Paul W. Powell Legacy Library

A newspaper article once told how the 83-member crew of the USS Pueblo, who had previously discarded faith as excess baggage, turned to prayer and the Bible to sustain them in their 11-month imprisonment by the North Korean government in 1968. The article said, “A symbol of both their faith and their unity was the ‘Pueblo Bible,’ scraps written...

Someone said, “God made the country, man made the city, and the devil made the small town.” He could have had your town in mind. Most people at one time or another contribute to the spread of idle gossip and groundless rumors. Rare indeed is the person who will let such information end with his hearing. While most people participate in rumors about others...

Donald Phlegar, missionary to Thailand, shared a story that was circulating among the Thai people about a man who had a lion. The lion had a habit of eating people. His owner told him it would be all right for him to eat one or two people a day, but the lion must not eat any Christians. One day the lion ate a man except for a small area around his lips. When the...

Charles J. Brown II was a multimillionaire oilman who retired at the age of 38. About a year later he made a commitment of his life to Christ to be ready, willing, and able to serve kingdom causes when needed.  I heard a story about a request that once went to Charlie for some personal information to be used in publicizing some Christian meetings. Back came the...

It is virtually impossible for a person to live without faith. A thousand times a day, we are called upon to exercise faith—faith in ourselves, faith in God, and faith in others. For example, you go to a classroom and the teacher begins to teach you about Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Columbus, and many other historical figures. You accept what the teach...

“The American nation will soon be in a state of nervous collapse..." So said the 1969 British writer Tom Stacey in the London Daily Telegraph. If we are on the verge of a nervous collapse, it is because we have added to our lives a multiplicity of activities without keeping pace morally and spiritually. We cannot be ever achieving new powers, enlargin...

An article in the Wall Street Journal once stated that the Good Book had hit upon bad times, clearly losing its influence on American life amid declining sales. If the Bible has hit upon hard times, why is that? It is not because of science. Some people feel that modern science has outmoded the Bible. This simply is not true. Dr. Victor Hess, Nobel Prize winner...

There is an old saying that a man is a fool who can’t be angry, but a man is wise who won’t be. Anger is a common emotion that we must all learn to deal with. The Bible says, “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil” (Ephesians 4:26-27). This teaches us that not all anger is sin. There...

The hardest three words to say as they ought to be said are these: “I have sinned.” It is only when a person comes face to face with his own sinfulness and is willing to confess it that he can become right with God. Jesus tells the story about a rebellious teenager who ran away from home and wasted all of his money in wild living. He eventually became tir...