June 7
Abdullah did not see why the Messiah must die for our sins. I took him to Genesis, telling him the story of a holy, faithful, and loving God who created humans to enjoy a close relationship with Himself. Next, we heard of God’s prohibition to Adam (2:16-17). I asked Abdullah, “Did God tell Adam that if he ate the forbidden fruit he must begin to pray, fast, give alms, and perform good deeds to ‘balance out’ his bad deeds?” “No!” replied Abdullah, “God told Adam, ‘In the day you eat of it, you will surely die!’” By going back to this original story, Abdullah understood that the penalty for...
Read MoreJune 6
“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise as some men count slackness; but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9). Repentance simply means “a change of mind.” Man naturally does not think rightly about himself, sin, God, or the way of salvation. In order to be saved, he must be re-educated by the Word of truth. This change of thinking should lead to believing God: “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom 10:17). In reality, repentance is agreeing with God concerning the verdict that...
Read MoreJune 5
Charles Finney writes: “I once labored in a village in New York where Universalism prevailed. The leading man among them had a sick wife who sympathized with his views. I called to see her, and endeavored to expose the fallacy of her delusion. After I left, her husband returned, and his wife, her eyes being now opened, cried out to him, ‘O my dear husband, you are in the way to hell—your Universalism will ruin your soul forever!’ He was greatly enraged, and, learning that I had been talking with her, his rage was kindled against me. ‘Where is he now?’ ‘Gone to the meeting,’ was the reply....
Read MoreJune 4
The authors of the Epistles, writes J.B. Phillips, “had a tremendous sense of the overwhelming Moral Perfection of God. The insistence on the only safe approach to God being through Christ is due to this acute sense of the peril of a sinful being coming within range, as it were, of the blazing light and purity of God. God, by His very Nature, must mean instant destruction to all evil, and whereas all religions attempt ‘bridgeheads’ towards Him, it is only through Christ that a real and safe bridge has been built between man, who has morally failed, and God, the incredibly active and powerful...
Read MoreJune 3
Christian apologist Josh McDowell explains that the change in his life when he trusted Christ convinced his father that there was hope for him as well. McDowell writes: “After I trusted Christ, my life was changed in six to eighteen months. But my father’s life was changed right before my eyes. It was as if someone reached down and switched on a light inside him. He touched alcohol only once after that. He got the drink as far as his lips, and that was it—after forty years of drinking! He didn’t need it anymore. Fourteen months later, he died from complications of his alcoholism. But in that...
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