A seminary professor once told me, “Try to explain election, and you may lose your mind. But explain it away—and you may lose your soul!” We will never on earth understand the total concept of divine election, but let’s notice some obvious facts about it: 1. Salvation begins with God....

Believers are complete in Christ (Colossians 2:10). We have a perfect standing before God because of the finished work of Jesus Christ. We know personally that we have this perfect standing before God because of the witness of the Holy Spirit through the Word. The witness of the Spirit is...

While preaching for a week at a summer conference, I noticed that my rechargeable razor was losing power. One morning, in fact, it operated so slowly that I was convinced it was broken. By evening it had picked up speed again. A few minutes’ investigation revealed the problem: I had...

Peter used two different words for love: Philadelphia, which is “brotherly love,” and agape (1 Peter 1:22), which is Godlike sacrificial love. It is important that we share both kinds of love. We share brotherly love because we have the common ground of being brothers and sisters in Christ; we...

“Let us draw near … Let us hold fast … Let us consider one another.” This threefold invitation from Hebrews 10:19-25 hinges on our boldness to enter into the holiest. And this boldness (“freedom of speech”) rests on the finished work of the Saviour. On the Day of Atonement, the...

When congregations at Christmastime sing “Peace on earth and mercy mild,” they are expressing only one aspect of the Christmas story. Our Lord’s birth at Bethlehem involved war as well as peace. It was part of an agelong conflict between God and Satan, a war that was declared in Genesis...

In a Christian home, we must minister to each other. A Christian husband must minister to his wife and help “beautify her” in the Lord. A Christian wife must encourage her husband and help him grow strong in the Lord. Spouses must take time to be with each other. Christian...

Death is a fact of life, an appointment. The only way we can escape death is to be alive when the Lord Jesus Christ returns. I once saw a quaint inscription on a gravestone in an old British cemetery not far from Windsor Castle. It read: Pause, my friend, as...

I realize that godly men differ in their interpretations of prophecy, particularly the matter of the church escaping or entering the time of Tribulation. My own position is that the church will be taken to heaven before the Tribulation, and then will return to the earth with the Lord to...

The official Spanish name for the site is the Isle of the Pelicans,but nobody knows it by that name. It is best known as Alcatraz, one of the most escape-proof prisons in the world. From 1933 to 1963 it served as a federal prison, and during that time twenty- six...