Quote of the Day

A good or bad defense of the faith may be helpful or unhelpful, but in each case that is only corroborative.  The Christian faith is not true because someone argues for it brilliantly, nor is it false because someone defends it badly.  Christian faith is true or false regardless of anyone's defense of the faith.  Faith's certainty lies elsewhere than in the rapier sharp logic or the sledgehammer power of the apologist.  At the end of the day, full certainty comes from the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

- Os Guinness
from his book:  Fool's Talk:  Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

Quote of the Day

Is it easy to convince someone that the Bible is the Word of God on the basis of its unity, its scientific, historical accuracy, its miracles, its archaeological evidence? I haven't found that to be the case. In a special series spread over a three-week period I presented such data at a private college in California. I felt the proof was overwhelming and not one person became a believer. Why doesn't it convince all unbelievers when it's so convincing to us? Paul said it when he wrote, "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14).  Only when the Holy Spirit does His regenerating work, only as He opens the mind, tears off the scales of blindness, gives life where there is death and plants the marvelous understanding of the revelation of God, only then do people come to believe and trust in the Bible. The reason I know the Bible is true is that the Spirit of God has convinced me of it.

John MacArthur

Quote of the Day

Sadly and ironically, in its attempt to achieve cultural relevance, mainstream evangelicalism has become essentially irrelevant.  As Os Guinness points out, the seductive promise of 'relevance' is, in reality, the road to irrelevance.  When the church markets itself like the world, it loses the distinctiveness of its message and irretrievably compromises the gospel.  The entertainment value may be high, attracting throngs each week; but the eternal value is conspicuously absent, as those same people go home unchallenged and unchanged.

-John Macarthur- 

Quote of the Day

You are required to believe, to preach, and to teach what the Bible says is true, not what you want the Bible to say is true.

R. C. Sproul

Quote of the Day

 Love is the Queen of the Christian graces. It is a holy disposition given to us when we are born again by God. True spiritual love is characterized by meekness and gentleness, yet it is vastly superior to the courtesies and kindnesses of the flesh.

We must be careful not to confuse human sentimentality, carnal pleasantries, and human amiability with true spiritual love. The love God commands, first to Himself and then to others, is not human love. If we indulgently allow our children to grow up with little or, no Scriptural discipline, Proverbs plainly says we do not love them, regardless of the human sentimentality and affection we may feel for them. Love is not a sentimental pampering of one another with a loose indifference as to our walk and obedience before the Lord. Glossing over one another’s faults to ingratiate ourselves in their esteem is not spiritual love.

The true nature of Christian love is a righteous principle which seeks the highest good of others. The exercise of love is to be in strict conformity to the revealed will of God. We must love in the truth. Love among the brethren is far more than an agreeable society where views are the same. It is loving them for what we see of Christ in them, loving them for Christ’s sake.

The Lord Jesus Himself is our example. He was not only thoughtful, gentle, self-sacrificing and patient, but He also corrected His mother, used a whip in the Temple, severely scolded His doubting disciples, and denounced hypocrites. True spiritual love is above all faithful to God and uncompromising towards all that is evil. We cannot declare, ‘Peace and Safety’ when in reality there is spiritual decay and ruin!

True spiritual love is very difficult to exercise because it is not our natural love. By nature we would rather love sentimentally and engender good feelings. Also many times true spiritual love is not received in love, but is hated as the Pharisees hated it. We must pray that God will fill us with His love and enable us to exercise it without dissimulation toward all.

 

Arthur Pink

Quote of the Day

Every workman knows the necessity of keeping his tools in a good state of repair...It is true that the Lord...can work with the faultiest kind of instrumentality, as He does when He occasionally makes very foolish preaching to be useful in conversion; and he can even work without agents, as he does when he saves men without a preacher at all, applying the word directly by his Holy Spirit; but we cannot regard God's absolutely sovereign acts as a rule for our action.  He may, in His own absoluteness, do as pleases Him best, but we must act as His plainer dispensations instruct us; and one of the facts which is clear enough is this, that the Lord usually adapts means to ends, from which the plain lesson is, that we shall be likely to accomplish most when we are in the best spiritual condition; or in other words, we shall usually do our Lord's work best when our gifts and graces are in good order, and we shall do worst when they are most out of trim.  This is a practical truth for our guidance.  When the Lord makes exceptions, they do but prove the rule.

  We are, in a certain sense, our own tools, and therefore must keep ourselves in order.  If I want to preach the gospel, I can only use my own voice; and therefore I must train my vocal powers.  I can only think with my own brains, and feel with my own heart, and therefore I must educate my intellectual and emotional faculties...It will be in vain for me to stock my library, or organize societies, or project schemes, if I neglect the culture of myself; for books, and agencies, and systems, are only remotely the instruments of my holy calling; my own spirit, soul, and body, are my nearest machinery for sacred service...

Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

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

Quote of the Day

Men do not reject the Bible because it contradicts itself, but because it contradicts them.

-Unknown

Quote Of The Day

Holy Mr. Whitefield, when someone observed, "I should like to hear your dying testimony," said, “No, I shall in all probability bear no dying testimony." "Why not?" said the other. "Because I am bearing testimony every day while I live, and there will be the less need of it when I die."

Charles Spurgeon

Quote Of The Day

O ye saints, when reproached and persecuted, look farther than man, spend not your wrath on him. Alas! They are but instruments in the devil’s hand. Save your displeasure for Satan, who is thy chief enemy. These may be won to Christ’s side, and so become thy friends at last. Now and then we see some running away from the devil’s colours, and washing thy wounds with their tears, which they have made with their cruelty. It is a notable passage in Anselm, compares the heretic and the persecutor to the horse, and the devil to the rider. Now, saith he, in battle, when the enemy comes riding up, the valiant soldier ‘is angry not with the horse, but horseman; he labours to kill the man, that he may possess the horse for his use; thus must we do with the wicked, we are not to bend our wrath against them, but Satan that rides them, and spurs them on, labouring by prayer for them as Christ did on the cross, to dismount the devil, that so these miserable souls hackneyed by him may be delivered from him.

William Gurnall