September 8
H.A. Ironside tells of open-air meetings in Albuquerque, NM. A gambler who had moved there for his tuberculosis had been convicted of sin, but was unsure there was mercy for him. When Ironside visited him, “he said, ‘I’m praying; I’ve made up my mind that if I have to go to hell, I’ll go praying.’” Ironside explained that salvation was a gift, gave him some gospel booklets to read, and left. The following evening he returned and, rapidly succumbing to the disease, brokenly told what had transpired: “This afternoon I lay on the bed–I took the tracts and tried to read–My aunt came in–I asked...
Read MoreSeptember 7
“You have heard him and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus” (Eph 4:21). “We should always remember that God is, so to speak, his own evidence. That is to say, since he is the Creator, he is the ultimate source of everything. There is no being in the universe who is…independent of God and is able on that account to give us an independent assessment of God’s claims to be God! Neither is there anyone able to provide us with evidence that did not ultimately originate with God himself. God is self-evident; and true faith on our part is our response to God’s self-revelation. And so...
Read MoreSeptember 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...
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