This page is primarily for quotes, quips and other jewels of insight from sages of past and present. Just because it appears here does not mean we necessarily agree with it. It may simply illustrate the inane in our culture but Great Minds will recognize this immediately. Please feel free to send me relevent material as you come across it. ~ PE
PS ~ It is a work in progress. ~ PE
On Government
We are not to see our freedom through rebellion but through obedience, faithfulness, and Godly reconstruction.
It is man who is made in the image of God not the state.
The biblical doctrine of theocracy means the self government of the Christian man.~ Rushdoony, Sovereignty
Dispensationalism ~ How important it is that we should realize the danger of starting with a theory and imposing it on the Scriptures. Martin Lloyd-Jones
Church Growth
God does not work through big battalions, he is not interested in numbers; he is interested in purity, in holiness, in vessels fit and meet for the master's use. We must concetrate not on numbers but on doctrine, upon regeneration, upon holiness, upon the realization that this is the holy temple in the lord, a habitation of God. Lloyd-Jones
The business of the gospel is to bring people to God and reconcile them to God. Not to fill churches! Not to have good statistics! But to reconcile men to God – To save them from the wrath to come. ~ Lloyd-Jones
On Preaching The Gospel
"When we hold forth the good news in our preaching, we should particularly beware of presenting this gospel as an option to be exercised for the betterment of sinners' lives. After all, what would a carnal person consider "better"? Leading questions like "are you scared of death?" "Do you want happiness?" "Wouldn't you like to know the meaning of your life?" are all well intentioned, and any of them may be used by God's Spirit to convict someone, and to lead to their conversion. But such questions may also be answered by a simple "no." To use such questions as if they are the starting point for those considering the gospel is to make it sound all too optional.
I don't care if my hearers are scared of death, wanting happiness or meaning in life, I know that they will die and stand before God to give an account of their lives. And I know that God will therefore rightly condemn them to an eternal Hell.
So I find verses like Mark 8:38 useful, where Jesus taught "If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."
Or again, Romans 3:19-20, "Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin."
Or Hebrews 9:27, "man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment . . ."
This demand—rather than a marketer's appeal—is to be the basis of the evangelistic call in our sermons. Our gospel sermons are not to sound like the solicitations of a salesman, but the summons of a judge. Mark Dever
Let the goats entertain the goats and let them do it in goatland ~ William Still
Did God send his son, did Christ come to die, for Cain and Pharaoh, damned so many ages before his suffering? "Credit Apella?" ~ John Owen
Spurgeon
What is the use of religion which comes up in a night, and perishes as soon? Ah, me!
what empty bragging we have heard! The thing was done, but then it was never
worth doing; soon things were as if it had never been done; and, moreover, this sham
way of doing it made it all the harder toil for the real worker. PM18
We do not consider soul winning to be accomplished by hurriedly inscribing more
names upon our church-roll, in order to show a good increase at the end of the year.
SW12
As you learn, teach; as you get, give; as you receive, distribute. Be as the small rain
upon the tender herb. Do you not think that in trying to bring people to Christ we
sometimes try to do too much at once? WE119
A man's converts are always a disgrace to him. It is only those that God converts that
will last. When we go fresh into a place, there is always a number of people who hear
with a degree of profit, and who are affected by us. But let that minister be taken
away, and they go back again. One wave washes them up on the shore, and the
return wave sucks them back again into the great deeps. 423.603
"Oh," writes one to me this week, "I have believed that Jesus died for me, but it does
not keep me from sinning in any way whatever. Our minister says that if we believe
that Jesus died for us we shall be saved." No, no, but that is not the gospel, and such
a belief is not faith at all. I did not wonder that a poor creature should have tried
such a gospel and found it fail. Do not these men say that Christ died for everybody,
and then declare that if you believe he died for you (which he must of necessity have
done if he died for everybody) then that will save you, and yet there are scores and
hundreds who are proofs to the fact that it does not save them, but that they can
believe this universal redemption and live as they did before? 834.564
I have known, in my short time, certain churches, in the paroxysms of delirium,
meeting houses crowded, aisles filled, preachers stamping and thundering, hearers
intoxicated with excitement, and persons converted by wholesale—even children
converted by hundreds—they said thousands. Well, and a month or two after, where
were the congregations? where were the converts? Echo has answered, "Where,
where?" Why, the converts were worse sinners than they were before; or mere
professors, puffed up into a superficial religion, from which they soon fell into a
hopeless coldness, which has rendered it difficult ever to stir them again. 890.513
I have never preached to you that you may live in sin if you only believe in Jesus: I
have never preached that you shall be saved without being purified in heart. No, the
salvation which this pulpit has proclaimed is not salvation in sin but salvation from
sin, not a licence to evil but a deliverance from evil. 1278.95
You must not imagine that in this church all who have come to Christ nominally
have come really. 1298.327
The apostle Paul not only said of Titus that he was his son, but he called him his
"true" son. The Revised Version correctly translates it, "My true child." We have,
alas! some who have called us "father" in a spiritual sense, of whom we have cause to
be ashamed. There are converts and converts. 2439.543
It is an idle attempt to heal those who are not wounded, to attempt to clothe those
who have never been stripped, and to make those rich who have never realized their
poverty. 2586.421
Our converts are worth nothing. If they are converted by man they can be
unconverted by man. 2920.54
Beware, beloved, of all dry-eyed reformations. 3049.350
You cannot vanquish a Calvinist. You may think you can, but you cannot. The stones of the great doctrines so fit into each other, that the more pressure there is applied to remove them the more strenuously do they adhere. And you may mark, that you cannot receive one of these doctrines without believing all. Hold for instance that man is utterly depraved, and you draw the inference then that certainly if God has such a creature to deal with salvation must come from God alone, and if from him, the offended one, to an offending creature, then he has a right to give or withhold his mercy as he wills; you are this forced upon election, and when you have gotten that you have all: the others must follow. Some by putting the strain upon their judgments may manage to hold two or three points and not the rest, but sound logic I take it requires a man to hold the whole or reject the whole; the doctrines stand like soldiers in a square, presenting on every side a line of defense which it is hazardous to attack, but easy to maintain. And mark you, in these times when error is so rife and neology strives to be so rampant, it is no little thing to put into the hands of a young man a weapon which can slay his foe, which he can easily learn to handle, which he may grasp tenaciously, wield readily, and carry without fatigue; a weapon, I may add, which no rust can corrode and no blows can break, trenchant, and well annealed, a true Jerusalem blade of a temper fit for deeds of renown. C. H. Spurgeon
Education
“I am sure as I am of the fact of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling engine for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen”. Dr. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Chair of Systematic Theology, Princeton Seminary (1878)
“I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the hearts of the youth”. Dr. Martin Luther
"It has been the error of the schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the author of them: for all the principles of science are of Divine origin,". "Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles. He can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author. When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well executed statue or a highly finished painting where life and action are imitated, and habit only prevents our mistaking a surface of light and shade for cubical solidity, our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talents of the artist. When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton
. How then is it, that when we study the works of God in the creation, we stop short, and do not think of God? It is from the error of the schools in having taught those subjects as accomplishments only, and thereby separated the study of them from the Being who is the author of them." ~ Thomas Paine
Television is very educational. Every time someone turns it on I go into the other rooom and read a book. ~ Groucho Marks
MISC:
The Brainwashed do not know they are brainwashed ~ Wendy O'Williams
The Bible calls debt a curse and children a blessing but our culture applies for curses and rejects blessings. ~ Doug Phillips
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