Paul W. Powell Legacy Library

There is an old western painting of a rugged wagon train that has been drawn into a circle for the evening. The men are gathered around the campfire, and the wagon-master has some maps spread out before him. On the map is a heavy black line that traces the zigzag course they have followed. They have swung a little to the left, then south, but always toward the west.&n...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor/theologian who was executed by Adolph Hitler for participating in a plot to kill the Führer. In a biography of his life, he describes Christ as a man “for others.” Then he reminds us that the church, as the body of Christ on earth, is a community in which Christ dwells and like Christ himself, exists &l...

It’s interesting, don’t you think, that after 2,000 years people still feel a need to attack Jesus? You can see examples of the vehement ridicule of Christ everywhere in our American culture and beyond every day.   Why does Jesus still disturb so? Are they trying to expose him as a fraud? If so, it’s a little late for that.   Are the...

Pat Neff, one-time governor of Texas and later president of Baylor University, once said, “All my life I’ve heard preachers tell me to lay up treasures in heaven, but none of them ever told me how to do it. I had to figure it out on my own. “The only way to get our treasures into heaven is to put them in something that is going there. Cattle, land,...

1 And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the winefat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country. 2 And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they caught...

William Wilberforce, the British statesman and reformer, at the end of his life confessed to his son Henry, “I’m in a very distressed state.”   “Yes,” Henry replied, “but you have your feet on the Rock.” When times of distress and trouble come, and they come to all of us, it’s time to check your foundation. W...

Willy Sutton was a noted bank robber and escape artist. He was a tough Irish kid born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1902. He began his life of crime pilfering small things and then moved to breaking and entering and eventually to robbing banks. In his lifetime he robbed more than 100 banks and served several prison sentences, including a stint in Sing-Sing. He also manage...

W.T. Waggoner, a Texas rancher and Deputy Secretary of Defense under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was one of the richest men in America. Among his assets was the largest fenced ranch in America, covering 535,000 acres of land. He is said to have once took a businessman on a tour of his ranch. He pointed north and said, “You can ride 50 miles in that dire...

12 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. 13 And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it. 15 If ye love me, keep my commandments....