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By Joseph S. Exell · 1887 · 1,353 illustrations
The Biblical Illustrator is a 56-volume reference work compiled by Joseph S. Exell in the late 19th century. Each passage of Scripture is illuminated with historical anecdotes, biographical sketches, analogies from nature, and homiletical observations drawn from ancient and contemporary sources. These illustrations have been carefully restored from the original public-domain text and rewritten for clarity and accessibility — preserving the historical depth while removing Victorian OCR artifacts.
This is not labored knowledge but native breath—religion so integrated into His nature that He prays and speaks as naturally as breathing.
Men must comprehend when their main business is to apprehend.
Their prejudice—the conviction that miracles *must* conform to established precedent—nearly blinded them to Elohim's work.
As the proverb reminds us, "The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind to powder." Sennacherib's parricides fled to Ararat in Central Armenia, where Armenian historians trace the Sassimian and Arzrunian tribes from them.
Instead, He borrowed a small ship from a fisherman and preached from that humble vessel.
The prophet addresses Judah's futile reliance upon Egypt for military aid—a covenant forbidden by Adonai and spiritually ruinous.
This command reveals three principles about Yahweh's covenant with humanity.
Justification means being brought into right relation with Elohim and all law-keeping beings.
Yet in withholding it, he would forfeit the very majesty that distinguishes Christianity itself.
His spirit had ascended—climbing Jacob's ladder toward glory and immortality—only to descend again into the melancholy fact of his countrymen's spiritual expatriation.
And when thou prayest—nine things pertain to the knowledge of true prayer: I. To know what prayer is. II. How many sorts of prayer there be. III. The necessity of prayer. Four things provoke us to pray: 1. God's commandment....
The prophet does not merely inform; he interrogates, drawing forth dormant faith that has withered through neglect or fear.
This man holds his candle at the door to inspect his neighbors while leaving his own room dark.
The cross may manifest as relinquishing certain pleasures, enduring reproach or poverty, suffering losses and persecutions for Christ's sake, consecrating all to Yahweh, or submitting to the Adonai's will.
Yet his refusal revealed his true allegiance: he regarded Jehovah not as his covenant God, but merely as Judaea's territorial deity, inferior to Assyria's gods.
The apostle Paul grounds predestination in God's eternal foreknowledge—a decree that turns all things to the good of those called according to Elohim's plan.
The jasper of the Apocalypse bears the characteristics of diamond: the most precious of stones, shining like the sun, displaying no single colour yet containing all colours in its pure, white light.
Christ's command divides into two classes of hearers: those dangerously unconcerned about salvation, whom the deceiver convinces that Elohim is too merciful to judge them; and those awakened by conscience, whom Satan now persuades that grace has expired and sin...
Among all earth's creatures, man alone is the worshipper.
Heathen moralists offered counsel but omitted humility; the word itself, before Christianity, signified baseness and shame.
This promise encompasses science, literature, arts, commerce, and above all, religion itself—all shall be renewed.
This creature burrows deep into the soil but journeys nightly to the sea to bathe in salt water.
The dispensation under which we live is emphatically that of night, in comparison with the dispensation to be introduced at the day of the Lord.
This transformation reveals three profound truths about conversion's power.