Someone recently asked me why we are traveling to the Holy Land in November. The answer is two-fold. First, the weather in Israel can be unbearably hot during the summer months. During November the days will be warm and the nights cool, thus making for an excellent traveling environment. Second, tour prices are lower in Nov…
Sermon Series: Ponder This - 2000Today is December 24. This is Christmas Eve, the day before Christmas. But is this really the day before Jesus was born in Bethlehem? Each year the question comes up and each year the answer is the same: We can’t be sure. The Bible does not clearly answer this question. Evidently the first Christians didn’t make a point of …
Sermon Series: Ponder This - 2000I’ve known Steve and Liz Massey for almost 17 years. Steve was an elder of the church I pastored in Texas and Liz often sang solos during our worship services. Their children attended Awana with our children. We lost touch when we moved to Oak Park in 1989. About eight years ago Steve came through Chicago on business a…
Sermon Series: Ponder This - 2000A blurb in USA Today reports that children laugh an average of 400 times a day while adults laugh 15 times a day. If anything, that latter number seems high to me. I know a few folks who apparently haven’t laughed since the Truman administration. But then again life is hard and no one gets a free ride and perhaps some …
Sermon Series: Ponder This - 2000Once again I am writing this column with the results of the presidential election still undecided. It occurs to me that although a week has passed, we don’t seem to be any closer to a solution-though of course the whole matter may be settled by the time you read this, but I’m not hopeful in that regard. Despite th…
Sermon Series: Ponder This - 2000On November 7 the American people will elect a new president and vice president, 435 members of the House of Representatives, and one-third of the Senate. In addition, there are thousands of statewide and local races that will be decided on that day. How should Christians approach their responsibilities in the coming electi…
Sermon Series: Ponder This - 2000This week my cousin Barbara sent me an e·mail containing a list of aphorisms called “Things I’ve Learned.” She got it from a friend in Florida who got it from somewhere else. I’ve taken a few from the list I received and I’ve added a few of my own. I’ve learned that ·You can do something in an instant that will give you…
Sermon Series: Ponder This - 2000Not long ago I was asked what happens to the people who either follow other religions or who die without ever hearing about Jesus Christ. It’s an important issue because even if you take the most optimistic numbers possible, that is, if you add up all the people who might be remotely related to any group related to Christia…
Sermon Series: Ponder This - 2000Many years ago (almost 20, to be exact) I took a night course called “Advanced Apologetics” from Dr. John Warwick Montgomery at a place called Melodyland School of Theology. I’m not making up that name. The school met in a big church building located right across the street from Disneyland. At that time I was pastoring a sm…
Sermon Series: Ponder This - 2000“The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (I Corinthians 2:14). Two nicely dressed people knocked on our door, a man and a woman who said they were from the local Kingdom Hal…
Sermon Series: Ponder This - 2000