us.