There is no teaching in the Bible about which there is so much muddled thinking as that of the Holy Spirit. I think that the least understood day in all the Christian calendar is Whit Sunday. I wouldn’t embarrass you, but I wonder how many of you could tell me when Whit Sunday really is? Let me just enlighten you a little. The word “Pentecost” means fifty days, and in the Acts of the Apostles 1:3 we read that, following the resurrection of our Lord from the tomb, He was seen of them forty days. And then there came a …
A question asked by Christ, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”Matthew 16:26.
Possibly you have observed that a great deal of the teaching of Jesus was by the method of interrogation. He was always asking questions. I find that during the last few days of His life, He asked upwards of fifty different questions of His disciples, such as, “Who do men say that I, the Son of man, am?”; “Who do you say that I …
One evening I was crossing on the ferry-boat from Oakland to San Francisco, California, and among other passengers, I noticed a Roman Catholic priest. Going over to him I introduced myself as one seeking to present the Gospel of God to men. He was a pleasant, affable man, and we were soon engaged in a conversation on the momentous truth of justification by faith, based on the Scripture: “To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Romans 4:5).
The priest maintained that he firmly believed the Scriptural declaration, but …
The moving picture shows are all the rage. But before a mile of film ever danced through the white light and showed upon the screen, God had made reel after reel of real men and set their record down so that you could see it any time of day or night for less than a nickel.
Now God gives a perfect picture of any man’s life when He does the recording. He gives a whole picture; that is, inside and outside. He throws the light into the heart and there you see it just as it is.
Diana was the most popular goddess in the Asian world. There were 33 centers for her worship, and the greatest of them was at Ephesus. The temple of Diana (or Artemis) was one of the wonders of the ancient world. The month of May was dedicated to Diana, and at that time thousands of worshippers would come to Ephesus to pay their respects. Little did the pilgrims know that during their festival there would be a riot! Acts 19 certainly presents a dramatic picture as you see that mob jamming into the theater (it seated 25,000) and shouting “Great is …
“When Jesus was come out of the ship, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit…And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid.”—Mark 5:2, 15
Those two verses fling a boundary around one of the many instances in the New Testament in which our Lord encountered men possessed by evil spirits, and we must beware of imagining that we are facing in this story something that is exceptional, or something that …
“And after he had spent some time there, he departed, and went over all the country of Galatia and Phrygia in order, strengthening all the disciples. And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John. And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and …
To me it is a sweet thought that Christ has not left us alone in this dark wilderness here below. Although He has gone up on high, and taken His seat by the Father’s throne, He has not left us comfortless. The better translation is, “I will not leave you orphans.” He did not leave Joseph when they cast him into prison. “God was with him.” When Daniel was cast into the den of lions, they had to put the Almighty in with him. They were so bound together that they could not be separated, and so God went down …
This sixth chapter of John’s Gospel with its seventy-seven verses is the longest chapter in this marvelous book telling of the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. Someone has called John’s Gospel the most wonderful book in the world and perhaps this is its most wonderful chapter. It would have been more helpful if we could have taken the whole chapter at once but there is so much in it that it is impossible to do it in thirty-five or forty minutes so we have had to break it up. But I hope that this will not result …
We are surprised that Dr. Luke devotes an entire chapter to a description of a storm and a shipwreck. This is perhaps the most dramatic chapter in the entire Book of Acts, but it is more than exciting history: it carries some valuable lessons for us as Christians.
We often picture life as a journey or a voyage. Bunyan did this in Pilgrim’s Progress; life is a pilgrimage from the City of Destruction to the City of God. Homer followed the same idea in The Odyssey, using the image of a voyage. Melville did it in Moby Dick. …
