Paul W. Powell Legacy Library

One of the great problems of society is the problem of human suffering. In the face of it many have concluded that there is no God.  They reason this way: “If God is both good and all-powerful why does he allow things like cancer, earthquakes, and heart attacks to happen? If he is good he surely doesn’t want them to happen, and if he is all-powerful h...

In this season of Thanksgiving, it's good to remember that the greatest American ideas are rooted in a Bible heritage and faith in God. I mean ideas like the dignity of people and equality before the law. I know that our forefathers were not saints. I know that many were not even Christians. However, they were greatly influenced by biblical faith. The repeated mention...

Victor Frankl, the Swiss psychiatrist and author, said that the primary motivating force in life was not a quest for power but a quest for meaning. Noted philosopher Albert Camus said, “Here is what frightens me. To see the sense of this life dissipated. To see our reason for existence disappear. That is what intolerable. Man cannot live without meaning.”&...

I read somewhere of a story about a group of teenagers who broke into the department store one night. They didn’t steal or destroy anything. They just had a wonderful time switching price tags. The next morning customers were puzzled and delighted to find fur coats selling for $5. Lotion was priced at $100. A silver service set was marked at $1.75 and a pair of...

God’s opinion of the atheist is so clear that even the atheist can understand it. He says, “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.” (Psalm 14:1) Why does God, in all the Bible, make this one statement on atheism and thereafter dismiss the subject? It’s because the foolishness of atheism is so self-evident that no other comment is nece...

A San Francisco psychiatrist once made an interesting observation about the young ladies who followed Charles Manson, the convicted orchestrator of the murder of Sharon Tate. He said, “Most of Charlie’s girls were hysteric, wishful thinkers, seeking after some absolute.” I think much of the turmoil and confusion of our age is due to the fact that pe...

It is a disquieting thought, said Charles Dickens, to do anything for the last time. I love the story from Fred Smith’s book, You and Your Network. He writes, “A young preacher in his first pastorate in a small northern mill town was talking for his first time with the mill owner, who said, ‘Young man, you have not seen me in church and you...

Writer Ernest Hemingway grew up in a strong evangelical Christian home in Old Platte, Illinois. His grandparents were missionaries and his father was a devout churchman. His family conformed to the strictest code of Christianity, and as a boy and then man he was active in the life of his church, even serving as a choirboy.   Then came the first World War. H...

General Sam Houston, one of my heroes, was commander the army of the Republic of Texas, the first elected president of the Republic of Texas, first Senator from the state of Texas, and later the sixth governor of the state. Life on the Texas frontier was rough and rugged. Men molded by the frontier knew how to fight, drink, curse, and kill. Sam Houston fit the lifesty...