Paul W. Powell Legacy Library

Will we know each other in heaven? Most assuredly! The apostle Paul said concerning heaven, “For now we see through the glass darkly; but then face to face: but now I know in part; but then shall we know even as also we are known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). In heaven our knowledge shall be vastly superior to our knowledge here upon this earth. Do we know each...

Sometimes people have tried to compare Jesus to other great men like Gandhi, the great Indian teacher. And they have said that Jesus, like Gandhi, was just a good man, a holy man. But about 30 years after Gandhi died someone wrote a book about him and his disciples, those people who followed him. They wrote down every word he said, more than 400 books written about th...

Sigmund Freud, the famous psychiatrist, was hostile toward Christianity. When he was two years old a nursemaid employed by his family made a profound impression on Freud. She took him to church, read the Bible to him, and indoctrinated him in the beliefs of her church. He was so impressed with her that upon returning from church he often pretended that he was a preach...

A young man who recently became a Christian said to me, “I am going home to a non-Christian family—a family that is prepared to laugh me out of the house. How should I deal with that?” Although he grew up next door to a parsonage and there were several different ministers who lived there over the years, no one ever spoke to him about being a Christi...

Hurrah for Johnny Cash when he refused to perform a bedroom scene with a nude actress in his movie A Gunfight. The scene was fairly tame by film standards at that time, but this is what Cash said about it: “I couldn’t do that scene. How could I do that and then record an album of hymns? Or talk on my television show about what religion means to my life? I&...

A light is not to look at but to look by. It does not exist to draw attention to itself but to help us to see other things more clearly. It is this basic quality of light that led Jesus to say to his followers of all ages, “You are the light of the world.” What did he mean?  The world is groping in spiritual darkness and cannot find God. It is the pu...

I once talked with a man who was convinced that Christianity was a failure. His conclusion was based on the fact that while our cities are full of churches and preachers, our world is getting worse and worse. If you think about this criticism, you must agree that there is much religion in America that has little effect on the daily lives of people. While the number o...

My father was born in 1902 and lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. I was born in the middle of that Depression. Life in the little East Texas sawmill town of Weirgate in Sabine County where I grew up was hard scabbed, and the Depression colored its citizens' thinking for the rest of their lives. The scriptures say, “Owe no man anything except...

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...