Quote of the Day

The smiles of an encouraging, if not a believing world, have long followed the writers and preachers of evangelical truth, making smooth and pleasant their allotted tasks.  We believe that it will cease to be so:  the envoys and ambassadors of the Most High will be dismissed with ignominy on the approach of war, where in a time of apparent peace, they have been feted and applauded…… Shall any be found wanting?  Shall voices that in more halcyon days were heard on the Lord's side, grow now so confused and indistinct, that it cannot be known what is piped or harped?  Shall trumpets that were used to echo through the camp of Israel their notes of victory or warning, give now so uncertain a sound that none shall know whether to prepare themselves for battle,  for fight, or for submission?  It may be so. Men sometimes seem to want in things spiritual the wisdom and courage that not uncommonly characterizes the children of this world in their generation.  When the wind sets in, and the tide flows strong upon a rocky shore, the skillful mariner turns the vessel's head, makes for the sea , and calls all hands together to keep her off the land.  Our helmsmen are doing contrariwise:  they have set their sails to wind and their head to the tide, and are doing all they can to near the fatal shore.  In some instance they have gone the utmost length their principles will admit, to conform themselves to the fashion of the times, to avoid the imputation of extreme opinions, and relieve themselves of a name they would once have been ashamed to be without…..

…we are apt to talk a little too vaguely about opinion - as if all religious truths were matters of opinion, subjects of reasoning, exercises of judgment.  It is not so.  The most important truths of the Gospel are not opinions - they are matters of revelation, and therefore matters of fact.  A positive declaration, statement, or command in the Holy Scriptures excludes opinion - forbids opinion - stamps on opinion the sin of unbelief.  There are more of such things  in the book of God than some people are aware of; and the 'I think,' and 'I don't think' of common talk, grates harshly sometimes on the considerate believer's ear; falls unbecomingly sometimes from the inconsiderate believer's lips.  He who insists upon such truths as these, however imperatively, is not dogmatical: he who condemns all contradiction and contravention of them, is not uncharitable; while the believer who when called upon to contend for the faith, from deference to opinion concedes or compromises, or withholds these plain declarations of the word of God, is a traitor or a coward, and no true soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ.  

 

Excerpt taken from Christ Our Law - by Caroline Fry Wilson

https://snickerdoodlesquotes.blogspot.com/

Quote of the Day

The preacher must not be surprised if in some cases the effect of his preaching is the opposite of what he expects. Offense, or no offense, I shall not cease to proclaim what God has given me.  I would rather see a soul leave me, because offended at my words, than that he should drift calmly to Hell without a word of warning from me."

Macrae(?)

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Our task is not to help people see God favorably but to see him accurately.  God has the power to touch hearts and to draw people his love and grace while they fully affirm his holiness and justice...God has appointed us to faithfully deliver his message, not to compose and edit it.  He has already written the message - it's called the Bible.  Who are we to spin it and tame it , or presume to be more loving than Jesus, who with outrageous love took upon himself the horrific penalty from our sin?  God's position is already taken; we need not apply.   We do not own the Christian faith.  It isn't ours to revise.  God's Word wasn't entrusted to us so that we could give it away piece-meal, leaving the next generation with the leftovers.  If we go on decade after decade parceling out fragments of the faith, what will be left?  When we abandon truths Christians once died for, will we no longer have truths worth living for?

- Randy Alcorn
From the Forward to 'God Wins:  Heaven, Hell, and Why the Good News is Better than Love Wins' - by Mark Galli

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……Adding to the fertile soil for legalistic parachurch gurus to adversely influence churches and individuals is the modern idea that we must have experts in every area of life.  Rarely does a week go by that I (as a pastor) fail to receive a call informing me of a new video series that is "must viewing" for every church body.  The expert on marriage relationships; the expert on child rearing; the expert on interpersonal relationships; the expert on this; the expert on that has made a video series.  Surely no mere pastor can keep up with 'the experts.'  And so, we are encouraged to turn our churches over to Dr. ___________.  After all, he or she supposedly knows more than any of the rest of us, and if we will just do what he or she says, we will all succeed in our Christian lives.  This is not intended to be a blanket condemnation of everything and everyone who is part of what might be called a parachurch ministry.  However, any and every time the parachruch dictates to the church rather than the other way around, parachurch is out of place.  And any individual who follows a parachurch ministry more closely than his own local church has a definite problem with his priorities, since parachruch organizations are never mentioned in the Bible…….If you listen to those trying to sell many of these products you are likely to conclude that pastors just aren't necessary anymore.  And why would anyone in the pew want to listen to old 'what's -his- name' week after week when they could be listening to 'the expert!'

Robert Pruitt

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Speaking of Martin Lloyd-Jones:  "Basically it lay in his conviction that ministers are called to be preachers, not writers.  He did not view the readiness of contemporary Christianity to allow the pulpit to be overshadowed by other means of communication as a wise adjustment to modern conditions but as a loss of faith in the means to which God has attached the special promise of His power."

Iain Murray

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In respect to its present state, I should say nay to what you say, as it regards the taste of the public for religious truth.  I should certify on no light grounds, that the defection lies elsewhere; there is appetite of the whole counsel of God, but they who are left in charge, have found in their wisdom that the food is not wholesome, and they dare - I speak strongly, for I have felt it strongly - even to tears; I have felt it under their pulpits - they dare deny it to the flock they have been sent to feed.  Comes there a man in town or country, or on week-day or Sunday, who in simplicity delivers the whole of his message, and you will see how they throng his aisles, how they will steal like Nicodemus by night, to take of the desired but forbidden draught, - afraid to be blamed by their ghostly confessors if they are detected…..many are the times I have whispered in the ear of those who sit satisfied, nay, abysmally devoted to some favorite preacher of a garbled truth, that there is more behind, and have been surprised to find how well they knew it, how much they could like to have it - but it is not good for them!  The servant has grown wiser than his master; the messenger can amend his message - God can no more be trusted with the salvation of his people - Man knows a better way, and expediency is like to become the Antichrist of our land.

Caroline Wilson

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We are not simply a society in which we recognize the existence of, and the differences between, a variety of religious beliefs, but one in which we declare all such beliefs are to be equally valid. From that perspective there is only one kind of heresy, namely, to claim that one view is ultimately right, where others are wrong. In granting plausibility to everything, we may grant certainty to nothing. Tolerance has been embraced at the expense of truth… To allow that everyone and everything is right is to destroy the notion of truth itself.

Alistair Begg

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Too many modern preachers are so bent on understanding the culture that they develop the mind of the culture and not the mind of Christ. They start to think like the world, and not like the Savior. Frankly, the nuances of worldly culture are virtually irrelevant to me. I want to know the mind of Christ and bring that to bear on the culture, no matter what culture I may be ministering to. If I’m going to stand up in a pulpit and be a representative of Jesus Christ, I want to know how He thinks—and that must be my message to His people too. The only way to know and proclaim the mind of Christ is by being faithful to study and preach His Word. What happens to preachers who obsess about cultural “relevancy” is that they become worldly, not godly.

John MacArthur

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Speaking of Church services in our day:

I think we cater too much to people who can't pay attention.

 Don Lambert

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Calvin believed that biblical preaching must occupy the chief place in the worship service.  What God has to say to man is infinitely more important than what man has to say to God.  If the congregation is to worship properly, if believers are to be edified, if the lost are to be converted, God's Word must be exposited.  Nothing must crowd the Scriptures out of the chief place in the public gathering.

Steven Lawson

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If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ.  Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved to be steady…  (It) is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point (of attack).

 

Martin Luther

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There is one further feature of Dr. Lloyd-Jones' preaching which needs to be added.  It was customary among evangelical Christians at this date to encourage the practice of giving 'testimonies' as a form of evangelistic witness…For one thing, he noticed that the giving testimonies tended to reduce all conversions to a similar pattern to standardize experience in away which went beyond Scripture.  And yet, at the same time, testimony-givers were prone to emphasize what made their story noteworthy.  No doubt the motives were often well intentioned, but the effect could easily be carnal and man-centered.  Hearers readily became impressed with the dramatic and unique features of a story, instead of with the grace of God which is identical in every conversion…….

He knew that the argument from experience could be matched by the claims and apparent results of other 'gospels'.  Do Christians claim to have obtained happiness and deliverance from fears?  So do the converts to Christian science and to other cults.  'Our case,' he was never to tire of saying, 'is not based upon experience, it is based upon great external facts.'  The business of preaching is the proclamation of the revealed truths of gospel history - truths indeed confirmed by experience, but independent of experience in their objective reality.  

- From Iain Murray's two volume biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1st Volume)

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God's sovereignty is to all other doctrines what the granite formation is to the other strata of the earth.  It underlies and sustains them, but it crops out only here and there.  So this doctrine should underlie all our preaching, and should be definitely asserted only then.

Charles Hodge

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If you don't have the meaning of Scripture, you do not have the Word of God at all.  If you miss the true sense of what God has said, you are not actually preaching His Word! 

John MacArthur

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1521-1522

In Germany, the Wittenburgers had been infiltrated by so-called apostles, giving new revelation from God discounting the Bible.  And from among their own congregation, a professor named Carlstadt, though rejecting to some degree the false-prophets, was advocating the forced profession of 'Protestantism' or at least its practices(no mass, no statues…etc.), and so abusing the Catholics by destroying the statues of saints, abolishing the mass…etc. In March 1522 Luther has arrived from his exile in the Wartburg castle to speak in the pulpit in Wittenburg for the first time since his exile.  He has returned because he is concerned about what is happening with his congregation:

(the following excerpt is taken from D'aubigne's History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century)His language was simple, noble, yet full of strength and gentleness:  one might have supposed him to be a tender father returning to his children, inquiring into their conduct, and kindly telling them what report he had heard about them.  He candidly acknowledged the progress they had made in faith; and by this means prepared and captivated their minds.  He then continued in these words:  But we need something more than faith; we need charity… What does a mother do to her infant?  At first she

Gives it milk, then some very light food.  If she were to begin by giving it meat and wine, what would be the consequence?......So should we act towards our brethren…permit your brother to drink as long as yourself. 

…The abolition of the mass, say you, is in conformity with Scripture:  Agreed!  But what order, what decency have you observed? It behoved you to offer up fervent prayers to the Lord, and apply to the public authority; then might every man have acknowledged that the thing was of God.

The mass is a bad thing; God is opposed to it; it ought to be abolished; and I would that throughout the whole world it were replaced by the Supper of the Gospel.  But let no one be torn from it by force.  His Word must act, and not we.  And why so, will you ask?  Because I do not hold men's hearts in my hand, as the potter holds the clay.  We have a right to speak; we have not a the right to act.  Let us preach:  the rest belongs unto God.  Were I to employ force, what should I gain?  Grimace, formality, ape-ings, human ordinances, and hypocrisy…..But there would be no sincerity of heart, nor faith, nor charity.  Where these are wanting, all is wanting…

Our first object must be to win men's hearts; and for that purpose we must preach the Gospel.  To-day the Word will fall in one heart, to-morrow in another, and it will operate in such a manner that each one will withdraw from the mass and abandon it.  God does more by his Word alone than you and I and all the world by our united strength.  God lays hold upon the heart; and when the heart is taken, all is won.

I do not say this for the restoration of the mass.  Since it is down, in God's name there let it lie!  But should you have gone to work as you did?  Paul, arriving one day in the powerful city of Athens, found there alters raised to false gods.  He went from one to the other, and observed them without touching one.  But he walked peaceably to the middle of the market-place, and declared to the people that all their gods were idols.  His language took possession of their hearts, and the idols fell without Paul's having touched them. 

I will preach, discuss, and write; but I will constrain none, for faith is a voluntary act.  See what I have done!  I stood up against the pope, indulgences, and papists, but without violence or tumult.  I put forward God's Word;  I preached and wrote - this was all I did.  And yet while I was asleep, or seated familiarly at table with Amsdorff and Melancthon…the Word that I had preached overthrew popery, so that neither prince nor emperor has done it so much harm.  And yet I did nothing:  the Word alone did all.  If I had wished to appeal to force, the whole of Germany would perhaps have been deluged with blood.  But what would have been the result?  Ruin and desolation both to body and soul.  I therefore kept quiet, and left the Word to run through the world alone.  Do you know what the devil thinks when he sees men resort to violence to propagate the Gospel through the world?  Seated with folded arms behind the fire of hell, Satan says, with malignant looks and frightful grin:  'Ah!  How wise these madmen are to play my game!'  But when he sees the Word running and contending alone on the field of battle, then he is troubled, and his knees knock together; he shudders and faints with fear.

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Truth is mightier than eloquence.  The victory remains with him who lisps out the truth, and not with him who puts forth a lie in flowing language.

 

Martin Luther

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‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎The mind of God is greater than all the minds of men, so let all men leave the gospel just as God has delivered it unto us.

  

Charles Spurgeon

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Beware of a religion without holdfasts….

Everybody is getting to be so oily, so plastic, so untrue, that we need a race of hardshells to teach us how to believe. Those old-fashioned people who in former ages believed something and thought the opposite of it to be false, were truer folk, than the present timeservers.

I should like to ask the divines of the broad school whether any doctrine is worth a man’s dying for it. They would have to reply, “Well, of course, if a man had to go to the stake or change his opinions, the proper way would be to state them with much diffidence, and to be extremely respectful to the opposite school.”

But suppose he is required to deny the truth?

“Well, there is much to be said on each side, and probably the negative may have a measure of truth in it as well as the positive. At any rate, it cannot be a prudent thing to incur the odium of being burned, and so it might be preferable to leave the matter an open question for the time being.”

Yes, and as these gentlemen always find it unpleasant to be unpopular, they soften down the hard threatenings of Scripture as to the world to come, and put a color upon every doctrine to which worldly-wise men object.<big>The teachers of doubt are very doubtful teachers.

 

Charles Spurgeon

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Of course, none of us is infallible, but it’s possible to understand the truth of the infallible Scriptures without being infallible ourselves. For example, we can know with absolute certainty that Jesus is God, that salvation is by grace through faith, that God is just, and that He judges sin. There’s an endless array of things we’re taught in Scripture that are clear and undeniable. The central message of Scripture is perspicuous — clear enough for all its essential propositions to be understood. Above all, the way of salvation through Christ is clear, and the claim that we are fallible will be no excuse for those who reject it.

It is significant that Scripture commends boldness, clarity, conviction, and courage — especially in church leaders (Titus 1:9). Timidity and faintheartedness are not spiritual virtues to be nurtured but fleshly character flaws that need to be overcome (Eph. 6:19–20; Col. 4:4; 2 Tim. 1:6–8). The faithful preacher’s calling is to declare the Word of God without mitigating it, modifying it, or apologizing for it. He is not there to share personal opinions. He ought to speak accordingly (Ezek. 2:4–7).

The commonly held notion that strong convictions are inherently uncharitable is itself an uncharitable judgment, rooted in secular and postmodern rationalism rather than biblical values. Likewise, skepticism, not Scripture, is the source of the notion that we can never really be sure about anything because our interpretations are fallible.

It’s not “arrogant” by any biblical standard to declare our confidence in the truth of God’s Word or to say “Thus says the Lord” where God has indeed spoken. What’s truly arrogant is the notion that God hasn’t spoken clearly enough, or that He hasn’t told us enough to enable the faithful pastor to teach and preach with that kind of authority.

It’s true enough that the mind of God is inscrutable, especially from the narrow perspective of human wisdom. Notice, however, that when the Apostle Paul made that very point, he immediately added, “But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16). The immediate context, especially verse 10, shows that Paul was speaking of how the Spirit illumines our minds to understand what is revealed to us in Scripture. Luke 24:45 says Christ opened the disciples’ minds “to understand the Scriptures.” Though we cannot know everything perfectly, of course, it does not follow that we cannot know anything for certain. Confusion on that point is the Achilles’ heel of postmodern philosophy.

John Macarthur

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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