₦airaland Forum

This year's JAMB UTME will definitely be different from previous years. With the introduction of the new computer based test, new challenges are expected.
But a well prepared candidate has nothing to fear. This is why I encourage candidates to prepare for their exams by studying diligently and praying fervently.

Do not depend on exam malpractice as you may be disappointed.
Here are a few tips to get you prepared

1. Make a study timetable for yourself. A minimum of 1hr 30mis daily should be okay.

2. Form or join a study group. Ensure that your study group is made up of candidates with similar subjects as yours.

3. Get a study software (e.g Brainfriend Study Software) to use alone or in your study group.

4. Attend extra mural classes.

5. Pray fervently

http://www.afrigenius.com/index.php/education

Prepare for JAMB, WAEC, NECO etc, all from the comfort of your home.
Grab your copy of brain friend now.

William Marrion Branham
William Marrion Branham was born to a fifteen-year-old mother, and an eighteen-year-old father, in a tiny, dirt floor shack up in the hills of Kentucky. They were poor and illiterate, and had no interest in spiritual matters. William grew up without any knowledge of God, the Bible, or prayer. Yet God had a special call on his life and would go to great lengths throughout William’s childhood to get his attention. From a young age, William heard God’s voice, and knew that he was being called to a different kind of life than those around him.

William Branham was beyond doubt a man of notable signs and wonders. From birth, supernatural manifestations marked his life. He truly walked with God for a time, but in the latter years of his life, began to err in doctrine and veer from his true calling. He did indeed have a divine impartation to minister healing and deliverance. A modern day prophet of biblical proportion, he healed the multitudes and delivered the afflicted from all kinds of demonic bondages and strongholds. He walked in the Spirit, guided by visions and angels: For a period of time the supernatural seemed to permeate his life and all he set his hand to.

During the height of Branham’s ministry, from 1946-1954, great men came alongside him to promote and partner with him; men such as Gordon Lindsey, F.F. Bosworth, and Jack Moore. Branham’s healing team launched what became known as the Voice of Healing magazine, which gave rise to the great healing revival of the early 1950s. This movement directly impacted T.L. Osborn, Kenneth Hagin, Oral Roberts, and others so that today the wider church has a firmer grasp on the truths regarding faith and healing.

In June of 1946 he conducted a twelve-day healing revival there where tremendous manifestations took place. The lame walked, the blind saw, the deaf heard, and the dead were raised. A woman who stood mocking outside dropped dead from a heart attack. Branham went out to pray for her and she revived praising God. The healings that took place were beyond count as Branham often stayed until 2:00 a.m. to pray for the sick.

From St. Louis he went on to Jonesboro, Arkansas, were 25,000 people attended the meetings.5 On one occasion, Branham went out to pray for a woman who had died in an ambulance outside the meeting hall. She sat up healed and Branham had to sneak out of the front of the ambulance under cover of disguise to return to the meeting.

John Wycliffe
Forasmuch as the Bible contains Christ, that is all that is necessary for salvation; it is necessary for all men, not for priests alone. It alone is the supreme law that is to rule church, state, and Christian life, without human traditions and statutes.

John Wesley
I look upon all the world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation.


George Whitefield
God forbid that I should travel with anybody a quarter of an hour without speaking of Christ to them.

Jonathan Edwards
The sense I had of divine things, would often of a sudden kindle up, as it were, a sweet burning in my heart, an ardor of soul, that I know not how to express.

Francis Asbury
We should so work as if we were to be saved by our works; and so rely on Jesus Christ, as if we did no works.

James McGready
Come Holy Spirit, heavenly dove,
With all thy quick’ning powers,
Kindle a flame of sacred love
In these cold hearts of ours.

Peter Cartwright
Love every body and fear no man.


Charles Finney
Christian people, are you figuring round and round to get a little property, yet neglecting souls? Beware lest you ruin souls that can never live again!

Dwight Moody
The world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him. . . . I will try my utmost to be that man.

Billy Graham
My one purpose in life is to help people find a personal relationship with God, which, I believe, comes through knowing Christ.

Martin Luther
“The Battle-Ax of the Reformation”

Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear, and distinct grounds of reasoning . . . then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience.

Aimee Semple McPherson
Show me a better way to persuade willing people to come to church and I’ll be happy to try your method. But please . . . don’t ask me to preach to empty seats. Let’s not waste our time quarreling over methods. God has use for all of us. Remember the recipe in the old adage for rabbit stew? It began, “first catch your rabbit.”

Charles Parham
I returned fully convinced that while many had obtained real experience in sanctification and the anointing that abideth, there still remained a great outpouring of power for the Christians who were to close this age

Evan Roberts
In Luke it does not say, “preach and faint not,” but “pray and faint not.” It is not difficult to preach. But while you pray, you are alone in some solitary place, fighting in a prayer-battle against the powers of darkness. And you will know the secret of victory.

William J.Seymour
When people run out of the love of God, they get to preaching dress, and meats, and doctrines of men and preaching against churches. All these denominations are our brethren... So let us seek peace and not confusion... The moment we feel we have all the truth or more than anyone else, we will drop.

William Ashley “Billy” Sunday
"Faith is a warrior invading the enemy's country and burning every bridge behind, for it expects to live there. Faith makes no provision for relapse. Faith is going to the goal for a touchdown. Faith will put the ball over the fence in the last half of the ninth inning, score 3 to 0 against you, bases full, two men out and two strikes and three balls called on you."

Charles H. Spurgeon
“I would go into the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary.”

Smith Wigglesworth
I saw that God wants us so badly that He has made the condition as simple as He possibly could—“Only Believe.”

Maria Woodworth-Etter
I have been in great dangers; many times not knowing when I would be shot down, either in the pulpit, or going to and from meetings…But I said I would never run, nor compromise. The Lord would always put His mighty power on me, so that He took all fear away, and made me like a giant…If in any way they had tried to shoot, or kill me, He would have struck them dead, and I sometimes told them so.¹


more to come. . .

Asa Alonzo Allen
“The Miracle Man”

Night after night, the waves of Divine Glory so sweep over the congregation that many testify of being healed while sitting in their seats.

William Branham
“A Man of Notable Signs and Wonders”

God didn’t put His endorsement upon one particular church, but He revealed that the pure in heart would see God . . . Let the fellow believe whatever he wants to about it. These things don’t amount to very much anyhow. Be brothers, have fellowship with one another.

William Booth
The chief danger of the 20th century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and Heaven without Hell.

John Calvin
When I consider that I am not in my own power, I offer my heart a slain victim for a sacrifice to the Lord. . . . I yield my soul chained and bound unto obedience to God.

Jack Coe
God’s going to open the eyes of the blind and cause the lame to walk, and the deaf to hear. He’s going to do it right here in this church tomorrow night

John Alexander Dowie
My tears were wiped away, my heart was strong, I saw the way of healing…I said, “God help me now to preach the Word to all the dying around, and tell them how ‘tis Satan still defiles, and Jesus still delivers, for He is just the same today.”

David du Plessis
“Lord, they’re enemies.”
Then love them.
“How can I love people that I don’t agree with?”
Forgive them.
“I can’t justify them.”
I never gave any child of mine authority to justify anyone. I gave you full authority to forgive them. That’s all you have.

George Fox
The church is the pillar and ground of the truth, made up of living stones and lively members; a spiritual household of which Christ is the head. But He is not the head of a mixed multitude, or of an old house composed of lime, stones, and wood.

John Hus
Therefore, faithful Christian, seek the truth, hear the truth, learn the truth, love the truth, speak the truth, adhere to the truth, defend the truth to death; for truth will make you free from sin, the devil, the death of the soul, and finally from eternal death.

John Knox
I will be of no other Church but that which has Jesus Christ for pastor, hears His voice, and will not hear the voice of a stranger.


Kathryn Kuhlman
The world called me a fool for having given my entire life to One whom I’ve never seen. I know exactly what I’m going to say when I stand in His presence. When I look upon that wonderful face of Jesus, I’ll have just one thing to say: ‘I tried.’ I gave of myself the best I knew how. My redemption will have been perfected when I stand and see Him who made it all possible.

John G. Lake
No words of mine can convey to another soul the cry that was in my heart and the flame of hatred for death and sickness that the Spirit of God had stirred within me. The very wrath of God seemed to possess my soul!


More to come soon. . .

Two months after he threatened to sue a Texas county for allowing a Nativity scene on public property, longtime atheist Patrick Greene has announced that he is not only converting to Christianity, but also plans to become a pastor, the Christian Post reports.

Greene, an Air Force veteran from San Antonio who has a history of activism, threatened in February to file a lawsuit against Henderson County, Texas, if they did not remove a Nativity scene in front of the courthouse, Malakoff News reported.

But he was forced to drop the lawsuit after doctors told him that he had developed eye cataracts and was in danger of losing his vision, according to the Houston Chronicle. Shortly thereafter, Greene's failing vision forced him to quit his job as a taxi driver and he was left with the challenge of supporting himself and his wife of 33 years.

That's when Jessica Crye, a Christian woman who read about Greene's troubles in the paper, went to members of her church and asked if they would be willing to donate money to help Greene. They ended up raising $400 in donations for Greene, which left him "flabbergasted that Christians would help atheists," the Athens Review reported at the time.

Both Christians and atheists alike ended up donating to Greene through a fundraising account he set up on the site GoFundMe.com.

It's that compassion that Greene says compelled him to start rethinking his religious beliefs. He told the Christian Post that after thinking deeply about Christianity and reexamining his views on evolution and animals, he decided to start practicing the religion.

"There's been one lingering thought in the back of my head my entire life, and it's one thought that I've never been able to reconcile, and that is the vast difference between all the animals and us," Greene told the Post.

He added later, "I kind of realized that the questions I [was] asking you just had to accept on faith without doubting every period and every comma."

Now Greene says he plans to use some of the money he received from good samaritans to move out of San Antonio and buy his wife her "dream" mobile home, according to the Christian Post. He's also planning to write a book about the donations he received that he's tentatively titled "The Real Christians of Henderson County."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/04/patrick-greene-atheist-christianity-conversion_n_1404196.html

John Alexander Dowie shook the world at the turn of the century with his passion for truth and zeal for the work of the Spirit. He brought to the forefront divine healing and repentance by shaking up a complacent Church and slaking the thirst of a parched society. He is known as the Healing Apostle of the late 19th century. Untold millions came to a revelation of Christ and the living power of the Holy Spirit through his deep conviction, unwavering faith and expansive vision. Against hypocritical, opposing clergy, fierce slanderous tabloids, murderous mobs, and relentless city officials, Dr. Dowie wore his apostolic calling as a crown from God, and his persecution as a badge of honor. Dowie was a force to be reckoned with.
John Alexander Dowie
Born May 25, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Dowie displayed from an early age a brilliance and enthusiasm for learning and a hunger for the truth of the Word of God. At only six years old he read the Bible front to back and upon encountering a humble street preacher named Henry Wright, Dowie gave his heart to the Lord. As a young man Dowie found much success in business applying himself wholeheartedly to all he set his hand to, but could not escape the deepening call of ministry upon his life.

In 1875, Dowie began pastoring a much larger group of believers in a suburb of Sydney called Newton. While in Newton, a disastrous plague ravaged the area and filled the inhabitants with terror. Within weeks of his arrival, Dowie presided over forty funerals within his congregation alone. It was on one such night that he heard a loud knock at his door. Two messengers had come bidding him to pray for a girl named Mary who was dying. Dowie rushed to her house and when he arrived he found her lying there, grinding her teeth and groaning in agony. Something in him at that moment snapped and he began to cry out to God. Suddenly she lay still. When asked if she was dead, he replied, “No…she will live. The fever is gone.” 1

From that point the plague in Newton had lost its power. Not one member of his congregation died from the epidemic and Dowie’s healing ministry began.

ooman: Are you the Lord? if not, let the lord tell me that himself!

He has been telling you, but you have not been listening. You have shut your ears to His voice, and your eyes have you closed from His vision.

To many who know me, this testimony may seem to be only a fleeting phase. I admit that I have undergone many transformations in the past few years. I have gone from a former would-be minister, to volatile adolescent, to a dilettante of eastern philosophy, to avid atheist. The latter being with what most people are familiar. I have written in many blogs, “preached” to many people I know about atheism (Oh, the irony), attempted to debate with public Christian groups, and been an overall ‘troll’ on the internet in order to further the ‘cause’ of atheism. I can only hope then, that people see this testimony as both a sincere recantation of those beliefs, and a firm statement in my belief in Jesus Christ. I have prayed to God for the strength to show the world my faults, and through Him, I am able to do this without shame.

Before I reached High School, I wanted to be a minister, but in retrospect, this did not come from a real devotion to the Lord, but rather, it was an outlet for a shy young boy to stand out amongst his peers. Being ‘religious’ was my way of gaining praise from my peers and loved ones, but by ‘religious’, I just mean that I had certain gifts in academics that allowed me to remember an awful lot about what we learned in Bible school, and what I read in the children’s Bibles that I had. I never really had knowledge about putting those lessons to use though, as I was a loner when I was young. I did not have many friends until I was in middle school, and I did not go out very much even when I did finally have a set group of friends.

It is important to note that I did not consciously manipulate and fool those around me into thinking that I was pious. I simply thought I was religious and therefore in the right. There was nothing sinister about it, and in fact, realizing that hardly anyone wakes up in the morning and says, “Well I’m going to be a manipulative asshole today”, is an important lesson that I have learned. We, as people, always think we are in the right, but so often, we are victims to our own arrogance and vanity.

My ‘faith’, which I now see as having been weak, began to seriously crumble when I entered High School. I had a girlfriend and more friends, and I was finally being exposed to the temptations of actually ‘having a life’. I began going out more and more, and when I say my faith crumbled, I certainly do not mean that I started using drugs or drinking alcohol. I actually only drank about two times before college, and I never touched drugs…ever. I just mean that I failed to have God with me. I did not live out my faith. I was morally weak, and my immaturity, unwarranted sense of self-importance, and arrogance played a large role in it.

I was never truly ‘real’ with myself, and that carried over into my college years. I was also having small spurts of things like training for long distance running of weight lifting, but I never had the commitment to actually improve my athleticism. I always had the capacity to be a straight A student, but I never really applied myself as much as I should have. I made the Dean’s List several times, but then I would have semesters and classes that I just thought I could blow off. I was ignorant to the blessing of being in college, and to my ‘shortcomings’ in the more social realm of life being a byproduct of my own insecurities and willingness to blame others.

Once in college, I became disillusioned with the world. I saw how much gray there was, and I somehow took it personally, as though I had been lied to my whole life. I thought of myself as a good, strong, moral person (as no one usually sees their own mistakes), and my own arrogance lead me into a rut. I became very cynical. I was cynical against institutions that were praised, individuals for being regarded as heroes, and especially of religion, as I thought it to be more or less a delusional lie.

I found, however, a temporary peace in my arrogance and ignorance. I had always been told how ‘smart’ I was, and I began to thrive off that. I began reading more, and one of the books I read was “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. That book moved me from ‘fence sitting’ about my belief in God to being an out and out atheist. I became active in my atheism. I treated it as though I was trying to convert people. I would go into blogs, chartrooms, online forums; I would post videos, and even openly challenge ‘theists’ to debating the existence of God. I would do this as often as I could. I came across many interesting people, who adamantly challenged me. When I say ‘challenge’, I mean they answered my call for a ‘debate’, and they used their faith and knowledge about God to combat my ignorance and arrogance. They did not penetrate me much though, but they still played an integral part in my salvation as I would find out later.

As much as I had ‘faith’ in science and reason, the only real satisfaction that I had was telling myself how much smarter I was than the rest of the world. I felt better about myself because of all the fools around me who put their faith in nothing, a delusion. I got such a kick out sites like www.gotquestions.org, which would go to such lengths to contradict the infallible science. I thought that all of the ‘born again’ Christians were fools, fakers, or weak conformists. Yet, the only arguments that I was really proposing to them were just regurgitations of Dawkins, Hitchens, and other cynics, or I was speaking out of my own personal pain. I was still very much disenchanted with life, and felt that I deserved so much more than I had.

This disenchantment helped me start a very unhealthy lifestyle. I used marijuana, but not every day, but I still looked forward to getting high in order to have a good time. Partially due to this, and being in a new school environment, I found myself alienated from many social activities, and it only declined.
This pattern of behavior continued until last winter, when for about three days I found myself in a depression. I simply did not want to talk to anyone, be around anyone, or even be awake, because being asleep was so much better than bearing the loneliness and emotional pain that I was feeling while awake. I felt unable to ‘make anything’ of myself. Then somehow, I thought of my Grandmother and what she would have said to me. She would have told me to stop crying and get on with it. This was a stepping-stone into a life with Christ, as my Grandmother has always displayed amazing strength and love, and she is deeply religious.

It was then that I realized that so many people around me experience similar things. As much comfort as I thought I was receiving by listening to ‘highly artistic’ and ‘super emotional and deep’ music to heal my wounds, I simply was not helping anything. I was just being reassured how wronged I was. Therefore, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I set goals for myself for my grades and physical health.

After a few stutter steps…I had the best semester of college that I ever had. My grades were fantastic. I was able to finally quit smoking cigarettes and marijuana (cold turkey mind you!), I met a wonderful young lady who is quite inspiring, a whole lot of new interesting people, and with all of that it was easier to just be a happier person.

I still felt slightly empty though. This is where I find it a bit hard to explain. I just somehow started going to church a little bit more, and I started to reopen my mind to the idea of religion. At first, I told myself that it was a cultural thing. Church and religion was just a community thing where people could come together to help heal each other of the mutual problems that I thought I had conquered myself.
But I still was not satisfied. There was still emptiness in my heart.

Then one lazy afternoon on the coattails of the cruelest winter I had ever experienced, I was listening to a Podcast talking about philosophy. It questioned our very existence. Then in some of my classes I was reading absurdist and existentialist works. I just felt lost in meaninglessness. So I was trying desperately to fix it.

I was overwhelmed once again. The conclusions and reasoning that I came to on my own failed me once again.
Even with all of my accomplishments that semester: the grades, the physical health, the friends, etc. I still felt overwhelmed and alone.
Then I found myself picking up a Bible, that came to my apartment by offhand chances (I had brought it down with me from home shortly before, just because I thought to have it), and I opened up to a passage in Matthew that I had highlighted when I was younger and a believer.

It was a parable about not worrying about things. That God provides. God provides for all of the other creatures of the world, and do they complain? Do they feel sorry for themselves? No. So why do we feel sorry for ourselves? Do not worry, God was telling me. And that was another stepping stone.
I found myself becoming more and more accepting of the idea of God. Then I understood faith. Faith is believing that God will lift you up and stay with you, despite your sins and inadequacy. I understood that God was not simply a ‘sapient’ creature with a beard in heaven who was the pinnacle of what a man should be. God was beyond me. Beyond any of our comprehension. A force of nature, who speaks to us in terms that we can understand and communicate with each other, but is so beyond all of us.

I understood that the world we live in is nothing without God. All of our arrogance and accomplishments are not greater than the Him. I understood that humans were more than the sum of their parts. We are more than just a hunk of cells. As wondrous and Biology is and how much splendor it shows us about life, they only illuminate the glory of God. We are more than just a mass of matter. We have souls, we have personality, we love, we hate, and we do so much. If I lose my arm, I am still the same person.

I realized that all of the stock I put into art, science, and the ability of man to conquer everything was folly. We cannot cash our own checks.
I realized that all of the pain I had in my life, from problems with my parents and friends, with the world around me, and most importantly with myself were all cured. I realized how blessed I actually am to have the life that I do and the friends that I do. Instead of simply being grateful, I am now inspired to show my gratitude through a life under God’s will. I have asked Jesus into my heart, and for him to take control of my life.

I have never felt a contentment like this; one so consistent and satisfying. He truly is the bread that always satisfies.

This was all progressive over a few weeks time span. I was talking to some of the Christians that I ‘battled’ as an atheist, and what they were saying was starting to make a whole lot of sense to me. I have been talking more and more to ‘born agains’, and their stories and what they are talking about makes total sense to me. I know exactly what they are talking about, and I know that they feel things that they cannot totally express in words. And they were strangers at the time.

Strangers, who I never met before, were experiencing the same things as me. I felt God then, and knew that Jesus was in my heart.
I pray that I can continue to be humbled and be in his care. And I have faith that I always will, and that He will be there until death.
I challenge everyone to lay down their arrogance. Read the Bible. I mean READ it. Read it all. It is entertaining to say the least, and understanding the messages and the truth in it are essential to developing a personal relationship with Jesus. I am working on forming a network of friends and loved ones who have also found Jesus, so that I can strengthen myself that way. We are called to serve in a ministry and show God’s love in all that we do, and I am undertaking that in my journey as well.

I challenge you all to do the same.

I pray that this testimony of an atheist has given hope to you, and that I can continue to be God’s instrument.

http://www.testimonyshare.com/testimony-of-an-atheist/

ooman: Christ Jesus!! can this stop?

The LORD is not willing that anyone should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

lecturerdabo: Staggerman, Thanks and God bless you real good.

Thanks

Converted to Catholicism

Mortimer J. Adler – American philosopher, educator, and popular author. He converted to Catholicism, from agnosticism, after decades of interest in Thomism.

G. E. M. Anscombe - analytic philosopher, Thomist, literary executor for Ludwig Wittgenstein, and author of Modern Moral Philosophy. She converted to Catholicism as a result of her extensive reading.

Paul Bourget – French author who became agnostic and positivist at 15, but returned to Catholicism at 35.

Avery Dulles – A Jesuit priest, theologian, and cardinal in the Catholic Church. He was raised Presbyterian, but was an agnostic before his conversion to Catholic Christianity.

Dawn Eden – Rock journalist of Jewish ethnicity who went from an agnostic to a Catholic writer, who was particularly concerned with the moral values of chastity.

André Frossard - French journalist and essayist.

Maggie Gallagher – Conservative activist and a founder of the National Organization for Marriage.

Eugene D. Genovese – Historian who went from Stalinist to Catholicism.

Anna Haycraft - Raised in Auguste Comte's atheistic "church of humanity", but became a conservative Catholic in adulthood.

Mary Karr - Author of The Liars' Club and a Guggenheim Fellow. She once described herself as an "undiluted agnostic", but converted to a self-acknowledged "Cafeteria Catholicism" that embraces Pro-Choice views amongst others.

Ignace Lepp - French psychiatrist whose parents were freethinkers and who joined the Communist party at age fifteen. He broke with the party in 1937 and eventually became a Catholic priest.

Leah Libresco - Atheist blogger, recently turned Catholic.

Arnold Lunn – A skier, mountaineer, and writer. As an agnostic he wrote Roman Converts, which took a critical view of Catholicism and the converts to it. He later converted to Catholicism due to debating with converts, and became an apologist for the faith, although he retained a few criticisms of the faith.

Gabriel Marcel – A leading Christian existentialist. His upbringing was agnostic.

Claude McKay – Bisexual Jamaican poet who went from Communist-leaning atheist to an active Catholic Christian after a stroke.

Vittorio Messori – An Italian journalist and writer called the "most translated Catholic writer in the world" by Sandro Magister. Before his conversion in 1964 he had a "perspective as a secularist and agnostic."

Malcolm Muggeridge – British journalist and author who went from agnosticism to the Catholic Church.

Bernard Nathanson - Medical doctor who was a founding member of NARAL, later becoming a Pro-Life proponent.

Giovanni Papini – He went from pragmatic atheism to Catholicism, also a Fascist.

Joseph Pearce – An anti-Catholic and agnostic British National Front member who became a devoted Catholic writer with a series on EWTN.

Charles Péguy - French poet, essayist, and editor. He went from agnostic humanist to a pro-Republic Catholic.

Sally Read - Eric Gregory Award winning poet who converted to Catholicism.

E. F. Schumacher – Economic thinker known for Small Is Beautiful, his A Guide for the Perplexed criticizes what he termed "materialistic scientism." He went from atheism to Buddhism to Catholicism.

Peter Steele - Lead singer of Type O Negative.

Edith Stein - Phenomenologist philosopher who converted to Catholicism and became a Discalced Carmelite nun; declared a saint by John Paul II.

John Lawson Stoddard – Divinity student who became an agnostic and "Scientific humanist." Later he converted to Catholicism. His son Lothrop Stoddard remained agnostic and would be significant to Scientific racism.

Allen Tate - American poet, essayist and social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

Sigrid Undset - Norwegian Nobel laureate who converted to Catholicism from agnosticism.

Evelyn Waugh – British novelist who converted to Catholicism from agnosticism.

John C. Wright - Science fiction author who went from atheist to Christian, specifically Catholic. Chapter 1 of the book "Atheist to Catholic: 11 Stories of Conversion", edited by Rebecca Vitz Cherico, is by him.

Anders Borg - Sweden's Minister for Finance.

Julie Burchill – British journalist and feminist.

Bruce Cockburn - Canadian folk/rock guitarist and singer/songwriter. (former agnostic)

Larry Darby – Former Holocaust denier and former member of the American Atheists.

Nina Karin Monsen - a Norwegian moral philosopher and author who grew up in a humanist family, but later convert to Christianity through philosophic thinking.

Rosalind Picard – Director of the Affective computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab. She was raised atheist, but converted to Christianity in her teens.

Allan Sandage - a prolific Astronomer converted to Christianity later in his life stating that "I could not live a life full of cynicism. I chose to believe, and a peace of mind came over me."

A. N. Wilson – Biographer and novelist who entered the theological St Stephen's House, Oxford before proclaiming himself an atheist and writing against religion. He announced his return to Christianity in 2009.

Converts to the Quaker faith

Whittaker Chambers – Former Communist turned conservative writer.

Gerald Priestland – News correspondent who discusses having once been the "school atheist" in Something Understood: An Autobiography. He became a Quaker after an emotional breakdown.

David O. Oyedepo
David O. Oyedepo is the richest pastor in Nigeria, affectionately called "Papa" by members of his church congregation (born September 27, 1954) is a Nigerian Christian author, preacher and the founder and presiding bishop of Living Faith Church World Wide, also known as Winners Chapel, and its affiliated international churches known as Winners Chapel International, with headquarters in Ogun State, Nigeria. He is also the senior pastor of Faith Tabernacle, a 50,000 seat church auditorium reputed to be the largest church auditorium in the world by the Guinness Book of Records. The Winners Chapel network of churches is present in over 300 cities, in all states of Nigeria, as well as in over 63 cities in 32 African nations, Dubai, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Oyedepo has been seen as one of pioneers of the Christian charismatic movement in Africa and has been referred to as one of the most powerful preachers in Nigeria. He was named in 2011 by Forbes magazine as being the richest pastor in Nigeria, worth around $150 million.

Andrew Wommack
Andrew Wommack is an American conservative Evangelical Christian TV evangelist, a Charismatic Word of Faith teacher and faith healer, as well as the founder of Andrew Wommack Ministries in 1978 and Charis Bible College (originally Colorado Bible College) in 1994.

Wommack has been preaching since 1969. He married his wife Jamie in 1972. Over the next six years, they led three small churches and completed their family with two sons, Joshua and Jonathan Peter.

Andrew Wommack is a Word of Faith preacher who teaches that human beings, by the authority of Christ and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, can miraculously heal and raise people from the dead; and he claims on his website and in his books that his younger son, Peter, was raised from the dead by the power of God on March 4, 2001. "My own son was raised up after being dead for five hours," Wommack said. He has also said, "I’ve personally seen three people raised from the dead, including my own son. He’d been dead for almost five hours, and had already turned black. His toe was tagged and he was lying on a slab in the hospital morgue."

Wommack states he has witnessed uncountable miracles and healings: "Although many people would like to see blind eyes and deaf ears opened, terminal diseases healed, the dead raised, and financial blessings manifest the way I have (by God's grace), they're not willing to spend the time yielding to and fellowshipping with the Lord in His Word, prayer, and obedience." "I don’t claim to have 'arrived' concerning prayer, but I've definitely left! I regularly see miracles of every kind happen in my life and ministry. My own son was raised up after being dead for five hours. I’ve seen many blind eyes and deaf ears opened, not to mention all of the cancers healed, people coming out of wheelchairs, and demons cast out."

William Folorunso Kumuyi
William Folorunso Kumuyi (born 9 June 1941) is the founder and General Superintendent of the Deeper Life Bible Church in Lagos, Nigeria. He is the author of several books. In the early 1970s Kumuyi worked as an education lecturer at the University of Lagos.
Early life

Kumuyi was born into a Christian family in Erin-Ijesha, Osun State, Nigeria. He completed his secondary school education in 1961, and in 1962 started teaching mathematics at Mayflower School in Ikenne, near Ibadan. He then proceeded to the University of Ibadan and in 1967 graduated with a first class honours degree in mathematics. He became a born again Christian in April 1964.


Kumuyi remarried in October 2010 in London about 18 months after the death of his first wife.

Converted to Protestantism

Steve Beren - former member of the Socialist Workers Party (United States) who became a Christian conservative politician.

Francis Collins - physician-geneticist, noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes, and the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (former atheist)

Bo Giertz - Swedish Confessional Lutheran Bishop, theologian, and writer.

Keir Hardie – Raised atheist and became a Christian Socialist.

Paul Jones – Musician, of Manfred Mann. Previously atheist and in 1967 he argued with Cliff Richard about religion on a TV show.

Kang Kek Iew (also known as Comrade Duch) - Cambodian director of Phnom Penh's infamous Tuol Sleng detention center

William J. Murray - author and son of atheist activist Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Marvin Olasky - former Marxist turned Christian conservative, he edits the Christian World magazine.

George R. Price - Geneticist who became an Evangelical Christian and wrote about the New Testament. Later he moderated his evangelistic tendencies and switched from religious writing to working with the homeless.

Lacey Sturm - Vocalist and lyricist for Alternative metal band Flyleaf.

Akiane Kramarik (and family) - American poet and child prodigy raised as an atheist and converted to Christianity

Converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity

Emir Kusturica - Film-maker, actor, and musician. Although of Muslim ancestry, his father was atheist.[56] He took the name "Nemanja" on conversion in 2005.

Seraphim Rose - Hieromonk and religious writer. In early adulthood he considered non-theist ideas of God and the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche that God is dead. He became Russian Orthodox in 1962.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – Nobel Prize-winning dissident author who converted to Russian Orthodoxy

Converted to Anglicanism or Episcopalianism

Joy Davidman – Poet and wife of C. S. Lewis.

Tamsin Greig - British actress raised as an atheist then converted at 30.

Nicky Gumbel – Anglican priest known for the Alpha course, from atheism.

Peter Hitchens – Journalist who went from Trotskyism to Traditionalist conservatism, and estranged brother of late outspoken anti-theist and Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens.

C. E. M. Joad – English philosopher whose arguing against Christianity, from an agnostic perspective, earned him criticism from T. S. Eliot. He turned toward religion later, writing The Recovery of Belief a year before he died and returning to Christianity.

C. S. Lewis - Oxford professor and writer; well known for The Chronicles of Narnia series, and for his apologetic Mere Christianity.

Alister McGrath - Biochemist and Christian theologian. Founder of 'Scientific theology' and critic of Richard Dawkins in his book Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life

Enoch Powell – Conservative Party (UK) member who converted to Anglicanism.

Michael Reiss - a British bioethicist, educator, journalist, and Anglican priest. Agnostic/Secular upbringing.

Dame Cicely Saunders - Templeton Prize and Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize winning nurse known for palliative care. She converted to Christianity as a young woman.

Fay Weldon - British novelist and feminist.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_converts_to_Christianity_from_nontheism

Enoch Adejare Adeboye
Enoch Adejare Adeboye is a Nigerian pastor and the General Overseer of Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG)

Pastor Adeboye has a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Lagos, and worked as a lecturer in mathematics at the universities of Lagos and Ilorin; After joining the RCCG, he began working to translate the sermons of its then Pastor and founder, Rev. Josiah Olufemi Akindayomi, from Yoruba into English.

In 1981 Adeboye was appointed General Overseer the church, taking over from Papa Akindayomi, who had died the previous year. For three years he filled the role part-time, still lecturing at Ilorin, until giving up his university position to preach full-time.

The church, which was not well known before Adeboye took charge, now claims branches in over a hundred countries, including more than 14,000 in Nigeria. Adeboye has stated that his aim is to put a church within five minutes of every person on Earth. He is the national president of RCF (an interdenominational fellowship in all the campuses in Nigeria). In 2008, Newsweek magazine named Adeboye one of the fifty most powerful people in the world. He is married to Foluke Adeboye, also a pastor, with whom he has children.

Curry Blake
Rev. Blake is currently President of The International Divine Healing Association (IDHA), which is a network of Christians involved in the divine healing ministry. Curry also heads the Divine Healing Institute (DHI), a research and development training organization specifically directed toward increasing the effectiveness of Divine Healing Technicians and members of the IDHA.

In 1997 Rev. Blake was given a copy of a manual used by Dr. Lake to train his Divine Healing Technicians (DHT's). Since that time Bro. Curry has been traveling and training Christians in how to minister healing to the sick. Thousands of DHT's have been trained around the U.S. and the world. Over 30,000 healings per month are being reported by these average men and women of God. Every type of disease has been healed and several dead have been raised.

Daniel Kolenda

Daniel Kolenda is a modern missionary evangelist who has personally led more than 10-million people to Christ through massive open-air evangelistic campaigns in some of the most dangerous, difficult, and remote locations on earth. As the successor to world-renowned Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, Daniel is the president and CEO of Christ for All Nations: a ministry which has conducted some of the largest evangelistic events in history, published over 200 million books in 146 languages, and maintains offices in 9 nations around the world. He also hosts an internationally syndicated television program.

Daniel is a gifted, fifth-generation preacher whose ministry is marked by a powerful evangelistic anointing and remarkable miracles after Jesus' model of preaching, teaching, and healing. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear. Daniel has even seen the dead raised, but most importantly, the poor have the gospel preached to them. It is this purposeful focus on the Gospel message that makes the ministry of Daniel Kolenda and Christ for all Nations so unique.

Daniel is a graduate of Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida, and the Brownsville Revival School of Ministry in Pensacola, Florida; but his greatest education has come from the years of ministry side-by-side with his mentor and spiritual father Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke. Together they have circled the globe preaching the Gospel and continue to do so as a single-minded team with great effectiveness.

As a previously successful pastor and church planter, Daniel holds a tireless commitment and dedication to the Church. More than half of the cost of every evangelistic campaign is invested in a follow-up system to connect every convert with local churches so they can become faith-filled, fearless disciples of Jesus Christ.

Daniel with his wife Rebekah and their four children (Elijah, Gloria, London, and Lydia) reside in the Orlando area

Reinhard Bonnke

Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke is principally known for his Great Gospel Crusades throughout the Continent of Africa. The son of a pastor, Reinhard gave his life to the Lord at age nine, and heard the call to the African mission field before he was even a teenager. After attending Bible College in Wales, and his ordination in Germany he pastored a church and then went on to start missionary work in Africa. It was there, in the small mountain kingdom of Lesotho, that God placed upon his heart the vision of 'the continent of Africa, being washed in the precious Blood of Jesus' - an entire continent, from Cape Town to Cairo and from Dakar to Djibouti that needed to be reached and to hear the proclamation of the signs-following Gospel.

He began holding meetings in a tent that accommodated just 800 people, but, as attendance steadily increased, larger and larger tents had to be purchased, until finally, in 1984, he commissioned the construction of the world's largest mobile structure, a tent capable of seating 34,000 people! Soon, attendance at his meetings even exceeded the capacity of this huge structure, and he began open-air Gospel Campaigns with an initial gathering of over 150,000 people per service! Since then, he has conducted city-wide meetings across the continent with as many as 1,600,000 people attending a single meeting using towering sound systems that can be heard for miles.

It has now been some thirty-five years since Reinhard Bonnke founded the international ministry of Christ for all Nations (CfaN), which currently has offices in the United States, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, Nigeria, South Africa, Singapore, Australia, and Hong Kong.

Since the start of the new millennium, through a host of major events in Africa and other parts of the world, the ministry has recorded 55 million documented decisions for Jesus Christ.

As part of the discipleship-training program, 185 million copies of CfaN follow-up literature have been published in 103 languages and printed in 55 countries. Millions of books have been printed and freely 'seeded' in nations around the world. All this is in addition to the 'Reinhard Bonnke School of Fire,' an online, self-study course, aimed at inspiring others to Holy Spirit Evangelism and leading to either a certificate or university credits.

Reinhard Bonnke is also recognized for hosting 'Fire Conferences' in many different countries of the world, events that are aimed at equipping church leaders and workers for evangelism; for distributing over 95,500,000 copies of Minus to Plus, a profound salvation message, to homes around the world; and for seeking every opportunity to reach and to save the lost.

More recently, Bonnke has spent several years developing the 'Full Flame Film Series,' a series of eight inspirational films aimed at inspiring and challenging the church to Holy Spirit evangelism.

He is known as one with a burning passion for the Gospel, a vision for Africa and a message for the world.

Evangelist Bonnke is married to Anni, father to Kai-Uwe, Gabrielle, and Susie, and grandfather to eight grandchildren.

Todd White
Todd White was a drug addict and atheist for 22 years when in 2004 He was radically set free! Redemption and righteousness are the foundation and the keys to the new creation reality that we are to live in and from. God has simply opened Todd's eyes to this truth and that Holy Spirit wants to flow through every believer everywhere we go, at work, school, grocery stores, malls, gas stations, everywhere.

His true joy is being able to reproduce in people the simplicity of this reality, in a 24/7 kingdom lifestyle! This is for every believer! No one is excluded!

Todd's testimony has been re-enacted on the Sid Roth show. He has appeared on the 700 club and also has been featured on the XP media with Patricia King. His heart is activating people into the simplicity of who they really are and destroying lies that hold people back from being who God created them to be.

enilove: You are a blessing.The devil and his agents shall not harvest your soul ,in the name of Jesus.

I also pray that those who have been decieved by the devil, believing his lies shall read with reasoning and shall come back to their senses and be set free, in the name of Jesus.

Thanks

You are blessed in every way. The truth will no longer be hidden, while lies take the center stage.

.

In thousands of classrooms all over the world teachers are indoctrinating naïve and impressionable students with the notion that they are an accident, the result of millions of years of random anomalies and lucky deformities, or that what they do with their lives is just a matter of preference and there is no divine designer who created them. But the Bible tells us that God designed us with a purpose in mind. Psalm 139:14 says we have been “fearfully and wonderfully made.” It is only in recent years, with advances in science, that we are beginning to understand just how true those words are. Your body is a mind-blowing feat of engineering — an unbelievably complex design. Did you know that your body employs the aid of more than two hundred muscles just to take a single step?

Consider the human eye, the design of which is so elegant and complex scientists still don’t fully understand how it works. It moves on average one hundred thousand separate times in a single day; conducts its own maintenance work while we sleep; has automatic aim, focus, and aperture adjustment; provides color, stereoscopic 3-D images; and can function from almost total darkness to bright light automatically. It can discern more than sixteen million color hues, including seven hundred shades of gray. In fact, Charles Darwin himself said, “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”

Your skin can contain in one square centimeter: 3,000 sensory cells, 12 heat sensors, 200 pain sensors, 700 sweat glands, 1 yard of blood vessels, 3 million cells, and 4 yards of nerves that send messages to our brains at speeds of up to 200 miles per hour. Your brain weighs only about 3 pounds yet contains 12 billion cells, each of which is connected to 10,000 other brain cells, making 120 trillion connections. It generates more electrical impulses in a single day than all of the world’s telephones put together yet uses less energy than a refrigerator light.

The DNA molecules in your body contain the most densely packed and elaborately detailed assembly of information in the known universe. Their code is so unbelievably complex that if you printed out all of your body’s DNA chemical “letters” in books, it is estimated that it would create enough books to fill the Grand Canyon fifty times!

Of course, I could go on and on and on citing the wonders of gravity and magnetism that science still cannot fully explain, the flawless rhythm of the solar system, the perfect balance of nitrogen and oxygen in earth’s atmosphere that makes life possible, the amazing order in nature that forms a self-supporting system of life, reproduction, and waste disposal. But is any of this necessary? What more evidence do we need that our world has been created with intelligence and purpose than the beauty, order, and design we see around us and within us?

No person who has ever been created is an accident, a fluke of nature, the hapless by-product of the union of a man and a woman, or the result of millions of years of unguided mishaps. Every person who has ever been born is a unique creation, an intentional work of art crafted by the hand of the master artist.

God told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5, nkjv). God both knew and crafted a destiny for Jeremiah the prophet even before his birth. John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit and called to be the forerunner of Jesus even before he was born (Luke 1:15). Samson was called to be a great deliverer before he was conceived in his mother’s womb (Judg.13:4–5).

Isaiah 46:10 says God declares “the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done” (nkjv). Romans 4:17 says that God “quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” Psalm 139:15–16 says, “You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; you know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, the days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day” (The Message).

God called Jeremiah a “prophet” before he was born. God called John a “forerunner” before he was born. God called Samson a “deliverer” before he was born. And this is why, even though God found a trembling, perspiring coward in the winepress, He called Gideon “a mighty man of fearless courage.” God saw inside Gideon the potential He had created in him before he was born. While Gideon was still in his mother’s womb, God called him a mighty man of valor, and God never gave up on that dream for Gideon’s life.

Someone once told me, “I don’t believe in God.” I said, “That’s unfortunate, because God believes in you.” Before you were even born, before God began to fashion and form you, before He began to knit you together in your mother’s womb, He had a dream for you and a plan for your life. He had a holy calling for you to fulfill. Paul told Timothy that it was God “who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began” (2 Tim. 1:9).

Gideon was full of imperfections, he was not esteemed highly in the eyes of other people, and he was a downright looser in his own eyes. But God looked at Gideon just as Michelangelo looked at that rejected piece of marble. In Gideon God could see beauty where everyone else saw only defects. My friend, you might have been written off by everyone else. You might think your life is far too flawed to ever be something beautiful. But our God is the master artist! He sees “an angel” in the rock of your life, and He wants to set it free. Throughout your life, no matter where you go or what you do, whenever God looks at you, He sees inside of you the potential He placed within you, and He is always calling to that potential as He called Lazarus out of the grave, “Come out!” God wants to take your life from the junkyard of the devil and turn it into a masterpiece, a trophy of His amazing grace and mercy.

http://sa.cfan.org/bible-study.aspx?id=10989

Day 19

02/19/AM

"Thus saith the Lord God; I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them."
— Ezekiel 36:37

Prayer is the forerunner of mercy. Turn to sacred history, and you will find that scarcely ever did a great mercy come to this world unheralded by supplication. You have found this true in your own personal experience. God has given you many an unsolicited favour, but still great prayer has always been the prelude of great mercy with you. When you first found peace through the blood of the cross, you had been praying much, and earnestly interceding with God that He would remove your doubts, and deliver you from your distresses. Your assurance was the result of prayer. When at any time you have had high and rapturous joys, you have been obliged to look upon them as answers to your prayers. When you have had great deliverances out of sore troubles, and mighty helps in great dangers, you have been able to say, "I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears." Prayer is always the preface to blessing. It goes before the blessing as the blessing's shadow. When the sunlight of God's mercies rises upon our necessities, it casts the shadow of prayer far down upon the plain. Or, to use another illustration, when God piles up a hill of mercies, He Himself shines behind them, and He casts on our spirits the shadow of prayer, so that we may rest certain, if we are much in prayer, our pleadings are the shadows of mercy. Prayer is thus connected with the blessing to show us the value of it. If we had the blessings without asking for them, we should think them common things; but prayer makes our mercies more precious than diamonds. The things we ask for are precious, but we do not realize their preciousness until we have sought for them earnestly.

"Prayer makes the darken'd cloud withdraw;
Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw;
Gives exercise to faith and love;
Brings every blessing from above."

(from Spurgeon's Morning & Evening, PC Study Bible formatted electronic database Copyright © 1999, 2003, 2006 by Biblesoft, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Day 19

02/19/PM

"He first findeth his own brother Simon."
— John 1:41

This case is an excellent pattern of all cases where spiritual life is vigorous. As soon as a man has found Christ, he begins to find others. I will not believe that thou hast tasted of the honey of the gospel if thou canst eat it all thyself. True grace puts an end to all spiritual monopoly. Andrew first found his own brother Simon, and then others. Relationship has a very strong demand upon our first individual efforts. Andrew, thou didst well to begin with Simon. I doubt whether there are not some Christians giving away tracts at other people's houses who would do well to give away a tract at their own—whether there are not some engaged in works of usefulness abroad who are neglecting their special sphere of usefulness at home. Thou mayst or thou mayst not be called to evangelize the people in any particular locality, but certainly thou art called to see after thine own servants, thine own kinsfolk and acquaintance. Let thy religion begin at home. Many tradesmen export their best commodities—the Christian should not. He should have all his conversation everywhere of the best savour; but let him have a care to put forth the sweetest fruit of spiritual life and testimony in his own family. When Andrew went to find his brother, he little imagined how eminent Simon would become. Simon Peter was worth ten Andrews so far as we can gather from sacred history, and yet Andrew was instrumental in bringing him to Jesus. You may be very deficient in talent yourself, and yet you may be the means of drawing to Christ one who shall become eminent in grace and service. Ah! dear friend, you little know the possibilities which are in you. You may but speak a word to a child, and in that child there may be slumbering a noble heart which shall stir the Christian church in years to come. Andrew has only two talents, but he finds Peter. Go thou and do likewise.
(from Spurgeon's Morning & Evening, PC Study Bible formatted electronic database Copyright © 1999, 2003, 2006 by Biblesoft, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Day 18
02/18/AM
"Shew me wherefore thou contendest with me."
— Job 10:2
Perhaps, O tried soul, the Lord is doing this to develop thy graces. There are some of thy graces which would never be discovered if it were not for thy trials. Dost thou not know that thy faith never looks so grand in summer weather as it does in winter? Love is too often like a glow-worm, showing but little light except it be in the midst of surrounding darkness. Hope itself is like a star—not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity. Afflictions are often the black foils in which God doth set the jewels of His children's graces, to make them shine the better. It was but a little while ago that on thy knees thou wast saying, "Lord, I fear I have no faith: let me know that I have faith." Was not this really, though perhaps unconsciously, praying for trials?—for how canst thou know that thou hast faith until thy faith is exercised? Depend upon it, God often sends us trials that our graces may be discovered, and that we may be certified of their existence. Besides, it is not merely discovery, real growth in grace is the result of sanctified trials. God often takes away our comforts and our privileges in order to make us better Christians. He trains His soldiers, not in tents of ease and luxury, but by turning them out and using them to forced marches and hard service. He makes them ford through streams, and swim through rivers, and climb mountains, and walk many a long mile with heavy knapsacks of sorrow on their backs. Well, Christian, may not this account for the troubles through which thou art passing? Is not the Lord bringing out your graces, and making them grow? Is not this the reason why He is contending with you?
"Trials make the promise sweet;
Trials give new life to prayer;
Trials bring me to His feet,
Lay me low, and keep me there."




Day 18
02/18/PM
"Father, I have sinned."
— Luke 15:18
It is quite certain that those whom Christ has washed in His precious blood need not make a confession of sin, as culprits or criminals, before God the Judge, for Christ has for ever taken away all their sins in a legal sense, so that they no longer stand where they can be condemned, but are once for all accepted in the Beloved; but having become children, and offending as children, ought they not every day to go before their heavenly Father and confess their sin, and acknowledge their iniquity in that character? Nature teaches that it is the duty of erring children to make a confession to their earthly father, and the grace of God in the heart teaches us that we, as Christians, owe the same duty to our heavenly father. We daily offend, and ought not to rest without daily pardon. For, supposing that my trespasses against my Father are not at once taken to Him to be washed away by the cleansing power of the Lord Jesus, what will be the consequence? If I have not sought forgiveness and been washed from these offences against my Father, I shall feel at a distance from Him; I shall doubt His love to me; I shall tremble at Him; I shall be afraid to pray to Him: I shall grow like the prodigal, who, although still a child, was yet far off from his father. But if, with a child's sorrow at offending so gracious and loving a Parent, I go to Him and tell Him all, and rest not till I realize that I am forgiven, then I shall feel a holy love to my Father, and shall go through my Christian career, not only as saved, but as one enjoying present peace in God through Jesus Christ my Lord. There is a wide distinction between confessing sin as a culprit, and confessing sin as a child. The Father's bosom is the place for penitent confessions. We have been cleansed once for all, but our feet still need to be washed from the defilement of our daily walk as children of God.

(from Spurgeon's Morning & Evening, PC Study Bible formatted electronic database Copyright © 1999, 2003, 2006 by Biblesoft, Inc. All rights reserved.)

February 17 PM


"Whereas the Lord was there."
Ezekiel 35:10
Edom's princes saw the whole country left desolate, and counted upon its easy conquest; but there was one great difficulty in their way--quite unknown to them--"The Lord was there"; and in His presence lay the special security of the chosen land. Whatever may be the machinations and devices of the enemies of God's people, there is still the same effectual barrier to thwart their design. The saints are God's heritage, and He is in the midst of them, and will protect His own. What comfort this assurance yields us in our troubles and spiritual conflicts! We are constantly opposed, and yet perpetually preserved! How often Satan shoots his arrows against our faith, but our faith defies the power of hell's fiery darts; they are not only turned aside, but they are quenched upon its shield, for "the Lord is there." Our good works are the subjects of Satan's attacks. A saint never yet had a virtue or a grace which was not the target for hellish bullets: whether it was hope bright and sparkling, or love warm and fervent, or patience all-enduring, or zeal flaming like coals of fire, the old enemy of everything that is good has tried to destroy it. The only reason why anything virtuous or lovely survives in us is this, "the Lord is there."
If the Lord be with us through life, we need not fear for our dying confidence; for when we come to die, we shall find that "the Lord is there"; where the billows are most tempestuous, and the water is most chill, we shall feel the bottom, and know that it is good: our feet shall stand upon the Rock of Ages when time is passing away. Beloved, from the first of a Christian's life to the last, the only reason why he does not perish is because "the Lord is there." When the God of everlasting love shall change and leave His elect to perish, then may the Church of God be destroyed; but not till then, because it is written, JEHOVAH SHAMMAH, "The Lord is there."



02/17/AM
"Isaac dwelt by the well Lahai-roi."
— Genesis 25:11
Hagar had once found deliverance there and Ishmael had drank from the water so graciously revealed by the God who liveth and seeth the sons of men; but this was a merely casual visit, such as worldlings pay to the Lord in times of need, when it serves their turn. They cry to Him in trouble, but forsake Him in prosperity. Isaac dwelt there, and made the well of the living and all-seeing God his constant source of supply. The usual tenor of a man's life, the dwelling of his soul, is the true test of his state. Perhaps the providential visitation experienced by Hagar struck Isaac's mind, and led him to revere the place; its mystical name endeared it to him; his frequent musings by its brim at eventide made him familiar with the well; his meeting Rebecca there had made his spirit feel at home near the spot; but best of all, the fact that he there enjoyed fellowship with the living God, had made him select that hallowed ground for his dwelling. Let us learn to live in the presence of the living God; let us pray the Holy Spirit that this day, and every other day, we may feel, "Thou God seest me." May the Lord Jehovah be as a well to us, delightful, comforting, unfailing, springing up unto eternal life. The bottle of the creature cracks and dries up, but the well of the Creator never fails; happy is he who dwells at the well, and so has abundant and constant supplies near at hand. The Lord has been a sure helper to others: His name is Shaddai, God All-sufficient; our hearts have often had most delightful intercourse with Him; through Him our soul has found her glorious Husband, the Lord Jesus; and in Him this day we live, and move, and have our being; let us, then, dwell in closest fellowship with Him. Glorious Lord, constrain us that we may never leave Thee, but dwell by the well of the living God.

(from Spurgeon's Morning & Evening, PC Study Bible formatted electronic database Copyright © 1999, 2003, 2006 by Biblesoft, Inc. All rights reserved.)