Faith must embrace doctrinal truth. To the suggestion that the time would come when preaching the doctrines of grace would be passe, Spurgeon responded, "Out on ye, traitors, who tell us that we care to shape our gospel to suit this enlightened nineteenth century! Out on ye, falsehearts, who would have us tone down the everlasting truth that shall outlive the sun, and moon, and stars, to suit your boasted culture, which is but varnished ignorance!" No, still he would preach those truths that were mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, and he would maintain it to the death.....Without such knowledge and consent to specific truth, no faith is possible. A strong evidence of grace is the "mind's perception of revealed truth and its obedience to it," Spurgeon argued. Since God has lifted the veil through divine revelation, the true believer does not make or invent his own precepts, but he learns them from God.
From the book: Living By Revealed Truth: The Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon by Thomas Nettles
Showing posts with label Thomas Nettles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Nettles. Show all posts
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Saturday, November 16, 2019
Quote of the Day
He argued with no one about "problems" in the biblical text or in the Christian faith. Not good could come of it. Those who raised such problems had not yet felt the weight of their sin or of their need for a Redeemer. Mere intellectual jousting would solve no issue in their minds, for the Scripture is not given in order that the vain philosophical cavils of resistant intellects might be satisfied, but that wounded consciences might be shown a perfect Redeemer.
From the book: Living By Revealed Truth: The Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon by Thomas Nettles
From the book: Living By Revealed Truth: The Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon by Thomas Nettles
Friday, November 15, 2019
Quote of the Day
"There will still be mysteries in the word of God that must be accepted as revelations rather than understood as the results of reasoning." Spurgeon was not afraid to exercise faith in "receiving the statements of the Scriptures." No independent confirmation of scriptural assertion was needed, for its authority was independent of human reason and research; its evidence was in itself and its witness to the needs of the human soul, as interpreted through the entire fabric of redemptive truth, served as sufficient ground for receiving it as a revelation.
From the book: Living By Revealed Truth: The Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon by Thomas Nettles
From the book: Living By Revealed Truth: The Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon by Thomas Nettles
Monday, December 9, 2013
Quote of the Day
…To change such
perfect good news as the gospel set forth made no sense and reached the depths
of Spurgeon's disgust. "My blood
boils with indignation at the idea of improving the gospel. There is but one Savior, and that one Savior
is the same for ever. His doctrine is
the same in every age, and is not yea and nay." If modern proposal for theological change
were authentic, what an absurd scene would eternity hold forth. "What a strange result we should obtain
in the general assembly of heaven,"
Spurgeon envisioned, "if some were saved by the gospel of the first
century, and others by the gospel fo the second, and others by the gospel of
the seventeenth, and others by the gospel of the nineteenth century! Imagine the scene. "We should need a different song of
praise for the clients of these various periods, and the mingled chorus would
be rather to the glory of man's culture than to the praise of the one
Lord. No such mottled heaven, and no
such discordant song, shall ever be produced."
Charles Spurgeon as quoted in Living by Revealed
Truth: The Life and Pastoral Theology of
Charles Haddon Spurgeon by Thomas Nettles
Monday, November 18, 2013
Quote of the Day
Spurgeon
observed many, "who, by hearing continually the most precious doctrines
that belief in Jesus Christ is saving, have forgotten other truths, and have
concluded that they were saved when they were not, having fancied they believed
when as yet they were total strangers to the experience which always attended
the true faith." Their confidence
was not grounded upon the divine word rightly understood, "nor proved by
any facts in their own souls." They
resented any suggestion of self examination by gospel tests as "an assault
upon their assurance" and "defended their false peace by the notion
that to raise a question about their certain salvation would be
unbelief." Their ill-placed
certainty has put them in a hopeless condition and they ignore biblical
warnings and admonitions by "their fatal persuasion that it is needless to
attend to them." Their historical
knowledge the work of Christ has settled them in a conviction "that godly
fear and careful walking are superfluities, if not actually an offence against
the gospel."
- From Thomas Nettles' book: Living By Revealed Truth
- From Thomas Nettles' book: Living By Revealed Truth
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Quote of the Day
By 1875 Spurgeon said the "new doctrines have certainly gone tolerable lengths now, and from annihilationism to restoration has been a mere foot-race." Soon he expected the ungodly to be exalted at once, with no stop in between, to heaven and the righteous sent to outer darkness. The sympathies of modern preachers were toward the unbelieving, doubt was celebrated and viewed as a sign of salvation. "We may naturally look for a heaven prepared for loose thinkers, who are so brave as to despise all creeds and believe in nothing whatever." Those deserving of being cast aside were believers in plenary inspiration, who view sin as a terrible evil and therefore affirm the justness of eternal punishment. Liberal modern thinkers see such folks as narrow-minded bigots. "Everybody is received as a Christian nowadays by the Broad School except those who are so indeed."…Robert Reynoldson's book Everlasting Punishment not Everlasting Pain was materialism under the guise of annihilation. The publication was as feeble as it was fallacious for it substituted assumption for argument, and dogmatism for demonstration…..[Spurgeon said that}"Truths once regarded as fundamental, are either denied, or else turned inside out till nothing of their essence remains. Holy Scripture is no longer admitted to be the infallible record of revelation; but is made to be a door-mat for 'thought' to wipe its shoes upon."…he found that men were "disloyal to God in order to be charitable to men" and propounded a Christianity "from which the Fall and the Atonement have both been eliminated."
From Living By Revealed Truth - by Thomas Nettles
Friday, October 11, 2013
Quote of the Day
Spurgeon advocated a pure Biblicism for theological construction. He loved the historic confessions and the pious and helpful writings of the Reformers and Puritans as well as selected numbers from the early Fathers and even some medieval writers…but all of these edified only to the degree that they opened to the mind that which already abided in scriptural revelation. Theology is not new, nor has it been the product of tradition or development…"the epistles are older than the thirty-nine articles."…We may gain assistance through others that interpret Scripture doctrines, but no addition to the doctrines themselves… Christian doctrine, to the degree that God wants us to know, has mature development in Scripture. Neither individual theologian nor church corporate may add to, diminish, amend, or dilute by false synthesis any assertion of the biblical text. We may find a way to give clear teaching on a variety of subjects and seek to show their mature biblical development and relations, and we may surely benefit from the way Christians through the ages have formulated these biblical truths and their practical applications; any effort, however to go beyond the biblical text and its own internal development perverts the truth.
From: Living By Revealed Truth: The Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon - By Thomas
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