Category: Odds & Ends

Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky died on this day, October 15th, in 1906 at the age of seventy-five. Born in Lithuania in 1831, he went to Germany to study for the rabbinate, where he became a Christian. He emigrated to America, trained for the priesthood, and was sent by the Episcopal Church to China. There, he translated the Bible into Mandarin, was elected bishop of Shanghai, founded St. John’s University, and began translating the Bible into Wenli, another Chinese dialect.

However, he developed Parkinson’s disease and became largely paralyzed. Resigning his bishopric, he spent the rest of his life completing his Wenli Bible, typing the last two thousand pages with the one finger that he could still move.

Four years before his death, he said:

“I have sat in this chair for over twenty years. It seemed very hard at first. But God knew best. He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted.” – Dr. Jim Denison

“Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.” — Oswald Chambers

“Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace, and your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.” — Jerry Bridges

“It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.” — A. A. Hodge

Merriam-Webster – Synonyms for INTREPID: courageous, brave, fearless, valiant, heroic, gallant, heroical, adventurous;

“No one can sum up all God is able to accomplish through one solitary life, wholly yielded, adjusted, and obedient to him.” — Dwight L. Moody

“A life isn’t significant except for its impact on other lives.” — Jackie Robinson

October 6, 2025

By: Dr. Jim Denison

“The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the disposition of self-realization—I am my own god.” – Oswald Chambers

The good news, as he added is this: “The moral miracle of redemption is that God can put into me a new disposition whereby I can live a totally new life.” This happens when we yield to God’s Spirit, allowing him to recreate “the disposition that was in Jesus Christ.”

Here we discover one way God redeems the moral failures that dominate each day’s news: as Chambers notes, God cannot work this miracle of transformation in my life “until I am conscious I need it.” Our Father cannot change our hearts without our hearts’ consent.

This is why the first beatitude is foundational to the Sermon that follows: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). When we honestly recognize our abject spiritual poverty, we abdicate the throne of our hearts and enthrone God as our king.

As a result, we experience the “kingdom of heaven,” that realm where God’s will is done “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

Imagine such a life-transforming, grace-infused, love-centered world. Now decide if you will pay the price to experience it personally.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously observed,

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

“A day must come in our lives, as definite as the day of our conversion, when we give up all right to ourselves and submit to the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ.” —Watchman Nee

“You will have no test of faith that will not fit you to be a blessing if you are obedient to the Lord. I never had a trial but when I got out of the deep river I found some poor pilgrim on the bank that I was able to help by that very experience.” — A. B. Simpson

John 15:10 “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”

John 14:15 “If you love Me, keep My commandments.”

“Our Lord told His disciples that love and obedience were organically united. The final test of love is obedience.” — A. W. Tozer

The only hope for your generation,
whichever one that you were born in,
is God’s miracle of regeneration,
you must be born again.
Yes, you must be born again! – Billy Conrad

I got inspired to write this after watching the newly released documentary Truth Rising produced by Focus on the Family.