Latest Gems
November 23 - 24
"But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the
thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth
unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; Whose goings
forth have been from of old, from everlasting."
(Micah 5:2)
The apostles preached Jesus, not from their own writings, which did not exist then, but from the Scriptures. What was Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost? He announced:
(1) The outpouring of the Spirit according to Joel 2.
(2) The resurrection of Jesus according to Psalm 16.
(3) His ascension according to Psalm 110; and on this basis,
(4) The lordship of Jesus as the Messiah.
(Dr. Adolf Saphir - Christ and the Scriptures)
N.J. Hiebert # 2805
". . . All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me. Yet the Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night, His song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life." (Psalms 42:7,8)
Someone once wrote that the man who can sing, "It is Well With My Soul" at a time in his life when "sorrows like sea billows roll," has learned the secret of the Lord, and can faithfully exclaim with Job, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him."
Such a man was Horatio Spafford, a lawyer in Chicago. When the great fire swept the city in 1871, he lost all his material possessions. Two years later, he sent his wife and four children to Europe, while he applied himself to retrieving his lost fortune.
They sailed on November 15, 1873, on the "S. S. Ville de Havre." In mid-ocean, one afternoon, six days after they had left New York, the ship collided with a sailing vessel.
Gathering her children on deck, immediately after the collision, Mrs. Spafford knelt in prayer, asking God to save them, or make them willing to die, if that were necessary. In fifteen minutes the boat sank! They were cast into the water and separated. Mrs. Spafford was taken out of the water unconscious by one of the oarsmen on duty in a life-boat, but the children were lost.
Then days later Mrs. Spafford landed in Cardiff, Wales, and cabled to her husband, "Saved Alone."
On receiving this terrible news Attorney Spafford exclaimed: "It is well; the will of the Lord be done!" To give expression to this faith he wrote the hymn which has blessed so many souls in deep trouble:
When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea-billows roll,
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
"It is well, it is well with my soul."
A wealthy man ruined in the panic of 1899 was giving himself up in despair, when a friend of his related to him the story of the writing of this hymn. Immediately he responded, "If Spafford could write such a beautiful resignation hymn, I shall never complain again." (Traveling Toward Sunrise)
N.J. Hiebert # 2806
