May 27
Some of the most complimentary statements about the Lord Jesus came from His enemies. “No man ever spoke like this Man!” (Jn 7:46). “This Man receives sinners and eats with them” (Lk 15:2). “He saved others; Himself He cannot save” (Mk 15:31). In Lee Strobel’s book, The Case for Faith, he recounts a visit with one-time evangelist and then outspoken agnostic Charles Templeton. When asked how he assessed Jesus, this was his response: “He was the greatest human being who has ever lived. He was a moral genius. His ethical sense was unique. He was the intrinsically wisest person that I’ve ever...
Read MoreMay 26
Grace is a word rich with biblical meaning. It is used to describe the condition of the heart of God moving in good will toward sinners; the practical extending of merciful kindness to such individuals as a result; and the benefits thus received as an unmerited gift from the gracious One. Grace is placed in contrast to “works” (Eph 2:8-9), “debt” (Rom. 4:4), “offence,” that is, trespass, or abounding “sin” (Rom 5:15, 17, 20), and the “law” (Gal 2:21; 5:4). It is the undeserved favor of God to sinners at the expense of Christ. We are “justified freely by His grace through the redemption that...
Read MoreMay 25
“I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life” (Deut 30:19). Col. and Mrs. George Clarke began the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago in 1877, a “doorway to heaven.” Mrs. Clarke also regularly visited the jail. One of those visited was John Callahan. After escaping a reformatory in New York, he moved to Chicago where he joined a notorious westside gang. The law finally caught him, and he was visited by Mrs. Clarke. Butch Lyons, Callahan’s cell-mate, jumped on the top bunk with derisive laughter, not wanting the “angel of mercy” to deal with him. Callahan,...
Read MoreMay 24
Harold Urey (1893–1981) won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934. Although he played a key part in developing the atom bomb, he is best known today for his contribution to theories on the development of organic life from non-living matter, giving his name to the renowned Miller-Urey experiment. The experiment is fatally flawed, both in its presuppositions about the early conditions on earth and in its results, only proving that there must be intelligence behind our living world. Urey confessed: “All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is...
Read MoreMay 23
Andrew Stenhouse tells of a furlough trip from Chile on the Sydney Star, a frozen-meat ship. It had only a few passengers, one an Englishman named Smith. After a botched surgery, he was returning home in a sick-berth cabin. “I asked if he had any hope for eternity. He answered, ‘None whatever.’ I explained God’s way of salvation and I told him about the dying thief. The next day, he had too much pain to concentrate. I said, ‘I’m going to leave you one verse,’ and repeated John 3:16. On the third day, he greeted me with a smile. I asked, ‘Do you see anything clearer today?’ ‘Yes, decidedly...
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