Explore the Bible

Nobody who is even faintly religious would deny that prayer Is part of the religious life. People who have had little to do with a church, who have seldom picked up a Bible, who have given scant attention to God, will, faced with a crisis, turn to prayer. Many a helpless individual, faced with the stark reality of death, has gone down on his knees in prayer. It sometimes comes as a surprise to discover that some of the most powerful men in history have been men of prayer.

The Marvellous Message of the Bible

Open a newspaper these days, listen to the news on radio or TV, and invariably you get the impression of trouble. Our world is torn by strife -- strife between political parties; strife between ethnic factions; strife between nations. It is beset by problems -- hunger, pollution of land and water, and ever present violence; problems of society, revealed by increasing crime rates and over-crowded prisons; by hospitals filled with patients, many of whom are there because of mental stress; and by an alarming number of victims of drug abuse and alcoholism. Looming over all is the frequent threat of economic crisis, with widespread unemployment and material hardship. The "under-developed nations" are in debt to the world banks (that is, chiefly those of America and Western Europe) to staggering sums running into billions of dollars, with no prospect of ever being able to repay the loans.

The old man stood high on the hillside, the Israelites below him hushed and expectant as they waited for him to continue. These were his people, the flock he had shepherded for over 40 years. Moses' voice rang clear through the desert air: "The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth" (Deuteronomy 7:6).