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I have done something in my ministry which has not been original with me at all. I heard the late Dr. A. C. Gaebelein say this, and it was so effective and so true that I have used it on many occasions. I will sometimes conclude a message by saying, “Friends, if you came in here today unsaved and you walk out of here unsaved, I am the worst enemy that you have ever had, because you have heard the gospel and you can never go into the presence of God and tell Him that you have never heard the gospel. You have heard it, and it will be worse for you when God pronounces judgment than for any heathen in the darkest part of the earth today.”

Peter speaks of these false teachers, using the term dog. To the Jewish mind there was nothing lower than a dog, by the way. “The dog is turned to his own vomit again.” Peter draws from Proverbs 26:11 to show that they will return to their true, natural, unchanged condition.

“And the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.” It is Simon Peter who gives us the parable of the prodigal pig. You may never have heard the parable of the prodigal pig, but here it is. It is, of course, based on the parable of the prodigal son, which is one of the greatest parables the Lord Jesus ever gave (see Luke 15:11–32).

There are those who say that you cannot preach the gospel from the parable of the prodigal son. However, the first time that I ever went forward in a meeting was under a brush arbor in southern Oklahoma in a little place called Springer. It’s not much of a place today, I’m told, and it certainly wasn’t in that day. I went forward and knelt down, and all I can remember of that night is that the preacher preached on the prodigal son. I can remember the figures of speech that he used. He took the prodigal son through all the nightclubs and places of sin. That night all the saints sinned vicariously through the preacher’s message. Believe me, it was a very effective message. I’m confident that others got saved that night, but nobody took the time to explain to me about the gospel. I didn’t really understand it, and my life afterward revealed that I wasn’t saved, but my heart was certainly open for it.

Actually, the story of the prodigal son is not how a sinner becomes a son but how a son becomes a sinner. The account, as recorded in Luke 15, is a familiar story. You remember that there was a father who had two boys. One of the boys, the younger one, wanted to take off for the far country. Dr. Streeter calls this the sin of propinquity. That is a big word, but it simply means that the things near at hand are not so attractive but that the faraway places have an allurement, an enchantment. I think the chief allurement of sin is its mystery. The old bromide that grass is greener on the other side of the fence is the story of this boy.

So the boy ran away and soon was living it up. When he had plenty of money, the fair-weather friends were with him, but they soon faded away. He ended up having to go out and get a job working for a man who raised pigs. When the Lord Jesus mentioned that, both the publicans and Pharisees winced, because a Jewish boy could have sunk no lower than that. He hit bottom. In effect, he was on drugs, involved in sexual immorality, and all that type of thing. This boy was down in the pigpen.

Again, let’s understand what the parable is primarily teaching. It is not showing how a sinner gets saved, but it reveals the heart of the Father who will not only save a sinner but will take back a son who sins. Someone asked the late Dr. Harry Rimmer, “Suppose the boy had died in the pigpen? What then?” Dr. Rimmer said, “Well, if he had died in the pigpen, there is one thing for sure, he would not have been a dead pig. He was a son.” He was a son when he left home; he was a son when he got to the far country; he was a son while he was living in sin; and he was a son in the pigpen. And because he was a son, he made a statement one day, a statement that no pig could ever have made. He said, “My father lives up yonder in that great big home. He has servants who are better off than I am. I am his son, but I’m living down here with the pigs. I will arise, and I will go to my father.” No pig could say that, unless he was going in the opposite direction, heading back toward the pigpen.

Now what is the father going to do with his boy when he returns home? According to the Mosaic Law, that boy was to have been stoned to death (see Deut. 21:18–21)—but he wasn’t stoned to death. The son went back and made his confession, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you!” But his father wouldn’t let him finish. You would expect the father to have said to one of his servants, “Go down and cut off some hickory limbs and bring them back to me. I’m going to whip this boy within an inch of his life. He has disgraced my name; he’s spent my substance; he’s wasted his time. He has been in sin, and I’m going to teach him.” But that’s not what happened at all. The boy, you see, had gotten his whipping in the far country. All prodigals get their whipping when they are away from home. When they come back to the heavenly Father, there is always a banquet, a robe, and a ring. And “they began to be merry.” The fun was up at the father’s house and never in the pigpen.

The interesting thing now is that Peter says, “And the sow that was washed [returned] to her wallowing in the mire.” Now we can add something to the parable of the prodigal son. One of those little pigs in the pigpen said to the prodigal son, “You say you want to leave this lovely pigpen with all of this nice mud and goo, and you want to go up to your father’s house? That sounds good; in fact, you’ve sold me. I think maybe I’d like to go up there with you and try it myself.”

When they got to the father’s house, the father put his arms around the boy and said, “Bring forth the robe.” Actually, he could smell those clothes his son had been wearing in the pigpen, and what he really meant was, “Give him a good bath and then put a new robe on him. He can’t smell like that or live like that in my house.”

The little pig went with the prodigal son, and he had to get all cleaned up too. They washed this little pig up nicely and tied a pink ribbon around his neck. They brushed his teeth with Pepsodent, and the little pig went squealing through the house. But it was only a couple of days until the little pig came to the prodigal son with a downcast look and said, “Prodigal Son, I don’t like it here.”

“Another thing I don’t like is sitting at a table, using a knife and fork, and having a white tablecloth, and eating out of a plate. Why couldn’t we have a trough down on the floor and put everything in there? We could all jump in and have the biggest time of our lives.”

And the little pig said, “Well, I think I’ll arise and go to my father.” His old man wasn’t in that house, and so he started back to his home. He had been all cleaned up, but he went back to the pigpen and found his old man right down in the middle of the biggest loblolly you’ve ever seen—mud all around him, dirty, filthy, and smelly. That little old pig began to squeal and made a leap for it. He jumped in right beside his father, saying, “Old man, I sure am glad to get back home!” You know why? Because he was a pig.

I had the privilege of being pastor in a downtown Los Angeles church beginning in 1949. Those were the years when subdivisions were beginning to be built in Southern California. That’s the period when the population doubled again and again. People came from everywhere, and we saw a tremendous ingathering in the church I pastored during that period. I have always thanked the Lord that He gave me the privilege of being in that unique position at just the right time.

Although it was a great time because so many folk turned to the Lord, there was always the problem of how to tell the pigs from the sons—that is, professing Christians from real born-again believers. It was difficult and confusing, but I learned something. I found that at one end of the road was the Father’s house, at the other end of the road was a pigpen, and there were always prodigal sons who were going back to the Father’s house.

I talked to a preacher’s son one time when he came in to see me. He was a handsome young man who had come out to Hollywood to make it big, but he was one of those who didn’t have the charisma and didn’t quite make it. He got in with the wrong crowd and began to drink. He saw that he was going down and down. He was a prodigal son—he wasn’t a pig. He hated the life he had been living. When he came to see me, he said “My dad is a wonderful man. I’ve let him down so, and I just don’t know how he would receive me. I don’t know whether I can go home or not.”

I said, “Let me call him, and if he doesn’t want to talk to you, we’ll just hang up,” and the boy agreed. So I called this man who is a very fine minister, and after we had exchanged a few pleasantries about the weather and such, I knew that he was wondering why I was calling him. I said, “I have somebody here in my study who would like to talk to you.”

However, the transition is always confusing because sometimes the prodigal sons are on the other side of the road going down to the pigpen. To add to the confusion, sometimes a pig will get out of the pigpen and go up to the Father’s house. But he is a pig—he won’t like it there. He may get all washed and cleaned up and become very religious. Sometimes he may even be made a deacon in the church. You just can’t tell because he’s all cleaned up on the outside; but inside he has the heart of a pig, and a pig loves the mire.

One time a lady came to me and said, “I used to know this man back East when he was a superintendent of a Sunday school and a deacon in the church. He’s here on the West Coast now. He’s drinking, he’s divorced his wife, and he’s running around. Is he saved or not?” I told her I didn’t know, and she said, “You mean that you are a preacher, and you don’t know whether that man is saved or not?”

I said, “No, I really don’t know. I couldn’t tell you, because all I can see is the outside. But I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We are in this great metropolitan area where there is a road with a pigpen at one end of it and the Father’s house at the other end. I’ve learned that, if you wait long enough, all the pigs will go down to the pigpen and all the prodigal sons will go home to the Father’s house. Just wait and see. If that man continues to live in the pigpen, we can know that he is a pig—because Peter says that the pig that was washed has now returned to her wallowing in the mire.”

McGee, J. Vernon: Thru the Bible Commentary. electronic ed. Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1997, c1981, S. 5:741-745