“And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire” (Jude 23). Think carefully and prayerfully about these words from Alexander Marshall: “A soul saved saves that soul from more misery, anguish, and torment than has ever been suffered by all the people of the world from the beginning of time to this time, […]
Author: Nicholson
Posts by Nicholson
Stirred by Bunyan’s “Visions of Heaven and Hell,” drunkard miner Billy Bray sought the Lord. For days in soul trouble, finally, he writes: “I said to the Lord, ‘Thou hast said, They that ask shall receive…and I have faith to believe it.’ In an instant the Lord made me so happy that I cannot express […]
William MacDonald writes: We teach our children to accumulate; Christ calls them to forsake all (Lk 14:33). We teach them that it is not respectable to be poor: Jesus said, “Blessed be ye poor” (Lk 6:20). We tell them to stay home and make good; the Lord tells them to “go…into all the world and […]
“Reach your finger here, and behold My hands” (Jn 20:27). H.A. Ironside recounts the story of a Roman Catholic woman who was lying very ill in hospital and in great distress because of the weight of her sins. A nun was called to the bedside, and promised to call the priest. In the meantime, a […]
John Polkinghorne, theologian and Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University, comments on the difference between the biblical account of creation and Mesopotamian texts on the same subject: “…Though the accounts are clearly influenced to a degree by neighboring Near Eastern cosmogonies, they differ in a most marked and important way from those other creation […]
“The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into a furnace of fire; there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Mt 13:41-42). Count the frail and fragrant blossoms spring has scattered through […]
“As having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (2 Cor 6:10). Sometimes we excuse our evangelistic inactivity because of a shortage of funds. But the poverty of the early Christians was an asset, not a liability. As J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) points out: “A religion which turned the world upside down, while its first preachers were […]
Anthony Cetola, a young shepherd living south of Rome, jumped at the chance to emigrate to the United States. He found a night-shift job in East Orange, New Jersey and a bed at the YMCA. He had heard the Protestants might try to brainwash him, so was reluctant to accept the tract offered him on […]
Buddhism, founded in India by Siddharta Gautama (the Buddha, or Enlightened One) in 520 bc, has 360 million adherents. Beliefs differ: Theravada Buddhism is atheistic; Mahayana is more polytheistic. Buddha taught nothing is permanent. Life’s purpose is to avoid suffering, gain enlightenment and release from the cycle of rebirth, or at least attain a better […]