Quote of the Day

Dear Brothers and Sisters, honor the Spirit of God as you would honor Jesus Christ if He were present! If Jesus Christ not there! Do not ignore the Presence of the Holy Spirit in your soul! I beseech you, do not live as if you had not heard whether there were a Holy Spirit. To Him pay your constant adorations. Reverence the august Guest who has been pleased to make your body His sacred abode. Love Him, obey Him, worship Him!

Take care never to impute the vain imaginings of your fancy to Him. I have seen the Spirit of God shamefully dishonored by persons—I hope they were insane—who have said that they have had this and that revealed to them. There has not, for some years, passed over my head a single week in which I have not been pestered with the revelations of hypocrites or maniacs. Semi-lunatics are very fond of coming with messages from the Lord to me and it may save them some trouble if I tell them once and for all that I will have none of their stupid messages. When my Lord and Master has any message to me He knows where I am and He will send it to me direct, and not by mad-caps!  

Never dream that events are revealed to you by Heaven, or you may come to be like those idiots who dare impute their blatant follies to the Holy Spirit. If you feel your tongue itch to talk nonsense, trace it to the devil, not to the Spirit of God! Whatever is to be revealed by the Spirit to any of us is in the Word of God already—He adds nothing to the Bible, and never will. Let persons who have revelations of this, that, and the other, go to bed and wake up in their senses.

Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

...But the Charismatic movement can't be defined doctrinally. Why? Because it involves Pentecostals, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, anybody and everybody. So it resists and has resisted any kind of doctrinal definition that is too rigid.

 

What they all hold in common is an experience which they will call the baptism of the Holy Spirit and they, wrongly, define the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a post-salvation experience that adds something to your Christian life that you previously didn't have and is usually accompanied by signs and wonders, most particularly, speaking in tongues. And we're going to talk much more about the baptism of the Holy Spirit in tongues at a later time…….

 

Paul was no Charismatic either, believe me. Paul was no Charismatic. He made divine truth the beginning and the ending of his ministry. It was the preaching of the truth revealed to him by the Spirit of God. Acts 17:2, "According to Paul's custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, 'This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ.'" He was explaining the Scripture, he was delineating the Scripture. He had an experience. He went to Heaven! But God said, "You are not allowed to," what? "You're not allowed to talk about it." "I don't want anybody basing anything on your interpretation, on your experience." Paul never built his ministry on his visions, his experiences. He built it on what he knew was the revealed truth of God, and he called into question any experience that violated Scripture.

 

The end of his ministry in the 28 Acts, we find him at lodge, and people were there in large numbers; and he was explaining to them by solemnly testifying about the kingdom of God, and trying to persuade them concerning Jesus, from both the Law of Moses and from the Prophets, from morning until evening. He was in the Scripture trying to prove the truth from the pages of the Word of God.

 

Charismatics, like Jews of Paul's day have zeal without knowledge. Enthusiasm without enlightenment. They are often approaching truth without their minds, without thinking. Some even claim that God deliberately gives people unintelligible tongues in order to bypass and thus humble the proud human intellect. Beloved, this is a serious and tragic error.

 

John Macarthur

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They (Disciples/Christians) are simply the servants and instruments of the Word; they have no wish to be strong where the Word chooses to be weak.  To try and force the Word on the world by hook or by crook is to make the living Word of God into a mere idea…..Where the Word is, there shall the disciple be.  Therein lies his true wisdom and his true simplicity.  If it is obvious that the Word is being rejected, if it is forced to yield its ground, the disciple must yield with it.  But if the Word carries on the battle, the disciple must also stand his ground.

  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Caroline [nee Fry] Wilson(1787-1846) writing to a lady friend about an apparently charismatic movement taking place:  "The party with whom it originates, and among whom it is at present confined, is certainly not marked with any character of sobriety.  They are pious and talented, but they are not sober-minded; they love novelty better than their daily bread.  The simplicity of divine truth, and the equal dealings of divine providence are not to their taste; they have mystified the plainest doctrines of the Gospel; they have made war upon every thing common and received; they have quarreled with their mother-tongue, because it can be understood.  Having thrown the whole church into confusion, they have called their own uproar, a 'sign of the times;' and denied salvation to all who will not run with them to like excess of riot….Pious people are not always wise, and clever people, by reason of their temperament, are peculiarly liable to extravagances where their feelings are interested.  ….You know that I expect as fully as they do, the events of 'the last days;' but the more I believe of this, the more I am upon my guard against the 'Lo here! Or Lo there!' with which the levity of men anticipates the majestic walk of Deity.  I know that God can do what he will, and will do what he has promised; but I am accustomed to adjust my faith to the promise, not the promise to my faith, as is the fashion now with some.  Though it is true the Scripture no-where says that miracles shall cease, I am equally sure, it no-where says that they shall not.  We can only judge therefore of what God meant to do, by what he has done, and it is certain they have ceased for many centuries.  Whether God recalled these gifts for some good purpose of his own, or whether man forfeited them by unbelief, I do not know, - for the same reason; the Scripture has not declared it.  If the former, I doubt not God will fully manifest His purpose, to restore them when His time is come; and I can wait till He does so.  If the latter, I must have some evidence that the faith of James Macdonald, and Mary Campbell, is more than the faith of Luther and Latimer, of saints and martyrs, of men of God both dead and living, who, with equal zeal and sounder minds, have followed Christ, but worked no miracles, before I believe that increase of faith has brought back the gifts.

There is one who says, 'If I testify of myself my testimony is not true; ' but these people not only testify of their own gifts, but give the credit of them to their own faith, which they represent to be more than all the faith that has been in exercise for sixteen or seventeen centuries.    Perhaps you will say, 'But here are facts, how can you account for the delusion without supposing willful imposture in the witnesses?'  This I cannot, neither can I explain how Papal Rome performed her well-attested wonders, nor how Joanna Southcote's absurdities deluded 40,000 people; nor how Prince Hohenlohe made the lame to walk; nor how Wesley and his people  raised their ghost.  All must stand together till these new miracles have some better ground to stand on, than the honest credulity of those who think they have witnessed them.  Respecting the recoveries, I am not prepared to say how far the senses may be the dupes of the imagination.  I have seen enough of this, to believe much more; and without a miracle, we see every day, the 'speculations and anticipations of physicians,' baffled by the recovery of the patient, from a seeming deathbed; and that often by no means but strong mental excitement.  As for the tongues, I can imagine nothing easier for man or woman, than to utter what neither themselves or any one else can understand……I must really wait the interpretation of their tongues, and the use to made of them, before I treat this part as any thing but a gross absurdity, calculated to discredit all the rest.  To tell the truth, if the Spirit would constrain some of these people to hold their tongues, rather than to talk; I should be much more disposed to admit a miracle:  the gift of silence would be an extraordinary blessing to the Church at this time.  Mr. E--'s letter is not the writing of a sensible man.  His talent and piety we all know; and it is sad indeed, that men who have been distinguished in the Church, should occupy themselves with turning the heads of silly women, by over-excitement of their pious feelings…….

  

Caroline Wilson

Quote of the Day

 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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…in prayer the goal of the work of Son and Spirit is to introduce us to the Father and to establish us in fellowship with him.  So it follows from the nature of the gospel and life of the God it reveals that Christian prayer is properly and characteristically addressed to the Father.  What it says could not be said from the Son and the Spirit, but what both Son and Spirit have taught it to say is 'Our Father.  IF we do not find that right and natural, we need to ask ourselves why.  There is a type of protestant prayer that concentrates in an unhealthy way on Jesus, and that can easily become familiar and sentimental, because it has forgotten who Jesus is - the only Son of and the only way to the Father.  There is a Jesuology that can lavish an all too human love on an all too human Jesus and banish God to such remote transcendence, that we are back with the idea that we have to cling to a loving Jesus to keep us  right with a remote and probably angry God.  There is equally a prayer that concentrates on the Holy Spirit and the gifts and blessings he can bestow in a way that forgets that these things matter only when we use them to witness to the Son and to serve the Father in amore effective obedience.  To pray to Jesus rather than through him, to the Spirit rather than in him, as the established habit of our prayer, is to betray a doubt about our relationship to the Father.

Prayer is through Christ….in John 16..."I do not say I will ask the Father on your behalf."  He will not go instead of us, we are to come ourselves because the way is open.  Yet it is immediately clear that our ability to do so is entirely dependent on Christ and our relationship to him.  We do not come by ourselves, but it is we ourselves who come through him.  The same idea of mediation is implied in Hebrews 4:16.  Because he has gone into the holiest of all as High Priest we can "approach the throne of grace with confidence"…….It was into all this that Christ initiated his disciples when he said, "When you pray, say Abba,"…

 Thomas Smail

From his book, "The Forgotten Father"

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Those who, rejecting Scripture, imagine that they have some peculiar way of penetrating to God, are to be deemed not so much under the influence of error as madness.  For certain giddy men have lately appeared, who, while they make a great display of the superiority of the Spirit, reject all reading of the Scriptures themselves….the true and full felicity of the…church will consist in their being ruled not less by the Word than by the Spirit of God….we must give diligent heed both to the reading and hearing of Scripture, if we would obtain any benefit from the Spirit of God, and, on the contrary, that any spirit which passes by the wisdom of God's Word, and suggests any other doctrine is deservedly suspected of vanity and falsehood.  Since Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, what authority can the Spirit have with us if he be not ascertained by an infallible mark?  And assuredly he is pointed out to us by the Lord with sufficient clearness; but these miserable men err as if bent on their own destruction, while they seek the Spirit from themselves rather than from Him.  But they say that it is insulting to subject the Spirit, to whom all things are to be subject, to the Scripture…True, if he were subjected to a human, an angelical, or to any foreign standard, it might be though that he was subordinate, or, if you will, brought into bondage; but so long as he is compared with himself, and considered in himself, how can it be said that he is thereby injured?  I admit that he is brought to a test, but the very test by which it has pleased him that his majesty should be confirmed.  It ought to be enough for us when once we hear his voice; but lest Satan should insinuate himself under his name, he wishes us to recognize him by the image which he has stamped on the Scriptures.

John Calvin

Quote of the Day

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

Quote of the Day

…we have had in recent years a Jesus movement and a charismatic movement.  The one has almost disappeared and the other is threatening to run out of steam, perhaps because each is in a different way inadequate to the gospel, which his basically a Father movement.   It is not first a Jesuology (a doctrine about Jesus) or a pneumatology (a doctrine about the Spirit) but it is a theology or even a patrology - a doctrine about God the Father.  It starts not with the cross of Jesus or with the gift of the Spirit, but with the Father who so loved the World that he gave his Son in his Spirit.

Thomas Smail

Quote of the Day

When the leaders of the army wished to know what they ought to do, they examined into what they had done when they felt happiest and nearest to God: such are not the means prescribed by Heaven. They should have asked themselves, "What does God command us in His word?" It is not by our feelings that He will guide us, but by His commandments. Our feelings may lead us astray. There is a way which seemeth right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. The Word of God never misleads us. A Christian's walk is in the Divine commandments: to act according to one's own sensations, one's interior illumination, is the walk of the mystic.

 

J. H. Merle D'aubigne

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But although we maintain the sacred Word of God against gainsayers, it does not follow that we shall forthwith implant the certainty which faith requires in their hearts. Profane men think religion rests only on opinion, and therefore, that they may not believe foolishly, or on slight grounds, desire and insist to have it proved by reason that Moses and the prophets were divinely inspired. But I answer that the testimony of the Spirit is superior to reason. For as God alone can properly bear witness to his own words, so these words will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men, until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who spoke by the mouth of prophets, must penetrate our hearts, in order to convince us that they faithfully delivered the message with which they were divinely intrusted.

John Calvin

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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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 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

Quote Of The Day

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