This perpetual calendar includes:
- Remarkable testimonies of souls won to the Savior
- Explanations of gospel concepts
- Answers to frequently-asked questions
- Stories of real-life witnessing opportunities
- Encouragements and tips for sharing the glorious gospel
September 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 another essential with being sincere. The people of God in the OT were implored: “Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve Him in sincerity and in truth” (Josh 24:14) while the saints of the NT are told: “Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor 5:8). Knowing the truth makes men free.
Today’s Reading: Ezekiel 12-14 Memorize: Romans 5:1September 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 took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted” (53:4). At that moment it dawned on him that the rejected Jesus was the Messiah who had suffered and died for his sins. His life was transformed. He returned to Russia to tirelessly preach the gospel of God’s Sin-bearing Lamb. — Risto Santala, p. 210
Today’s Reading: Ezekiel 9-11 Memorize: Romans 4:23-25September 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 to waste any breath in giving information about the power of the sun. The springtime will do that by making all nature burst into bud, flower, and leaf, and the power of Christ is shown just as convincingly in the changed lives of men and women who believe in Him…Do you know Him as your Savior?…None has ever been saved nor can be saved except through Him.”
Today’s Reading: Ezekiel 6-8 Memorize: Romans 4:4-5September 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 the Lord for an answer, and immediately it came to him: “Father Junkins, do you think that God will forget any of His promises?” White adds, “I shall always remember the sweet smile that came over the face of the old saint as he looked up at me. ‘Praise God,’ he said. ‘That is wonderful! He will remember them, won’t He!’” In a few hours he had gone home to be with the Promiser.
Today’s Reading: Ezekiel 3-5 Memorize: Romans 3:31September 1
Handley Moule (1841-1920) gives this insight into the words, “Of His fullness have all we received, and grace for grace” (Jn 1:16). “Quite literally, the words run: ‘Grace instead of grace.’ The image is one of perpetual supply; a displacement and replacement ever going on; ceaseless arrivals of all that is needed for the ceaseless changes of need…The picture is that of a river. Stand on its banks and contemplate its flow. A minute passes and another. Is it the same stream? Yes,…But not the same water! The liquid mass that flowed under the bridge a few seconds ago has been displaced and replaced. Water instead of water! Even so in the believer’s life…Grace takes the place of grace; ever new, ever old, ever the same, ever fresh and young, on and on through life, until grace blossoms into glory.…No need to economize in it, no fear of the stream running dry.” The redeemed soul may draw everything it needs from the endless source in Christ. This is the gospel we offer today!
Today’s Reading: Lamentations 5; Ezekiel 1-2 Memorize: Romans 3:28August 31
Who has heard of “engineer missionary” to Uganda Alexander Mackay? Against tremendous obstacles, he built 230 miles of road to Uganda from the coast, built several boats to traverse Lake Victoria, and translated Matthew’s Gospel into Luganda. He lived constantly under the threat of violence from Arab slave traders whom he resisted at every turn. He died in 1890 at the age of 41, having spent fourteen years of unbroken efforts in Africa without returning to his native Scotland. A few months before Mackay’s death, he was visited by explorer Henry Stanley who called him “the best missionary since Livingstone.” Stanley wrote, “To see one man of this kind, working day after day for twelve years bravely, and without a syllable of complaint…and to hear him lead his little flock to “show forth God’s loving-kindness in the morning and His faithfulness every night,” is worth going a long journey for the moral courage and contentment that one derives from it.” Whose faith follow!
Today’s Reading: Lamentations 2-4 Memorize: Romans 3:24-26August 30
Can the remarkable fine tuning of the universe be scientifically explained by the concept of a “multiverse,” worlds upon unperceived worlds with an endless variety of conditions that leaves our world as simply “the right one” for life to exist? Not according to Cambridge physicist John Polkinghorne. In one lecture, he wryly quipped about the exacting standards of the world, “There is no free lunch. Somebody had to pay, and only God has the resources to put in what was needed to get what we’ve got.” In his book, One World (pp. 79-80), he writes: “Let us recognize these speculations for what they are. They are not physics, but, in the strictest sense, metaphysics. There is no purely scientific reason to believe in an ensemble of universes…A possible explanation of equal intellectual respectability—and to my mind, greater elegance—would be that this one world is the way it is because it is the creation of the will of a Creator who purposes that it should be so.”
Today’s Reading: Jeremiah 49-52; Lamentations 1 Memorize: Romans 3:22-23