Quote du Jour

"He who is gifted with a desire to know God, and to appropriate rightly the provisions of his grace, shall increase in wisdom and knowledge more and more by the manifold revelations of divine truth. But the man of opposite character, who has heart, soul and mind wherewith to love God, but is unwilling to use his powers in earnest search for the truth, shall lose even what he seems to have. His powers will become weak and worthless by inactivity, and like the slothful servant in the parable of the talents, he will lose that which should have been his glory."

Milton Terry

  Category: Kingdom of God

Talk

"When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber."

Winston Churchill

Faith and Reason

"Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand."

Augustine

The Essential Nature of Antichrist

"Antichrist will not promote idolatry, but seduce men from the true God, as also from all idols, and set himself up as the only object of adoration. This remarkable idea, that sin in antichrist issues in a downright self-deification, discloses to us the inmost nature of evil, which consists in selfishness. In antichrist, all love, all capability of sacrifice and self-denial, shows itself entirely submerged in the making of the I all in all, which then also insists on being acknowledged by all men, as the centre of all power, widsom, and glory."

John Chrysostom  (4th century)

Bible translations

"Reading the Bible in translation is like kissing your wife through a veil."

Martin Luther

Ceremony

"The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously in no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual"

C.S. Lewis -- A Preface to Paradise Lost  (1942)

Conservatism

"It may be inferred again that the present movement for women’s rights will certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent, Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the accepted priniciples of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will to-morrow be forced upon its timidity, and will be succeeded by some third revolution to be denounced and adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves towards perdition….It is worthless because it it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle."

R.L. Dabney -- Discussions  (1897)

Church Growth

"The problem in our day, which gives rise to highly questionable church growth methods, is twofold:

On the one hand, we are seeing a waning confidence in the message of the gospel. Even the evangelical church shows signs of losing confidence in the convincing and converting power of the gospel message. That is why increasing numbers of churches prefer sermons on family life and psychological health. We are being overtaken by what Os Guinness calls the managerial and therapeutic revolutions. The winning message, it seems, is the one that helps people to solve their temporal problems, improves their self-esteem and makes them feel good about themselves. In such a cultural climate, preaching on the law, sin and repentance, and the cross has all but disappeared, even in evangelical churches. The church has become "user friendly," "consumer oriented," and as a result evangelical churches are being inundated with "cheap grace" (Bonhoeffer). Today's "gospel" is all too often a gospel without cost, without repentance, without commitment, without discipleship, and thus "another gospel" and accordingly no gospel at all, all traceable to the fact that this is how too many people today have come to believe that the church must be grown.

On the other hand, we are seeing a waning confidence in preaching as the means by which the gospel is to be spread. As a result, preaching is giving way in evangelical churches to multimedia presentations, drama, dance, "sharing times," sermonettes, and "how to" devotionals. Preaching is being viewed increasingly as outdated and ineffective. Business techniques like telemarketing are now popular with the church growth movement. Churches so infected also look to the multiplication of programs to effect their growth. They sponsor conferences and seminars on every conceivable topic under the sun; they subdivide their congregations down into marrieds and singles, single parents and divorced, "thirty-something" and "twenty-something," teens, unemployed, the child-abused and the chemically dependent, attempting to arrange programs for them all. And once a person joins such a church, conventional wisdom has it, the church and the minister must meet his every felt need. Accordingly, ministers have become managers, facilitators, and motivators—everything but heralds of the whole counsel of God—and this all because they have lost confidence in the preaching of God's Word as the primary means for the growth of the church and the individual Christian.

What is the answer? A restored confidence in the Reformed doctrine of the sovereignty of God in salvation!"

Robert L. Reymond -- A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith

City on a Hill

"...If there were such a thing as a "seeker", someone who is looking for something, they would certainly not be looking for more of the same, or a bad imitation of what he is fleeing. When the world gives us mindless drivel, then is the time to say of the church, "Come in here. You'll get none of the nonsense you're so tired of." When the world is happy and light, we need to be somber, serious. When the gods of this world are distant, spineless, voiceless, reflections of our baser selves, our duty is to present the one true God, transcendent and immanent, omnipotent and tender, the God who speaks with all authority and wisdom. And we need to reflect not the perverse generation from which we have been saved, but Him in whom we have been regenerated, Him whose image we are to be.

"...Proverbs tells us "There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death (Proverbs 14:12). Ours is a God which confounds the wise, one who tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Practically, if we want to grow churches, we too must begin with the fear of God. If we want wisdom we need to turn in His Word which tells us, "But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him (James 1:50)."

R.C. Sproul

Preparation by Trial

"It is a rule of the Scriptures, and a rule which is confirmed by and exemplified in the long history of the Church and her saints, that when God has a particularly great task for a man to perform, He generally does try him. I care not which biography you pick up, you may take the life of any man who has been signally used by God, and you will find that there has been a severe time of testing and of trial in his experience.... So one may have to pass through this kind of experience because of some great task ahead. Look at Joseph.... Can you imagine a more dismal kind of life? Everybody seemed to be against him.... But in all this God was only preparing the man for the great position that He had in store for him. And it is the same with all the great men of the Bible. Look at the suffering of a man like David. . . . The Apostle Paul was no exception (2 Corinthians, 11 and 12).... God sometimes prepares a man for a great trial ... by giving him some lesser trials. It is there that I see the love of God shining out so gloriously. There are certain great trials that come in life, and it would be a terrible thing for people suddenly to be plunged into a great trial from the undisturbed and even tenor of their ways. So God sometimes, in His tenderness and love, sends lesser trials to prepare us for the greater ones. 'If need be' (1 Peter 1:6)—if such proves needful, if God, in looking upon us as our Father, sees that this is just what we need at that moment. So we start with this great principle, that God sees and knows what is best for us and what is needful. We do not see, but God always does, and, as our Heavenly Father, He sees the need and He prescribes the appropriate trial which is destined for our good."

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones -- Spiritual Depression, pp. 225-6

Perseverance

""By perseverance the snail reached the ark.""

C.H. Spurgeon

Prayer

"When a man is speaking to God he is at his very acme. It is the highest activity of the human soul, and therefore it is at the same time the ultimate test of a man's true spiritual condition. There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christian people so much as our prayer life. Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer. It is not so difficult to give alms ... you can have a true spirit of philanthropy in people who are not Christian at all.... The same applies also to the question of self-discipline—refraining from certain things and taking up particular duties and tasks. God knows it is very much easier to preach like this from the pulpit than it is to pray. Prayer is undoubtedly the ultimate test, because a man can speak to others with greater ease than he can speak to God. Ultimately, therefore, a man discovers the real condition of his spiritual life when he examines himself in private, when he is alone with God ... have we not all known what it is to find that, somehow, we have less to say to God when we are alone than when we are in the presence of others? It should not be so; but it often is. So that it is when we have left the realm of activities and outward dealings with other people, and are alone with God, that we really know where we stand in a spiritual sense. It is not only the highest activity of the soul, it is the ultimate test of our true spiritual condition."

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones -- Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, p. 46

Instruments of Darkness

"And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray 's
In deepest consequence."

William Shakespeare -- MacBeth Act i. Sc. 3.  (circa 1600)

Not the critic

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt  (1910)

Perfect Philosophy

"Just when we think our philosophy is perfect,
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides—
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears ...
The grand Perhaps."

Robert Browning -- Bishop Blougram's Apology

Where your heart is...

"If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell."

C.S. Lewis -- The Great Divorce  (1945)

Life or Death

"The mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace: because the mind of the flesh in enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be: and they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. But if any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his."

St. Paul -- Letter to the Romans, 8.6-9  (1st century)

Hell

"The one principle of hell is – 'I am my own'"

George MacDonald -- Unspoken Sermons

Onward

"For it is one thing to see the land of peace from a wooded ridge ... and another to tread the road that leads to it."

Augustine -- Confessions

"We should not confuse the geometry of orthodoxy with the poetry of the Gospel."

George Grant

Honoring the past

"Men cannot give a meaning to history that they themselves lack, not can they honor a past which indites them for their present failures."

R.J. Rushdoony

Truth

"L'exactement ce n'est pas la verité"

Paul Matisse  (19th Century)

Disorder

"the punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder"

Augustine -- Con  (4th century A.D.)

Progress

"When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress."

G.K. Chesterton

Life

"Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust."

T.S. Eliot

More pitiful

"I have more pity for a person who rejoices in wickedness than for a person who has the feeling of having suffered hard knocks by being deprived of a pernicious pleasure."

Augustine -- Confessions  (4th century A.D.)