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 11
Two great sins are marked out in Scripture by other sinners being threatened with having “their portion with hypocrites” (Mt 24:51), and that God “will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers” (Lk 12:46). Who can say which is greater? Certainly the Lord reserved His most scathing words for hypocrites. As He said, “Woe to you…hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in” (Mt 23:13). Through hypocrisy, both leader and follower perish. The curse of hypocrisy is this: as long as a person pretends to be what he is not, he can never become what God desires for him. Honesty about my true condition is the first step in a living relationship with God. But the second is equally important: trust in God. If hypocrisy pretends one is not a prisoner, unbelief locks up one’s own soul to prohibit the only way of escape. God’s solution? “Repent, and believe the gospel” (Mk 1:15).— J.B.N.
Today’s Reading: Ezekiel 32-34 Memorize: Romans 5:19-20September 10
James M. Gray, longtime Dean at Moody Bible Institute, tells his story: “I regularly attended church. At 14, when I knew ‘the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the ten commandments’ I was ‘confirmed in the most holy faith’ by a bishop of our church, and was taught that I had become a child of God. But this I do not now believe. My true conversion took place seven years later. I was reading a book by William Arnot called Laws from Heaven for Life on Earth. For my Bible I did not care, but this book had a strong attraction to me. One night, after an exciting evening among worldly people, my eye fell on this sentence: Every soul not already won to Jesus is already lost. It was an arrow to my soul; an overwhelming sense of my hopeless condition fell on me. Daily I had said my prayers, but that night I prayed! The prayer of the publican came to me and I uttered it with my face on the floor: “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” And God heard it! He lifted me out of the miry clay and put my feet upon the Rock.
Today’s Reading: Ezekiel 29-31 Memorize: Romans 5:17September 9
Historian Arnold Toynbee, in an essay titled Christianity and Civilization, presented at Oxford University, said: “Democracy is another leaf from the book of Christianity, which has also, I fear, been torn out and, while perhaps not misread, has certainly been half emptied of meaning by being divorced from its Christian context and secularized; and we have obviously, for a number of generations past, been living on spiritual capital, I mean clinging to Christian practice without possessing the Christian belief, and practice unsupported by belief is a wasting asset, as we have suddenly discovered, to our dismay, in this generation.” The solution is not to try to reinsert Christianity into democracy, but proclaim salvation to sinners. We need to follow our Lord’s example: “Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come” (Heb 13:12-14). It is divine power the evangel needs, not popularity.
Today’s Reading: Ezekiel 26-28 Memorize: Romans 5:15September 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 her to read them to me.–Every time she came to a Bible verse–I said, ‘Look it up.’–She said, ‘Tain’t necessary.’–I said ‘It is.–I can’t afford to make any mistakes.’–She looked them up–They were just the same.–At last I saw it–I said, ‘That’s it–Christ died for sinners–that’s me exactly.–He saves all who trust Him–I can trust Him now.’” He did, and three days later, he was with the Lord.
Today’s Reading: Ezekiel 23-25 Memorize: Romans 5:12September 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 it is with the Son of God. He is his own evidence. If you wish to provoke faith in him, proclaim him himself. Preach his person; repeat his words and sermons; tell out his virgin birth, his cross, his death, his resurrection; relay the interpretation that he himself gave of these great events. It is this that creates and draws out people’s faith.” — D.W. Gooding, An Unshakeable Kingdom, p 30
Today’s Reading: Ezekiel 20-22 Memorize: Romans 5:10September 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 answer that could never have been bettered by any theological college. He said, ‘My brother, I suppose it was so all the world could see that by the Savior’s death a highway had been opened right up to the heart of God.’” Thus we declare: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them; and has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19).
Today’s Reading: Ezekiel 15-19 Memorize: Romans 5:6-8September 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 5:1