The Scriptorium Daily

Month: March 2009

  • How to Be Led by the Holy Spirit

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    by

    R.A. Torrey
    in

    Q: How can one distinguish between the leading of the Holy Spirit and a mere impulse of our own heart? A. The most important condition of being able to distinguish the true leading of the Holy Spirit is that we be absolutely surrendered to the will of God. There are many people doing the things…

  • Happy Birthday to Haydn

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    Fred Sanders
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    Joseph Haydn was born on March 31, 1732, in Austria. He died on May 31, 1809. There’s plenty of Haydn music to choose from, much of it exquisitely good for casual listening: concertos, string quartets, piano trios, symphonies, etc. But if you want to move to the slightly more ambitious side of Haydn’s works, try…

  • Rambam Guided the Perplexed

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Today is the birthday of Moses Maimonides (born March 30, 1135, died 1204), the twelfth-century Sephardic Jewish intellectual who wrote The Guide for the Perplexed, which was a very influential book for international philosophical theology in the late middle ages and beyond. In the history of Jewish thought, Maimonides is often referred to as the…

  • Charles Wesley was Ready to Die

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Charles Wesley (born 1707, died March 29, 1788) lived a long and fruitful life, died peacefully at home, and was buried in the yard of his parish church. His family was gathered around him and some of them wrote descriptions of how he died. His death was not really remarkable except that it was such…

  • Happy Birthday to Donald Grey Barnhouse

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Donald Grey Barnhouse (March 28, 1895, died 1960) is best remembered as the pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, and his most far-reaching ministry was through the radio show “The Bible Study Hour” (later re-named Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible). Among his many books, the most important is probably his four-volume homiletic commentary on…

  • Peloubet’s Notes

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    Fred Sanders
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    Francis Nathan Peloubet (1831-March 27, 1920) decided the most strategic thing he could do as a pastor was to train Sunday School teachers how to teach the Bible to their students well. So he travelled and lectured, wrote books and articles about it, and networked inter-denominationally to support the Sunday School movement any way he…

  • “My Son, Give Me Thy Heart” (J. H. Sammis)

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    To thee, who from the narrow road In sinful ways so long hast trod, How kindly speaks thy Father, God, “My son, give Me thy heart.” “My son!” O word of mighty grace, That children of our mortal race, With sons of God may take their place — “My son, give Me thy heart.” How…

  • Happy Birthday, Dawson Trotman

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Dawson Trotman (born March 25, 1906, died 1956) was the founder of the Navigators, a Christian ministry that is famous for Scripture memorization and one-on-one discipleship. Both of those emphases seem to have flowed directly from the personal charisma of Daws, as his friends called him and as his biography is entitled. Converted as a…

  • Divorce, Deeper Sunday School, and Destructive Criticism

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    R.A. Torrey
    in

    Q. What do the 27th and 28th verses of First Corinthians 7 mean? i.e., do they release one in such a case from Matthew 5:32? A. They certainly do not. They simply teach that if a man is not under obligation to a wife through having one living, he has a right to marry, and…

  • Fanny Crosby “Beheld the Wondrous Love”

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    Fred Sanders
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    Fanny J. Crosby (born March 24, 1820, died 1915) was the prolific blind hymn-writer who captured the ethos of late nineteenth-century evangelicalism and set it to music. We had to wait until just a few years ago for a substantive critical biography of Crosby: In 2005, Edith L. Blumhofer published Her Heart Can See: The…

  • Gregory Illuminated Armenia

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    Fred Sanders
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    Gregory the Illuminator is the man who persuaded the king of Armenia to renounce idolatry and accept Christianity. That was in the year 301, making Armenia the first nation to become officially Christian. According to Armenian legends, the gospel had come to them long before that official conversion, though. Supposedly, Thaddeus, one of the 70…

  • How Jonathan Edwards Died

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    On March 22, 1758, Jonathan Edwards died in Princeton, New Jersey, from complications that set in after a smallpox vaccination. It was a surprising turn of events, right when Edwards thought he was starting an exciting new phase of his life’s work. He had moved to Princeton just a few months before, to assume the…