September 6
“And they shall be all taught of God” (Jn 6:45). Harold St. John was given permission to have some Bible discussions in a post office in Somaliland. “It was a small tin shack with a floor inches deep in dust,” he wrote. One man, a recent believer, dressed only in a leopard skin, had been named “2½ Pence.” St. John asked him, “Dear brother 2½ Pence, have you any thought as to why the Scriptures tell us that the soldier plunged his lance into the Savior’s side and there came out blood and water?” As St. John continued, this untutored man, “so recently emerged from degraded heathenism, gave an...
Read MoreSeptember 5
Won’t God accept everyone, provided they are sincere? Sincerity is certainly important with God. In fact, insincerity is a sure way to be rejected by Him! But mere sincerity is not enough. It is possible to be sincere, but sincerely wrong. Remember the false prophets of Baal at the Battle of the Gods on Carmel. They certainly seemed to be sincere, as they “cried aloud, and cut themselves, as was their custom, with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them” (1 Ki 18:28). But it did not save them from the judgment of God; not one of them escaped (v. 40). So the Scripture links...
Read MoreSeptember 4
Russian Jew Rabbi Joseph Rabbinowitsch fled from the pogrom there in 1881 to Palestine, intending to found a colony. One of his relatives had given him a New Testament because he recommended it as “one of the best guides to the Holy Land.” One day as he climbed Olivet and looked over the Kidron Valley at Jerusalem, questions flooded mind: “Why has the City of David been desolate all these centuries…? Why have my people lived so long in their dispersal? Why do we go through these persecutions again and again?” His gaze shifted north to Calvary and Isaiah’s words sprang to his mind: “Surely he...
Read MoreSeptember 3
Billy Sunday (1862-1935) became America’s the most renowned evangelist at the start of the 20th century. One night he preached on Isaiah 9:6, “His name shall be called Wonderful.” “Does the name fit Him?” he asked the crowd. “Jesus declared that He fulfilled the prophecies and the law of Moses, and the only effort He ever made to prove His claim was to point to the works that He did. The first thing an impostor always does is to overprove his case. Jesus never turned His hand over to try to convince His enemies that He was the Christ. You have to explain a coal-oil lamp, but you don’t need...
Read MoreSeptember 2
“God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath” (Heb 6:17). William P. White, one-time editor of Biola’s monthly magazine The King’s Business, tells this story about his early days in ministry. One morning he received a request to visit a dying 87-year-old saint by the name of Junkins. When he entered the room, the old believer, with distress in his voice, said, “For years I’ve been feasting on the promises of God, but this morning when I woke up, I couldn’t remember one of them. What shall I do?” White cried out to...
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