Quote of the Day

  It is certainly to be deplored that error and fanaticism have been so often mingled with prophetic studies.  God has been thereby dishonored, and his word profaned.  The lips of scoffers have been opened in taunt and derision, while timid believers have kept silence, as if unable to reply. 

  We need not keep silence.  Let us admit the fact on which the mockery is founded, and there let it rest.  It will humble us; it will inspire caution; it will teach us wisdom, but it will do no more.  It will not deter us from such studies, nor will it lead us to impeach the Word of God for consequences in which man alone is the delinquent.  It will not lead us to join in the fears of the over-prudent respecting the perilous nature of these investigations, nor to relinquish the field as either impracticable, or barren, or injurious.  Because visions of futurity, drawn professedly from Scripture, have, with unholy fire, kindled some burning fancies into the wildness of a frenzied enthusiasm……are we, therefore, to shut up the prophetic record, and turn away our eyes from pages tamped so broadly with the seal, and encircled so brightly with the blessing of God?  Are the prophets to be treated as if belonging to the kindred of the sybils, and their books to be buried out of sight? Nothing more profane has ever been uttered against Scripture, than that the study of any part of it is fitted to unhinge the mind, or raise its temperature beyond the point of calm and solemn inquiry.  No Romanist ever promulgated an idea so indefensible as that any region of Scripture is unfruitful or forbidden ground, to be employed merely as a field out of which a casual text may be culled as taste or fancy may incline; that whole chapters and books of Scripture are wrapt in such studied mystery that the very endeavor to understand them betokens rashness and folly. 

  "Secret things belong to God," says an objector.  Most certainly; and whoever insists on prying into God's secrets will only proclaim his own pride and plunge himself into profounder ignorance.  But prophecy is no secret thing; it is a thing revealed.  It is not truth over which God has drawn the veil.  It is just the opposite.  It is truth from which God has withdrawn the veil, on purpose that we may know it and profit by it.……We hear much of the difference between things essential and things non-essential; but who will undertake to draw the dividing line?  Or who will venture to affirm that the prophetic portions of the Word are its non-essentials?  Do not such truths as the advent, the resurrection, the judgment, form some of the chief scenes of prophecy; and are these non-essentials?  Strange, truly strange, that man should make such a division of the Word of God!  Stranger still, that he should make it for the purpose of excusing himself for the neglect of so large and precious a portion of revelation.  Is not the fact of its being revealed enough to show us that God thought it essential; or if not essential absolutely and with reference to salvation, at least essential relatively and as pertaining to holiness?  If a man will persist in calling it non-essential, surely he will not irreverently pronounce it unimportant?  And if it be admitted to be important, then surely all farther argument is at end.  It must be studied.  We dare not overlook or postpone the duty.

- Horatius Bonar 

From his book: Prophetic Landmarks

Quote of the Day

Satan has now transformed himself into an angel of light, and under this fair disguise he is working with marvelous success.  He is teaching us to build the tombs of our fathers, that we may rest content with the mere approbation of their principles without any imitation of their practice.  He leads some astray into fatal error under the pretext of candor and love of truth; others he saturates with the orthodoxy of the head, that they may become Indifferent to the state of their heart before God.  Some he persuades to deny the Bible; to others he lauds it, that he may make it a substitute for the God of the Bible.  He cries up faith, that he may set it as a substitute for the object of faith.  With some he denies the possibility of assurance, that he may keep them from peace with God; with others he maintains the necessity of it, only in order that he may lead them to make a god of it, and substitute their being sure of salvation for believing in the Savior.  He cries down the Arminianism of making works our Savior, that he may lead us into the more subtle delusion of making a Savior of our faith.  He allows us a wide range of religious feeling and sentiment, if he can only succeed in making them a substitute for God.  He hinders not our being serious, earnest, solemn, if he can thereby feed the cravings of a restless, empty soul with something which may prevent us from seeking the bread of life.  He permits us to denounce the world's vanity and hollow pleasures - to be weary of its unsatisfying round of folly, that he may delude us into the idea that this dissatisfaction with the world is a proof that we are religious, and thereby cause us to sit down contented when yet a great way off from our Father's house.  He tolerates the circulation of useful, nay, of religious knowledge, that we may rest satisfied with something short of the fullness of God himself.  He may countenance, too, the routine of religious societies or Church courts, and the false excitement of crowded assemblies, eloquent speeches, glowing reports, that he may administer thereby that opiate to the soul by which it may be kept in a delusive day-dream, which seems so like the "sober certainty of waking bliss," that we cannot think of breaking the luxury of the pleasant spell.  He inculcates the necessity of providing for our children what is called a liberal education, that he may make that a substitute for a father's blessing and a mother's prayers.  He urges the obligation of Christian liberality, the necessity of large funds, that he may bring men to rest religious enterprise upon funds, not upon faith, - upon prudence, not on prayer. 

These outward things may be in themselves right and good, but what are they without the indwelling Spirit?  What is truth without the True One?  What is the perfection of Church order without the vital power from above?  - The body is there, but the living spirit has fled; the alter and the sacrifice are there, but the fire from heaven descends not; the temple is perfect and the worshippers are thronging its courts, but the glory is departed, Jehovah has left his shrine!

  - Horatius Bonar

From his book: Prophetical Landmarks