As thought is given to mothers and motherhood there are two special elements in my memory of Mother’s Day, especially during the last 50 years. First, with a few exceptions, I have been blessed with the opportunity to annually write and publish a piece such as this with the aim of giving honor to mothers and motherhood.
Second, as a preacher of the gospel, but by the grace of God, one of the richest blessings of my life has been to study, prepare, and deliver the word of God . . .
Read MoreThe recent shootings in El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH, remind us again that times have changed. The world is more violent than it was when I was a boy. People put no value on human life. Since 1973, abortions have been made legal in this country and many millions of babies have been murdered. On the streets of our cities, especially the large ones, murders have increased each year. The senseless killing of innocent lives is beyond our ability to comprehend. Such killing of the innocent seems to be a regular occurrence.
Read MoreOn this Fourth of July let us rededicate ourselves to the proposition that the people can be trusted to govern themselves. Let us resolve anew that this hallowed concept, bathed in the blood of heroic men and washed in the tears of courageous women, shall not perish by fault or default.
For democracy’s success rests with the people: statehood on manhood, political self-government on personal self-government, national greatness on personal greatness, and liberty for all on restraint for each. Freedom’s preservation truly lies in its true purpose: not the freedom to do wrong which hurts others, but the freedom to do right which helps all.
Read MoreThe following appears in Here’s How by Who’s Who, published and edited in 1965 by Jesse Grover Bell, Cleveland, OH. It is “a compilation of messages from successful men, directed to the youth of America, in the hope that herein will be found a spark of inspiration that will point the way to individual achievement.” The book includes literary contributions from 56 influential and prominent men in America who have been successful in such fields as religion, politics, military, industry, sports, and entertainment.
The individual copy of this book used by Warren Apologetics Center is from the personal library of Dr. James D. Bales (1915-1995) who served as moderator for Dr. Thomas B. Warren during the Warren-Flew debate in 1976. Both Warren and Bales were professors at Harding Graduate School of Religion and Harding University respectfully. Interestingly, the late Dr. George S. Benson, president of Harding (1936-1965) was a contributor to the book which also includes such men as Barry Goldwater, Bill Graham, Otto Graham, Herbert Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover, Norman Vincent Peale, Ronald Reagan, Lawrence Welk, and others.
Read More“And He said to them, ‘Come away by yourselves to a desolate place
and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no
leisure even to eat” (Mark 6:31).
In the midst of this sheltering of families and the shutdown of numerous businesses, we have been forced to slow down. For many, like it or not, we have been required to rest.
The present circumstances have caused many of us to reflect upon who we are and who God expects us to be. Scripture reveals several facts about what it means to be human. Contemplate with me:
Read MoreThe prophet Hosea writes, “Sow for yourselves righteousness; Reap in mercy; Break your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the LORD” (Hosea 10:12, emp. added). The prophets often illustrated God’s truths from nature or from an agrarian viewpoint. They saw land that was generally plowed and sowed in crops laying idle; land that normally was productive was left lifeless, useless, and nonproductive (fallow). In Exodus 23:11, God required Israel to allow their ground to be fallow one year in seven. The fallow ground of Hosea was fallow, period! It was a graphic picture of carelessness and indifference in the people’s lives. Jeremiah joined the chorus of Hosea by writing, “Break up your fallow ground, and do not sow among thorns” (Jeremiah 4:3, emp. added). Great food for thought!
Nothing is as cold as lead, yet nothing is so scalding as molten lead. There is nothing so blunt as iron, yet nothing so sharp if sharpened. There is nothing so merciful as God’s love, yet if He is provoked nothing is more terrible than His wrath. “Break up the fallow ground” (Hosea 10:12; Jeremiah 4:3) is picturesque. There is nothing so ineffective in the Christian as a forsaken, barren, or fallow life. Do we like a personal faith that produces no fruit for Christ? Are we content to not produce the fruit of the Spirit—“love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23)?
Read MoreIn his essay, “The Honor of Courage,” Henry van Dyke wrote,
. . . [T]he history of the brave is written in letters of gold.
It is this that men have loved to read in . . . annals of war—deeds of self-forgetful daring which leap from the smoke and clamour of battle, and shine in the sudden making of splendid names. (Six Days of the Week 308-09)
We honor the courage of the “self-forgetful daring” of the healthcare professionals who are now battling day and night on the front-lines of the war against the COVID-19 pandemic. We are thankful for their extraordinary skills and sacrificial service.
Read MoreToday, I would like to share some thoughts with you about religious liberty in America. . . .
From the Founding Era onward, there was strong consensus about the centrality of religious liberty in the United States.
The imperative of protecting religious freedom was not just a nod in the direction of piety. It reflects the Framers’ belief that religion was indispensable to sustaining our free system of government.
In his renowned 1785 pamphlet, “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” James Madison described religious liberty as “a right towards men” but “a duty towards the Creator,” and a “duty….precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.”
It has been over 230 years since that small group of colonial lawyers led a revolution and launched what they viewed as a great experiment, establishing a society fundamentally different than those that had gone before.
They crafted a magnificent charter of freedom – the United States Constitution – which provides for limited government, while leaving “the People” broadly at liberty to pursue our lives both as individuals and through free associations.
Read MoreIntroduction
Recently a television program was aired in the Atlanta area featuring Thomas B. Warren in an interview about the Warren-Flew debate. The primary thrust of this program, as is the thrust of the whole “Issue of Life” series, was to show the need for belief in God and further to show the credibility of belief in God.
A responsible person was reported to have questioned the value of this effort by wondering, “If the money spent on this effort were spent on this effort were spent on trying to convert people, would it not be more profitable?”
The failure of this person—and he represents the thinking of thousands in the church—to realize what is involved in preaching the gospel and converting people is essentially the major lack of the church in its responsibility to evangelize the world.
I hold in my hand the Bible. It is God’s book. It is His communication to man. In this Bible God reveals to humans today what He wishes them to know about Himself and indeed what He wishes them to know about themselves. Although we may learn many other things from our observation of the world about, the Bible contains that which God wishes us to know for our spiritual welfare.
This writer has been preaching for a little over thirty-five years. When I began, I almost never found anyone who questioned the authority of the Bible. The whole controversy involved the matter of what the Bible said. Today much of our controversy involves whether it even matters what the Bible says.
Read MoreThis is the time of year when many Christians expend the bulk of their religious fervor (most of the balance occurring at Easter). It is also a time when a great deal of the religious significance of this season is overwhelmed by crass commercialization and unrestrained materialism. Some Christians are repulsed by Christmas because of what commercialization has down; others do not celebrate it because there is no directive in the Bible to give Christ’s birthday a special celebration. Whether one opts to recognize the birth of Christ or to ignore it altogether, one fact remains: the birth of Christ is one of the four greatest, most improbable, and intensely inscrutable events in all existence. These events overshadow all human history, achievement, and thought. They are 1) the Creation (the work of God), 2) The Incarnation of Christ (the birth of God as a man), 3) the death and resurrection of Christ (the suffering, crucifixion, and resurrection of God), and 4) Christ's Second Coming (the return of God). If we would stop the excessive spending, insatiable wanting, and foolish squabbling, we might have time to consider things “that cannot be told, which man may not utter (2 Corinthians 12:4 ESV).”
Read MoreIn a 2019 book, Os Guinness makes the observation that gratitude is “foundational to . . . trust in and allegiance to God, and memory is gratitude’s oxygen just as forgetfulness is its poison” (92). Scripture implies that forgetfulness will poison thanksgiving while positive remembrance will keep it alive. Moses reminded Israel of this in the following:
Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His rules and His statutes, which I command you today, lest when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. . . . Beware lest you say in your heart, “My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.” You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth. . . . And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God. (Deuteronomy 8:11-14, 17-20, ESV)
Read MoreON [VETERAN’S] DAY we remember; and, remembering, judge ourselves. A nation, like an individual, is the sum of all the preceding character that has contributed to it. There is the best and the worst, both made profitable by a just conscience, which recognizes and decides between them. The light of high endeavor never goes out; the torch passes from generation to generation, borne safely amid tumult and peace, amid onslaught and reverence.
Today the nation stands on the golden hillcrest of which only the boldest had dared to dream, and looks back along the road. A long, magnificent road gloriously alive with the figures of brave men and brave women, of loyal hearts of undiscouraged purpose, of God-fearing manhood.
Read MoreReading an essay by syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, during the early days of 2015, introduced me to a small, but unusual book called the Fate of Empires and Search for Survival. The author of the book is the late Sir John Glubb, British diplomat who lived from 1897 to 1986. The Thomas essay was originally titled “America Interrupted” and first appeared in the Cal Thomas column published by the Chicago Tribune, 29 December 2014. I read it from a copy of The Intelligencer (Wheeling, WV) handed to me by a friend. The headline of the article in the Wheeling paper was “Without Duty, Decadence.”
Read More“Is there a cultural war?” A good question. What do we mean by culture? Culture is “the sum total of ways of living developed by a group of human beings and handed on from generation to generation” (qtd. in Gagging of God 538). This definition creates conflict between good and evil, right and wrong, God and the world, but cannot be avoided. Incidentally, this is the meaning of Armageddon in Revelation 16:16.
The biblical worldview. In the beginning (Genesis 1-3), God set forth the biblical worldview culminating in Christianity (Hebrews 1:1-2a; John 14:6). The biblical worldview insists man obey, serve, worship and glorify God (Revelation 4:11). God defines both the origin and purpose of man. God created man in His image (Genesis 1:26-27) and as the apex of His creation. He imbued man with all the traits of personality. God created man a creature of choice; i.e. man could choose to obey or disobey God. Consequently, man walks in the biblical worldview when his behavior is learned and modified by the divine standard, the Bible.
Read MoreFrom its beginning the Christian faith has been in conflict with the world, facing the hostility of rival religions, philosophies, and political powers. The “city of God” (as Augustine calls it) has always been at war with the “earthly city,” and that conflict, in the view of Augustine, is the dominant fact of world history. It is a struggle for the hearts of men, and it still goes on wherever Christians are found.
In the first three centuries the church encountered four chief antagonists: Judaism, philosophy, paganism, and the Roman state.
Judaism. The earliest extended account of a controversy between Christian and Jew is the Dialogue with Trypho, written by Justin Martyr not far from the year 150. Trypho was an educated Jew, perhaps identical with a Rabbi Tarphon, who is mentioned in the Jewish Mishna. Justin went about, wearing the philosopher’s cloak to mark him as a teacher, and talked of Christ as he had opportunity. He was walking one day in Ephesus when he was hailed by Trypho, who asked what was the nature of the philosophy he professed. In reply Justin gave an account of his early studies with Stoic, Pythagorean, and Platonist philosophers. Then he met an old man who was able to go beyond Plato, telling him of ancient prophets to whom God had revealed things hidden from philosophers, especially the future coming of his Son, the Christ. Justin was converted and resolved to devote his life to teaching others.
Trypho laughed when he heard the story, saying that Justin would have done better to stay with the teaching of Plato, unless he was willing fully to accept the Law and the prophets, along with observance of circumcision, the Sabbath, and the other ordinances.
Justin replied by quoting Isaiah on the calling of the Gentiles, and Jeremiah on the two covenants. Christianity, he declared, is the new covenant foretold by the prophet. It replaced the old, and it is now being preached to every people. So the discussion went on, with constant appeals to the Old Testament, which was recognized by both as a final authority. Particular emphasis is laid on the divinity of Christ, his crucifixion and resurrection, and the conversion of the Gentiles. Micah had spoken of the last days, when Jehovah should be exalted, and the nations should say: “Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us of his ways and we will walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Micah 4:1-7; cf. Dialogue 109). Through Micah God had made a similar prophecy. “From the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles, and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering” (Malachi 1:10-12; cf. Dialogue 117).
Read MoreWhen I was training gospel preachers, I would at times tell them the following: The affirmation of a probability is the admission of the possibility of the contradictory. What does that precisely mean? It means that when a person asserts that something is only probable, he is already saying at the same time what is being asserted may not be correct at all. In other words, if I say that I will probably attend a ball game tonight, it is also the case that I may not attend that ball game. The contradictory (I may not attend) is possible just as the affirmation (I will probably attend) is possible and stated as a probability. The chances of the occurrence of my attending or not attending do not cancel this truth: When I say that something is probably the case, I am also saying that it is possible that it may not be the case at all.
A second fundamental point needs to be stated just here: Nothing ever probably occurs in the real world external to the human mind. Probability is not a characteristic or an attribute of the world in which we live. I am afraid that in the discussion of probability this truth is sometimes not realized.
Whatever happens—happens. Whatever does not happen—does not happen. When it happens or does not happen, probability is nowhere to be found in the event.
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