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 that 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; and to be steady on all the battlefield besides,
is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.
... Martin
Luther
The Hebrew word,
nabi, translated "prophet" in English Bibles, has the connotation
of "message bearer". The prophets were men called by God to serve as His
messengers to a stubborn and unheeding people. They were always careful
to point out that they were not voicing their own wisdom. Their warnings,
entreaties, and promises were always prefaced by the awesome proclamation:
"Thus says the Lord..." When the prophets did engage in prognostication,
they usually were concerned with events which were fairly close at hand,
such as the Assyrian conquest of Israel and the Babylonian conquest of
Judah (both of which they foretold with deadly accuracy). But occasionally
a prophet's vision ranged farther into the future, to the day when God
would enter into a new covenant with his rebellious children. The hope
of reconciliation was often linked with the coming of a very particular
person, a Messiah or Savior.
What made the prophets
so sure that they had a right--nay, a duty, to speak in the name of God?
It is clear from their writings that they were not megalomaniacs who confused
their own thoughts with the voice of God. On the contrary, they were humble
men, awe-stricken by the responsibilities thrust upon them... The prophets
minced no words in their indictments of the sins of Israel and Judah, and
they trod especially hard on the toes of the rich, the powerful, and the
pious. The Establishment responded then as some church members are wont
to respond now when a preacher speaks out on controversial public issues:
"One should not preach of such things!" (Micah
2:6).
... Louis
Cassels, Your Bible
In most parts of
the Bible, everything is implicitly or explicitly introduced with "Thus
saith the Lord". It is... not merely a sacred book but a book so remorselessly
and continuously sacred that it does not invite -- it excludes or repels
-- the merely aesthetic approach. You can read it as literature only by
a tour de force... It demands incessantly to be taken on its own terms:
it will not continue to give literary delight very long, except to those
who go to it for something quite different. I predict that it will in the
future be read, as it always has been read, almost exclusively by Christians.
... C.
S. Lewis, They Asked for a Paper
It seems to me
that testimonies should once again become a part of the life of our churches.
I have not made a study of why the testimony fell into disrepute and was
discarded, but I suspect these were three of the factors:
(1) The same persons
gave the testimony every time.
(2) They gave the
same testimony every time.
(3) The testimony
they gave was about something that happened ten, or twenty, or thirty years
before.
... Findley
B. Edge, The Greening of the Church
We are frequently
advised to read the Bible with our own personal needs in mind, and to look
for answers to our own private questions. That is good, as far as it goes...
But better still is the advice to study the Bible objectively, ... without
regard, first of all, to our own subjective needs. Let the great passages
fix themselves in our memory. Let them stay there permanently, like bright
beacons, launching their powerful shafts of light upon life's problems
-- our own and everyone's -- as they illumine, now one, now another dark
area of human life. Following such a method, we discover that the Bible
does "speak to our condition" and meet our needs, not just occasionally
or when some emergency arises, but continually.
... Frederick
C. Grant
Inward rest...
gives an air of leisure to [Christ's] crowded life: above all, there is
in this Man a secret and a power of dealing with the waste-products of
life, the waste of pain, disappointment, enmity, death -- turning to divine
uses the abuses of man, transforming arid places of pain to fruitfulness,
triumphing at last in death, and making a short life of thirty years or
so, abruptly cut off, to be a "finished" life. We cannot admire the poise
and beauty of this human life, and then ignore the things that made it.
... A.
E. Whitham, The Discipline and
Culture of the Spiritual Life
I need not shout my faith. Thrice eloquent
Are quiet trees and the green, listening sod;
Hushed are the stars, whose power is never spent;
The hills are mute: yet, how they speak of God!
... Charles Hanson Towne
I saw full surely
in this and in all, that ere God made us he loved us; which love never
slackened, nor ever shall be. And in this love he hath done all his works;
and in this love he hath made all things profitable to us; and in this
love our life is everlasting. In our making we had beginning; but the love
wherein he made us was in him from without beginning; in which love we
have our beginning. And all this shall we see in God, without end.
... Juliana
of Norwich, Revelations of Divine
Love
If thou believest
that Christ was crucified for the sins of the world, thou must with Him
be crucified... If thou refusest to comply with this order, thou canst
not be a living member of Christ, nor be united with Him by faith.
... John
Arndt
One who receives
this Word, and by it salvation, receives along with it the duty of passing
this Word on... Where there is no mission, there is no Church, and where
there is neither Church nor mission, there is no faith.
... Emil
Brunner
If the whole universe
has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning --
just as, if there were no light in the universe, and therefore no creatures
with eyes, we should never know that it was dark. Dark would be without
meaning.
... C.
S. Lewis
It seems to me,
as time goes on, that the only thing that is worth seeking for is to know
and to be known by Christ -- a privilege open alone to the childlike, who,
with receptivity, guilelessness, and humility, move Godward.
... Charles
H. Brent
Insofar as theology
is an attempt to define and clarify intellectual positions, it is apt to
lead to discussion, to differences of opinion, even to controversy, and
hence to be divisive. And this has had a strong tendency to dampen serious
discussion of theological issues in most groups, and hence to strengthen
the general anti-intellectual bias...
... Sidney
E. Mead in Church History (1954)
In religion, we
are not asked to make up our minds, we are asked to make up our lives...
We may refuse to make up our minds, but our lives get made up, one way
or the other... Whatever we believe with our minds, our lives are committed
either to God's way or to the God-denying way, and what matters in religion
is the act of commitment.
... A.
Leonard Griffith, Barriers to Christian
Belief
Although we have
different ways of worshipping and doing things, we have only one God. So
how can we claim to have... "Good News" unless people can see in us that
Jesus Christ is breaking down barriers and bringing us together?
... Albert
Braithwaite
The truth of Christ's
supremacy over all the powers in the universe is one which modern man sorely
needs to learn. He is oppressed by a sense of impotence in the grasp of
merciless forces which he can neither overcome nor escape. These forces
may be Frankenstein monsters of man's own creation, or they may be horrors
outside his conscious control; either way, he is intimidated by the vastness
of those fateful currents which threaten to sweep him on to destruction,
whether he will or no. And to modern man in his frustration and despair,
the full-orbed gospel of Christ, as Paul presents it to the Colossians,
is the one message of hope. Christ crucified and risen is Lord of all;
all the forces in the universe, well-disposed and ill-disposed, are subject
to Him. To be united to Christ by faith is to throw off the thraldom of
hostile powers, to enjoy perfect freedom, to gain the mastery over the
dominion of evil -- because Christ's victory is ours.
... F.
F. Bruce, The Apostolic Defense
of the Gospel
Above all, the
group must keep remembering that true growth in grace is not to be achieved
by our own efforts or contriving, but must be received as the gift of God's
Spirit, working in and among us. The work of the group is to keep open
the channels of receptiveness through study, discipline, prayer, and self-offering.
When a group learns to live in this faith, it can keep the lines of endeavor
tentative and sensitive to new headings and possibilities, on the one hand;
and, on the other, move forward resolutely under such light as is now given.
... John
L. Casteel, Spiritual Renewal
through Personal Groups
Every time we say,
'I believe in the Holy Spirit,' we mean that we believe that there is a
living God able and willing to enter human personality and change it.
... J.
B. Phillips, Plain Christianity
[With thanks to Bill
Blake]
I suddenly saw
that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had
been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had
my back turned to God. All the beauty and truth which I had discovered
had come to me as a reflection of his beauty, but I had kept my eyes fixed
on the reflection and was always looking at myself. But God had brought
me to the point at which I was compelled to turn away from the reflection,
both of myself and of the world which could only mirror my own image. During
that night the mirror had been broken, and I had felt abandoned because
I could no longer gaze upon the image of my own reason and the finite world
which it knew. God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my
own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no
longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.
... Bede
Griffiths, The Golden String,
pp. 107-8
[With thanks to Rowland
Croucher director of John
Mark Ministries]
If criticism has
made such discoveries as to necessitate the abandonment of the doctrine
of plenary inspiration, it is not enough to say that we are compelled to
abandon only a "particular theory of inspiration..." We must go on to say
that that "particular theory of inspiration" is the theory of the apostles
and of the Lord, and that in abandoning it we are abandoning them.
... B.
B. Warfield, The Inspiration
and Authority of the Bible
We are all pencils
in the hand of a writing God, who is sending love letters to the world.
... Mother
Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu)
[With thanks to Mervin
W Koehlinger]
In all the sins
of men, God principally regards the principle -- that is, the heart.
... John
Owen
... for one good
never clashes with another.
... Meister
Eckhart
Wherever riches
have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion.
Therefore I do not see how it is possible in the nature of things for any
revival of religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce
both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as
riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its
branches. How then is it possible that Methodism, that is a religion of
the heart, though it flourishes now as the green bay tree, should continue
in this state? For the Methodists in every place grow diligent and frugal;
consequently, they increase in goods. Hence, they proportionately increase
in pride, in anger, in the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes,
and the pride of life. So, although the form of religion remains, the spirit
is swiftly vanishing away. Is there no way to prevent ... this continual
decay of pure religion?
... John
Wesley
The world exists,
not for what it means but for what it is. The purpose of mushrooms is to
be mushrooms, wine is in order to wine: things are precious before they
are contributory. It is a false piety that walks through creation looking
only for lessons which can be applied somewhere else. To be sure, God remains
the greatest good; but, for all that, the world is still good in itself.
Indeed, since He does not need it, its whole reason for being must lie
in its own natural goodness; He has no use for it, only delight.
... Robert
Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb
We must try to
be at one and the same time for the Church and against the
Church. They alone can serve her faithfully whose consciences are continually
exercised as to whether they ought not, for Christ's sake, to leave her.
... Alec
R. Vidler
When they inquire
into predestination, they are penetrating the sacred precincts of divine
wisdom. If anyone with carefree assurance breaks into this place, he will
not succeed in satisfying his curiosity and he will enter a labyrinth from
which he can find no exit. For it is not right for man unrestrainedly to
search out things that the Lord has willed to be hidden in Himself; nor
is it right for him to investigate from eternity that sublime wisdom, which
God would have us revere but not understand, in order that through this
also He should fill us with wonder. He has set forth by His Word the secrets
of His will that He has decided to reveal to us. These He decided to reveal
in so far as He foresaw that they would concern and benefit us.
... John
Calvin, The Institutes of the
Christian Religion (III, xxi, 1)
The denominations,
churches, sects, are sociological groups whose principle of differentiation
is to be sought in their conformity to the order of social classes and
castes. It would not be true to affirm that the denominations are not religious
groups with religious purposes; but it is true that they represent the
accommodation of religion to the caste system. They are emblems, therefore,
of the victory of the world over the church, of the secularization of Christianity,
of the church's sanction of that divisiveness which the church's gospel
condemns.
... H.
Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources
of Denominationalism
Never propose to
thy self such a God, as thou wert not bound to imitate: Thou mistakest
God, if thou make him to be any such thing, or make him to do any such
thing, as thou in thy proportion shouldst not be, or shouldst not do. And
shouldst thou curse any man that had never offended, never transgrest,
never trespass thee? Can God have done so? Will God curse man, before man
have sinned?
... John
Donne, Fifty Sermons
The neglect of
the spiritual cannot be laid directly at the door of advertising. It may
be better laid at the door of the church [that] has failed to preach the
God of the Bible, heaven and hell, repentance, faith, and eternal life.
It can be argued that a society only gets the advertising it deserves.
Yet the power to commend certain patterns of spending behaviour to millions
with regularity is an open invitation to orchestrate the covetousness,
envy, lust, and desire to dominate, which lie in the heart of sinful man.
... Raymond
Johnston, "The Power of the Media"
in The Changing World
If... you are ever
tempted to think that we modern Western Europeans cannot really be so very
bad because we are, comparatively speaking, humane -- if, in other words,
you think God might be content with us on that ground -- ask yourself whether
you think God ought to have been content with the cruelty of past ages
because they excelled in courage or chastity. You will see at once that
this is an impossibility. From considering how the cruelty of our ancestors
looks to us, you may get some inkling of how our softness, worldliness,
and timidity would have looked to them, and hence how both must look to
God.
... C.
S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain,
p. 52
Compilation Copyright, 1996-2008, by Robert McAnally Adams,
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