1 John 4:1-10

THESE ARE THE TIMES that try men's souls. The Spirit has spoken expressly that in the latter times some should depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron. Those days are upon us and we cannot escape them; we must triumph in the midst of them, for such is the will of God concerning us.

Strange as it may seem, the danger today is greater for the fervent Christian than...

For Reading and Meditation:     1 John 4:7-16

We turn now to consider another aspect of God's nature and character - love. There are three things told us in Scripture concerning the nature of God. First, "God is spirit" (John 4:24), which means He has no visible substance. Second, "God is light" (

For Reading and Meditation:     Romans 3:21-31

Herbert Spencer, whom we quoted earlier, wrote: "The task of religion is at-one-ment: atonement. If it fails to do this it fails at the vital point." Its ritual may be beautiful, its sanctions may be ancient, its precepts may be good, but if it fails to bring men and women into correspondence with God it fails vitally...

For Reading and Meditation:     1 John 4:7-21

There have been two great attempts to find God throughout the ages," said Dr. E. Stanley Jones, "one, philosophy, the other, moralism." The attempts of philosophy to find God are represented by the three great philosophical nations - Greece, India, and China. These three nations have taken men and women about as far as...

For Reading and Meditation:     Philippians 2:1-11

We are reflecting on the fact that the Christian faith is not just a little better than other faiths but radically different. Religion is mankind's search for God; Christianity, however, is God's search for man. Therefore there are many religions, but only one gospel. Religion is the word become word; the gospel is...

The distinguishing mark of a Christian is his confidence in the love of Christ, and the yielding of his affections to Christ in return. First, faith sets her seal upon the man by enabling the soul to say with the apostle, "Christ loved me and gave himself for me." Then love gives the countersign, and stamps upon the heart gratitude and love to Jesus in return. "We love him because he first loved us." In those grand old ages, which are the heroic period of the Christian religion, this double...

The coming of Christ brought a new word for love into the Greek language - agape. There was already a word for friendship (philia) and one for passionate love (eros), but there was none to express the kind of love which God showed in giving His only begotten Son and which He calls on His people to show to one another.

This is another-worldly love, a love with new dimensions. The love of God had no...

Love is that quality in God which causes Him to lavish unbounded affection on others. His love is manifest in giving good and perfect gifts to the beloved.

We can give only a few of the myriad of verses that speak of that love! "I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee" (Jeremiah 31:3). "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (

Sometimes it seems that Christians are especially prone to accept passing fads and winds of doctrine. John Blanchard wrote of two tour-bus drivers who were comparing notes. When one mentioned that he had a bus full of Christians, the other said, "Really? What do they believe?" To which the first replied, "Anything I tell them!"

One minute it may be a food fad. Certain foods are denounced as poison and others are credited with almost magical properties. Or it may be a medicinal fad,...

We live in a day when cults are multiplying with amazing rapidity. Actually there are no new cults; they are just variations of heretical groups that sprang up in New Testament days. It is their variety that is new, not their basic tenets.

When John says that we should test the spirits, he means that we should test all teachers by the Word of God so that we can detect those that are false. There are three fundamental areas where the cults expose themselves as being counterfeits. No...