Quote of the Day

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

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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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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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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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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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Discernment is not simply a matter of telling the difference between what is right and wrong; rather it is the difference between right and almost right.

  

Charles Spurgeon

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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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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