THE GREAT GAMBLE

"People are not born again when they are in bed and asleep, so that they do not know it. They FEEL it; they EXPERIENCE it. Galvanism, or the power of electricity, may be mysterious; BUT THEY PRODUCE A FEELING, A SENSATION. SO DOES THE NEW BIRTH." C. H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Volume I, The Victory Of Faith

"Give someone an ELECTRIC SHOCK and I warrant you he will know it, BUT IF HE HAS THE HOLY GHOST, HE WILL KNOW IT MUCH MORE." C. H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol XXX, Receiving The Holy Ghost
 

"A certain teaching tells us to 'take it by faith' and not to worry about feelings. 'You may feel nothing at all,' it says, 'but if you believe this Word and its teaching you can take the Holy Spirit by faith irrespective of any feeling.' THE WHOLE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT TEACHES THE OPPOSITE. So does the subsequent history of the Christian Church... YOU CANNOT BE BAPTIZED OR FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT WITHOUT KNOWING IT. IT IS THE GREATEST EXPERIENCE ONE CAN EVER KNOW. THE TEACHING THAT ASSURES US THAT WE MAY FEEL NOTHING AT ALL RUNS ENTIRELY CONTRARY NOT ONLY TO THE TEACHING OF THE SCRIPTURE BUT TO THE RECORDED EXPERIENCES OF COUNTLESS CHRISTIANS THROUGHOUT THE CENTURIES." D. M. Lloyd-Jones, Romans - The Sons Of God
 

"Had I a mind to HINDER THE PROGRESS OF THE GOSPEL, and to ESTABLISH THE KINGDOM OF DARKNESS, I WOULD GO ABOUT TELLING PEOPLE THAT THEY MIGHT HAVE THE SPIRIT OF GOD, AND YET NOT FEEL IT." George Whitefield, The Indwelling Of The Spirit
 

"I HAVE FELT THE SPIRIT OF GOD WORKING IN MY HEART JUST AS REALLY AND TRULY AS I HAVE FELT THE WIND BLOWING IN MY FACE." D.L. Moody, The Gateway Into The Kingdom

"Alas, in these degenerate times, FEW HAVE ANY IDEA THAT SAVING FAITH IS A MIRACULOUS THING. INSTEAD, IT IS NOW ALMOST UNIVERSALLY SUPPOSED THAT SAVING FAITH IS NOTHING MORE THAN AN ACT OF THE HUMAN WILL, WHICH ANY MAN IS CAPABLE OF PERFORMING: all that is needed is to bring before a sinner a few verses of Scripture which describe his lost condition, one or two which contain the word “believe,” and then a little persuasion for him to “accept Christ,” and the thing is done. And the awful thing is that so very, very few see anything wrong with this -- BLIND TO THE FACT THAT SUCH A PROCESS IS ONLY THE DEVIL'S DRUG TO LULL THOUSANDS INTO A FALSE PEACE." Arthur Pink, Studies On Saving Faith
 

"We, being by nature dead in trespasses and sins, HAVE NO POWER TO PREPARE OURSELVES FOR THE RECEIVING OF GOD'S GRACE, NOR IN THE LEAST MEASURE TO BELIEVE AND TURN OURSELVES UNTO HIM." John Owen, A Display Of Arminianism
 

"Many souls, we may safely say, do not only perish praying, repenting, and believing after a sort, BUT THEY PERISH BY THEIR PRAYING AND REPENTING, WHILE THEY CARNALLY TRUST IN THESE." William Gurnall, The Christian In Complete Armour

"All the professors that have not faith which floweth from being born of God [supernatural faith], will seek to enter into heaven, and shall not be able." John Bunyan, The Strait Gate
 

"If we believe not with faith divine and supernatural, we believe not at all." John Owen, The Reason Of Faith
 

"Christ crucified is of no practical value to us without the work of the Holy Spirit; and the atonement which Jesus wrought can never save a single soul unless the blessed Spirit of God shall apply it to the heart and conscience. Jesus is never seen until the Holy Spirit opens the eye: the water from the well of life is never received until the Holy Spirit has drawn it from the depths." C. H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol X, The Superlative Excellency Of The Holy Spirit
 

"You must confess yourselves unable to do anything effectually of yourselves, in coming to a glorious Christ, as your Saviour... Oh! Lie at the Foot of Sovereign Grace confessing and Imploring, Lord, I am justly destroyed. If I do not sincerely renounce my sin, sincerely embrace my Saviour. But I cannot, Oh! I cannot! I have deadly fetters upon my Soul; I shall never answer thy gracious Calls, except thy Sovereign Grace enable me. Oh! Quicken me: Oh! Strengthen me: Oh! Enable me; Turn thou me and I Shall be Turned." Cotton Mather, What Must I Do To Be Saved?

"In that great and terrible day, there will be those white with shock when they find that they have depended upon a mental assent to Christianity instead of upon the miracle of the new birth." A.W.Tozer, The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
 

"You must be invaded by the Spirit of God by means of supernatural recreation... Beware of the tendency to water down the supernatural in religion." Oswald Chambers, Approved Unto God
 

"People are not born again when they are in bed and asleep, so that they do not know it. They FEEL it; they EXPERIENCE it. Galvanism, or the power of electricity, may be mysterious; BUT THEY PRODUCE A FEELING, A SENSATION. SO DOES THE NEW BIRTH." C. H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Volume I, The Victory Of Faith
 

"Men are born again, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God, his Spirit and grace; that it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy; that the work of faith is a work of power, of the operation of God, and is carried on by it, and is even according to the exceeding greatness of his power, who works in man both to will and to do of his own good pleasure." John Gill, The Scriptures

"The doctrine of REGENERATION is absolutely foundational. It is because so many do not realize this that they have a wrong view of evangelism, and become interested overmuch in decisions... in every single instance that is given in the New Testament of people receiving this gift of the Holy Spirit, it is always accompanied by much and strong feeling, and by the knowledge that they have received it... The answer of the New Testament is that when the Holy Spirit came upon the early Christians they knew it... you cannot be baptized or filled with the Spirit without knowing it." D. M. Lloyd-Jones -- Romans, The Sons Of God
 

"To say that we have a sufficiency in ourselves so much as to think a good thought, or to do anything as we ought, any power, any ability that is our own, or in us by nature, however externally excited and guided by motives, directions, reasons, encouragements, of what sort soever, to believe or obey the gospel savingly in any one instance, is to overthrow the gospel and the faith of the catholic church in all ages." John Owen, A Discourse Concerning The Holy Spirit
 

"God has surely promised His grace to the humbled: that is, to those who mourn over and despair of themselves. But a man cannot be thoroughly humbled till he realizes that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsels, efforts, will and works, and depends absolutely on the will, counsel, pleasure and work of Another -- God alone. As long as a man is persuaded that he can make even the smallest contribution to his salvation, he remains self-confident and does not utterly despair of himself, and so is not humbled before God. Such a man plans out for himself - or at least hopes and longs for - a position, an occasion, a work, which shall bring him final salvation, but which will not. Conversely, the man who is out of doubt that his destiny depends entirely on the will of God, despairs entirely of himself, chooses nothing for himself, but waits for God to work in him; and such a man is very near to grace for his salvation." Martin Luther, Bondage Of The Will
 

"We have unconsciously usurped the place of the Holy Ghost; we present a series of argumentative doctrines and say, If you believe this and accept that, something will happen. It never happens in that way, but always as a tremendous surprise." Oswald Chambers, Bringing Sons Unto Glory

"The being of God is invisible, but the operations of his Spirit in believers, are sensible and discernable. The soul's union with Christ is a supernatural mystery, yet it is discoverable by the effects thereof, which are very perceptible in and by believers." John Flavel, The Method Of Grace
 

"Scarce one of forty professors know what it is to be born again, to have communion with the Father through the Son, to feel the power of grace sanctifying their hearts." John Bunyan, A Discourse Touching Prayer
 

"The doctrine of our regeneration, or new birth in Christ Jesus, though one of the most fundamental doctrines of our holy religion; though so plainly and often pressed on us in sacred writ, that he who runs may read; nay though it is the very hinge on which the salvation of each of us turns, and a point too in which all sincere Christians, of every denomination, agree; yet it is so seldom considered, and so little experimentally understood by the generality of professors, that were we to judge of the truth of it, by the experience of most who call themselves Christians, we should be apt to imagine they had not so much as heard whether there be any such thing as regeneration or not." George Whitefield, On Regeneration
 

"If the way to heaven be not far harder than the world imagines, then Christ and his apostles knew not the way, or else have deceived us; for they have told us that the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence; that the gate is strait, and the way narrow; and we must strive, if we will enter; for many shall seek to enter, and not be able... Observe it, and believe it, whoever thou art; there was never a soul that made Christ and glory the principal end, nor that obtained rest with God, whose desire was not set upon him, and that above all things else in the world whatsoever. Christ brings the heart to heaven first, and then the person." Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest

"In the Scriptures and in church history, persons filled with the Spirit always knew they were filled, and it was an instantaneous act, not a gradual filling." A. W. Tozer, The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
 

"All those who are true disciples of Christ have felt a divinely supernatural power working upon them... The Spirit of God came upon us, and we were awakened, aroused, and made to live. Do you remember that?" C. H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol XXXV, Intimate Knowledge Of The Holy Spirit
 

"What a power was put forth in raising Christ from the grave when such a tombstone lay upon him as the sins of all the world! yet he was raised up by the Spirit. The same power is put forth by the Spirit of God in working faith. The Spirit irradiates the mind, and subdues the will. The will is like a garrison, which holds out against God: the Spirit with sweet violence conquers, or rather changes it; making the sinner willing to have Christ upon any terms; to be ruled by him as well as saved by him." Thomas Watson, A Body Of Divinity - Faith
 

"Believing in Christ and spiritually seeing him are parallel... he that has had a clear sight of the spiritual glory of Christ may say, I have not followed cunningly devised fables, but have been an eyewitness of his majesty, upon as good grounds as the Apostle Peter, when he had respect to the outward glory of Christ that he had seen." Jonathan Edwards, A Divine And Supernatural Light

"I could not make another man understand the FORCE of an electric shock unless he has felt it... Those of you that never felt the Spirit's energy, are as much strangers to it as a stone would be. You are out of your element when you hear of the Spirit. You know nothing of his divine POWER; you have never been taught of him." C. H. Spurgeon -- Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol VI, The Teaching Of The Holy Ghost
 

"Both Christ and faith are strangers to many souls who yet persuade themselves they are at peace with God." John Flavel, The Method Of Grace
 

"We need to remember that it is possible to have some kind of external religious experience that immunizes you to the new birth, and puts you where you will never be born again, because you THINK you are already born again." A. W. Tozer, The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
 

"Self-denial is when the soul knows it has nothing, and therefore is so overpowered with the mighty hand of God and the work of his Spirit that it does not so much as expect any power or ability from itself... It therefore looks up to heaven and seeks all sufficiency from God alone... For a man to deny himself is for him to know that he has no power in himself to do any spiritual duty. Therefore we must look only to the voice that calls us, the voice of Christ, and know that he who calls us from the ways of darkness, and out of ourselves, must and will bring us out. Therefore, expect power from Christ alone to pluck you out of yourself, and to make you a believer; for the same hand must do both or it will never be." Thomas Hooker, The Poor Doubting Christian Drawn To Christ

"That soul is dead to which the Spirit of Christ is not given in the work of regeneration; and all its works are dead works." John Flavel, The Method Of Grace
 

"How long have you believed? Would not most of you say, as long as we can remember; we never did disbelieve? Then this is a certain sign that you have no true faith at all, no, not so much as a grain of mustard seed... you must know that there was a time in which you did not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, if ever you received him, convinced you of your unbelief." George Whitefield, The Holy Spirit Convincing The World Of Sin, Righteousness, And Judgment
 

"A man's conversion is nothing, his believing is nothing, his profession is nothing unless he is made to be a new creature in Christ Jesus... If our faith has not brought with it the Holy Spirit, if, indeed, it is not the fruit of the Spirit, and we are not changed in nature and in life, then our faith is presumption, and our profession is a lie." C. H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol XXX, Receiving The Holy Ghost
 

"He that believeth the Scriptures to be the Word of God, believeth that men must be born again, and also be partakers of that faith which is of the operation of God, according as he hath read and believed, or else he must and shall be damned. And he that believeth this aright will not be contented until, according as it is written, he do partake of and enjoy the new birth, and until he do find, through grace, that faith that is wrought by the operation of God in his soul. For this is the cause why men do satisfy themselves with so slender a conceited hope that their state is good, when it is nothing so, namely, because they do not credit the Scripture; for did they, they would look into their own hearts, and examine seriously whether that faith, that hope, that grace which they think they have be of that nature, and wrought by that spirit and power that the Scripture speaketh of. I speak this of an effectual believing, without which all other is nothing unto salvation." John Bunyan, A Few Sighs From Hell

"This blessed Spirit, who once moved on the face of the great deep; who over-shadowed the blessed Virgin before that holy child was born of her; who descended in a bodily shape, like a dove, on our blessed Lord, when he came up out of the water at his baptism; and afterwards came down in fiery tongues on the heads of all his Apostles at the day of Pentecost: this is the Holy Ghost, who must move on the faces of our souls; this power of the Most High, must come upon us, and we must be baptized with his baptism and refining fire, before we can be stilled true members of Christ’s mystical body." George Whitefield, Marks Of Having Received The Holy Ghost
 

"Do you see a connection between your believing and the Holy Ghost? Did you receive Him when you believed?... Life does not lie latent in natural men for themselves to stir it up, but until the Holy Ghost visits them, they are dead in trespasses and sins. If, when you believed, you had not a life imparted by the Holy Spirit, your believing was a dead believing, the mere counterfeit of living faith, and not the faith of God's elect." C. H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol XXX, Receiving The Holy Ghost
 

"If God did not make His call effectual for the people whom He has marked out they would not believe. This is the way in which God guarantees their full salvation and glorification. He calls them in such an effectual manner by the Spirit that this is what they now desire above everything else... The more you believe in the effectual call the deeper will be your concern about your soul. The people who are most careless about their souls and their lives are those who have been most ignorant of doctrine and who are not aware of these profundities." D.M. Lloyd-Jones, Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
 

"Brethren, Let's not forget that the new birth is a miracle -- a major miracle! Peter in describing it relates it to the miracle of Jesus Christ rising from the dead. So there is a divine principle here -- the fact that a man truly born again is a man who has experienced regenesis, supernatural regenesis. Just as God generated the heavens and the earth in the beginning. He regenerates again in the breast of the believing man!" A.W. Tozer, The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II

"They are ordained to eternal life first, and therefore believe, and not first believe, and therefore elected." Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest
 

"The same Spirit which is in the Mediator himself, he communicates to his elect in due time, never to depart from them... The Spirit of faith furnishes him feet to come to Christ, and hands to receive him. What by nature he could not do, by grace he can, the Holy Spirit working in him the work of faith with power." Thomas Boston, Man's Fourfold State
 

"Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God." Jonathan Edwards, Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God
 

"People often argue that this doctrine of divine election and choice leaves no place for evangelism, for preaching the gospel, for urging people to repent and to believe, and for the use of arguments and persuasions in doing so. But there is no contradiction here any more than there is in saying that since it is God that gives us the crops of corn in the autumn, therefore the farmer need not plough and harrow and sow; the answer to which is that God has ordained both. God has chosen to call out His people by means of evangelism and the preaching of the Word. He ordains the means as well as the end." D.M. Lloyd-Jones, Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose

"They are not Christ's that neither know how they are called, nor can give any proof that they are called... to some God speaketh in thunder, to others in a still small voice, but to all he speaketh; therefore did you ever discern God's calling and your answering?" Thomas Manton, The Epistle Of Jude, v.1
 

"Christians are born, not made. They are not produced by imitation, nor by praying and vowing; they are produced by new birth." Oswald Chambers, The Psychology Of Redemption
 

"What our Lord promised happened at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost as we are told in the second chapter of the Book of Acts. Yet in spite of the account of the event given there I am asked to believe that it is non-experimental, that it did not lead to any feelings or to anything whatsoever in the sphere of consciousness... We are so afraid of excesses, we are so afraid of being labeled in a certain way, that we claim the baptism of the Spirit to be something unconscious, non-experimental, a happening that does not affect a man's feelings. Such an argument is utterly unscriptural." D.M. Lloyd-Jones, Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
 

"I think the difference is in the emphasis of the major miracle which we ought to expect in genuine Christian conversion. Those old-timers would not have believed if a major miracle had not taken place. They would never have been willing to accept a pale and apologetic kind of believing on the Son of God. They insisted on a miracle taking place within the human breast. They knew what Peter meant when he said that the Lord God has begotten us unto a living hope." A.W. Tozer, The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II

"He that professes to be a believer, while he has never received the truth in the power of it, as sent home by the Spirit of light and fire, has need to begin again, and learn the first rudiments of the faith. He has learned nothing aright who has not been under the direct tuition of the Holy Ghost." C. H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol XXX, Receiving The Holy Ghost
 

"The cardinal error into which many tend to fall is to think of ourselves as Christians in terms of our believing and our holding on, instead of looking at ourselves in the way in which Scripture always presents the position to us... There has been so much emphasis upon decision, receiving, yielding, being willing, and giving ourselves that salvation is regarded almost exclusively in terms of our activity... Many are in trouble simply because they do not realize the truth concerning the NEW BIRTH... Nothing is more glorious than the doctrine of the rebirth; and this is obviously the work of God in us through the Spirit. We do not give birth to ourselves, we are not reborn because we believe. We believe because we are reborn." D.M. Lloyd-Jones, Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
 

"How few are there who have been blessed with an inward illumination, by the special operation of the Spirit of Christ, leading them into a view of divine truths in their spiritual and heavenly lustre! How have you learned the truths of religion, which you pretend to believe?" Thomas Boston, Man's Fourfold State
 

"Another lust that Satan cockers is pride... and this hath spawned another fry of dangerous errors - the Pelagian and Semi-pelagian, which set nature upon its legs, and persuade man he got alone to Christ, or at least with a little external help, of a hand to lead, or argument to excite, without any creating work in the soul... The faithful servants of Christ tell sinners from the Word, that man in his natural state is corrupt and rotten, that nothing of the old frame will serve, and there must needs be all new; but in comes an Arminian, and blows up the sinner's pride, and tells him he is not so weak or wicked as the other represents him, that if thou WILT, thou mayest repent and believe; or, at least, by exerting thy natural abilities, oblige God to superadd what thou hast not. This is the workman that Satan uses to please proud man best." William Gurnall, The Christian In Complete Armour

"No act that is saving can be done without the concurrence of special grace... so men may come to the Word, and attend to what is spoken, remember and consider what the Word tells them; but as to believing or coming to Christ, that no man can do of himself." John Flavel, The Method Of Grace
 

"He who in his soul believes that man does of his own free-will turn to God, cannot have been taught of God, for that is one of the first principles taught us when God begins with us, that we have neither will nor power, but that he gives both; that he is Alpha and Omega in the salvation of men." C. H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol I, Free Will - A Slave
 

"If you say that it is our belief and faith that saves us, then you have turned believing into a work and a man is entitled to glory and to boast in that." D.M. Lloyd-Jones, Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
 

"We receive all by believing, except the grace of faith, which cannot be received by faith, but by free favour and grace, without us, in God. Grace, first and last, was all our happiness." Samuel Rutherford, The Trial And Triumph Of Faith

"Some are so ignorant that they know not what self-examination is, nor what a minister means when he persuadeth them to try themselves, or they know not that there is any necessity of it, but think every man is bound to believe that God is his Father, and that his sins are pardoned, whether it be true or false, and that it were a great fault to make any question of it... They have as gross conceits of that regeneration, which they must search for, as Nicodemus had. And when they should try whether the Spirit be in them, they are like those that knew not whether there were a Holy Ghost to be received or no... But the most common and dangerous impediment is that false faith and hope, commonly called presumption, which bears up the hearts of the most of the world, and so keeps them from suspecting their danger." Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest
 

"The state of unregeneracy is a state of impotency... The Spirit finds sinners in as helpless a condition, as unable to repent, or believe on Christ for salvation, as they were of themselves to purchase it. Confounded therefore for ever be the language of those sons of pride, who cry up the power of nature, as if man with his own brick and slime of natural abilities were able to rear up such a building, whose top may reach heaven itself... God himself hath scattered such Babel-builders in the imagination of their hearts, who raiseth this spiritual temple in the souls of men... And therefore, if any yet in their natural estate would become wise to salvation, let them first become fools in their own eyes, and renounce their carnal wisdom, which perceives not the things of God, and beg wisdom of God, who giveth and upbraideth not. If any man would have strength to believe, let them become weak, and die to their own." William Gurnall, The Christian In Complete Armour
 

"They are taught that if they believe that Christ died for sinners they have faith. At this rate the very devils are believers... Last, but not least, the sovereignty of God in saving sinners, and the absolute necessity of preventing grace, are far too much overlooked. Many talk as if conversions could be manufactured at man's pleasure." J.C. Ryle, Holiness
 

"Conversion and salvation must, in the very nature of things, be wrought and effected, either by ourselves alone, or by ourselves and God together, or solely by God himself. The Pelagians were for the first. The Arminians are for the second. True believers are for the last." Augustus Toplady, The Doctrine Of Absolute Predestination