Hy Pickering, born in Newcastle-on-Tyne, was raised in a religious home, but after being christened and confirmed, found he had not been converted. Not far from where he lived, some meeting began in a barn. He said the preacher “made no pretense at eloquence, wore no surplice, used no notes, and feared no man. The […]
It was Blaise Pascal who said: “Not only do we not know God except through Jesus Christ; we do not even know ourselves except through Jesus Christ.” At the Cross we find both revealed. God’s love, mercy and justice respond to the sinner and his sin. Look at what Christ did to reconcile us to […]
George Whitfield (1714-1770), who was used by God to spread the Great Awakening, became perhaps the best-known preacher in Britain and America in the 18th century. In May of 1750, after hearing Whitfield preach, John Thorpe and three friends attended a local “Hell-Fire Club,” an atheists’ gathering. To amuse his friends, with amazing accuracy Thorpe […]
No man is greater than his prayer life. The preacher who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. The pulpit can be the shop window to display one’s talents; the prayer closet allows for no showing off. Poverty-stricken as the Church is today in many things, she is most […]
William Williams, in his fascinating account of pioneer work in Venezuela, called It Can Be Done, tells how it was done, how a handful of missionaries, in a country one sixth the size of the U.S., carried the gospel to every city, town, and village in one generation. Facing strong opposition from the priests, long […]
What are the most positive and most negative sentences in the NT? The first reads, “God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every (lit. all) good work” (2 Cor 9:8). In the Greek, the root word for “all” occurs five […]
I was standing with some Christians in a small antiquities shop hard by the ancient pool of Siloam. The clerk, a Muslim, had been spoken to about the Lord Jesus, and in defense had launched into his own “personal testimony” of his conversion to Islam, a borrowed rendition from previous Christians who had witnessed to […]
How do you respond to someone who says: “I’d like to be a Christian but I don’t think I can live that kind of life”? Robert J. Little responds, “Christians are not expected to live the Christian life in their own strength. No one could do this. Part of the experience of conversion to Christ […]
D.L. Moody paid nine visits to the Civil War battlefront. One evening past midnight, he was called to visit a dying soldier. “He said, ‘I wish you to help me to die.’ ‘I would help you if I could,’ replied Moody. ‘I would take you on my shoulders and carry you into the kingdom if […]