Paul W. Powell Legacy Library

It’s ridiculous what’s happening to marriage today. For every person who says, “I do,” there’s another who says, “I’m through.” With marriage, every passing day finds the distance between the marriage altar and the divorce court growing shorter and shorter. Why is this? It’s partly due to the fact that we hav...

One of the joys of today is that there is so much good fighting going on. By a good fight I mean an honest struggle between ideas and convictions. Yet there are so few who will fight. We are afflicted with moral laryngitis. We are like the lad who was asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” He replied, “Alive.” That is what we want mo...

Let me point to just one area where we need some people to “yell” a little. That is in the field of entertainment. By the time a child enters the first grade, he has spent more hours in front of a TV set than he will spend in a college classroom, and much of what he sees is filth. Can anyone deny that movies, TV, and books are dirtier than ever? But we don...

The excuses that people give for not attending church are abundant. They are also pretty shallow when carefully examined. I am sure you would agree that the same excuses people use for not attending church would be absurd if the preacher tried to use them as reasons for not attending a sports event.  Consider these common excuses for not attending church as reas...

      “Everybody is doing it!” At least that is what people keep telling me to justify their conduct. Three things ought to be said about this kind of reasoning.       First, it is not true. Not everyone is doing anything in a moral sense. Some people may be doing it and most people may be doing it, but not everybody is doing...

One of the most disturbing things in our day is the apparent breakdown of law and authority. There is an awful lot of foolish talk by otherwise intelligent people who condone it. Some of them try to condone it under the guise of American tradition by saying, “Our nation was born out of violence and will progress by violence.” How foolish can you get? ...

We must learn to respect those whose views differ with ours and those who want to openly demonstrate against what they feel is evil and injustice. Such dissent has great value in democracy and we need understanding of the other man’s view. Our greatest danger is extremes in either direction. Our problem is illustrated in the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhau...

Whether you examine it with a telescope or with a microscope, our universe is indeed amazing. Of its minuteness Bible commentator John Phillips once wrote, “If the molecules in one drop of water could be converted into grains of sand, there would be enough sand to build a concrete highway, half a mile wide and one foot thick, from New York to San Francisco.&rdqu...

One of the most pressing issues of our day is that of moral standards. What absolutes impose the limits of freedom? What givens determine what is right and what is wrong? There are some people who say that there are no absolutes in life. They reject all moral standards completely. They claim freedom on all matters of morals and live only for pleasure. Their motto see...