| Devotional | The Four Horsemen of the Gloomy Decades
Immediately following the first World War, a wave of pessimism swept over the literate world.
What the cause was I shall not go into here but, whatever it was, the intellectual mood of the ?20s and ?30s was thoroughly despondent. Materialism, pessimism, cynicism and skepticism were the four horsemen of those gloomy decades and they rode forth con ...read |
| Devotional | The From's and To's
The evangelical Church today is in the awkward position of being wrong while it is right, and a little preposition makes the difference. One place where we are wrong while we are right is in the relative stress we lay upon the prepositions to and from when they follow the word saved. For a long generation we have been holding the letter of truth wh ...read |
| Excerpt | The Gift of Prophetic Insight
Excerpted from Of God and Men
A prophet is one who knows his times and what God is trying to say to the people of his times.
What God says to His church at any given period depends altogether upon her moral and spiritual condition and upon the spiritual need of the hour. Religious leaders who continue mechanically to expound the Scriptures wi ...read |
| Devotional | THE GODHEAD-FOREVER ONE
When Christ Jesus died on that unholy, fly-infested cross for mankind, He never divided the Godhead! We are assured from the earliest church fathers that the Father in heaven, His eternal Son, and the Holy Ghost are forever One-inseparable, indivisible-and can never be anything else. Not all of Nero's swords could ever cut down through the substan ...read |
| Devotional | The Good Life that Turns Out to be Not So Good
Almost everywhere it is assumed that people are seeking truth, that society is literally swarming with dedicated truth seekers. The fact is that men have never in any numbers sought after truth. If we may judge peoples interests by their deeds, then of the young men and women who stream forth from our halls of learning each year the vast majority h ...read |
| Devotional | THE GOSPEL WARNING
We who rejoice in the blessings that have come to us through the Savior, need to bear in mind that the gospel is not good news only! The message of the Cross is good news indeed for the penitent, but to those who obey not the gospel it carries an overtone of warning. The Spirit's ministry to the impenitent world is to tell of sin and righteousness ...read |
| Devotional | The Great Deceiver
The Devil is a master strategist. He varies his attacks as skillfully as an experienced general and always has one more trick to use against the one who imagines he is well experienced in the holy war. By two radically opposite things the devil seeks to destroy us-by our sins and by our virtues. First, he tempts us to sin. This might be called his ...read |
| Devotional | The Great Illuminator
The New Testament draws a sharp line between the natural mind and the mind that has been touched by divine fire. When Peter made his good confession, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:16), our Lord replied, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in he ...read |
| Devotional | THE GREAT PHYSICIAN
If you are a discouraged and defeated Christian believer, you may have accepted the rationalization that your condition is "normal for all Christians." You may now be content with the position that the progressive, victorious Christian life may be suitable for a few Christian - but not for you! You have been to Bible conferences; you have been to ...read |
| Devotional | THE HAPPY MORN
When we sing, "The Light of the world is Jesus," there should be a glow on our faces that would make the world believe indeed that we really mean it! The Incarnation meant something vast and beautiful for John Milton-and he celebrated the coming of Jesus into the world with one of the most beautiful and moving expressions ever written by a man: T ...read |
| Devotional | The Heavy Responsibility of Sheep-Feeding
God's Word says that a faithful and wise steward gives the people their meat in due season. Some people preach the Bible all right, and you cannot deny that. But they go to the Bible as you would to a medical book to find out what you should prescribe. But instead of prescribing to suit each patient, they just prescribe for everybody at one time. ...read |
| Devotional | The Holy are Humble
The Church in America suffered a greater loss than she has since discovered when she rejected the example of good men and chose for her pattern the celebrity of the hour. Human greatness cannot be determined by popularity polls nor by the number of lines any man rates in the public press. It is altogether unlikely that we know who our greatest men ...read |
| Devotional | THE HUMBLE PLACE
I have met two classes of Christians; the proud who imagine they are humble, and the humble who are afraid they are proud! There should be another class: the self-forgetful men and women who leave the whole thing in the hands of Christ and refuse to waste any time trying to make themselves good. They will reach the goal far ahead of the rest. The ...read |
| Devotional | The Illogic of Complaining
Among those sins most exquisitely fitted to injure the soul and destroy the testimony, few can equal the sin of complaining. Yet the habit is so widespread that we hardly notice it among us. The complaining heart never lacks for occasion. It can always find reason enough to be unhappy. The object of its censure may be almost anything: the weather, ...read |
| Devotional | The Indispensable Necessity of Spiritual Diagnosis
Not the fact that the churches are unusually active these days, not what religious people are doing, should engage our attention, but why these things are so. The big question is: Why? And no one seems to have an answer for it. Not only is there no answer, but scarcely is there anyone to ask the question. It just never occurs to us that such a ques ...read |
| Devotional | The Inner Witness of the Spirit
Then, there is another kind of divine working that may occur without our being aware of it, or at least without our recognizing it for what it is. This is that wondrous operation of God known in theology as prevenient grace. It may be simple "conviction," or a strange longing which nothing can satisfy, or a powerful aspiration after eternal value ...read |
| Devotional | The Inseparability of Faith and Obedience
The truth is that faith and obedience are two sides of the same coin and are always found together in the Scriptures. As well try to pry apart the two sides of a half-dollar as to separate obedience from faith. The two sides, while they remain together and are taken as one, represent good sound currency and constitute legal tender everywhere in the ...read |
| Devotional | The Last Chapter
The four Gospels tell the story of the life and ministry of Jesus, and in so doing, they follow accurately the ordinary course of biography, giving the facts of His birth, growth, work, death and burial. That is the way with biography: the very word itself suggests it, for it comes from bios, life, and graphein, to write, and means the written hist ...read |
| Devotional | The Law of Surrender
The Bible says that we are to present our bodies "as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God." Of course, if you give your body, you give everything it contains. That means giving yourself wholly to God, and the idea of giving yourself wholly to God contains three laws. The first law is the law of surrender. If you do not surrender, it will b ...read |
| Devotional | THE LONELY HUMAN
There is a strange contradiction in human nature all around us: the fact that a person can reek with pride, display a swollen ego and strut like a peacock-and yet be the loneliest and most miserable person in the world! We find these people everywhere-pretending and playing a game. Deep within their beings, they are almost overwhelmed by their grea ...read |
A.W. Tozer