Hi Friend, A man once came to Jesus in a respectful and even worshipful attitude to ask what good thing he could do to inherit eternal life. He had great wealth so he may have expected advice on starting a philanthropic project. The Bible says he was a ruler so

Hi Friend, Growing up in a typical Protestant church, my early perception of Jesus was formed by the pictures surrounding the worship area.  I don’t know exactly when it was that I looked at the picture behind the preacher on Sunday morning and said to myself “That picture is a

Hi Friend, It sounds strange to write an essay on virtue that finds fault with niceness.  After all, Jesus admonished us to treat others as we want to be treated.  Who doesn’t want to be treated nice? So, I was surprised to read a Christian-based article describing a Culture of

Hi Friend, A young child often learns about life the hard way. When I was about 10 years of age my friend, Don Warden, and I purchased rubber band guns. They were plastic pistols that each held an arsenal of six rubber bands, ingeniously designed to shoot at enemy soldiers.

Hi Friend, December 7, 1941, is a date that will live in infamy, as then-President Franklin Roosevelt said when he addressed the nation the next day. In the surprise military strike on the American naval post in Hawaii by the Imperial Japanese Navy, four battleships, three destroyers, three cruisers and

Hi Friend, Do you want an example of how fast the world is changing? Rummaging through the books on my parent’s bookshelf I found a history textbook my mother used in school when she was about 10 years old. Mom was born in 1915. The textbook “The Beginners American History”

Hi Friend, Christians know that God is love so it seems counterintuitive to ask if there is anything that God hates, yet it is essential to knowing God. After all, if there is something or someone that God hates, I want to be aware of it. Love for your children,

Hi Friend, The most incredible concept of life is that God created man in His own image. Cows and horses are just animals.  What the creator of the universe imparted to no other species He freely gave to homo sapiens, which is the Latin term for “wise being.” The Apostle

Hi Friend, Christians are known to disagree with one another, which explains why so many denominations exist. You’ve also heard Christians ask, if we can’t live in harmony now, how can we do it for eternity? One question Christians have regarding creation, is why did the Intelligent Designer make us

Hi Friend, There is a lot we can learn from the early settlers that came to America and the Thanksgiving celebration that followed. The good intentions of the early colonists were not always combined with diligent effort. Hardship followed hardship for the first Pilgrims to land at Plymouth Rock. The

Hi Friend, As a young minister one of my first responsibilities was working with young people on field trips.  At first, this meant raising money from car washes and fruit sales so the kids could take a trip to a recreational area, stay in motel rooms, eat at restaurants and

Hi Friend, Several years ago, a U.S. President made the shocking statement that the greatest threat to the United States was not the Russians or the Chinese but the public education system in the United States which has undermined a belief in the values of the country.  He went on

Hi Friend, Have you ever discovered something new that had been right in front of your eyes for years? Something so plain you wonder “why” you ever missed it in the first place. That happened to me once when I was reading Matthew 19:28. A young man wanted to follow

Hi Friend, As a rule, most people think it’s wrong to destroy.  We hate to see the old building torn down even when it will be replaced by something modern and beautiful. We want to save the historic landmark. I confess I can’t stand to throw away old clothes. They’ve

Hi Friend, Of all the proofs that God exists creation itself is the most obvious.  If such evident truth is not universally accepted, then we should not expect less visible proofs to be recognized. A case in point is the improvement in civilized culture since Christianity gained a foothold in

Hi Friend, It is nearly impossible to comprehend that a nation of a few million people could exist without a leader.  Yet there was a time when ancient Israel had no king, no standing army, or even a system of governance that most of the world would recognize.  But Israel

Hi Friend, There’s a new book on the market.  There always is but this one is a reexamination of the traditional teaching of “going to heaven” when you die.  A former Anglican Bishop who now teaches at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews says, “The Bible doesn’t teach what churches say

Hi Friend, There are profound concepts that a minister must deal with from time to time.  A man in another profession may face the same idea, give it a passing thought, and move on, but the minister has to answer the question.  That requires thought about things others might sweep

Hi Friend, When Jesus instructed his disciples to go and make disciples of all men, he spoke from an underlying assumption. Namely that all men are made in the image of God and thus all men were created with an internal receptor for the Spirit of God. On the one

Hi Friend, In his book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” Dale Carnegie made the insightful statement that the most basic motivating factor for man is power.  Money, he believed, was only a means to obtain power. He may be right. In a psychological study of men working in

Hi Friend, From the time Adam and Eve were given the perfect world in which to live there has been a consistent problem that has remained with mankind to this day.  The explanation is revealed in the Bible when God created a world that was perfect—even for an extreme environmentalist. 

Hi Friend, Donna and I were seated for lunch when the waitress introduced herself before taking our order.  She was young, attractive and sporting several conspicuous tattoos.  On the right forearm was a large graphic of two elephants with trunks intertwined.  Putting a permanent picture of two elephants painted prominently

Hi Friend,   British Professor David Starkey walked through a graveyard in Bayeux in Northern France.  He observed there 4,000 headstones of British Commonwealth soldiers that died in WWII in Normandy to liberate the French from Nazi tyranny. The inscription carved above the classic columns of the war memorial reads:

Hi Friend, The year was 2012 when Glenn Beck had a meeting at the Vatican with the then Pope. He was clearly impressed with members of the Catholic hierarchy who candidly reported that the Catholic Church was in a fight for the soul of the church. Pope Benedict was 85

Hi Friend, It is surprising that the history of Israel is vague to many people, even students of the Bible.  David is a familiar name, maybe because he fought the giant Goliath thus becoming the hero to the underdog.  But most don’t know that Israel fought a devastating civil war

Hi Friend, On Monday our country will celebrate the founding of our nation.  Abraham Lincoln captured the sentiment when he said, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers, brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created

Hi Friend, A recent report from the Office of National Statistics in England shocked me, and it has many other free people.  They reported that almost 70,000 people died within 28 days of receiving the Covid-19 vaccine.  If it could be worse, 175,000 people died within 60 days of getting

Hi Friend, Waiting for my car to be serviced I sat next to a police officer from Sharonville, Ohio.  It’s a quiet suburb of Cincinnati that borders a conjunction of expressways. The conversation started easily as I asked him about his work.  I was surprised when he told me about

Hi Friend, Counted among those “unforgettable people” I’ve been privileged to know were Ewald and Elsie Unger whom I met in 1974. In the early ‘30’s they were young, just married and beginning a family in Germany when the madman Adolph Hitler came to power. Their homeland was swept up

Hi Friend, The nature of human beings has changed little since creation nearly 6,000 years ago. However, one internal and unseen change revolutionized the world. It transformed the nature of man. We don’t know exactly when the decision was made, but the Prophet Joel wrote about it almost 800 years