Paul W. Powell Legacy Library

Do you own a Bible? If so, you own the greatest book in all the world. It is a priceless possession for which people have suffered, bled, and died through the ages. It is the inspired, eternal, authoritative, powerful word of God. In the light of its importance we ought to do four things with the Bible. 1. We ought to believe it. If you believe what you like in the B...

A lady said to me, “My husband has an elephant memory.” He never forgets anything—especially things she says to him in the heat of an argument. In times of anger we oftentimes say the most cutting and hurting things. We do not live together as husband and wife very long before we know what really hurts each other. Then when an argument comes up we us...

Life has been defined as the sum total of a person’s choices. From the cradle to the grave we face many great decisions. What is life’s greatest choice? It is not the choice of a vocation, or education, or a mate. Life’s greatest choice has to do with God and one’s spiritual life. The Bible presents that choice to us when it says, “Choo...

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...

A Look article raised the question, “Can we still be shocked?” The author, William K. Zinsser, pointed out that gusts of outrage swept this country when the movie Gone with the Wind came out in 1939 and Clark Gable spoke his final line: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” To use such language in a movie in those days was considered m...

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...

Jeff Ray, former professor at Southwestern Seminary, used to say to his students, “Be kind to everyone because everyone is having a hard time.” He was right. Some burdens are seen. But some of the deepest and most powerful ones aren’t. If we but knew the battles people were fighting, we would be more understanding of them. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow...