“Behold I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” —Revelation 3:20
Christ outside! Such is the sad picture presented to us in our text—Christ outside, waiting at the door, pleading for entrance, pleading to unheeding ears.
The doors have been closed to our Lord Jesus Christ ever since the day the inn at Bethlehem had no room for Him. “He is despised and rejected of men,” it was said of Him long ago, even before He came …
Christianity is not a cold, dead or not a theory about Christ; it is not a series of ethical statements proceeding from Christ; it is not a system, builded upon the concepts of Christ—Christianity is Christ.
Christianity is not a cold, dead organization; it is a living organism, and it could not survive the loss of Christ, its living, vital Head any more than a human body, a living organism, could survive the loss of its head. Herein lies the chief distinction between Christianity and all world religions. Buddhism survive the loss of Buddha; …
(Helpful to Sunday School Lesson of March 14, 1920, Revelation 1)
“The Revelation of Jesus Christ,”—not Revelations, but the REVELATION of that which God told the devil in the garden of Eden, “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.” This is the record of the “bruising,” the record of the ascendancy of Jesus Christ and His Body, called “the church,” over all the works of the devil and over all the kingdoms of the earth.
There are many things out of place, and the Revelation of Jesus Christ shows how these things are to get back …
When I wrote the book Hitler’s Cross, I explained some of the “cultural myths” that fed into the Nazi agenda and thus made Hitler’s Germany possible. These cultural myths are fueled by propaganda that pushes a culture in a destructive direction.
In Hitler’s time there were several powerful cultural myths, including that the Jews were sub-human, that whatever was good for Germany was good for Christianity, and that obedience to the state transcends individual conscience, among others. Eric Hoffer said that, “propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.” The further we drift from God as …
God’s plan was to get his people into the land of Canaan. He never wanted them to die in the wilderness and have to come through the Jordan again, which was typical of another water crossing. So many people think that crossing the Jordan is typical of coming into the fulness of the Holy Spirit and forget that there are two types, because the parents came through the Red Sea and the children there in the wilderness had never been through the Red Sea. God had to take them through Jordan.
The experience of the fulness of the Holy Spirit …
(Helpful to Sunday School Lesson of Easter 1920, Mark 16)
“And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.” This, and the occasion when Jesus spoke to Lazarus are the only records of Jesus using a loud voice. Both are in connection with death—one to bring a man from death, the other, in utter agony as He Himself enters into death.
We have, as a Sunday School lesson, the story of the resurrection, but I have purposely started with this agonizing cry of Jesus that we might go to the cross before we look at the open …
I have just read a book entitled, “A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion,” sent out from Chicago University. I wish someone would write a companion volume and entitle it “A Color-Blind Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion.” For these eminent gentlemen are blind to three things. They are blind to the purple—they see no royalty in Jesus Christ. To them He is an evolution from things before Him, and did not come down from heaven as He said He did, but came up from the mud with the rest.
“Not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection.” —Hebrews 11:35
All nature is full of resurrected things. It would seem as if our northern lands God in His providence has brought together both the spiritual and the natural springtime that the world like an open book might speak to us of the deeper mysteries of the new creation where every blade of grass and every bursting bud and every blossom seems to whisper to us again, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much …
“To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.” —1 John 3:8
It is absolutely necessary for Jesus Himself to return to this earth, in order to finish the task that He set out to do, as stated in this text. Here on the earth, is where God has been blasphemed, here is where men have sinned, here is where the devil has had his run as the god of this world, here is where he is prince of the power of the air, and “goeth about as a roaring lion, …
As the youngest child in our family, it was customary for me to read the Christmas story in our home before we opened our gifts. As you might guess, I probably had my mind on the presents under the tree rather than on the words I was reading. Even so, I often was puzzled by the promise of the angel, “Peace on Earth.” Even back then I knew that there was little peace in the world.
I’m sure you know the story. The shepherds are tending their flocks on the outskirts of Bethlehem at night. They are startled when suddenly …
