Paul W. Powell Legacy Library

This is a time of moral confusion. There is a fog of uncertainty and doubt that clouds the minds of most people so that they have difficulty in making moral distinctions. Some say there are no fixed moral principles for life’s moral questions. Each situation, they claim, must be judged on its own and they insist that there can be no rules applied apart from eac...

Will Durant, in his book The Story of Civilization, spoke extensively about revolutions. He wrote, “The only real revolution is the revolution of the individual. The only real revolutionists are the philosophers and the saints.” What an insight! He was saying to us that violent revolutions do not redistribute the wealth; they just destroy the wealth. Advoc...

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&...

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...

Who wants to be average? The person who is average is either the sorriest of the best or the best of the sorriest. Too many people are content to be just average. We too readily allow the world to level us down to the same plane. It is a part of the purpose and work of Jesus Christ to help people rise above the average. Jesus helps people rise above the average in th...

There is planted in every person a sense of right and wrong and he is often called on to choose between these two. Today it is increasingly more difficult to make a distinction between them because our standards are sometimes muddled.  In the face of moral decisions, some people say, “I do as I want.” They reject all standards of morality and live on...

To a startling degree, American parents have handled their primary duty of child rearing to educational institutions or babysitters who cannot and will not do the job. Because of our divided lives, most young people are left to grow up without adequate guidance from their parents.  Parents need to wake up. Parenthood is not just biological. It is also moral and...

Someone has well said, “One trouble with the world today is that so many people who stand up vigorously for their rights fall down miserably on their duties.” In Christianity, as in citizenship, there are responsibilities as well as rights. There are duties as well as privileges. In Micah 6:8 the question is asked, “What doth the Lord require of thee...

Violence is no new thing. Cain, first mortal man of natural birth, killed his own brother in a jealous rage. God, knowing his heart, warned if he didn’t deal with his anger it would end up destroying him. And, it did. Anger will do that to anyone. The fact that we usually turn to the church for answers in times of crisis indicates that we know this is basically...