Colleague Ron Boyd-MacMillan recounts an interesting experience in China: There’s a house church in Beijing I like to take my friends to visit. The members are all young professionals, about twenty of them, and they meet in a huge, darkened, open-plan office at midnight once a week. It’s totally illegal. Some of them are quite high ranking members of the communist party. If their faith is...
A co-worker once asked a Christian in Vietnam how he introduces the gospel in the villages where people have never heard about God. Without hesitating he answered “Oh very easily. I simply say, ‘I have good news for you but it might cost you your life, would you like me to continue?’ People want to hear good news and most of the time they eagerly ask me to tell them. But the introduction is...
Here’s a reported story worth re-telling. The year was 1930. Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was one of the most powerful leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution. He stood before a large crowd in Kiev with a commanding air of absolute confidence. He had just finished addressing the huge assembly on the subject of Atheism. A Russian intellectual, Bukharin was the editor of the Soviet newspaper Pravda...
In the northeast part of China there was a severe flood. Most of the homes were ruined and peoples’ belongings were totally destroyed. There was a couple who were not Christians. The wife was paralyzed from the waist down. They lost everything in the flood so the husband bought some poison pills and was going to give them to his wife and then also take them himself so they could both commit...
Heart-pounding terror—that’s what most Cambodians felt when Pol Pot seized power in 1975. Setan Lee was a young teen-aged medical student when the Khmer Rouge communist forces took over control of Cambodia. Their horrors and atrocities against their own citizens brought the label “Killing Fields” to the era. Setan was in the most vulnerable class as an educated young person. By God’s grace alone...
Ron Boyd-MacMillan’s: That Endures: The Biblical scholar William Barclay famously described a New Testament Christian as having three remarkable characteristics: “One, they were absurdly happy; two, they were filled with an irrational love for everyone; and three, they were always in trouble!” The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace...
The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Acts 5:41 Today’s devotional comes from Ron Boyd-MacMillan’s excellent volume Faith That Endures: The Biblical scholar William Barclay famously described a New Testament Christian as having three remarkable characteristics: “One, they were absurdly happy; two, they were filled with...
Revival in England In 1776 England was in such a shocking condition, that some historians tell how people became more savage than could be imagined since the creation of the world. Some men sold their wives on auction in the cattle market. Immorality was so rampant that most birth registers were filled with illegitimate births. Drunkenness was so common that even five-year-olds would be...
In 202, Christians who refused to sacrifice to Roman gods were considered traitors. Emperor Septimus Severus was cracking down on anti-state elements. As he saw it, the sacrifice was simply a patriotic gesture, not much more than our salute of the flag. But the Christians saw it as a denial of Christ. Among those swept into the emperor’s dragnet in Carthage were two young women...
His name is Victor Marx. His father was a pimp and a drug dealer. Four stepfathers abused and even tortured him. To escape the emotional pain, he began taking drugs as a teenager. You probably think you know how this tragic tale ends—but you’d be wrong. Today, that boy, Victor Marx, is an evangelical Christian who runs a ministry that helps traumatized children. When he grew up, Victor escaped...