Joseph Parker

Showing 1 to 15 of 15 items.

A Battle of Love
      "When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone" (John 6:15). The Church should be like the Master: it should not rule by force. I would never compel even a child to go to church; much less would I attempt to compel anyone who was momentarily in my po ...read

Back To God
      "But from the beginning of the creation God" (Mark 10:6). THAT IS WHAT WE WANT TO GET AT. We are perplexed, divided, and confused by things intermediate and transient. We have had enough of them. We want to get back to the beginning, back to the divine intent - back behind the beginning, back into the council chamber of the Eternal. The context ...read

Beyond Our Need
      "Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten" (John 6:13). It was like Jesus Christ to give ten thousand times more than the people really needed. At the wedding feast they said there was no wine, and he gave them firkin afte ...read

Destruction And Construction
      THERE IS NOTHING SO EASY AS DESTRUCTION. That is a simple doctrine which is often forgotten. The unbeliever is not in any need of genius. The fool, the withered heart, hath said, "There is no God." I want to smite and humiliate and expel if I can the notion that it requires a very great genius to be an infidel. Christian ministers and Christian ...read

God's Terribleness And Gentleness
      IT IS A FEARFUL THING TO FALL INTO THE HANDS OF THE LIVING GOD. It is better to fall into the hands of men. Our God is a consuming fire - God is love. These are great, yet contradicting truths about our God. The combination of great power and great restraint-indeed, the combination of opposite qualities and uses generally-is well-known in civili ...read

Jesus' Way
      "And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth" (John 9:1). Why did he pass that way? Could he not have gone by some other path? The answer is, No. Grace has its necessities; love has its predestinations. Jesus Christ always looked out for opportunities of doing good. He knew which road to take; he said, The blind man is do ...read

Judas Iscariot: A Study In Character
      Jesus answered them, "Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?" - John 6:70 IT WILL HELP ME very greatly in my delicate work of examining the character of the betrayer of our Lord if there be an understanding between us that it is not presumptuously supposed on either side that every difficulty can be explained, an ...read

Looking for the Wrong Things
      "But he that is spiritual judgeth all things" (1 Cor. 2:15). Many men also suffer from looking for the wrong thing. They are looking for argument, demonstration, long and elaborate statement of pros and cons. They will be disappointed with Christ. He will have nothing but pureness of soul, love of heart, a desire after the very spirit and genius ...read

Religion of the Heart
      "The Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" (John 7:15). Now above all things it is preeminently true that religion is not learned by letters; it is a divine action in the soul; it is a divine communion; it is the claiming of a kinship long ignored or long misunderstood; it is the look of friend to friend; i ...read

The Effect Of Pentecost
      THIS IS A FULL LENGTH portrait of Peter himself. If we see clearly the effect upon Peter, we shall have a true idea of the effect of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the entire church. God shows us things that are too great to be seen in their completeness, in illustrative and easily comprehended parts. Those who carefully study Peter's speec ...read

The Revival of Religion
      Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee? - Psalm 85:6. IT IS WELL KNOWN that many Christians have come to have a distaste for the word "revival" when used with reference to religious work. To some extent I share that distaste. There has been so much exaggeration, so much fanatical excitement, and so much transient prof ...read

The Sick Of The Palsy
      AND HE ENTERED into a ship and passed over and came into his own city." That does not tell us half the truth. A reference to this verse will show you the necessity of reading the Scriptures through, and of paying attention not to the text only, but to the context. Anybody would think, from reading this first verse, that Jesus had, upon His own will ...read

The Unknowable God
      GOD IS THE unknown and the unknowable. Yet He is also the one Reality and the one Energy of the universe. What it is possible to know, it must be possible to explain-to put into words, which, being all set together, sum themselves into the exact measure of the thing that is known. What can be known may, of course, be contained by the faculty tha ...read

Waiting Too Long
      "In these [porches] lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting..." (John 5:3). The world is a hospital, the whole earth is an asylum. Understand, that the man who is, popularly speaking, in the robustest health today may be smitten before the setting of the sun with a fatal disease. In the midst of life we are in d ...read