The fact that some religious people believe they have a monopoly on truth does not mean that some of them, at least, under the pressure of persuasion cannot be changed.

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I believe that Jesus Christ was and is the Son of God. The key word in the sentence for me is “believe.”

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I believe that anyone has a right to express his or her personal religious views at anytime, most appropriately when the expression is not obviously aimed at garnering votes.

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I pray to God, my Father and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I earnestly ask Him to grant my desires. He often does.

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In the second Genesis account of creation (Genesis 2), the Creator settled His creatures in a setting which the Creator called “good” and “very good.” In that setting, represented as a “garden,” the tenants were to “dress it and keep it.”

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The American Mass Communications Networks honors religion in the same manner which prompted Jesus to say “. . . this people honoreth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.” (Mark 7:6). The prophet Isaiah much earlier reported that this same word was the indictment made by God (Isaiah 29:13).

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If the remains of Jesus had been definitively found, Christianity would be radically changed into an ethical system without salvific substance.

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I have had a long, good life and I have been trying to preach for nearly seventy years. After forty-two years in a major pulpit, the Concord Baptist Church, at the crossroads of the world, in New York, I felt when I retired nearly fifteen years ago that I had done about what I could. I know of nothing I want out of this life which my Lord has not given to me through Jesus Christ.

Tenets and traditions are not the bedrock upon which my faith rests. The New Testament is the foundation and superstructure of my faith. It has welcomed and withstood the most exhaustive scrutiny to which competent scholarship could put it, as well as the acid test of human experience, for 20 centuries. The New Testament faith will stand secure and sure when time is no more.

God so loved (extent) the world (all) that He gave (donated) His only begotten Son (all that He had) that whosoever believeth on Him (no exception) should have everlasting life (endless joy in His presence). I favor this verse because it is the heart of the gospel (good news).

The wide attention given to Mother Teresa’s doubt about God and Christ represents an almost universal struggle which goes on in most of us who are believers.

Faith and doubt are the two sides of the same religious experience. Even Jesus felt that abandonment on Calvary about the presence of God, though at the last He said that He was able to give Himself into the hands of God with a blessed finality.

Faith and doubt are the two sides of the same religious experience. An example might be a silver dollar held up to the light. Viewing the coin from its top, one sees brightness and clarity. The bottom side of the coin is in shadows, away from the light. But it is the same coin.

There would be no doubt if doubt did not have something which makes doubt possible. What makes doubt real is faith – the ultimate capacity of the human spirit.

My belief is that any religion that focuses solely on the individual is a stunted religion because religion must have two dimensions, a vertical dimension that deals with relation to God and also a horizontal dimension that deals with relation to others. This is brought to the forefront when a certain lawyer inquired of Jesus about inheriting eternal life. When asked of Jesus how he understood it, the lawyer responded, “Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.” To these words, Jesus simply replied, “This do, and thou shall live.” (Luke 10:25-28)