John 14:8-21

The Lord said to become children. If we all became children, how beautiful that would be. You could walk up to a man and shake his hand without wondering, "Do I know enough judo to handle him"" He would not hurt you. Christians here are not going to hurt anybody, so just be perfectly candid. This is one passage you can practice no matter who you are or where you are. It touches you right now. "I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the...

IN OUR KNOWLEDGE OF DIVINE THINGS three degrees may be distinguished: the knowledge furnished by reason, by faith and by spiritual experience respectively.

These three degrees of knowledge correspond to the departments of the tabernacle in the ancient Levitical order: the outer court, the holy place and the holy of holies.

Far in, beyond the "second veil," was the holiest of all, having as its lone piece of furniture the Ark of the Covenant with the cherubim of...

O taste and see.

Psalms 34:8

It was Canon Holmes, of India, who more than twenty-five years ago called attention to the inferential character of the average man's faith in God. To most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate; but He remains personally unknown to the individual. `He must be,' they say, `therefore we believe He is.' Others do not go even so far as this;...

The Christian cannot be certain of the reality and depth of his love until he comes face-to-face with the commandments of Christ and is forced to decide what to do about them. Then he will know. "He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings" (John 14:24), said our Lord. "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me" (John 14:21). So the final test of love is obedience. Not...

It is a rare mind, I suppose, that is much concerned with the conduct of God in those distant realms that lie beyond human experience. But almost everyone has wondered how God would act if He were in our place. And we may have had moments when we felt that God could not possibly understand how hard it is for us to live right in such an evil world as this. And we may have wondered how He would act and what He would do if He were to live among us for a while. To wonder thus may be natural but...

The absence of the concept of discipleship from present-day Christianity leaves a vacuum which we instinctively try to fill with one or another substitute. I name a few.

Pietism.By this I mean an enjoyable feeling of affection for the person of our Lord which is valued for itself and is wholly unrelated to cross-bearing or the keeping of the commandments of Christ.

It is entirely possible to feel for Jesus an ardent love which is not of the Holy Spirit. Witness the love...

No matter what I write here, thousands of pastors will continue to call their people to prayer in the forlorn hope that God will finally relent and send revival if only His people wear themselves out in intercession. To such people God must indeed appear to be a hard taskmaster, for the years pass and the young get old and the aged die and still no help comes. The prayer meeting room becomes a wailing wall and the lights burn long, and still the rains tarry.

Has God forgotten to be...

For Reading and Meditation:     2 Corinthians 13:1-14

That great Christian, Francis Schaeffer, said that he would have remained an agnostic if it weren't for the doctrine of the Trinity. It was this, he claimed, that gave him the answer - the only answer - to the theme of unity and diversity. The question I have been asked most often about the Trinity is this: Why...

For Reading and Meditation:     Galatians 2:15-21

We turn now to consider the second of our Lord's Beatitudes: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" (Matthew 5:4). It is important to note that there is a very definite order in these sayings of Christ. Every one is carefully thought out and is given a...

For Reading and Meditation:     John 14:1-14

We make the claim once again - Christianity is unique. It is unique in the sense that it is the divinely appointed way to enter into a relationship with the one true and living God. There is only one way, only one Name, only one God, only one Lord, only one Mediator. Our claim that Christianity is unique comes not from...