Paul W. Powell Legacy Library

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a story about a handsome, kindly Dr. Jekyll who discovered a drug that had the supernatural power to change a person’s personality. When taken, it immediately transformed him into Mr. Hyde, a monster who delighted in evil deeds. He spent the rest of his days living the double life of the good Dr. Jekyll and the evil Mr. Hyde until he...

Many years ago four men accompanied me on a mission trip to the West Indies. While visiting with people about Christ one day, a heckler said, “Practice what you preach!” I later learned what was behind the taunt. A few years earlier a young man had professed Christianity and had become very active in the church. He had even done some preaching. Then he fe...

Donald Phlegar, missionary to Thailand, shared a story that was circulating among the Thai people about a man who had a lion. The lion had a habit of eating people. His owner told him it would be all right for him to eat one or two people a day, but the lion must not eat any Christians. One day the lion ate a man except for a small area around his lips. When the...

In 1986 Desmond Tutu, an anti-apartheid and social rights activist and Anglican bishop, recounted the story of the whites coming to South Africa. “When they came,” the bishop said, “the blacks had the land and the whites had the Bible.” Then, he said, the whites wanted to teach the blacks to pray. “So we bowed our heads and closed our eye...

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...

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&...