January 19
Let others keep quiet about hell if they wish—I dare not. I see it plainly in Scripture, and I must speak about it. What would you say about the man who saw his neighbor’s house burning and never raised the cry of “Fire”? Call it bad taste, if you like, to speak about hell. Call it being charitable to make things pleasant and soothe people with a constant lullaby of “peace and safety.” From such notions of taste and charity may I ever be delivered! My notion of charity is to warn men plainly of their danger. My notion of taste is to declare all the counsel of God. If I never spoke of hell, I...
Read MoreJanuary 18
Didn’t Jesus receive a sinful nature through His mother Mary? Mary was not “immaculately conceived” in her mother’s womb. The Bible does not teach this; Mary knew she needed a Savior (Lk 1:47). Besides, this doesn’t solve the problem—it only moves it back one generation. Human reasoning will always leave us with Job’s question: “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” (14:4). He answered his own query with the brief “not one.” He could not anticipate “the mystery of godliness…God was manifest in the flesh” (1 Tim 3:16). We take the words of the angel at face value: “The Holy Ghost...
Read MoreJanuary 17
When I look over an audience and think of the misery that you and I do not see, that He does see, I think I understand what it means, “When He saw the multitude, He was moved with compassion” (Mt 9:36). We ought to have more compassion. How many times I have had to upbraid myself for this…One day my wife told me that one of the children in my Sunday school had been drowned. I took my little girl, four years old, and started for the home…the mother sat by the dead child, stroking her hair…The husband sat in the corner—drunk. I looked after the woman’s simple requests all very mechanically,...
Read MoreJanuary 16
The Lord Jesus Christ dominates the Scriptures as the sun dominates our solar system. As the Eternal Son, He acts through creation and history. As the virgin’s Son, He joins the stream of our race, the tributary destined to unite the currents of Jew and Gentile, and to divide our river into two courses: one flowing with ever-increasing depth to the ocean of everlasting love; the other flowing darkly…to be swallowed up at last in the Saharan sands of the second death…No article, no book, no library, no university can contain the infinite treasure of the revelation of God in His Son…for He is...
Read MoreJanuary 15
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14). If New Testament Christianity is to reappear today with its power and joy and courage, men must recapture the basic conviction that this is a Visited Planet. It is not enough to express formal belief in the “Incarnation” or in “the divinity of Christ”; the staggering truth must be accepted afresh that in this vast, mysterious universe, of which we are an almost infinitesimal part, the great Mystery whom we call God has visited our planet in person. It is from this conviction that there springs unconquerable certainty and unquenchable...
Read MoreJanuary 14
“‘Is not my word like fire,’ declares the Lord, ‘and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?’” (Jer 23:29). In Who Says, Fritz Ridenour makes the following observation: “Mighty potentates have raged against this Book, and sought to destroy and uproot it—Alexander the Great and princes of Egypt and Babylon, the monarchs of Persia, of Greece and of Rome, the Emperors Julius and Augustus—but they prevailed nothing. They are gone while the Book remains, and it will remain forever and ever, perfect and entire, as it was declared at first. Who has thus helped it—who has protected it against...
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