Quote 2205

Suffering Sin

Almost all doctrinal error is really truth perverted. Truth wrongly divided. Truth disproportionately held and taught.

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Truth Error

Here then is the design of prayer: not that God's will may be altered, but that it may be accomplished in His own good time and way. It is because God has promised certain things that we can ask for them with the full assurance of faith.

Prayer God's Sovereignty

Years are slipping away and time is flying. Graveyards are filling up and families are thinning. Death and judgement are getting nearer to us all. And yet you live like one asleep about your soul! What madness! What folly! What suicide can be worse than this? Awake before it is too late; awake, and arise from the dead, and live to God. Turn to Him who is sitting at the right hand of God, to be your Saviour and Friend. Turn to Christ, and cry mightily to Him about your soul.

Holiness (Chapter 6)

J.C. Ryle

How many a young man, never called of God, has been pressed into the ministry by well-meaning friends who had more zeal than knowledge. None may rightly count upon the divine blessing in the service of Christ unless he has been expressly set apart thereto by the Holy Spirit (Ac 13:2)

Gleanings from Elisha (18)

Calling

Everything about God is great, vast, incomparable. He never forgets, never fails, never falters, never forfeits His word.

Knowing God

Maybe the atheist cannot find God for the same reason a thief cannot find a policeman.

Unknown

It is not the distance of the earth from the sun, nor the sun's withdrawing itself, that makes a dark and gloomy day; but the interposition of clouds and vaporous exhalations. Neither is thy soul beyond the reach of the promise, nor does God withdraw Himself; but the vapours of thy carnal, unbelieving heart do cloud thee.

John Owen

the very manner of their publication plainly showed that God Himself assigned to the Decalogue peculiar importance. The Ten Commandments were uttered by God in an audible voice, with the fearful adjuncts of clouds and darkness, thunders and lightnings and the sound of a trumpet, and they were the only parts of Divine Revelation so spoken—none of the ceremonial or civil precepts were thus distinguished. Those Ten Words, and they alone, were written by the finger of God upon tables of stone, and they alone were deposited in the holy ark for safekeeping. Thus, in the unique honor conferred upon the Decalogue, we may perceive its paramount importance in the divine government.

False theology makes God's foreknowledge of our believing the cause of His election to salvation; whereas, God's election is the cause, and our believing in Christ is the effect

Foreknowledge Election

the perpetuity of the Law appears in God's writing it in the hearts of His people at their new birth ( Jeremiah 31:33; Ezekiel 36:26,27).

the character of God Himself must change before the Law (the rule of His government) can be revoked.

Salvation is a free gift, but an empty hand must receive it, and not a hand which still tightly grasps the world.

Salvation

If Scripture teaches the imputation of sin, we should not stumble when we find it affirming the imputation of righteousness.

Original Sin Imputation

An ineffably holy God, who has the utmost abhorrence of all sin, was never invented by any of Adam's fallen descendants!

Existence of God

How foolish are they who know not God! So many good things before their eyes, yet Him Who Is they fail to see.

Confessions (Ch. Conversion)

Augustine

we would say to any young man who is seriously contemplating entering the ministry, Abandon such a prospect at once if you are not prepared to be treated with contempt and made 'as the filth of the world, the off-scouring of all things'

The Life of Elijah (chap 30)

Calling

The wrath of God is as much a divine perfection as is His faithfulness, power, or mercy

Wrath

When a Russian cosmonaut returned from space and reported that he had not found God, C.S. Lewis responded that this was like Hamlet going into the attic of his castle looking for Shakespeare. If there is a God, he wouldn't be another object in the universe that could be put in a lab and analyzed with empirical methods. He would relate to us the way a playwright relates to the characters in his play. We (characters) might be able to know quite a lot about the playwright, but only to the degree the author chooses to put information about himself in the play.

The Reason for God (122)

Tim Keller

True, the Christian is not under the Law as a Covenant of Works nor as a ministration of condemnation, but he is under it as a rule of life and a means of sanctification.

the people were commanded to spend two days in preparing themselves, by a ceremonial cleansing from all external pollution, before they were ready to stand in the presence of God ( Exodus 19:10,11). This teaches us that serious preparation of heart and mind must be made before we come to wait before God in His ordinances and receive a word at His mouth

Ten Commandments

The reason why God blessed the seventh day was not because it was the seventh, but because "in it he had rested."

Sabbath The Lord's Day

Why, then, did He "rest," and why is it recorded on the top of the second page of Holy Writ? Surely, there can be only one answer: as an example for man!

Sabbath The Lord's Day

We must remember that the Christian belongs to the spiritual realm as well as the natural, and so he has spiritual as well as natural foes; hence he needs spiritual strength as well as physical.

Spiritual World

When faith be not exercised upon Christ, it nods and ceases to produce good works. When hope languishes and becomes inactive, the heart is no longer lifted above the things of time and sense by a desirous expectation of good things to come. Then love declines and is no longer engaged in pleasing and glorifying God. Zeal slumbers and instead of fervour there is heartless formality in the use of means and performance of duties