Quote of the Day

Christianity is not just an experience, we need to remember, but it is about truth.  The experience of being reconciled to the Father, through the Son, by the work of the Holy Spirit all happens within a worldview.  This worldview is the way God has taught us in His Word to view the world.  That is why the Bible begins with Genesis 1:1 and not with John 3:16. 

David Wells

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Excerpt from a letter written bv Hudson Taylor, in China at the time, to a friend in England.  Taylor's wife and new-born son Noel had just died(their oldest son, Samuel, died earlier that year). There second youngest child was staying with friends eleswhere in China and the other children had been sent to England not long before this event:
 

It is Sunday evening.  I am writing from Mr. White's bungalow.  The cool air, the mellow, autumnal beauty of the scene, the magnificent Yangtze - with Silver Island, beautifully wooded, reposing, as it were, on its bosom - combine to make one feel as if it were a vision of dreamland rather than actual reality.  And my feelings accord.  But a few months ago my home was full, now so silent and lonely - Samuel, Noel, my precious wife, with Jesus; the elder children far, far away, and even little T'ien-pao in Yang-chow.  Often, of late years, has duty called me from my loved ones, but I have returned, and so warm has been the welcome!  Now I am alone.  Can it be that there is no return from this journey, no home-gathering  to look forward to? Is it real, and not a sorrowful dream that those dearest to me lie beneath the cold sod?  Ah, it is indeed true!  But not more so, than that there is a home-coming  awaiting me which no parting shall break into, no tears mar….Love gave the blow that for a little while makes the desert more dreary, but heaven more home-like.  "I go to prepare a place for you":  and is not our part of the preparation the peopling it with those we love? 

And the same loving Hand that makes Heaven more home-like is the while loosening the ties that binding us to this world, thus helping our earth-cleaving spirits to sit looser, awaiting our own summons, whether personally to be "present with the Lord," or at "the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior"  "Even so, come, Lord Jesus," come quickly!

Quote of the Day

"For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith excellence, to excellence, knowledge; to knowledge, self-control; to self-control, perseverance..."(2Pe 1:5-6 NET)

We're not persevering if it's not difficult.

- Don Lambert

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…the number of people who suffer from such newly identified "sicknesses" is increasing even faster.  The therapy industry is clearly not solving the problem of what Scripture calls sin. Instead it merely convinces multitudes that they are desperately sick and therefore not really responsible for their wrong behavior.  It gives them permission to think of themselves as patients, not malefactors.  And it encourages them to undergo extensive - and expensive- treatment that lasts for years, or better yet, for a lifetime.  These new diseases, it seems, are ailments from which no one is ever expected to recover completely……Recovery, the code word for programs modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous, is explicitly marketed as a lifelong program.  We've grown accustomed to the image of a person who has been sober for forty years standing up in an A A meeting and saying, "I'm Bill, and I'm an alcoholic."  Now all "addicts" are using the same approach - including sex addicts, gambling addicts, nicotine addicts, anger addicts, wife-beating addicts, child-molesting addicts,  debt addicts, eat addicts, or whatever.  People suffering from such maladies are taught to speak of themselves as "recovering" never "recovered."  Those who dare to think of themselves as delivered from their affliction are told they are living in denial….. Disease model therapy therefore feeds the very problem it is supposed to treat. It alleviates any sense of guilt, while making people feel they are victims helplessly bound for life to their affliction….(it)is disastrously counterproductive.  By casting the sinner in the role of a victim, it ignores or minimizes the personal guilt inherent in misbehavior.  "I am sick" is much easier to say than, "I have sinned."  But it doesn't deal with the fact that one's transgression is a serious offense against a holy, omniscient, omnipotent God.  Personal guilt is for that very reason at the heart of what must be confronted when dealing with one's sin.  But the disease-model remedy cannot address the problem of guilt without explaining it away.  And by explaining guilt away, disease-model therapy does untold violence to the human conscience.  It is therefore no remedy at all, but a disastrous prescription for escalating wickedness and eternal damnation.

John Macarthur 

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One thing that concerned Mr. Taylor more at this time than shortness of supplies was the fear lest, in their desire to help, friends at home should be tempted to make appeals in meetings, or even more personally, for funds. To one and another he wrote very earnestly on the subject, begging that this might not be done. The trial through which they were passing was no reason, to his mind, for changing the basis on which they had been led to found the Mission.......(excerpt from one of his letters:

"I am truly sorry that you should be distressed at not having funds to send me. May I not say, ' Be careful for nothing.' We should use all care to economize what God does send us ; but when that is done bear no care about real or apparent lack. After living on God's faithfulness for many years, I can testify that times of want have ever been times of special blessing, or have led to them. I do beg that never any appeal for funds be put forward, save to God in prayer. When our work becomes a begging work, it dies. God is faithful, must be so. 'The LORD is my Shepherd, I shall not want.' He has said : 'Take no thought (anxiety) for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. But seek first (to promote) the kingdom of God, and (to fulfill) His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.'

' Obedience is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.' It is doubting, beloved Brother, not trusting that is tempting the Lord."

 

Hudson Taylor

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God said it, I believe it, that settles it. This sounds good but isn't accurate because God's Word is true, irregardless of whether we believe it or not. A more accurate "saying" would be God said it, that settles it!

Bruce Hurt

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Two learned doctors are angrily discussing the nature of food, and allowing their meal to lie untasted, while a simple countryman is eating as heartily as he can of that which is set before him. The religious world is full of quibblers, critics, and skeptics, who, like the doctors, fight over Christianity without profit either to themselves or others; those are far happier who imitate the farmer and feed upon the Word of God, which is the true food of the soul. Luther’s prayer was, “From nice questions the Lord deliver us.” Questioning with honesty and candor is not to be condemned, when the object is to “prove all things, and hold fast that which is good;” but to treat revelation as if it were a football to be kicked from man to man is irreverence, if not worse. Seek the true faith, by all manner of means, but do not spend a whole life in finding it, lest you be like a workman who wastes the whole day in looking for his tools. Hear the true Word of God; lay hold upon it, and spend your days not in raising hard questions, but in feasting upon precious truth.

 

Charles Spurgeon

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From Macarthur's book, The Master's Plan For the Church:  In Luke 6:46 Jesus says, "Why do you call Me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?'  Reminiscent of that verse is a painting in the cathedral of Lubeck Germany, entitled 'The Lament of Jesus Christ against the Ungrateful World.'  The corresponding poetic text for the painting reads,

You call Me master, and obey Me not;

You call Me light, and see Me not;

You call Me the way, and walk Me not;

You call Me life, and live Me not;

You call Me wise, and follow Me not;

You call Me fair, and love Me not;

You call Me rich, and ask Me not;

You call Me eternal, and seek Me not.

I condemn thee; blame Me not.

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Christians have every reason to be the first to volunteer when suffering is called for (Matt. 5:11-12)

Erwin Lutzer

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And as he passed by he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the place of toll, and he saith unto him, Follow me.  And he arose and followed him. (Mark 2.14)"

The call goes forth, and is at once followed by the response of obedience.  The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus.  How could the call immediately evoke obedience?  The story is a stumbling-block for the natural reason, and it is no wonder that frantic attempts have been made to separate the two events.  By hook or by crook a bridge must be found between them.  Something must have happened in between, some psychological or historical event.  Thus we get the stupid question: Surely the publican must have known Jesus before, and that previous acquaintance explains his readiness to hear the Master's call.  Unfortunately our text is ruthlessly silent on this point, and in fact it regards the immediate sequence of call and response as a matter of crucial importance.  It displays not the slightest interest in the psychological reasons for a man's religious decisions.  And why?  For the simple reason that the cause behind the immediate following of call by response is Jesus Christ himself.  It is Jesus who calls, and because it is Jesus, Levi follows at once.  This encounter is a testimony to the absolute, direct, and unaccountable authority of Jesus…Jesus summons men to follow him not as a teacher or a pattern of the good life, but as the Christ, the Son of God.  In this short text Jesus Christ and his claim are proclaimed to men.  Not a word of praise is given to the disciple for his decision for Christ.  We are not expected to contemplate the disciple, but only him who calls, and his absolute authority.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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This evening I passed unavoidably through Miss ----'s room.  She was reading Byron as usual and looked so wretched and restless, that I could not help yielding to a loving impulse and putting my hand on hers and asking why she was so sad.  She told me.  It was just what I supposed.  She is trying to be happy, and can not find out how……I alluded to her religious history and present hopes.  She said she did not think continued acts of faith in Christ necessary; she had believed on Him once, and now He would save her whatever she did; and she was not going to torment herself trying to live so very holy a life, since, after all, she should get to heaven just as well through Him as if she had been particularly good (as she termed it).  I don't know whether a good or a bad spirit moved me at that minute, but I forgot that I was a mere child in religious knowledge, and talked about my doctrine and made it a very beautiful one to my mind, though I don't think she thought it so.  Oh, for what would I give up the happiness of praying for a holy heart -- of striving, struggling for it!  Yes, it is indeed true that we are saved simply, only, apart from our own goodness, through the love of Christ.  But who can believe himself thus chosen of God-- who can think of and hold communion with Infinite Holiness, and not long for the Divine image in his own soul?  It is a mystery to me-- these strange doctrines.  Is not the fruit of love aspiration after the holy?  Is not the act of the new-born soul, when it passes from death unto life, that of desire for assimilation to and oneness with Him who is its all in all?  How can love and faith be one act and then cease?  I dare not believe -- I would not for a universe believe -- that my sense of safety in the love of Christ is not to be just the sense that shall bind me in grateful self-renunciation wholly to His service.  Let be sure of final rest in heaven -- sure that at this moment I am really God's own adopted child; and I believe my prayers, my repentings, my weariness of sin, would be just what they now are; nay, more deep, more abundant.  Oh, it is because I believe -- fully believe that I shall be saved through Christ -- that I want to be like Him here upon earth.  It is because I do not fear final misery that I shrink from sin and defilement here.

Elizabeth Prentiss

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I asked the Lord that I might grow

In faith and love and every grace;

Might more of His salvation know

And seek more earnestly His face.

T'was He who taught me thus to pray,

And He I know has answered prayer;

But it has been in such a way

As almost drove me to despair.

I hoped that in some favored hour,

At once He'd answer my request;

And by His love's constraining power

Subdue my sins and give me rest.

Instead of this, He made me feel

The hidden evils of my heart;

And let the angry powers of Hell

Assault my soul in every part.

Yes! More! With His own hand it seemed

Intent to aggravate my woe;

Crossed all the fair designs I'd schemed,

Blasted my gourds, and made me low.

"Lord! Why is this?" I trembling cried;

"Wilt Thou pursue Thy worm to death?"

"Tis this way" The Lord replied

"I answer for grace and faith."

"These inward trials I employ

From self and pride to see thee free

And break thy schemes of earthly joy

That thou mayest seek thy ALL IN ME."

John Newton

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"Be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives." If you didn't care about the Bible, you might say, "Submission has to mean taking a husband the way he is and not trying to change him."  But if you believe what the Bible says, you conclude that submission, paradoxically, is sometimes a strategy for changing him.

John Piper

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…As to domestic cares, you know Mrs. Stowe has written a beautiful little tract on this subject -- "Earthly Care a Heavenly Discipline."  God never places us in any position in which we can not grow.  We may fancy that He does.  We may fear we are so impeded by fretting, petty cares that we are gaining nothing; but when we are not sending any branches upward, we may be sending roots downward.  Perhaps in the time of our humiliation, when everything seems a failure, we are making the best kind of progress.  God delights to try our faith by the conditions in which He places us.  A plant set in the shade shows where its heart is by turning towards the sun, even when unable to reach it.  We have so much to distract us in this world that we do not realize how truly and deeply, if not always warmly and consciously, we love Christ.  But I believe that this love is the strongest principle in every regenerate soul.  It may slumber for a time, it may falter, it may freeze nearly to death; but sooner or later it will declare itself as the ruling passion.  You should regard all your discontent with yourself as negative devotion, for that it really is.......I know all about these little domestic foxes that spoil the vines, and sympathize with you in yours.  But if some other trial would serve God's purposes, He would substitute it.

 Elizabeth Prentiss

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The Godhood of God stands at the base of Divine revelation: “in the beginning God”—in solemn majesty, eternal, un-caused, self-sufficient. This is the foundation doctrine, and upon it all other doctrines must be built, and any other doctrine which is not built upon it will inevitably fail and fall in the day of testing. At the beginning of all true theology lies the postulate that God is God—absolute and irresistible. It must be so. Without this we face a closed door: with it we have a key which unlocks every mystery. This is true of Creation; exclude an Almighty God and nothing is left but blind and illogical materialism. This is true of Revelation: the Bible is the solitary miracle in the realm of literature; exclude God from it and you have a miracle and no miracle-Worker to produce it. This is true of Salvation. Salvation is “of the Lord,” entirely so; exclude God from any aspect or part of salvation, and salvation vanishes. This is true of History, for history is His story: it is the outworking in time of His eternal purpose; exclude God from history and all is meaningless and purposeless. The absolute Godhood of God is the only guaranty that in the end it shall be fully and finally demonstrated that God is “All in all”.

Arthur Pink

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Some want to shape the Scriptures to their creed, and they get a very nice square

creed too, and trim the Bible most dexterously: it is wonderful how they do it, but I

would rather have a crooked creed and a straight Bible, than I would try to twist the

Bible round to suit what I believe. 

Charles Spurgeon

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I'm still thinking about the assertion…that man cannot live without hope, and that men who have really lost all hope often become wild and wicked.  It may be an open question whether in this case hope = illusion.  The importance of illusion to one's life should certainly not be underestimated;  but for a Christian there must be hope based on a firm foundation.  And if even illusion has so much power in people's lives that it can keep life moving, how great a power there is in a hope that is based on certainty, and how invincible a life with such a hope is. 'Christ our hope' - this Pauline formula is the strength of our lives.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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The Scripture will be attacked all the time relentlessly from every angle whether it's coming from critics or cultists or Charismatics who want to add to it, whether it's coming from the culture.  I could even throw in the capricious, the silly, foolish attacks on Scripture like Bible codes.  I was one time on the radio program and somebody said, "What do you think of Bible codes?" And I said, "Well I'll tell you what I think of Bible codes, I think you better be careful when you say God said something He didn't say, because for that God condemns false teachers."  It's clear what God said in the Bible.  But to find some acrostic in a computer and think that what God said is written in a diagonal up this way and half-way down that side and that what God meant to say was that Ghandi would die in October of 1984 is a far cry from the revelation of God.  In fact, people have found the same stuff in Moby Dick.

John Macarthur

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 In the new Testament, as understood in the mainstream of Christian tradition, we meet the same God three times.  First of all we meet him in the Father, whom Jesus prayed to and obeyed, at whose bidding he came, lived, suffered and died, by whose hand he was raised from the dead.  But in Jesus Christ himself, we encounter the same divine love and power appearing personally among us as our fellowman.  God is now not only exalted in heaven but made man on earth.  The acts of Jesus are the acts of God, the words of Jesus are the words of God, the suffering of Jesus is the self-sacrifice of God, the person of Jesus is the person of God, so that the confession of the Church echoes the confession of Thomas (John 20:28) and addresses not the Father in heaven but the risen human Jesus, "My Lord and my God".  But with Jesus ascended there comes according to his promise allos Parakletos, "Another of the same kind of Advocate Counselor."  The Holy Spirit who keeps on relating Christians to Christ and the Father, and then to one another, is himself God, God at work in and among men.  He does not hand us over to another, but in this other he keeps on coming to us himself.

 

Thomas Smail

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 It is our duty and our privilege to exhaust our lives for Jesus. We are not to be living specimens of men in fine preservation, but living sacrifices, whose lot is to be consumed; we are to spend and to be spent, not to lay ourselves up in lavender, and nurse our flesh.

Charles Spurgeon

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One question frequently stops Christians in their tracks: "If the Gospel alone saves, then what about the heathen in Africa who never heard?" Can God justly convict a man who hasn't heard about Jesus? Some people hear the Gospel and reject it, but most never hear it. How can God condemn them? Christians are ill-equipped to respond because they don't really understand something vital about sin and mercy. Sin brings guilt. Mercy is a gift. Anyone who is a sinner receives punishment he deserves. Anyone who is saved receives mercy he does not deserve and which is not owed him. Think of this question: How could the sheriff send anyone to jail if he didn't offer him a pardon first? The answer is simple. If he's guilty, the sheriff is justified in throwing him in jail. There is no obligation to offer a pardon to a guilty man. The same is true of God. He can justly convict a man who has broken His law even though the sinner has heard nothing about God's pardon in Jesus. God owes no one salvation. He can offer it to whomever He wishes. That's why it's called grace.

 

Gregory Koukl

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Look again at Paul's instructions to Timothy.  Instead of urging Timothy to devise a ministry that would garner accolades from the world.  He warned him about suffering and hardship - hardly the stuff of modern church-growth experts' aspirations!  In Scripture external success is NEVER a valid goal.  Paul was not telling Timothy how to be "successful,"  he was encouraging him to pursue the divine standard.

That, of course, is what defines real success.  Real success is not getting results at any cost.  It is not prosperity, power, prominence, popularity, or any of the other worldly notions of success.  Real success is doing the will of God regardless of the consequences.

John Macarthur

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God doesn’t love us because of our worth, we are of worth because God loves us.

 

Martin Luther

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Triumph, O my faith! All things are Christ's, and Christ is God's and God, Christ, and all things are thine. Time is his, and in it I have my numbered years; the air is his, and in it I breath; the world and on it I dwell; its fullness and I am fed; grace is his, and in it I stand; faith, and by it I overcome the world; tribulations are from him, and in them I glory; perfection is his, and towards it I press; death is his and by it  I arrive at home; heaven is his, and there is my mansion; eternity is his, and there is my treasure and glory.

James Meikle

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Mathew 5:32 states: 'Every one who divorces his wife, except for the cause of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.' If with Erasmus we suppose that 'divorce' here means 'the complete dissolution of the marriage', the logic of this statement seems defective or at least unfair. For on this understanding Mathew 5:32a means that divorce with the right to remarry is only valid if the wife commits the particular sin of adultery.  Yet in other situations that result in divorce neither party can remarry as the unconditional statement of Mathew 5:32b declares.  Now if the sin of adultery results in the complete dissolution of the marriage, that allows both parties, the adulterous wife and the innocent husband, to remarry!  Dupont regards it as 'manifestly absurd' to allow a woman divorced for adultery to remarry, but to deny this right to a woman divorced for another reason.

This absurdity may be alleviated, as Dupont suggests, if one supposes that the divorced adulteress is refused the right of remarriage, but the innocent husband may remarry (=Erasmian view). But this is effectively to allow polygamy!  For if the woman cannot remarry she is not technically divorced, but separated. The marriage bond with her husband  still exists: that is why remarrying a divorced woman is adultery (5:32b).  Thus her former husband is really becoming a bigamist if he takes a second wife since the marital bond with his former spouse has not been dissolved.  The early church view, in contrast, leads to no such contradiction.  In no case is there the right of remarriage. Immorality may justify separation but not remarriage: in every case remarriage involves adultery.

William A. Heath and Gordan Wenham 

From their book "Jesus And Divorce: The Problem of the Evangelical Consensus"

Quote of the Day

The Christian loves God as He reveals Himself.  The non-Christian seeks to conform God to an image that is less threatening to him in his rebellion.  It is a work of grace in the heart that allows a person to love God as God really is, not as we wish He would be.  The Christian desires to love God truly.

James White