“My father was converted by the preaching of a hair-raising sermon on the text, “He that being often reproved hardenth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy” (Proverbs 29:1). It scared him into the Kingdom of God. Such preaching is discouraged these days but it is better to scare men into heaven than to lull them into hell. Better shocked than stupefied!”

~ Vance Havner

The Crowd Or The Christ?

And every man went unto his own house. (But) Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.
John 7:53; 8:1

Our lonely Lord, beset by the Pharisees, despised and rejected of men, took to the solitude of the Mount of Olives, while men returned to the comfort of their homes. He had nowhere to lay His head, having come to His own, who received Him not. Many a night He spent in prayer, while even His disciples slumbered.

This world still goes “every man to his own house.” Alas, even we Christians do, for “all week their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s.” We pursue our own interests, we live our own lives, we know nothing of the Mount of Olives concern for the plight of our hearts, the condition of the church, the state of the world. We pay God our respects on Sunday, but we return to putter around our own premises. We sing, “I’ll Go With Him Through The Garden,” when the olive trees would never recognize us, for we never accompany our Lord there.

Our Lord was a solitary figure in His day, and to this hour the deeper Christian life is a lonely life. You will never “follow the crowd“ to the Mount of Olives, for few go that way.

You can follow the crowd or the Christ, but not both, for they go in opposite directions.