Rodney “Gipsy” Smith – birth, Mar. 31, 1860

Christ, the Transforming Light,

Touches this heart of mine,  

Piercing the darkest night,

Making His glory shine.

Refrain:

Oh, to reflect His grace

Causing the world to see

Love that will glow,

Till others shall know

Jesus revealed in me.

Rodney “Gipsy” Smith born was born this date, 3/31/1860, in a gyp­sy tent, in Ep­ping For­est, near Wanstead (6 miles northeast of London).  His father, Cornelius (yet unconverted) told his mother (as she was dying) how to be saved and she was.  Later he was converted and (when Rodney was about 15) Cornelius let his son to Christ. 

After a stint with the Salvation Army, Gipsy became a Methodist evangelist and traveled to several countries preaching and singing.  He was in American a number of times.  In fact, he was on his way here when he died, aboard the Queen Ma­ry 8/4/1947.

 A quote attributed to Smith says, “Anyone can preach to a crowd, but it takes the grace of God to preach to one man.”

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A W Tozer – birth, Apr. 21, 1897

  A religion, even popular Christianity, could enjoy a boom altogether divorced from the transforming power of the Holy Spirit and so leave the church of the next generation worse off…

                – A W Tozer, Keys to the Deeper Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Pub.,1957), 12.

 …That word perfection never meant a spiritual terminal point nor a state of purity that made watchfulness and prayer unnecessary.  Exactly the opposite was true.

                – A W Tozer, Keys to the Deeper Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Pub.,1957), 30.

 …We so desperately need leaders with the gift of discernment…we do not have them and are compelled to fall back upon the techniques of the world.

 This frightening hour calls aloud for men with the gift of prophetic insight.  Instead we have men who conduct surveys, polls and panel discussions.

 We need men with the gift of knowledge.  In their place we have men with scholarship – nothing more.   

                – A W Tozer, Keys to the Deeper Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Pub.,1957), 40.

 …Let us beware of that imitation faith which is no more than a mental assent to truth… True faith invariably brings a witness.

                – A W Tozer, Keys to the Deeper Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Pub.,1957), 52.

A W (Aiden Wilson) Tozer was born this date (4/21/1897) in (what is now) Newburg, PA.  He was converted after hearing a man preaching on the street in Akron, were Tozer was working in a tire factory. 

 It is said that he never owned a car and seldom made pastoral calls.  He did pray, preach, and publish: “The Pursuit of God”, “The Root of Righteousness” and “God Tells the Man Who Cares.”

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Blaise Pascal – converted to Christ, Nov 23, 1654

 

Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.

           – Blaise Pascal, Pensees (1660) paragraph 275.

 

Grace is indeed needed to turn a man into a saint; and he who doubts it does not know what a saint or a man is.

           – Blaise Pascal, Pensees (1660), paragraph 508.

 

The feeble-minded are people who know the truth, but only affirm it so far as consistent with their own interest. But, apart from that, they renounce it.

           – Blaise Pascal, Pensees (1660), paragraph 583.

 

The Gospel only speaks of the virginity of the Virgin up to the time of the birth of Jesus Christ. All with reference to Jesus Christ.

           – Blaise Pascal, Pensees (1660), paragraph 742.

 

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

           – Blaise Pascal, Pensees (1660), paragraph 895.

  

Blaise Pascal, who is credited with inventing the wristwatch, the bus route, the first workable calculating machine, turned to Jesus.  This French mathematician was converted today in history.

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Augustus Montague Toplady – birth, Nov. 4, 1740

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure;
Save from wrath and make me pure.

Toplady though English, attended Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.  He was ordained in the Church of England in 1762 but left it in 1775 to pastor a Calvinist church.  He was converted (at 15) through a Methodist outreach.  It is no secret that he later openly opposed to teachings of John Wesley but note the cry in the 1st stanza for the “double cure” and for purety.

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