About the Ray C. Stedman Library

This web site gathers together in one place the entire Ray C. Stedman Library originated in 1995 at Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California where Ray Stedman was pastor for 40 years. We offer fast download of printed and audio files, free of charge for educational purposes—according to the copyright notice at the end of each message. We have added Ray's in-print and out-of-print books to this web site.

Ray C. Stedman was this century's great champion of expository preaching. Rather than topical preaching—which is common in many churches today--Ray believed the "whole counsel of God" was best communicated to God's people by systematically teaching through the entire Bible, usually an entire book at time. This included giving the sense of the passage (Nehemiah 8:8)--and its application to contemporary living. In this way the Christian could build up a broad base of Biblical knowledge---since the Bible teaches truth on various topics, "here a little there a little, line upon line, precept upon precept." Ray's sermons were delivered with minimal notes and when transcribed into printed form rarely needed any editing. Ray was always prepared for questions afterwards. It is said that he recommended to young pastors that they spend 20 hours of preparation for a one hour message.

A favorite Scriptural verse of Ray's was:

“This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.” (1 Corinthians 4:1-2 RSV)

Occasionally Ray would preach on an issue of critical current concern to his audience, or on an issue of basic foundational truth. These topical messages are usually to be found under the category of "Single Messages."

Ray strongly emphasized the New Covenant in all his teaching. In his very popular book Authentic Christianity (online) he shows clearly that most nominal churchgoers today have defaulted into some form of Old Covenant living and have failed to discover real life in Christ as God intended it to be under the terms of the New Covenant which our Lord instituted at the Last Supper..

Ray's teaching on church life and government represents a return to New Testament principles of non-hierarchical leadership in the church and the ministry of all the saints rather than the traditional clergy/laity division of effort common in most churches. See the collected Leadership Papers.

Early in Ray's work at Peninsula Bible Church, the Board of Elders decided that Ray should spend most of his time teaching out of town. This means that we have fewer books and sermons by Ray on our web site than would otherwise exist. Ray's greater calling was to teach young pastors around the world about Expository Preaching. He led a vigorous movement called the Congress on Biblical Exposition (COBE) for some years. He was featured speaker at countless Bible conferences and seminars around the world. This web site therefore preserves only one corner of Ray Stedman's enormous influence on the Christian community in his generation—much of it behind the scenes and featuring the low profile of a faithful servant of the Lord.

On this page we have attempted to very briefly summarize the overall content of Ray's available messages. Our web site search engine can be of some help.

For more on the life of Ray C. Stedman see his Biography page. Elaine Stedman's 1998 message, Body Language is an excellent survey of Ray's ministry and life during the foundational years of Peninsula Bible Church. She has briefly written on the New Covenant in response to a question.

This web site preserves most all of Ray's sermons and also his books—whether books now in print or out of print. We are adding new messages as they are discovered and transcribed, see the Attic!

A further goal of this project is foreign language versions of Ray's messages. We have made a good start in the Spanish Library and welcome contributions to pay for the cost of translation services. Five of Ray's books have been translated into Russian and are available in our Russian Library.

Contributions: This web site is supported by the prayers, gifts and contributions of interested friends. We very much appreciate your gifts, large or small. Most all of the work is done by volunteers and the web site resources are offered free of charge—we have chosen to remain non-commercial by choice, counting on God and God's people to help us with our operating costs. Please click the link below to visit the Contributions Page to make your donation. Thank you very much.

www.raystedman.org/contributions.html

A note concerning pdf files: For the Adobe Acrobat versions of the papers and many of the books in this library, you will need Acrobat Reader to read and print these files. The advantage is better formatting and pagination, especially useful if you wish to print the messages. You are welcome to print and use our messages subject to the stated copyright limitations.

Books in print, Tapes, Booklets, and Discovery Papers by Ray C. Stedman. Many of Ray Stedman's books and most of his messages on cassette tapes or CD are available from Discovery Publishing (DP) along with other PBC sermon libraries. Discovery Publishing may be contacted by email at (Robin_Yee@PBC.org). It is very easy to order books by Ray Stedman from Amazon.com Amazon has both in-print books and used out-of- print books by Ray Stedman. Discovery House Publishers (DHP) is the regular publisher of Ray Stedman's books. You may also order books directly from their web site. We are most grateful to Discovery House Publishers for granting us permission to put Ray's books online in their entirety. Please buy printed copies of the books you find helpful, and buy extra copies for your friends. Buying books through the Amazon.com website links throughout this site helps support maintaining this online library resource through the Amazon Associates program.

Other Ray Stedman Resources: The old Ray C. Stedman Library plus 67 messages in MP3 format is available on a free CD from Firefighters for Christ Address: #4 Santa Maria, Foothill Ranch, CA 92610, 949-470-9883 (This new growing library is not yet available on CD or DVD.)

Easy Access to some online Bible Search Engines & Study Tools

The Blueletter Bible Links: The Blueletter Bible | Study Tools | Bible Maps | Bible Commentaries

Studylight.org Links: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE) | Condensed Bible Cyclopedia | Writings of Alfred Edersheim | StudyLight Bible Study Resources | Interlinear & Parallel Bible

Bible Study Software: Accordance Bible Software (for MacIntosh)

Lambert Dolphin's Library   (Lambert Dolphin is the founding creator of Ray's Online Library and also has a wealth of information and useful links on his site.)

The Paraclete Forum is available to answer your questions and to pray for you.

***********************************
The Ray C. Stedman Library consists of over 15,000 printed web pages, along with over 1000 hours of audio files to listen to, and is maintained by volunteers. Typos? Broken links? Scanning errors? Please feel free to report these using the Email Webmaster link in the left-side column—they'll be fixed promptly. Thank you!

***********************************

Last changed September 19, 2007