Quote of the Day

On Luther's posting of the 95 theses:

…It was not the effect of man’s policy, but of God’s power. If Luther had been urged forward solely by human passions, he would have sunk under his fears; his errors, his scruples, would have smothered the fire kindled in his soul; and he would have shed upon the church a mere passing ray, as many zealous and pious men have done whose names have been handed down to us. But now God’s time was come; the work could not be stopped; the emancipation of the Church must be accomplished…he(Luther)felt himself alone in the Church, alone against Rome, alone at the foot of that ancient and formidable building whose foundations penetrated to the centre of the earth, whose walls soared to the clouds, and against whom he had aimed so daring a blow…he trembled at the thought that he had the whole authority of the Church against him; to withdraw from that authority, to be deaf to that voice which people had obeyed for centuries, to set himself in opposition to that Church which he had been accustomed from his infancy to venerate as the mother of the faithful,……he, and insignificant monk……was an effort too great for human power! No step cost him dearer than this. And it was this, accordingly, which decided the Reformation.

…Shall we not recognize the hand of God in those grand manifestations, those great men, those mighty nations, which arise and start as it were from the dust of the earth, and communicate a fresh impulse, a new form and destiny to the human race? Shall we not acknowledge him in those heroes who spring from society at appointed epochs – who display a strength and activity beyond the ordinary limits of humanity…?…. In history, God should be acknowledged and proclaimed. The history of the world should be set forth as the annals of the government of the Sovereign King.

J. H.  Merle D'aubigne

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Oh! How I do groan in this body of clay, this clog of humanity! When I would serve God with gladness, feeble nature hinders me; my strength is exhausted, and I must be again refreshed with sleep. - Though grace had not sin to fight against, it has infirmity to struggle with; and I have no way of getting comfort under my calamities of this kind, which are so many, but by beholding with the eye of faith, through the prospect of revelation, the glories of the world above, when this mortal shall put on immorality, and death shall be swallowed up of life. -…There…with greater ease shall I go on with the highest acts of adoration, than here give over the ordinary acts of devotion; for it shall be life to my soul, and vigour to all my powers, to be so employed!...No weariness there, where the exercise renders happy….Well then, what though the hours of time steal from me unknown? I rejoice that I shall not lose one moment through weariness, while eternity rolls.

James Meikle

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(the Christian) is free from the fear of men.  Ungodly men, many of them, truckle to their fellow men.  It is to them  a most important question whether they are smiled upon or frowned at by their fellow worms.  The godly man has learned to lift his head above the common race of mankind, and when he lives as he should, he neither thinks a thing the better because men praise it, nor the worse because they censure it.  His rule is not popular opinion, nor the dictates of the philosophy of the hour; he believes what God tells him to be true, and what God prescribes he knows to be right; and he does this careless of man's judgment, for none can judge him but his Master.

Charles Spurgeon

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So much of the pursuit of sin is the avoidance of suffering. We seek to please our self.

Don Lambert

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A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling 'darkness' on the wall of his cell... 

C. S. Lewis

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One admires Christ according to aesthetic categories as an aesthetic genius, calls him the greatest ethicist; one admires his going to his death as a heroic sacrifice for his ideas.  Only one thing one doesn't do: one doesn't take him seriously.  That is, one doesn't bring the center of his or her own life into contact with the claim of Christ to speak the revelation of God and to be that revelation.  One maintains  a distance between himself or herself and the word of Christ, and allows no serious encounter to take place.  I can doubtless live with or without Jesus as a religious genius, as an ethicist, as a gentleman - just as, after all, I can also live without Plato and Kant….Should, however, there be something in Christ that claims my life entirely with the full seriousness that here God himself speaks and if the word of God once became present only in Christ, then Christ is not only relative but absolute, urgent significance for me…understanding Christ means taking Christ seriously.  Understanding this claim means taking seriously his absolute claim on our commitment.  And it is now of importance for us to clarify the seriousness of this matter and to extricate Christ from the secularization process in which he has been incorporated since the Enlightenment.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Every workman knows the necessity of keeping his tools in a good state of repair...It is true that the Lord...can work with the faultiest kind of instrumentality, as He does when He occasionally makes very foolish preaching to be useful in conversion; and he can even work without agents, as he does when he saves men without a preacher at all, applying the word directly by his Holy Spirit; but we cannot regard God's absolutely sovereign acts as a rule for our action.  He may, in His own absoluteness, do as pleases Him best, but we must act as His plainer dispensations instruct us; and one of the facts which is clear enough is this, that the Lord usually adapts means to ends, from which the plain lesson is, that we shall be likely to accomplish most when we are in the best spiritual condition; or in other words, we shall usually do our Lord's work best when our gifts and graces are in good order, and we shall do worst when they are most out of trim.  This is a practical truth for our guidance.  When the Lord makes exceptions, they do but prove the rule.

  We are, in a certain sense, our own tools, and therefore must keep ourselves in order.  If I want to preach the gospel, I can only use my own voice; and therefore I must train my vocal powers.  I can only think with my own brains, and feel with my own heart, and therefore I must educate my intellectual and emotional faculties...It will be in vain for me to stock my library, or organize societies, or project schemes, if I neglect the culture of myself; for books, and agencies, and systems, are only remotely the instruments of my holy calling; my own spirit, soul, and body, are my nearest machinery for sacred service...

Charles Spurgeon

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True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will.

 

Jonathan Edwards

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We Christians ought to be sure of our doctrine, and be able to say yes or no without hesitation.  To presume to hinder us from affirming our belief with full conviction, is depriving us of faith itself.  The Holy Ghost is no skeptic; and He has written in our hearts a firm and strong assurance, which makes us as certain of our faith as we are of life itself.  

Martin Luther

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Men do not reject the Bible because it contradicts itself, but because it contradicts them.

-Unknown

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The problem with Christians is nobody wants to kill them anymore.

Author Unknown

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 The Cross of Christ is the only hope of the world. Our constant danger is that we cry, Behold this new opportunity. Behold our new methods. Behold our human brother-hood. And forget to cry: Behold the Lamb of God! 

Amy Carmichael

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 They (Believers who do not accept a definite atonement/Arminians) necessarily turn away from a substitutionary atonement altogether. Christ did not die in the sinners stead, it seems, to bear his penalties and purchase for him eternal life; He died rather to make the salvation of sinners possible, to open the way of salvation to sinners, to remove all the obstacles in the way of salvation. But what obstacle stands in the way of salvation besides the sinner's sin? And if this obstacle (their sin) is removed, are they not saved?

Benjamin B. Warfield

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We should seek out God's thoughts first before we delve too deeply into our own.  

Don Lambert

Quote Of The Day

It is not enough to say, 'Serve one another.' That is true of Christ and his church - they serve each other.  But they do not serve each other in all the same ways.  Christ is Christ.  We are the church.  To confuse the distinctions would be doctrinally and spiritually devastating.  So also the man is the Christ-portraying husband, and the woman is the church portraying wife.  And to confuse these God-intended distinctions, or to abandon them, results in more disillusionment and more divorce and more devastation.  

One of the things that is crystal-clear in Ephesians 5 is that the roles of husband and wife in marriage are not arbitrarily assigned, and they are not reversible any more than the role of Christ and the church are reversible.  The roles of husband and wife are rooted in the distinctive roles of Christ and his church.  The revelation of this mystery is the recovery of the original intention of covenant marriage in the Garden of Eden. 

You can see this more clearly when you ponder what sin did to headship and submission and how Paul's teaching here in Ephesians 5 is so perfectly suited to remedy that corruption.  When sin entered the world, it ruined the harmony of marriage not because it brought headship and submission into existence, but because it twisted man's humble loving headship toward hostile domination in some men and lazy indifference in others.  And it twisted woman's intelligent, willing, happy, creative, articulate submission toward manipulative obsequiousness in some women and brazen insubordination in others.  Sin didn't create headship and submission; it ruined them and distorted them and made them ugly and destructive.

Now if this is true, then the redemption we anticipate with the coming of Christ is not the dismantling of the original, created order of loving headship and willing submission, but a recovery of it from the ravages of sin.  And that's exactly what we find in Ephesians 5:21-33, Wives, let your fallen submission be redeemed by modeling it after God's intention for the church!  Husbands, let your fallen headship be redeemed by modeling it after God's intention for Christ!

John Piper

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(On having a good conscience) That it be properly enlightened to know what is right and wrong, or that it be not under the dominion of ignorance, superstition, or fanaticism, prompting us to do what would be a violation of the Divine law… Without the first of these -- clear views of that which is right and wrong -- conscience becomes an unsafe guide, for it merely prompts us to do what we esteem to be right, and if our views of what is right and wrong are erroneous, we may be prompted to do what may be a direct violation of the law of God…Conscience is not revelation, nor does it answer the purpose of a revelation.  It communicates no new truth to the soul , and is a safe guide only so far as the mind has been properly enlightened to see what is truth and duty.  Its office is to prompt us to the performance of duty, not to determine what is right.

Albert Barnes

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Wisdom is the royalty of God; the proper dialect of all His ways and works.  No creature can lay claim to it.  He is so wise, that He is Wisdom Itself.

Stephen  Charnock

Quote Of The Day

 And, my brethren, it is quite certain that no man ever begins the new birth himself. The work of salvation never was commenced by any man. God the Holy Spirit must commence it. Now, the reasons why no man ever commenced the work of grace in his own heart, is very plain and palpable. First, because he cannot; secondly, because he won't. The best reason of all is, because he cannot—he is dead. Well the dead may be made alive, but the dead cannot make themselves alive, for the dead can do nothing. Besides, the new thing to be created as yet hath no being. The uncreated cannot create. "Nay," but you say, "that man can create." Yes, can hell create heaven? Then sin may create grace. What! will you tell me that fallen human nature, that has come almost to a level with the brutes, is competent to rival God; that it can emulate the divinity in working as great marvels, and in imparting as divine a life as even God himself can give? It cannot. Besides, it is a creation; we are created anew in Christ Jesus. Let any man create a fly, and afterwards let him create a new heart in himself; until he hath done the less he cannot do the greater. Besides, no man will. If any man could convert himself, there is no man that would. If any man saith he would, if that be true, he is already converted; for the will to be converted is in great part conversion. The will to love God, the desire to be in unison with Christ, is not to be found in any man who hath not already been brought to be reconciled with God through the death of his Son. There may be a false desire, a desire grounded upon a misrepresentation of the truth; but a true desire after true salvation by the true Spirit, is a certain index that the salvation already is there in the germ and in the bud, and only needs time and grace to developed itself. But certain it is, that man neither can nor will, being on the one hand utterly impotent and dead, and on the other hand utterly depraved and unwilling; hating the change when he sees it in others, and most of all despising it in himself. Be certain, therefore, that God the Holy Spirit must begin, since none else can do so.

Charles Spurgeon

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Whence could such a creature(man) come but from Thee O Lord? Or shall any man be skillful enough to fashion himself? Or is their any other vein by which being and life runs into us save this, that "Thou, O Lord hast made us," with whom being and life are one, because Thou Thyself art being and life in the highest? Thou art the highest, "Thou changest not," neither in Thee doth this present day come to an end, though it doth end in Thee, since in Thee all such things are; for they would have no way unless Thou sustainest them. And since "Thy years shall have no end," Thy years are an ever present day. And how many of ours and fathers' days have passed through this Thy day, and received from it their measure and fashion of being; and others yet to come shall so receive and pass away! "But Thou art the same," and all the things of tomorrow and the days yet to come, and all of yesterday, and the days that are past, Thou wilt do today, Thou hast done today.

What is it to me if any understandeth not? Let him still rejoice and say "What is this?" Let him rejoice even so, and rather love to discover in failing to discover, than in discovering not to discover Thee.

Augustine

Quote Of The Day

An evil is in the professed camp of the Lord, so gross in its impudence, that the most shortsighted can hardly fail to notice it during the past few years. It has developed at an abnormal rate, even for evil. It has worked like leaven until the whole lump ferments. The devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them. 

From speaking out as the Puritans did, the church has gradually toned down her testimony, then winked at and excused the frivolities of the day. Then she tolerated them in her borders. Now she has adopted them under the plea of reaching the masses.

My first contention is that providing amusement for the people is nowhere spoken of in the Scriptures as a function of the church. If it is a Christian work, why did not Christ speak of it? "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15). That is clear enough. So it would have been if He had added, "and provide amusement for those who do not relish the gospel." No such words, however, are to be found. It did not seem to occur to him.

Then again, "He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers .., for the work of the ministry" (Eph. 4:11-12). Where do entertainers come in? The Holy Spirit is silent concerning them. Were the prophets persecuted because they amused the people or because they refused? The concert has no martyr roll. 

Again, providing amusement is in direct antagonism to the teaching and life of Christ and all his apostles. What was the attitude of the church to the world? Ye are the salt" (Matt. 5:13), not the sugar candy---something the world will spit out not swallow. Short and sharp was the utterance, "Let the dead bury their dead" (Matt. 8:22) He was in awful earnestness.

Had Christ introduced more of the bright and pleasant elements into his mission, he would have been more popular when they went back, because of the searching nature of His teaching. I do not hear him say, "Run after these people Peter and tell them we will have a different style of service tomorrow, something short and attractive with little preaching. We will have a pleasant evening for the people. Tell them they will be sure to enjoy it. Be quick Peter, we must get the people somehow." Jesus pitied sinners, sighed and wept over them, but never sought to amuse them.

In vain will the Epistles be searched to find any trace of this gospel of amusement! Their message is, "Come out, keep out, keep clean out!" Anything approaching fooling is conspicuous by its absence. They had boundless confidence in the gospel and employed no other weapon.

After Peter and John were locked up for preaching, the church had a prayer meeting but they did not pray, "Lord grant unto thy servants that by a wise and discriminating use of innocent recreation we may show these people how happy we are." If they ceased not from preaching Christ, they had not time for arranging entertainments. Scattered by persecution, they went everywhere preaching the gospel. They turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6). That is the only difference! Lord, clear the church of all the rot and rubbish the devil has imposed on her, and bring us back to apostolic methods.

Lastly, the mission of amusement fails to effect the end desired. It works havoc among young converts. Let the careless and scoffers, who thank God because the church met them halfway, speak and testify. Let the heavy laden who found peace through the concert not keep silent! Let the drunkard to whom the dramatic entertainment has been God's link in the chain of the conversion, stand up! There are none to answer. The mission of amusement produces no converts. The need of the hour for today's ministry is believing scholarship joined with earnest spirituality, the one springing from the other as fruit from the root. The need is biblical doctrine, so understood and felt, that it sets men on fire.

Charles Spurgeon

Quote Of The Day

The verse which you want more than any other, and which you had better make your whole Bible for the present, is that wonderful passage in Deuteronomy: "I led thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with food that thou knewest not, to teach thee that man does not live by bread alone" - no, not by what you and I think a necessary of life, that without which we cannot live - love, success, fulfilled desire - "but by everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Most High," Whether that word ("thing" in the revised version) be failure or success, love or heart hunger, uselessness or abounding labor - by that does man live. Our life is distinctly a supernatural life, and we are always longing for a natural life, and God let us go hungry of the natural life in order that we may enter into the supernatural, and our wish to be taken up into His.

Ellice Hopkins

If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too.  If so, then all our present thoughts are accidents- the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms.  And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's.  But if their thoughts are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true?  I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents.

C. S. Lewis

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A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol. The Lord whom we trust binds us so firmly to himself that we are freed from superstition and a desire for miracles. The person to whom God has given faith has faith in him, whatever happens.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Holy Mr. Whitefield, when someone observed, "I should like to hear your dying testimony," said, “No, I shall in all probability bear no dying testimony." "Why not?" said the other. "Because I am bearing testimony every day while I live, and there will be the less need of it when I die."

Charles Spurgeon

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O ye saints, when reproached and persecuted, look farther than man, spend not your wrath on him. Alas! They are but instruments in the devil’s hand. Save your displeasure for Satan, who is thy chief enemy. These may be won to Christ’s side, and so become thy friends at last. Now and then we see some running away from the devil’s colours, and washing thy wounds with their tears, which they have made with their cruelty. It is a notable passage in Anselm, compares the heretic and the persecutor to the horse, and the devil to the rider. Now, saith he, in battle, when the enemy comes riding up, the valiant soldier ‘is angry not with the horse, but horseman; he labours to kill the man, that he may possess the horse for his use; thus must we do with the wicked, we are not to bend our wrath against them, but Satan that rides them, and spurs them on, labouring by prayer for them as Christ did on the cross, to dismount the devil, that so these miserable souls hackneyed by him may be delivered from him.

William Gurnall

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Science is not a hermeneutic for interpreting Genesis...or for that matter for interpreting any other portion of Scripture.  Science is not a hermeneutic.  It is not a principle of interpretation.  The Bible does not bow to science.  The accuracy of the Genesis text is no different than the accuracy of any other portion of Scripture.  All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.  All Scripture is God-breathed.  All Scripture comes not by any private interpretation but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit...Jesus summed it up when He said, "Thy Word is truth."  The Bible is true whether you're talking about revelation and eschatological prophecy or whether you're talking about Genesis and historic origins.  The Bible is true whether you're talking about the history of Israel or the history of the Canaanites.  The Bible is true whether you're talking about salvation or sanctification, whether you're talking about the life of Jesus or the theology of Jesus.  Whatever the Bible says is absolutely true.  And the Bible is as true in Genesis as it is anywhere else, and everywhere else. 

John MacArthur

Quote Of The Day

What is faith? In the simplest manner in which I am able to express it, I answer: Faith is the assurance that the thing which God has said in His Word is true, and that God will act according to what He has said in His Word. This assurance, this reliance on God’s Word, this confidence is faith.

Impressions have neither one thing nor the other to do with faith. Faith has to do with the Word of God. It is not impressions, strong or weak, which will make any difference. We have to do with the written Word and not ourselves or our impressions.

Many people are willing to believe regarding those things that seem probable to them. Faith has nothing to do with probabilities. The province of faith begins where probabilities cease and sight and sense fail. A great many of God’s children are cast down and lament their want of faith. They write to me and say that they have no impressions, no feeling, they see no probability that the thing they wish will come to pass. APPEARANCES ARE NOT TO BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT. The question is – whether God has spoken it in His Word.

George Muller

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The great guide of the world is fashion and its god is respectability--two phantoms at which brave men laugh! How many of you look around on society to know what to do; you watch the general current and then float upon it; you study the popular breeze and shift your sails to suit it. True men do not so! You ask--Is it fashionable? If it be fashionable, it must be done. Fashion is the law of multitudes, but it is nothing more than the common consent of fools.

Charles Spurgeon

Quote Of The Day

Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. The church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto a part of that grace. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God. Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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In our own day, we have a theoretical Trinitarianism, but in many instances we have a practical Unitarianism.  For instance, there are many churches where the person and work of Christ are given such focus that all thought of the Father and the Holy Spirit is removed.  These churches seem to have as their creed, 'Jesus is all that I need.'  Of course, these churches affirm that they believe in the Father and the Spirit, but for all practical purposes, they are Unitarian in their religious behavior.  Theirs is a Unitarianism of the second person.  At the same time, in the past century, there probably have been more books written on the person and work of the Holy Spirit than were written in the first nineteen centuries of the Christian church.  This is a direct result of the charismatic movement and Pentecostalism, which give so much attention to the Holy Spirit.  Please don't misunderstand.  I think it is a wonderful thing that the church has been awakened to the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit.  We need that.  But we need to be careful that we don't slip into a practical Unitarianism of the third person, because the Scripture shows that the work of God is Trinitarian in every dimension.

R. C. Sproul

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It is Christ who is to be exalted, not our feelings. We will know Him by obedience, not by emotions. Our love will be shown by obedience, not by how good we feel about God at a given moment. “And love means following the commands of God.” “Do you love Me?” Jesus asked Peter. “Feed My lambs.” He was not asking, “How do you feel about Me?” for love is not a feeling. He was asking for action.

Elisabeth Elliot