Almost done with these books …
Jesus Among Other Gods by Zacharias
It often happens that when the moral law protects the , a ceremonial law is invoked to accomplish immoral ends.
Pilate may well be the quintessential example of what politics has come to mean. He knew what was right but succumbed to the seduction of his position.
… nobody is born a Christian. All Christians are such by virtue of conversion. To ask a Christian not to reach out to anyone else from another faith is to ask that Christian to deny his own faith.
From The Pursuit of God by Tozer
The whole Bible supports this idea. God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. He is, by His nature, continuously articulate. He fills the world with His speaking voice.
God’s word in the Bible can have power only because it corresponds to God’s word in the universe. It is the present Voice which makes the writen Word all-powerful. Otherwise it would lie locked in slumber within the covers of a book.
God did not write a book and send it by messenger to be read at a distance by unaided minds. He spoke a Book and lives in His spoken words, constantly speaking His words and causing the power of them to persist across the years.
The tragedy is that our eternal welfare depends upon our hearing and we have trained our ears not to hear.
Just now we happen to be living in a secular age. Our thought habits are those of the scientist, not those of the worshiper. We are more likely to explain than to adore. “It thundered,” we exclaim, and go our earthly way. But still the Voice sounds and searches.
The Bible will never be a living Book to us until we are convinced that God is articulate in His universe.
I believe that much of our religious unbelief is due to a wrong conception of and a wrong feeling for the Scriptures of Truth. A silent God suddenly began to speak in a book and when the book was finished lapsed back into silence again forever. Now we read the book as the record fo what God said when He was for a brief time in a speaking mood. With notions like that in our heads, how can we believe?
And one last one:
Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?
Well, then I will tell you. Alexander, Ceasar, Charlemagne and I myself have founded great empires; but upon what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded his empire upon love, and to this very day millions will die for Him … I think I understand something of human nature; and I tell you, all these were men, and I am a man: none else is like Him; Jesus Christ was mare than man … I have inspired multitudes with such an enthusiastic devotion that they would have died for me … but to do this it was necessary that I should be visibly present with the electric influence of my looks, my words, of my voice. When I saw men and spoke to them, I lighted up the flame of self-devotion in their hearts … Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of the man toward the unseen, that it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and space. Across a chasm of eighteen hundred years, Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy; He asks for that which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. He asks for the human heart; He will have it entirely to Himself. He demands it unconditionally; and forthwith His demand is granted. Wonderful! In defiance of time and space, the soul of man, with all its powers and faculties, becomes an annexation to the empire of Christ. All who sincerely believe in Him, experience that remarkable, supernatural love toward Him. This phenomenon is unaccountable; it is altogether beyond the scope of man’s creative powers. Time, the great destroyer, is powerless to extinguish this sacred flame; time can neither exhaust its strength nor put a limit to its range. This is it, which strikes me most; I have often thought of it. This it is which proves to me quite convincingly the Divinity of Christ.
That was Napoleon.
Peace.