| D. M. Lloyd-Jones |
| "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." 1 Timothy 2:5 |
"The man who has not got eternal life does not
know God, he is outside the life of God; and that means that he is dead." Romans
- The Sons Of God
"The doctrine of regeneration is absolutely foundational...
This is a vital fact about the Christian. Every born again person knows it...
You cannot have life without knowing it." Romans - The Sons Of God
"The man who is trying to be a Christian is trying to hold
on to something. The man who is a Christian feels that he is being held by
something. It has been put to him, it is there; it may even seem to be in spite
of him, but it is there. It is not what he is doing that matters to him; it is
what has been done to him, it is what he has become, it is the awareness of this
power within him -- life. Romans - The Sons Of God
"The world's good, moral people are admired so much today;
and yet the Apostle's words describe exactly where they stand. They are as much
'after the flesh' and they as much 'mind the things of the flesh' as does the
man who falls into drunkenness or gives rein to his passions and lusts. It is
purely a difference of degree... The only difference between the obvious
so-called 'sinner' and the highly cultured good moral man is purely a social
difference, a superficial one." Romans - The Sons Of God
"You can be a member of a church and hotly resent the
things of the Spirit. You may be very interested in religious organizations, in
religious activities, in denominations, in activities of your particular church,
and so on, but it may have nothing to do with minding the things of the Spirit.
Indeed, as I say, it can be the greatest enemy of such things." Romans - The
Sons Of God
"It is possible for a man with his natural mind to grasp a
theological system in an intellectual way only. That may be of no spiritual
value to him at all; it can even be the cause of his damnation." Romans - The
Sons Of God
"The things of the Spirit are the things to which the
Spirit, the Holy Spirit, always draws attention... They are completely hidden
from the world. The man who is after the flesh knows nothing about them... These
things are hidden mysteries, hidden wisdom, altogether outside him... It means
something that is inaccessible to the natural mind, but which God in His grace
has revealed to the Christian by the Spirit." Romans - The Sons Of God
"The trouble with modern men is not that they do not
understand the terminology of the Authorized Version of the Bible, it is that
they are spiritually dead." Romans - The Sons Of God
"We alone, as Christians, understand what is wrong with the
world. We see powers and principalities, the rulers of the darkness of this
world, behind the visible and seen phenomena, and we see perplexed politicians
trying to deal with the problems, and failing. We know they must fail because
they do not see what is at the back of it all. We see it as the conflict between
heaven and hell." Romans - The Sons Of God
"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." Romans - The Sons Of
God
"The Christian man has been born again, he has been given a
new life and a new nature and has become a child of God; he has been adopted
into a new kingdom... He has proof of this because God has put His Spirit - His
own Spirit - within him; the 'Spirit of Christ', the 'Spirit of God', the 'Holy
Spirit'." Romans - The Sons Of God
"You cannot be a Christian without having received the Holy
Spirit. There is no question about that; it is impossible, it is inconceivable."
Romans - Assurance
"Are you troubled about the state of the world, and
perplexed that it should be as it is? You should not be, if you are a
Christian." Romans - The Sons Of God
"The gift of God, which we have already received, is
eternal life. If you are a Christian you have it now; you are not waiting for
it." Romans - The Sons Of God
"There is no second death for the man who has been
regenerated." Romans - The Sons Of God
"As regards my spirit I am saved, as saved as I ever shall
be. I have been quickened with Christ, I have been raised with him, I am seated
in the heavenly places in Christ, my spirit at this moment is alive in Christ
Jesus." Romans - The Sons Of God
"The Christian must abstain from sin. It is as simple and
direct as that... You have no right to say, 'I am weak, I cannot, and temptation
is very powerful.' The answer of the New Testament is, Stop doing it!" Romans -
The Sons Of God
"Are you still looking to the statesmen and others to solve
all problems and to put the world right? Do you still believe that some kind of
Utopia is going to come? If you do, you can take it as certain that you are not
being led by the Spirit, that you are not a child of God." Romans - The Sons Of
God
"We are aware that we have an antagonist, an adversary, who
often persuades people that they have the Spirit of adoption when that is not
true of them." Romans - The Sons Of God
"There is the very real danger that many who are assumed to
be Christians, and who themselves assume that they are Christians, are not
really Christians at all. That is why the Apostle urges the Corinthians and
others to examine themselves, to prove their own selves, to make sure that they
are in the faith." Romans - The Sons Of God
"We should thank God for every time that we are disturbed.
We should thank God when we are ever forced to examine ourselves, to make sure
whether we are in the faith or not. There is no greater danger to our highest
interests than this kind of easy believism which is really not the work of the
Holy Spirit at all." Romans - The Sons Of God
"It is not true faith unless an element of feeling is
involved. If there is no such element it may be nothing but intellectual assent,
nothing but a kind of historical faith. There is nothing to stop anyone saying,
'I believe that; I believe that evidence.' That does not make him a Christian."
Romans - The Sons Of God
"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." Romans - The Sons Of God
"The answer of the New Testament is that when the Holy
Spirit came upon the early Christians they knew it." Romans - The Sons Of God
"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." Romans - The
Sons Of God
"You cannot be baptized or filled with the 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." Romans - The Sons Of God
"Any teaching which prevents us from examining and
searching ourselves, testing and proving ourselves, condemning our own
superficiality, and from seeking for something bigger and deeper, is of
necessity condemned. And such is the invariable effect of the teaching which
tells us to 'take it by faith and not to worry about our feelings,' and to thank
God for it, because we have taken it, and assume that all is well." Romans - The
Sons Of God
"The whole object of the sealing of the Spirit is to give
us certainty about our inheritance. It is an earnest, a foretaste, of good
things to come. It is essentially experimental... though the intensity or the
degree may vary considerably, the experience itself is always unmistakable."
Romans - The Sons Of God
"But - and thank God for this - once you have had it [the
sealing of the Spirit], the memory of it will remain with you as long as you
live; you will look back to it as the greatest joy in your life." Romans - The
Sons Of God
"Why is it that some have believed? It is because the
Spirit has sanctified them, has set them apart, has called them out. It is the
call of the Spirit; it is the work of the Spirit in conviction, and calling out,
and giving power to believe." Romans - The Sons Of God
"We should never be content with anything less than what is
described as possible to the Christian in the New Testament." Romans - The Sons
Of God
"We must with the whole of our being give diligence to make
our calling and election sure, and there is no better way of doing so than by
receiving this testimony of the Spirit with our spirits that we are the children
of God." Romans - The Sons Of God
"Faith does not lay hold on the blessing itself, it lays
hold on the One Who gives the blessing, and pleads with Him." Romans - The Sons
Of God
"But the highest assurance of all results from the Spirit
bearing witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God... This is
essentially experimental, experiential; and so to tell people that they can take
this, of all blessings, by faith and not to worry about their feelings, is sheer
confusion of thought and a denial of the teaching of the Scriptures about the
highest and the greatest experience possible to a human being." Romans - The
Sons Of God
"Apart from justification, apart from that which has been
done for us in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no peace between God
and man." Romans - Assurance
"Nothing is more wonderful than to know that God loves you;
and no man can truly know that God loves him except in Jesus Christ and Him
crucified." Romans - Assurance
"Every doctrine is dangerous, and can be - and has been -
abused." Romans - Assurance
"The man who is a true Christian is a man who has had a
glimpse of Hell, and who knows that there is only one reason for the fact that
he is not bound for it." Romans - Assurance
"The final perseverance of the saints is guaranteed by
their relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ." Romans - Assurance
"The Christian is a man who should have assurance; it is
the business of every Christian to have assurance... The Roman Catholic Church
not only does not teach the doctrine of Assurance of Salvation, it preaches and
teaches against it. Why? The explanation is quite simple. As long as you are
uncertain, you are dependent upon the Church, you are dependent upon the
priests. If you have assurance of salvation you do not need a priest, you do not
need the help of the Virgin Mary, or the works of supererogation of the saints;
you go directly to God through Christ. Assurance of salvation militates against
the whole policy and activity of that Church with its teaching about purgatory
and need of indulgences and so on; so they denounce that doctrine. That is, of
course, because they put their own tradition before the Scripture, indeed
because they here deny the plain teaching of the Scripture. They are thoroughly
unscriptural and they can only establish their whole system, and keep it going,
in defiance of the Scriptures." Romans - Assurance
"Over and above your intelligent apprehension of it, over
and above your intelligent and intellectual deduction of it, there is a direct
and immediate assurance given by the Holy Ghost who sheds abroad the love of God
in your heart. You are overwhelmed by it, it is poured out in your heart, and
there is no uncertainty any more... We do not take it by faith; we know; we have
tasted it, we have felt it... It is a sensibile something; it is experimental;
it affects the emotions and the feelings; it is direct and immediate, not
indirect and mediate. There is surely nothing more precious in the whole of
Scripture, and yet how little we hear about it today. It seems to have dropped
out of evangelical teaching. It is because of that psychological teaching about
taking it by faith and not worrying about your feelings." Romans - Assurance
"No man has ever had the love of God shed abroad in his
heart without knowing it; and it always leads to the shout!" Romans - Assurance
"Our Lord's death on the Cross is the supreme manifestation
of the love of God." Romans - Assurance
"Man is totally incapable, he is without any strength at
all in the matter of his salvation... Man as he is born into this world is
totally unable to please God. His righteousness is but as filthy rags. Man does
not like to be told that, and he does not believe it." Romans - Assurance
"Ultimately it is only the man who feels quite hopeless
about himself who really trusts God." Romans - Assurance
"The universality of sin is only truly explained by the
doctrine of the Fall... It is sin that has brought in death. Sin is the cause of
the infliction of death. Death is penal; it came in as the punishment of sin; it
was not there before." Romans - Assurance
"If you say to me, 'Is it fair that the sin of Adam should
be imputed to me?' I will reply by asking, 'Is it fair that the righteousness of
Christ should be imputed to you?'" Romans - Assurance
"There is no blessing that ever comes to man from God
without coming through the Lord Jesus Christ." Romans - Assurance
"Do we delight to talk about free grace and free gift?
Pharisees never do so because they realize that these terms make them out to be
paupers as all others. They like to feel that they have earned salvation or at
least that they have made a contribution towards it." Romans - Assurance
"He who as Son of God had made the Law with his Father put
Himself under it in order to redeem us." Romans - Assurance
"There is no greater sinner in the universe than the man
who has never seen his need of the blood of Christ. There is no sin greater than
that - murder and adultery and fornication are nothing in comparison with it."
Romans - Assurance
"There has been no such thing as freedom since Adam fell.
Adam was free. Not a single child of Adam has ever been free... Man's will has
been bound ever since the fall of Adam. By nature man is not free to choose
God." Romans - Assurance
"No Christian should be surprised at the state of the world
today; he should expect it." Romans - Assurance
"Grace is in no sense contingent upon or dependent upon
what man does." Romans - Assurance
"No man is saved unless he is predestinated and elected.
This is not my statement; it is Paul who says it. There is nothing accidental
about salvation." Romans - Assurance
"Not only is grace irrestible, it must be irrestible. For
if grace were not irrestible no one would ever have been saved... The idea that
grace presents itself to us, but that the final choice remains with us as to
whether we are going to take advantage of it or not, is not only a contradition
of the verse we are considering, it is a contradiction of the entire biblical
teaching concerning the way of salvation." Romans - Assurance
"The restraining power of grace is manifested in God's
people even before their conversion. They are not allowed to sin to such a
degree that they put themselves outside the scope of salvation. They are never
allowed to blaspheme against the Holy Ghost." Romans - Assurance
"The teaching of the New Testament Epistles is directed
only and solely to Christians, to believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is
utterly wrong and heretical to take the teaching of any New Testament Epistle
and apply it to the world in general." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"The Church is not an institution, she is primarily a
gathering, a meeting of saints." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"We must learn to shed once and for ever the false
dichotomy which Roman Catholicism has introduced at this point. It picks out
certain people and calls them saints... But that is wrong and unscriptural.
Every Christian is a saint; you cannot be a Christian without being a saint...
We have accepted the false idea that only certain Christians are saints, we have
not realized that every Christian is meant to be separate from the world."
Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"However much we may delude ourselves, there is no such
thing as a theoretical Christian. It is possible to hold the doctrine of the
faith in the lecture room, to give an intellectual assent to these things, but
that does not make us Christian." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"You cannot, you must not try to divide Christ. It is a
false doctrine which says that you can be justified without being sanctified...
Holiness is a characteristic of every Christian, and if we are not holy, our
profession of Christ is valueless." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"Man was never meant to be a god, but he is for ever trying
to deify himself." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"It is because man has an inadequate conception of sin that
he has an inadequate conception of the grace of God." Ephesians - God's Ultimate
Purpose
"Anything which claims to be Christianity without having
Christ at the beginning and the centre and the end is a denial of Christianity,
call it what you will." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"He is Jehovah, but He is also Jesus - the God-man... He is
the Lord Jehovah become Jesus, taking upon Himself our nature, taking upon
Himself our problems, and even our frailties, and eventually our sin." Ephesians
- God's Ultimate Purpose
"The Christian position is always and inevitably
Trinitarian. Christian worship must be Trinitarian if it is true worship."
Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"There is no such thing as a Christianity which is not
experimental." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"Any attempt to equate the teaching of the New Testament
with any one of the political parties, or any other party, is to do violence to
the teaching of Christ... The greatest tragedy in the world is that the Church,
instead of preaching her own message, is preaching an earthly, human, carnal
message. Has the Church nothing better to preach than an appeal to statesmen to
solve problems? That is really a denial of the Christian faith, and reveals an
abysmal ignorance of the heavenly places." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"The Christian, and he alone, sees God's plan and purpose."
Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"The teaching is that those who enjoy these spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ do so because they have been chosen by
God to do so... Such is the Apostle's categorical statement." Ephesians - God's
Ultimate Purpose
"There are many Christian people today, it seems to me, who
claim to be believers in the inspiration of the Scriptures but who nevertheless
quite deliberately avoid large portions of Scripture simply because they are
difficult. But if you believe that the whole of Scripture is the Word of God,
such an attitude is sinful; it is our business to face the Scriptures."
Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"Not only does the Bible not argue; it reprimands us for
our arrogance in bringing our difficulties and pitting them against what God has
revealed." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"If we hold that we become regenerate because we have
already believed, then we have to show why we need to be regenerated at all...
The doctrine of regeneration has a great deal to say about election and this
doctrine of divine choice... The natural man hates this doctrine more than any
other." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"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."
Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"The Bible is a whole, and we have no hope of understanding
the New Testament gospel unless we accept the first chapters of the Book of
Genesis with their account of the Fall of man into sin." Ephesians - God's
Ultimate Purpose
"God's desire for us that we be holy comes before His
desire for our happiness or anything else." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"You cannot be justified before God and decide later on to
be sanctified." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"The man who is not being chastened is a bastard; he is not
a child of God... God, who has chosen you to holiness, will make you holy; and
if the preaching of the gospel does not do so, God has other means and
methods... Antinomiansim is nonsense. If you are chosen of God unto holiness and
to be without blemish, He will bring you to that condition; and if you defy Him,
well then, terrible things may happen to you." Ephesians - God's Ultimate
Purpose
"Theological and spiritual understanding are clearly as
important in the work of translation as linguistic proficiency, and arguably
they are more important." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"The world knows nothing about true honour and riches...
The glory God gives is an unseen glory, but it is a real glory because it is
given by Him." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"I do not hesitate to assert that there is no teaching
which is finally so inimical to our souls and their salvation as this teaching
about the universal Fatherhood of God." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"Salvation is not according to man's desire or request. Man
by nature, and in sin, does not desire salvation. Salvation is not a response on
God's part to anything in man; it is entirely from God." Ephesians - God's
Ultimate Purpose
"In our redemption in the Lord Jesus Christ we see the
glory of God at is greatest height." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"There is only one answer to the question as to why Christ
had to die - the holiness of God!" Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"Our Lord did not come to tell us what we have to do in
order to save ourselves; He came to save us... The Christian doctrine of
salvation and redemption is this - that Christ Himself is the salvation."
Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"Nowhere is sin so brought home to us as at the Cross of
Christ and by the blood of Christ. Before we are forgiven we must realize
something of the enormity of sin, and it is at the Cross that we do so. We see
it as something so terrible, so horrible, such an affront to God, that it
necessitates the Cross. The Cross therefore condemns us before it sets us free.
This is why it is an offence to the natural man... Sin is so terrible, so foul,
and so vile that nothing could deal with it but the blood of Christ." Ephesians
- God's Ultimate Purpose
"Make sure that you know something of the power of the Holy
Spirit working in you." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"The teaching concerning the kingdom of heaven is a
mystery; and He makes it known to disciples only... It is a mystery in the the
sense that man with his unaided, fallen mind and intellect can never discover
and arrive at... The entire New Testament teaching turns upon this, that
believers in Christ have entered into the secret, have had the mystery revealed
to them. SAVING TRUTH is no longer a mystery to the Christian, it is only a
mystery to the non-Christian." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"Men come to the New Testament with all their ability and
understanding and training but they do not see the truth. They can never do so
without the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, and His operation upon us, are
absolutely essential before we can receive the truth and begin to understand
it... Whatever a man may be, and however great his natural ability may be, if he
is not enlightened by the Holy Spirit he will not and cannot understand the
Scriptures. The truth which they reveal is spiritually discerned." Ephesians -
God's Ultimate Purpose
"To me the greatest tragedy of all at the present time is
that so many Christian leaders, when they try to deal with this world situation,
concentrate on what they think statesmen should do to resolve the recurring
crises and to avert certain dangers... There are many who believe that it is
possible to Christianize the world, and that the main business of preaching is
to try to persuade people to apply Christian teaching to the affairs of the
world. But to expect Christian behaviour from people who are not Christian
betokens a colossal ignorance of sin and its ways as they are revealed in the
Bible. That is not the message that is revealed here and indeed anywhere in the
Bible." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"Christ is central, Christ is essential, and anything which
calls itself Christianity which does not go on repeating the blessed Name is
ultimately a denial of Christianity." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"In spite of the arguments based upon a philosophic ideal
of the love of God, the Scripture draws the ultimate distinction between eternal
salvation and eternal destruction." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"It is particularly interesting to observe that God's way
in Christ is so very different from that which frequently passes as Christianity
at the present time, with all its emphasis on the political and social
application of the gospel." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"All troubles in the world, between nations, between
individuals, stem from a failure at some point in the realm of relationships...
But this does not mean, as so many teach, that what is needed is the application
of the teaching of Christ to modern problems, and that the Church's business is
to tell people how to behave in a Christian manner and to apply Christian
principles. That is not the teaching of Paul. There is no greater heresy, in a
sense, than to expect Christian conduct from people who are not Christians."
Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"The Church is largely wasting her time in talking
politics, and in imagining that, if you give people the Christian ethic and urge
them to practise it, the problems of the world will be solved. It cannot be
done: regeneration is essential." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"The kingdom of God and of His Christ is coming; and
nothing can stop it. And we who are in Christ are certain to be there... Men and
women who believe this truth, and who know that it is true of themselves, are
not over-interested in this world and what happens in it." Ephesians - God's
Ultimate Purpose
"In every view of salvation the place given in it to the
glory of God provides the ultimate test. The proof that it is truly scriptural
is that it gives ALL the glory to God." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"A man cannot be in the kingdom of God unless he is a child
of God; and he cannot be a child of God without the Spirit... It is God's
action, in which He bears witness that we are His children, that He is our
Father, and that we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. It is God's
authentication of the fact that we really belong to Him." Ephesians - God's
Ultimate Purpose
"The teaching of the Scripture is that the moment a man is
born again his sanctification has and must have started. The process of making
him holy and separating him unto God has already begun. There is no greater
error than to teach that you can receive your justification by faith and then
later on you receive your sanctification by faith. Sanctification is not an
experience, not a gift to be received: it is a work of the Holy Spirit in the
heart which starts from the moment of regeneration." Ephesians - God's Ultimate
Purpose
"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 labelled 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." Ephesians - God's
Ultimate Purpose
"There is nothing in contemporary Christianity which is so
dangerous and so unscriptural as the the teaching that, with regard to each and
every blessing in the Christian life, all that we have to do is to take it by
faith and not worry about feelings... The teaching of take it by faith is
responsible, I believe, for much of the present undesirable state of the
Christian Church." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"Let us be clear in our minds, then, that we do not receive
this blessing in that way and apart from feelings; when we are sealed with the
Holy Spirit of God we shall know it. It is not to be accepted by faith apart
from feelings... When God seals you with the Spirit you will know it. You will
not have to take it by faith irrespective of your feelings and your condition...
You will not have to persuade yourself; the persuasion will be done by the Holy
Ghost." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"When we have this seal of the Spirit we know it, and
others know it. It is the highest, the greatest experience which a Christian can
have in this world." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"The sealing with the Spirit, or the baptism with the
Spirit, is clearly experimental and experiential." Ephesians - God's Ultimate
Purpose
"The Holy Spirit within us gives us what we as Christians
should be enjoying - a foretaste of heaven." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"In this expression - Lord Jesus - we have the mystery of
godliness, namely, that God was manifest in the flesh, together with all that
followed the birth at Bethelem." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"The first commandment to the Christian is not that we
should love one another but that we should believe in the Lord Jesus. We are
told about the early disciples that they continued stedfastly in the apostles'
doctrine and fellowship and breaking of bread and prayers. Today the fellowship
is put first, and the doctrine is almost regarded as a hindrance and an
obstacle. For this reason the church is in her present perilous condition. She
has departed from the Apostolic order - faith in the Lord Jesus first, doctrine
first; and then love towards all saints." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"Man claims that he wants knowledge. To that demand the
Bible says: If you want knowledge, if you want wisdom, if you want true
understanding, there is only one place in which you can find it - here it is!"
Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"The extent of man's fall is so great and extensive that no
man by the exercise of his own will or understanding can ever save himself or
become a Christian." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"God, through the gospel and by the Holy Spirit, sends out
this general call to the whole world, but He calls certain people in particular,
and no man is a Christian unless he is called in this special sense... They are
people in whom the Word of God has been made effective; it has come to them in
power, it has come as a command which they find to be irrestible, and they
readily respond to it with the whole of their being." Ephesians - God's Ultimate
Purpose
"Roman Catholics dislike the doctrine of assurance of
salvation, and denounce it. They do not want us to have personal certainity; our
assurance must lie in the Church to which we commit ourselves... But the essence
of Protestantism, as Martin Luther discovered to his great and eternal joy, is
that the individual Christian may know his salvation is certain; he may defy all
devils and hell and Satan himself; the Christian knows the Christ whom he has
believed; his hope is sure; his calling and election are sure." Ephesians -
God's Ultimate Purpose
"One of the greatest and most practical grounds of
assurance is the doctrine of the new birth, or of regeneration. If I am born of
God, of the Spirit, I cannot fall away; it is impossible." Ephesians - God's
Ultimate Purpose
"No man was more concerned about decent, proper living in
this world than John Calvin. The story of that man and how he reformed the life
of Geneva, has inspired many others who have borrowed his ideas, and this has
been the greatest motive power in the history of democracy." Ephesians - God's
Ultimate Purpose
"The only man who really respects life in this world is the
man who knows that this world is only the antechamber to the next world."
Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"Do you know that you are a saint? Are you certain that you
are one of God's people? Make certain of it." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"A Christian is the result of the operation of God, nothing
less, nothing else. No man can make himself a Christian; God alone makes
Christians... A Christian is one who has been created anew; and there is only
One who can create, namely, God. It takes the power of God to make a Christian."
Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"The mightiest foes, the devil, death, and hell have
already been vanquished, and the resurrection of Christ is the proof of it."
Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"Our very believing is the result of the power of God...
There is a strong tendency to talk in a superficial manner about believing, as
if it were an easy thing which any man can do if he feels disposed to it. How
lightly and glibly many talk about believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, or about
believing the gospel... There is much emphasis on believing and decision; and it
is suggested that anyone who wants to become a Christian can easily accomplish
it... There are two main explanations of this superficial, indeed false, view of
believing. The first is that it is due to an appalling failure on our part to
realize the consequences of sin and the Fall of man... The second is our failure
to realize what is involved in the new birth, or regeneration; we fail to
realize the greatness of the change that is described in those terms, and what
is included in them, and why regeneration is ever necessary. These are the cause
of all glib use of the word believe, and the tendency to to say that the natural
man is able to believe." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"There is a defect even in man's will. Sin has affected the
whole of man. Our failure to appreciate the power of God in our very act of
believing is due to our failure to realize the devastating effect of the Fall.
It marred and defaced God's image in us, with the inevitable consequences that
our minds and wills became defiled." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"When we come to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ,
do we realize that it was the greatest manifestation of the energy of the
strength of God's might that the world has ever known?... From the moment God
puts His hand upon a man and brings him to the new birth and new life, He
continues to exert this power in him... If we are to understand this power which
is working in us we must see it as it is illustrated in what God has done in
Christ, in the power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the
dead. What a display of power that was!" Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"The line between the Church and the world is almost
invisible, and the people of God no longer stand out in their uniqueness as they
once did." Ephesians - God's Ultimate Purpose
"We recognize no human being as the Head of the Church;
Christ alone is the King and the Head of the Church." Ephesians - God's Ultimate
Purpose
"Christianity is not a movement for world reform. The Bible
is quite explicit about this." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"The Bible has no comfort whatsoever to give to people who
are not Christians - none at all; indeed the exact opposite. The Bible has
nothing to say to such people except to warn them to flee from the wrath to
come. It tells them that the sufferings of this present hour are not worthy to
be compared with the sufferings they are going to endure, that these are but a
foretaste of what is coming to them, that the account of the Flood, the
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all similar calamities are but faint
pictures of the suffering that is going to come to those who do not belong to
the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no comfort here for an unbeliever - none at
all." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"This present world is passing, transient, temporary. The
world to come is the real, the permanent world. That is the one that has
substance and which will endure for ever. And it is coming for certain: nothing
can stop it." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"Man is in a totally unsatisfactory position when he
imagines that he can hold on to the doctrines of the Christian Faith and yet
reject the factual, the historical element." Romans - The Perseverance Of The
Saints
"The Apostle says that you should know that you were saved,
and you should have absolute certainty and assurance concerning it... We should
know the witness of the Spirit with our spirit that we ARE - not that we are
HOPING to be - but that we ARE the children of God, and joint-heirs with
Christ." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"Hope is the measure of true Christianity, which is through
and through other-worldly. Pseudo-Christianity always looks chiefly at this
world. Popular Christianity is entirely this-worldly and is not interested in
the other world. But true Christianity has its eye mainly on the world which is
to come... This is not our world. I am a stranger here, heaven is my home...
Such is the Christian position, such is the Christian attitude. The world will
call it escapism. Let it call it what it chooses; its language but reminds us of
its blindness and darkness." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"We must examine the world, and see it for what it is. Do
not be mislead by the world, do not be captivated by it. See the rottenness, the
ugliness, the foulness; and do not allow it to monopolize your time and your
attention. You must see through it. Then, having seen through it, keep yourself
from it." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"To tell people to start praying as they are is virtually
to deny the whole of the Christian gospel. The gospel's first message is to tell
us that there is only one way into God's presence, and the Lord Jesus Christ
came into the world, and lived and died to this end, that he might bring us to
God... There is no entry into the presence of God, and there is no true prayer,
except through the Lord Jesus Christ by the influence and power of the Holy
Spirit... This is the way to pray, the only way, and simply to tell all and
sundry, when they are in difficulties, to start praying immediately and to keep
on doing so, is a denial of the New Testament gospel. It makes the Cross of
Christ unnecessary, and it is ultimately to do despite to the very blood of the
Cross itself." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"If you bombard God with certain particular, personal,
material requests, there is the possibility that He will let you have them; and
you will bitterly regret it. He may grant you your request; but because it was
not a true request, nor in your best interests, and because you would not listen
to Him and His discouragements, He will let you have your request but you will
find leanness in your soul." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"There are those who teach that the prayer of faith means
that you say to yourself, I believe it. You try to work yourself up into saying,
Yes, I do believe it; it is the Word of God, I do believe it. But it means no
such thing; indeed, it means almost the exact opposite... There is a prayer
given sometimes by the Spirit concerning which He tells you that it is going to
be answered. That is the prayer of faith. It is not an experiment, it is not a
trying to persuade yourself, or to work yourself up. It is an ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY
that is given by the Spirit, and you know, therefore, when you are praying and
making your requests, that your prayer is answered. And it happens because the
prayer was given, and the assurance of it was given, by the blessed Holy Spirit
Himself." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"Any translation of the Bible that does away with the
variations in the styles of the authors is a bad translation." Romans - The
Perseverance Of The Saints
"The word called - to call - is used in two main senses in
Scripture: the one indicating a general call, and the other an effectual call...
There are some who have misunderstood the doctrine of the great reformers and
who say this should not be done, that the gospel is only to be offered to those
who are chosen and elect. Many in their IGNORANCE regard that as Calvinism. But
it is hyper-Calvinism. John Calvin taught that the general call, the offer,
SHOULD be made to everyone, to all creatures." Romans - The Perseverance Of The
Saints
"There are no promises to the effect that all things work
together for good to them who do not respond to the call of the gospel; indeed
they are threatened with the damnation of hell. God's wrath is upon them... It
is only to people who have been effectually called in this way, and who are thus
saints, that this great promise is made." Romans - The Perseverance Of The
Saints
"Are you aware of this calling of God? All things work
together for good to them who are the called according to His purpose. Has He
laid His hand upon you and arrested you and apprehended you?... Whether you are
or are not a church member, if the truth of the gospel does not ravish your
heart, if you do not feel that it is the most glorious thing you have ever
heard, you have never been called." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"At this point we are face to face with what is called the
doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints... The Roman Catholics, as I
have had occasion to point out before, do not believe this doctrine; they reject
it in toto.There would really be no place for their church if they believed it
to be true, which explains why they have always fought it with such great zeal."
Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"The more certain I am that I am going to heaven and to
glory where I shall see Christ, the more concerned I am about preparing myself
for that experience." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"God's purpose came into being before the foundation of the
world... God Himself not only planned the purpose, and thought of it, and
initiated it; it is God ultimately who is carrying it out and putting it into
operation... The purpose of God is carried on and fulfilled through the work of
the Spirit, who applies the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ to us."
Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"Salvation is not ultimately for our sakes; but for the
glory of God. God in salvation is vindicating Himself, and manifesting Himself
to the whole universe. He is displaying His everlasting and eternal glory. Hence
His purpose cannot and will not fail." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"The philosopher believes that he can work out everything
in his own mind; he has a pathetic faith in his own reasoning... Some go so far
as to say that the sole purpose of preaching is to tell people that God loves
them whether they believe in Him or not." Romans - The Perseverance Of The
Saints
"Our Lord is unique as the only begotten Son of God. There
is no other such Son of God, and there never will be. As the only begotten Son
of God He is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father. He is God the Son, the
second Person in the blessed Holy Trinity." Romans - The Perseverance Of The
Saints
"A race started in Adam; another race started in Christ."
Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"The ultimate end and object of salvation is the
glorification of the Son." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"Our ultimate and final salvation is absolutely graranteed;
and it is guaranteed because it is the purpose of God with respect to us.
Moreover God has ordained every single step in this process that is going to
bring us to that ultimate glorification. And one of the steps is this calling.
It means that God causes the word of the gospel, which is preached to all
creatures, to come to these people whom He has foreknown, with power, the power
of the Holy Ghost." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"THe startling fact is that there is a single Christian in
the whole world. The amazing thing is not that most people do not believe; what
is astounding is that anyone believes... What God has predestined for these
people whom He has foreknown would never come to pass in a single instance were
it not that God, in His infinite love and mercy, quickened us and awakened us by
His Spirit through His effectual calling." Romans - The Perseverance Of The
Saints
"It is God who grants repentance. Even repentance is a
gift. No man would ever repent were it not for the effectual call of God."
Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"If God did not make this call effectual for the people
whom He has marked out they would not believe. This is the way in which God
guarantees their full salavtion and glorification. He calles them in such an
effectual manner by the Spirit that this is what they now desire above
everything else." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"How did he ever become the Apostle Paul? Did he decide to
believe in Christ? Did he decide to accept the message? We know what happened.
The Lord of Glory appeared to him. He saw Him in His glorified state! And
immediately he believed, immediately his will desired Him. What wilt thou have
me to do, Lord? A perfect picture of the effectual call." Romans - The
Perseverance Of The Saints
"The change that takes place in all who become Christians
is the change from Saul to Paul - not as regards office, of course, but as
regards nature. It happens to every one of us who is a Christian, but it would
never happen to anyone were it not that the Spirit reveals these things unto us.
Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man,
the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed
them unto us - not to everyone, but unto US." Romans - The Perseverance Of The
Saints
"There is nothing the natural man hates more than to be
told that he is a sinner, and that his nature is twisted and perverted." Romans
- The Perseverance Of The Saints
"If we are certain of our calling, we can be certain of our
ultimate glorification. If God has called us it means that He has justified us,
and if He has justified us, it means that He has glorified us; because if we are
in any one of these positions we are in them all... The one thing that matters,
therefore, from our experimental standpoint is to be sure that we are in the
purpose of God. Do we know that we have been called?" Romans - The Perseverance
Of The Saints
"The ultimate sin is intellectual pride... There is no
point in saying that you accept the Bible as the Word of God if you are
determined to reject statements which you cannot understand." Romans - The
Perseverance Of The Saints
"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." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"In expounding Scripture we must keep to the Scripture and
not go outside it and begin to reason in terms of our failure to understand. For
the moment you begin to import anything from the realm of philosophy, you are
not only of necessity confusing the issue, but also in a sense denying the
sufficiency of revelation." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"It is possible to spend a lifetime in the Christian
ministry, and at the end to be disapproved as ministers and have nothing to show
for all our labour." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"That was why five of these virgins were foolish. They pick
up their lamps and rush off, but then they feel tired and fall asleep; and so,
when the bride groom comes and the call is given, they suddenly find they have
no oil. They have never troubled about that... That was precisely the trouble
with the foolish virgins - assuming, taking things for granted, not making sure,
not examining, not proving their own selves, not examining their own selves as
the Scriptures tell us to do... If you are heedless and thoughtless, and never
examine yourself at all, and resent any call to self-examination, then I suggest
very seriously that you had better examine the very foundation as to whether you
are a Christian at all." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"It is possible for the Holy Ghost to influence us to a
certain point and still leave us short of regeneration." Romans - The
Perseverance Of The Saints
"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." Romans - The Perseverance Of The
Saints
"The plan of salvation not only cannot fail, it will not
fail because the glory of God is involved in it. It must succeed. The proof of
this is that the whole of salvation depends upon the Lord Jesus Christ Himself,
the Son of God... God has chosen the people whom He has given to His Son; and
the Son has said that He came into the world to do this work for them at the
behest of His Father... God's own Son is the guarantee of success. He has
conquered all our enemies; and we are joined to Him." Romans - The Perseverance
Of The Saints
"You will never find an unbeliever who accepts the doctrine
of the final perseverance of the saints... The same applies to those who are
known as higher critics, or liberals in their theology... St. Augustine believed
this doctrine and that explains why his teaching was the one light that
illuminated the darkness of so much of the dark Middle Ages. It was also the
doctrine of the Protestant Reformers. Martin Luther believed it with all his
soul, as also did John Calvin... George Whitefield, the greatest evangelist and
preacher that England has ever produced, believed it, preached it, and rested
upon it... Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached it, as all volumes of his sermons
testify. He went so far as to say that he really doubted whether a man who did
not believe the doctrine was a Christian at all." Romans - The Perseverance Of
The Saints
"The great slogan today, and especially in evangelical
circles, is always be positive, never be negative. That is utterly unscriptural;
it is the exact opposite of the Apostle Paul's method... Do not be misled by
this spurious notion of love. We must not only assert the truth; we must attack
the evil and the false." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"We are faced with the devil in all his power and
malignity. We must not underestimate the power of the enemy; to do so is no part
of the New Testament teaching." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"There is nothing more foolish or self-defeating than for a
Christian to say that he is not interested in doctrines." Romans - The
Perseverance Of The Saints
"It was God who ordained the death on Calvary's hill, and
not men... it was God's eternal Son who died there, and not a human martyr."
Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"When God put our sins upon His own Son He did not withhold
any part of the punishment from Him; He poured it all upon Him, everything that
it deserved. God kept nothing of it back, and the Son submitted Himself to it
willingly. That God delivered Him up for us all means that He poured all the
vials of His wrath against sin upon Him. He smote Him, He struck Him, He wounded
Him, He oppressed Him, He afflicted Him. He put Him to grief, nothing was
withheld." Romans - The Perseverance Of The Saints
"Nothing shall be able to separate US - the Christians -
those who are the called according to God's purpose. God's love is to them, and
to them only. God's wrath is against all others." Romans - The Perseverance Of
The Saints
"God's character and honour demand that a man who has been
justified should finally be glorified, and His power guarantees it." Romans -
The Perseverance Of The Saints
"The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace
alone always leads to the possibility of this charge [antinomianism] being
brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really
preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people
might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to
this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what
you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all
the more to the glory of grace. That is a very good test of gospel preaching. If
my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to
that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel." Romans - The New Man
"While an expert knowledge of Greek is good, it can also be
dangerous." Romans - The New Man
"The main trouble with the Christian Church today is that
she is too much like a clinic, too much like a hospital; that is why the great
world is going to hell outside!... What most of us need is not a clinic, but to
listen to the sergeant major drilling his troops, commanding them, warning them,
threatening them, showing them what to do." Romans - The New Man
"There are many preachers who never preach justification by
faith at all, because they do not believe it. They regard the New Testament
message as no more than an ethical system, and they are always exhorting people
to live better lives, and to stop doing this and that. They apply this in a more
general sphere, and so are always making protests to Governments and other
powers. They talk unceasingly about applying the Christian ethic... we can say
without any hesitation that such men are not preaching the Gospel." Romans - The
New Man
"It is God's purpose that guarantees the final perseverance
of the saints, the final glorification of His people." Romans - God's Sovereign
Purpose
"There is no better test of our spiritual state and
condition than our missionary zeal, our concern for lost souls. That is always
the thing that divides people who are just theoretical and intellectual
Christians from those who have a living and a vital spiritual life." Romans -
God's Sovereign Purpose
"If you are clear in your theology and in your doctrine you
will know that no natural man cannot believe the gospel... So if you expect a
natural man to believe the gospel simply because you are putting it to him, you
are denying the gospel; you have not understood it yourself." Romans - God's
Sovereign Purpose
"When you talk about covenant as it is used in the Bible,
to say that it is the same as two people arriving at an agreement is not only an
inadequate conception, it is an utterly false conception and entirely wrong... a
covenant in the Bible is a sovereign act of God's grace in which He pledges
Himself to do something... Covenant in the Bible is always something that is
entirely and solely and only from God's side." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"God brought Isaac into being by His own action in order
that His purpose might be carried out in him and through him. And as the Apostle
argues in Galatians 1 and 4, it is the sole explanation also of anybody who is a
Christian, anywhere and at all times." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"So what is it that makes certain that the word of God will
not fall down but will stand and be firm and secure? Oh, it is, Paul says, that
God's purpose is always carried out through the process of election... 'not of
works, but him that calleth' ... It is not of the works of man, so this shuts
out once and for ever the thought that the purpose of God through election is
something that works out simply through God foreseeing that certain people are
going to do good works." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"This purpose of God is worked out through election
entirely as the result of the action and the activity of God Himself. It is
completely independent of anything in us, our birth, our nationality, our good
works or anything else whatsoever... It is God's free choice, and it is an
absolute and a sovereign choice." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"God deliver us from this modern trust in scholarship which
does not hesitate to criticize the writings of a divinely inspired Apostle!"
Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"God does not create evil or put it there, but He
aggravates what is there for His own great purpose." Romans - God's Sovereign
Purpose
"Well, I have already shown you where man's responsibility
is; he is responsible for his damnation, he is not responsible for his
salvation." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"Do not talk to me about free will; there is no such thing.
There is no such thing as free will in fallen man. The Bible teaches that."
Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"The only man who has ever had free will was Adam, and we
know what he did with it. Since then, we have all been born in sin, we are
shapen in iniquity. And what makes any man a Christian is the purpose and the
will and the choice of God." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"We have no claim upon God at all; we deserve nothing but
punishment and hell. If you think that you deserve anything else, then you do
not know God and you do not know yourself either." Romans - God's Sovereign
Purpose
"If you do not believe in God's wrath there is no real need
for the sacrifice on Calvary's hill." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"The Bible is the history of redemption. That is what it
really amounts to. And all the history, all that you have about other nations,
comes in simply because it throws some light upon the history of redemption...
It is always the history of God searching for lost man. When God, as it were,
came down from heaven into the garden of Eden after Adam and Eve had fallen,
that is the beginning of that history, and all the rest just has reference to
that." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"The riches of God's glory are to be seen supremely in the
person of His Son." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"Salvation is always the immediate result of the action of
God Himself. Man does not save himself, nor does he determine his own
salvation." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"A man does not become a Christian by taking a decision. He
is made a Christian by God, who had marked him out before the foundation of the
world and who sees to it that he is born, and sees to it that he believes."
Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"We are responsible for our rejection of the gospel, but we
are not responsible for our acceptance of it. That is the result of the electing
grace of God." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"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." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"The Lord Jesus Christ is the acid test of the value of any
supposed belief in God... That people say they believe in God is of no value
whatsoever unless they believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; that people may have
very exalted views about life and living does not matter at all unless they
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ; that people do not believe in war, or that
they do believe in doing good, does not make the slightest difference if they do
not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. The fact that people may make great
sacrifices for the sake of others and, as they believe, in order to praise God,
is utterly useless unless they believe on our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."
Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"If you do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ utterly and
absolutely as your Saviour, what you are really doing is pitting yourself
against God and flinging His own actions back into His face... It is a rejection
of God's own plan and God's own provision." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"There are still people who think of this country as a
Christian country. What utter nonsense! There is no such thing." Romans - God's
Sovereign Purpose
"You can believe in God and still not be a Christian."
Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"We should have seen very clearly that we must not rely
even upon our belief; even our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not my
belief that saves me; it is not my faith that saves me. If I say that, I am
turning my belief and my faith into works. I am taking credit to myself, and I
must not do that." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"If you take the Scriptures with this prejudiced mind and
understanding you can make them prove almost anything you like... We must always
beware of prejudice. We must never read the Scriptures without praying. We
should never approach them without asking the Holy Spirit to lead us and to
guide us and to direct us." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"This chapter [Romans 9] is a perpetual warning to us
against regarding all people, who are members of the Christian church in a
visible sense, as being Christians... It seems to me that the main argument for
the so-called ecumenical movement is just this -- that all people who call
themselves Christians and who are members of the Christian church are therefore
Christians and that we must regard them all as such." Romans - God's Sovereign
Purpose
"The fifth deduction is the question of the significance of
numbers in connection with the church and her function. And the answer is that
numbers do not matter at all. God preserves a remnant. He preserves a seed... We
must cease to think in terms of numbers, we must think in terms of the purpose
of God and the purity of the witness and the testimony God will preserve this
seed. He will carry it on in spite of everything, thank God, if we belong to the
faithful remnant." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"A church which is not actively propagating the truth,
witnessing to it and concerned about the lost, is unworthy of the name of the
church of Jesus Christ." Romans - God's Sovereign Purpose
"There is no such thing as salvation without Christ at the
centre. We must not listen to people who tell us how God is blessing them,
unless Jesus Christ is central." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"Nothing is so tragic in the history of mankind as the fact
that though God has placarded the cross before us we turn our backs upon it and
seem to think that God can bless us without it. But He does not." Ephesians -
God's Way Of Reconciliation
"Do we understand that nothing but this almighty power of
God that was manifested in the resurrection and exaltation of our Lord, nothing
but that, nothing less than that, could make us Christians?" Ephesians - God's
Way Of Reconciliation
"Many think of salvation, and of Christianity, in terms of
a little bit of morality and of decency. What an insult to the Christian! as if
the Christian were just a good and a nice and harmless individual. Not at all!
He is a man who has undergone this tremendous change. There has been this
dynamic action. He has been raised, resurrected; he is in the heavenly places.
This is the power of God!" Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"Christian people are but a handful in the world today."
Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"The trouble with all false evangelism is that it does not
start with doctrine, it does not start by realising man's condition... If you
and I realised that every man who is yet a sinner is absolutely dominated by the
prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of
disobedience, if we only understood that he is really a child of wrath and dead
in trespasses and sins, we would realise that only one power can deal with such
an individual, and that is the power of God, the power of the Holy Ghost. And so
we would put our confidence, not in man-made organisations, but in the power of
God, in the prayer that holds on to God and asks for revival and a descent of
the Spirit. We would realise that nothing else can do it. We can change men
superficially, we can win men to our side and to our party, we can persuade them
to join a church, but we can never raise the spiritually dead; God alone can do
that." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"The gospel of Jesus Christ is thoroughly realistic, and it
starts with us exactly where we are, and that is, at the bottom of a pit of
corruption." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"No man will ever have a true conception of the biblical
teaching with regard to redemption if he is not clear about the biblical
doctrine of sin." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"The devil is so subtle that he dominates man and persuades
him at the same time that he is not being dominated." Ephesians - God's Way Of
Reconciliation
"The biblical doctrine of sin really went out of men's
thinking some sixty or seventy years ago, and psychology came in in its place."
Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"There has been no such thing as free will as regards
obeying God since Adam fell. Adam had free will; no one else has ever had it.
Freedom of the will was lost in the Fall; man there became a slave of sin and
under the dominion of the devil... In spite of that, everything man does he does
deliberately. He wills to sin, he enjoys sinning, he glories in sinning. He does
exert his will negatively in sin; what he cannot do is to will positive good, to
will spiritual good. He is incapable of that and that is why he needs to be born
again and to have a new nature. But he can will evil and he delights to do so."
Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"We tend to think of sin in terms of separate acts of the
will; and therefore we tend to lose sight of the fact that we are ourselves
sinful apart from our actions, that sin is in us and is a part of our very
nature... The fatal mistake is to think of sin always in terms of acts and of
actions rather than in terms of nature, and of disposition." Ephesians - God's
Way Of Reconciliation
"You cannot understand the modern world apart from the
doctrine of original sin... That is why we must believe the early chapters of
Genesis if we are to believe the New Testament. You cannot have a true doctrine
of salvation apart from this." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"To expect Christian conduct from people who are not yet
Christians is dangerous heresy." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"What is this Christian message? We start by saying that it
is NOT a great appeal for patriotism: that is not the Christian message... The
only message of the Christian faith to an unbelieving world, in the first
instance, is simply about judgment, a call to repentance, and an assurance that
if they do repent and turn to Christ they shall be delivered. The Church,
therefore, the Christian faith, has no message to the world apart from that."
Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"If I may so put it, God would never have sent His Son from
heaven to earth and to the cross of Calvary to solve a social problem. The
problem to God was His own glory, His own majesty, His own everlasting
greatness. This had been queried and questioned by the devil and all who belong
to him... Why did God ever send His Son? God forbid that we should give some
sentimental, subjective answers only, and fail to see that God sent Him in order
to vindicate Himself. It is the grandest theodicy of the ages; God is
vindicating and declaring and showing the truth concerning Himself." Ephesians -
God's Way Of Reconciliation
"There is no more monstrous idea than the idea that you can
fall away from grace, that you can ever be born again and then be damned. The
character of God is involved! It is impossible. His object is not merely to save
me, it is to vindicate His own being and nature, and I am being used to that
end. The end is absolutely certain because God's character is involved in it."
Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"What vast numbers of men and women still think of the
blessings that come from God, apart from Christ Jesus! There are thousands of
people in the world today who are worshippers of God, as they THINK, and are
anxious to be blessed by God, and believe that they are being blessed by God,
but they seem to be able to speak about all that without mentioning Christ
Jesus. They talk about praying to God, they talk about being blessed by God, of
being healed by God, being led by God, and so on, but they do not mention the
name of Jesus Christ. The apostle was aware of that danger, that is why he never
misses an opportunity of saying, 'through Christ Jesus.' The whole essence of
Christianity is to say that God deals with man and blesses man ONLY in and
through Christ Jesus. Everything comes from God to us through Him." Ephesians -
God's Way Of Reconciliation
"We must always be extremely careful, therefore, never to
say that it is our believing that saves us... In other words they say that by
believing on the Lord Jesus Christ a man saves himself. But that is to turn
faith into works because it says it is our action that saves us... Belief does
not save. Faith does not save. Christ saves. Christ and His finished work. Not
my belief, not my faith, not my understanding, nothing that I do." Ephesians -
God's Way Of Reconciliation
"The first thing the sinner needs is life. He cannot ask
for life, for he is dead. God gives him life, and he proves that he has it by
believing the gospel. Quickening is the first step. It is the first thing that
happens. I do not ask to be quickened. If I asked to be quickened I would not
need to be quickened. I would already have life." Ephesians - God's Way Of
Reconciliation
"Sin not only separates men from God and from one another,
it produces a state of enmity against God and enmity against one another."
Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"People who think that you can cut out the early chapters
of Genesis and still have a Christian gospel are just displaying their
ignorance." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"The world can go on developing intellectually and in every
other respect, it can add to its knowledge of science and of sociology and of
psychology and all else, it can multiply its institutions, it can train us in
this respect and that respect, but it will all lead to nothing because the
problem can never be solved except in, and through, our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"How monstrous it is, therefore, for the Church to say to
the statesmen, All you have to do is to apply our teaching and you will produce
peace amongst the nations. It is a denial of the whole doctrine of the Church.
It is a denial of the doctrine of regeneration. It is indeed a complete
misrepresentation of the teaching of our blessed Lord." Ephesians - God's Way Of
Reconciliation
"There is no such thing as a Jewish section of the
Christian Church. There is no such thing as a Gentile section of the Christian
Church. And there never will be. The old has been done away with." Ephesians -
God's Way Of Reconciliation
"All the minor and secondary divisions and separations and
quarrels among men are ultimately due to the fact that all men are separated
from God." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"It is a sheer waste of energy and of breath and of time to
try to get Christian behaviour from people who are not Christians." Ephesians -
God's Way Of Reconciliation
"I cannot kneel down together with, and look up with
people, one of whom is looking at Confucius and another at Mohammed and another
at the Buddha, and another at some philosopher. I cannot! There is only One to
look at; it is this blessed Son of God... What is the value of talking about
having things in common and claiming that we are all one, if there is any
question about Him, as to whether He is Son of God or only man? If there is any
doubt about it there is no unity, there is no fellowship. We must confess
together that there is only one Saviour, one only Lord Jesus Christ, God and
Man, two natures in one person, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius
Pilate, risen again. There must be no question about Him! There is no unity
unless we are agreed about Him! The same Saviour, the same Person!" Ephesians -
God's Way Of Reconciliation
"If a man tells me that he knows that he is a hopeless,
vile, condemned, damned sinner, and that he relies only on the fact that the
Lord Jesus Christ died for his sins, that His body was broken and His blood shed
for his sins, that he trusts only to that atoning, reconciling work of Christ,
that Christ was his Substitute, and that God in Christ by the Spirit has made a
new man of him, and given him a new nature, I am one with such a man." Ephesians
- God's Way Of Reconciliation
"There is no greater change known to man in any realm or
department than the change that we all undergo when we become Christians. It is
a new creation, nothing less." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"If you are simply hoping or trying to be a Christian you
are not one." Ephesians - God's Way Of Reconciliation
"If we are not, in some shape or form, suffering
persecution for Christ's sake, we are not Christians." Ephesians - The
Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"Without the enlightenment which the Holy Spirit alone can
give, gospel truths remain as dark and as hidden to us as they did to the
princes of this world when the Lord of glory was actually amongst men... We need
the inspiration and the anointing and the unction of the Holy Ghost before we
can receive and understand divine truth." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of
Christ
"If a man is not always conscious of the honour and dignity
of being a Christian at all, and especially of having the privilege of preaching
the gospel and of his own inadequacy and insufficiency, he is in a very false
position." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"It is the effectual working of the power of God that makes
anyone a Christian. It means a rebirth, a regeneration. It is not the result of
our decision, it is not something that you and I decide to do; it is what is
done to us!" Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"No man can truly preach the gospel in his own strength and
power. He can talk perhaps, and talk eloquently; but talk is not preaching, and
it will lead to nothing." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"The business of any man who claims to have been called to
be a minister of the gospel is to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ."
Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"It is not the business of the Christian Church to preach
patriotism. It has often done so. The Church has often been nothing but a
recruiting agency, a recruiting station in times of war. That is a travesty of
the Christian ministry." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"There is nothing contingent about God's plan. God never
had to improvise, or to modify, His policy because of what someone else has
done." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"Salvation is the activity of God; not your activity and
mine." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"There is not held out a vestige of hope in the Bible for
peace among men and nations in this world until Christ comes back again and
finally destroys sin and evil." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"If your knowledge of doctrine does not make you a great
man or woman of prayer, you had better examine yourself again. The more you
know, the more it should show itself in your prayer life, in your holy living,
in every other respect." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"Doctrine, I repeat, is meant to be practical and is meant
to lead to a great richness in the Christian life. But it is equally important
to say that your Christian life will never be rich unless you know and apprehend
doctrine. These things must not be separated; they are one and the indivisible."
Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"Let us banish from our thinking once and for ever the
artificial and unscriptural, and indeed sinful, dichotomy which is found in all
forms of Catholic teaching, the teaching which divides people into two groups,
the religious and the laity. There is no such distinction in Scripture."
Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"A central message of the New Testament is that there is no
possibility of prayer, or of entry into the presence of God, except in and
through and by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ... There is always much
interest in prayer when the world is in trouble. When people are driven to their
wits' end they turn to prayer and to God. But according to the Scriptures -- and
I have no other knowledge apart from this -- there is no entrance into the
presence of God except in and through the Lord Jesus Christ." Ephesians - The
Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"The best teaching in the world is useless unless the Holy
Spirit takes hold of it and applies it and opens our understanding to it, and
gives it a deep lodging place in our whole being." Ephesians - The Unsearchable
Riches Of Christ
"You cannot reason anyone into the Christian life. You can
give the reasons for believing but you cannot reason them into belief. You can
put the case before them, but you cannot prove it as if it were a matter of a
theorem in geometry. We must realize that while we are instructing them, we must
also be praying for them. It is only as the Holy Spirit deals with them and
prepares them and opens their understanding that they can receive the truth."
Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"Wherever we may be, whatever our circumstances, in and
through the Lord Jesus Christ we can always come face to face with God."
Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"True Christian praying -- praying in the Spirit, praying
in Christ -- is not only spiritual in character, but it is always specific
also." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"It is of the essence of the Bible's method to show us that
because this is a sinful world there must of necessity be trials and troubles
and problems and tribulations in it... Sin, the lust that is in the human breast
and heart, is the cause of war and discord and of all our troubles, and while it
continues thus there will be troubles." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of
Christ
"When we become Christians, and receive the gift of the new
birth and the new life, a new man is put into us, a new order of life begins,
and we enter a new realm, a spiritual unseen realm." Ephesians - The
Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"When Christ enters the heart the glory is such, the power
is such, that the very physical frame seems to collapse beneath it, and we are
made to tremble and shake." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"If you are making no real effort to understand this
Epistle to the Ephesians, or all the other profound teaching in the New
Testament, you are guilty of sin." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"If Christ is in your heart, then Christ has manifested
Himself to you. And when Christ manifests Himself to us it is not merely a
figure of speech, it is real, it is actual. It is so definite that there is no
doubt at all about it." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"It is possible for us to read the Scriptures with much
intellectual understanding, but without faith it is possible to read over these
great words without understanding their real meaning." Ephesians - The
Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"There should be little difficulty in stating the doctrine
of Justification by Faith clearly. One who cannot do so should never stand in a
pulpit." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"The New Testament, unlike the Roman Catholic Church and
other forms of Catholicism, does not divide believers into religious and laity.
There are no specialists in the Christian life." Ephesians - The Unsearchable
Riches Of Christ
"When a Christian is sealed with the Spirit he has a
consciousness of Christ and is aware also of the power of the Spirit." Ephesians
- The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"If there is no subjective element you are not a Christian
at all; you may only be giving an intellectual assent to truth." Ephesians - The
Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"There is much to be said for the view that we should not
sing certain hymns in public. We can often be dishonest as we sing hymns."
Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"If Christ is in our hearts then certain other things must
not be, and cannot be, in our hearts... There is no need to argue about this.
Certain things are incompatible. There is no concord between Christ and Belial.
If Christ is in my heart there are certain things that have to go out of my
heart. He will not dwell with them. He is the Son of God; He is holy and
sinless." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"One simply cannot believe that the Son of God came on
earth and gave Himself to the death of the Cross for us, and for our sins,
without there being an element of grateful love toward Him immediately."
Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"Knowledge in the truly Christian sense is never merely
intellectual. This is so, and that because it is the knowledge of a Person. The
purpose of all doctrine, the value of all instruction, is to bring us to the
Person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Ephesians - The Unsearchable
Riches Of Christ
"The day of judgment will be a revelation, a day of
surprises. What appeared to us to be very great may then appear to be nothing at
all; and what appeared to us to be trivial will then be seen to be of great
value with the arc-light of God's love shed upon it. What a reversal of our
judgments and our conceptions we shall find!" Ephesians - The Unsearchable
Riches Of Christ
"Much more important than to say our prayers, and more
important than what we may say and desire in our prayers, is our attitude
towards God when we pray to Him." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"If your knowledge of the Scriptures and of the doctrines
of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ has not brought you to this knowledge of
the love of Christ, you should be profoundly dissatisfied and disturbed. All
biblical doctrine is about this blessed Person; and there is no greater snare in
the Christian life than to forget the Person Himself and to live simply on
truths concerning Him." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"Biblical truth is not one subject among others; it is not
something that belongs to a syllabus. It is living truth about a living Person."
Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"Love is powerful and weighty. Love is not weak and flabby
and sentimental. Love is dynamite, love is power. God is love, and His might and
majesty and power are in that love. Thus when you feel the love of God you are
feeling something of the might of God, and the weight and the eternity of God's
glory." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"The one and only way to get rid of self is to look at
Christ. You do not get rid of self by going into a monastery and becoming a
monk. You do not do so by being a hermit on tope of a mountain or by living on a
lonely island all on your own. You can be as full of self in such places as you
ever were. There is only one way to lose self, and that is, to love Another and
to be lost in Him." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"There are, unfortunately, even many evangelical Christians
who deny that God has any direct dealings with men today, and who hold feeling
and emotion at a discount... They are afraid of the power of the Holy Spirit,
and so afraid of certain excesses which are sometimes found in mysticism and in
certain people who claim to have unusual experiences of the Holy Spirit, that
they quench the Spirit and never have any personal knowledge of Christ. Indeed,
they often go so far as to deny the possibility of such a knowledge." Ephesians
- The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"There is, of course, a false mysticism... There is a
morbid, introspective, selfish, impractical and useless type of mysticism. But
because certain mystics have been guilty of such things we should not allow
ourselves to be blinded to that which is a true and healthy mysticism, a
mysticism which is taught in the Bible itself." Ephesians - The Unsearchable
Riches Of Christ
" There is always the danger of rejecting a true teaching
because we dislike a false presentation of it." Ephesians - The Unsearchable
Riches Of Christ
"The Lord Jesus Christ is not among us in the flesh now;
but in the Spirit He can be much more real, and we can know Him with an intimacy
that the disciples and apostles did not enjoy when He was here in the days of
His flesh." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"We have made of activity an end in itself. We say we must
be getting busy. And in a carnal manner we are attempting to do God's work. But
how little happens! It is not surprising. We are forgetting the true motive and
the energizing power. We should not work as Christians simply because it is good
and right for Christians to work. The motive is all-important. We must work
because of the love of Christ. We must not work because we decide to do so or
because we are told that now we are converted we must get busy. Our motive must
not be to fill the churches again. That is a travesty of the New Testament
picture and manner, as is the whole idea of training people to be witnesses and
to do personal evangelism. Everything today has to be organized, and the
impression is given that no Christian can witness without under-going a course
of training... The man who knows the love of Christ in his heart can do more in
one hour than the busy type of man can do in a century. God forbid that we
should ever make of activity an end in itself. Let us realize that the motive
must come first, and that the motive must ever be the love of Christ." Ephesians
- The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"Once a man has the love of Christ in his heart you need
not train him to witness; he will do it. He will know the power, the constraint,
the motive; everything is already there." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of
Christ
"We cannot command blessings or claim them. God in His own
sovereign will and grace dispenses His blessings. But though we cannot command
them, we can do what blind Bartimaeus did... The Lord walks along certain roads;
it is His custom and His habit to pass in certain directions. So all I can do is
to tell you how to take up your position along the side of these roads."
Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"No one has ever been tempted in this world by the devil as
the Son of God was tempted; and the closer we get to Him the more shall we be
tried and tempted." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"The more we seek the Lord's face and the knowledge of His
love, the more shall we become acquainted with the wiles of the devil and the
fiery darts of the wicked one. The devil thereby pays us a great compliment; but
we must remember that he is powerful and mighty, and if we go in our own
strength and power he will certainly defeat us... If you seek to be near to
Christ the devil will bring out all his reserves against you, and you will
become aware of the depths of Satan in a manner you have never even imagined."
Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"Christian people who do not know what it is to be
subjected to an onslaught of Satan or to a Satanic attack are but babes in
Christ." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"Prayer really means talking to God, listening to God, and
having communion with God." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"In a sense the central purpose of Scripture is to reveal
the Lord Jesus Christ. This is true of the Old Testament as well as the New."
Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"The fact is that God has continued to speak to the saints
through His word throughout the centuries." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches
Of Christ
"To be as God, is -- for man, Christian or otherwise -- a
sheer impossibility. Indeed, it was the original sin of man to listen to the
suggestion of the devil that this was a possibility." Ephesians - The
Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"You cannot be holy without knowing your doctrine. Doctrine
is the direct key that leads to holiness." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches
Of Christ
"If we really desire to do things for God and for Christ,
then, according to the New Testament teaching we do not begin to act at once; we
must first make certain that we are filled with the fullness of God, and the
power that follows of necessity from that." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches
Of Christ
"The Christian faith necessitates an entirely different
type and mode of thinking. The new man in Christ has a spiritual sense, a
spiritual instinct, which enables him to follow and understand spiritual truth
which means nothing to the natural man, the non-Christian." Ephesians - The
Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"When God controls our hearts we have ceased to be governed
by self. When the love of God comes in, the love of self goes out. And when the
love of self goes out and the love of God comes in, we begin to love others."
Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"There is an instinct in the child of God for holiness and
for righteousness. He no longer complains that the Christian life is narrow and
restricting. If you feel that it is, you are confessing that you lack this
instinct of the new-born babe in Christ." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of
Christ
"I take leave to say in all humility, that there is nothing
more blessed under heaven than to know something of the power of the Holy
Spirit." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"Sometimes in our prayers we think that we have been
somewhat daring, and that we have asked for something which is quite impossible.
The Apostle tells us that we must never harbour such thoughts, because God is
able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we can ask." Ephesians - The
Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"God is not only able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all
that we can ask; but also beyond all that we can imagine, all that we can think
of, all that we can conjure up with our highest and most inspired thoughts and
imaginations." Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"Surely our greatest trouble in the Christian life is our
failure to realize that God is not as man. The greatest sin of every Christian,
and of the Christian Church in general is to limit the eternal, absolute power
of God to the measure of our own minds and concepts and understandings."
Ephesians - The Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"How constantly are we guilty of limiting the power of God
in our petitions and requests for ourselves... We are guilty of the same
unbelief when we limit our petitions with respect to others... God's word to us
today, as of old, is 'Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it.'" Ephesians - The
Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"No man can believe the gospel in and of himself; the power
of the Spirit alone can lead anyone to belief; without it we are spiritually
dead and lost and ruined, and under the wrath of God." Ephesians - The
Unsearchable Riches Of Christ
"Salvation is something that is entirely dependent upon the
purpose of God. Before the creation of the world and of man, God conceived the
purpose of saving many of those who would fall and this he does in accord with
his election of them... There is therefore no more to be said. Salvation is
entirely of God. Men and women can never boast of the fact that they have saved
themselves, not even their faith saves them." Romans - Saving Faith
"If a man is saved, it is because God has saved him. But if
a man is lost, that is to be attributed to his own rejection of the gospel and
his rebellion against God's way of salvation." Romans - Saving Faith
"If a man is saved it is because God saves him; if he is
lost it is because he has not believed. Paul teaches both and we must not try to
get rid of either." Romans - Saving Faith
"The greatest evangelists this world has ever known have
been men who have believed in the sovereign, free election of God. Let us not
forget that! Two of the greatest evangelists that England has ever produced have
been George Whitefield and Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and they both preached and
believed in unconditional election. They said that no man is saved unless God
has chosen him and set him apart for Himself -- the doctrine of Romans 9 -- yet
they were two men who were indefatigable as evangelists, urging men and women to
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. The same thing can be said of others in other
countries: Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland in Wales; Jonathan Edwards in
American, Samuel Davies, the writer of many hymns, and David Brainerd, who
evangelized the Indians. All these men held this high doctrine of election, but
they were indefatigable in their evangelism and in their praying. But here is
another interesting thing. The founders of the great missionary enterprise, the
modern missionary movements, were all men who held to this high doctrine of
Romans 9. William Carey believed that if someone was saved it was because this
was the purpose of God according to election; and yet he was, in so many senses,
the father of the modern missionary movement." Romans - Saving Faith
"If you find that you put greater emphasis upon doing than
upon being, it is always an indication that you should be careful. If you are
more anxious to do things than to be a saint, you had better examine your zeal
again." Romans - Saving Faith
"Christian people are mistaking natural qualities,
niceness, a cultural veneer or politeness, for true Christian grace. It seems
that we are no longer capable of differentiating between the two. How often
today is affability mistaken for saintliness! ‘What a gracious man he is,’ they
say. What they really mean is this: he never criticizes and he agrees with
everybody and everything. I know of nothing more dangerous than that. These
so-called gracious men are of course, altogether nicer than John the Baptist or
the Apostle Paul! I do not hesitate to go further -- they are very much nicer
than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who denounced the Pharisees! Affability is
not saintliness. A mere intellectual, oral flabbiness, is not synonymous with
graciousness and with the possession of grace!" Romans - Saving Faith
"Our best deeds are impure, polluted, unworthy. Any man who
talks about his goodness and his righteousness has completely misunderstood the
whole of the biblical teaching. His words are an abomination in the sight of
God, who does not see as man sees nor judge as man judges." Romans - Saving
Faith
"The last people to believe the gospel, and to be saved,
are always those who think that they can save themselves." Romans - Saving Faith
"Any teaching concerning salvation which does not express
itself in terms of the demands of the law of God is a false teaching... any
teaching, or any thinking, about salvation which does not put it in terms of
satisfying the law of God is completely false and is to be rejected as being of
the devil himself." Romans - Saving Faith
"The law is God's expression of His holy character and
shows what He expects from the human race. So we must never say that the law has
been abolished by the coming of our Lord and that God no longer demands that it
be kept. He does. he demands it still of everybody. There is no greater error
than to set law and grace in opposition... Indeed, we must go further and say
that even though we become Christians we do not say farewell to the law, we must
still keep it. It still makes its demands and shows the kind of life which we
should be living. And one of the purposes of salvation is to enable us to live a
life such as is demanded by the holy law of God. It is a very dangerous teaching
which says that the Christian now has a lower standard." Romans - Saving Faith
"Adam, the first, was perfect, but he could not keep the
law; he failed. If God had created another Adam, he, too, would have failed in
exactly the same way. The devil is too strong. There is only one way of
salvation -- God must become flesh. And God did become flesh! The incarnation is
an absolute necessity. Christ came into the world because He had to." Romans -
Saving Faith
"Paul says that the purposes of God have not failed, in
spite of Jewish unbelief. The mistake, of course, was to assume that it was
God's purpose to save everybody who belonged to Israel. That was the cardinal
error." Romans - Saving Faith
"Salvation is entirely a matter of God's free, sovereign
choice... Nevertheless, it is equally true to say that if a man is not saved, it
is because of his own rejection of the gospel which is offered to him." Romans -
Saving Faith
"If you have all the bishops in the universe preaching
justification by works, it does not matter at all. This is not what God says,
and they are wrong! And we must not be afraid of saying so. They will say that
we have a wrong spirit. We will say that something worse is true of them: they
are liars and blasphemers who are substituting their own thoughts for God's
plain, explicit commandment. You see how far astray we have gone at the present
time with all this niceness, and these warnings that we must not criticise. We
must criticise! This is a doctrine that leads to hell and to damnation! It is a
denial of the doctrine of God and of His dear Son" Romans - Saving Faith
"The world will praise you if you try to justify yourself
by your works; it is doing so. It praises men and women as great Christians who
deny the very elements of the Christian faith. But that which is highly esteemed
among men is abomination in the sight of God." Romans - Saving Faith
"Trying to keep God's law is a way of despair, of
hopelessness, it is a way of death." Romans - Saving Faith
"We are not saved by our understanding but by a simple
trust in, that is an abandonment of ourselves to, the Lord Jesus Christ." Romans
- Saving Faith
"Those who say that they can make themselves Christians --
well, there is no difficulty about them, they are altogether wrong; they have
not started seeing the gospel at all!" Romans - Saving Faith
"In many Roman Catholic churches you see Mary and,
somewhere behind her, there He is on the cross! Or look at their pictures. Very
often Jesus is represented as a baby; He is either that or someone who is far
removed! Mary is always central and prominent. And this is an utter denial of
Paul's teaching. We do not need her. Nor do we need the saints... Do not be
mislead, dear Christian people, by niceness. Realise what their teaching is,
what Roman Catholic doctrine says, and you will see, as Luther saw, that it is a
denial of the plain teaching of the Scripture." Romans - Saving Faith
"When we say, JESUS IS LORD, we mean that Jesus Christ of
Nazareth is God and man! We say with the Apostle Paul, GREAT IS THE MYSTERY OF
GODLINESS: GOD WAS MANIFEST IN THE FLESH; and with John, THE WORD WAS MADE
FLESH, DWELT AMONG US. We must not just utter these words without realising what
we are confessing." Romans - Saving Faith
"Jesus Himself claimed to be the Lord and did so many
times. It is almost impossible to select examples of this because there are so
many of them." Romans - Saving Faith
"Our Lord performed His miracles primarily in order to say
that He was the Lord... He had not come primarily to heal people's sicknesses.
He did do that, but He performed healing miracles mainly that they should be
proofs that He is the Son of God, who has control over all things." Romans -
Saving Faith
"We cannot play fast and loose with the four Gospels. There
is your evidence to prove that Jesus is indeed Lord. That is the first element
in the content of saving faith." Romans - Saving Faith
"The resurrection of Christ is a proclamation of the fact
that He is the Lord, the eternal Son of God." Romans - Saving Faith
"The essence of the gospel therefore is those two things:
that Christ died for our sins and that He rose again from the dead. All this is
a fulfillment of all the prophecies of the Old Testament. In other words, if we
do not believe that Jesus is the Lord, if we do not believe that He had to die
before we could be saved, we are not Christians. If we do no believe in the
resurrection we cannot be Christians. These are the first principles without
which there is no such thing as Christianity at all." Romans - Saving Faith
"I cannot understand the type of Christian who dislikes
doctrine... doctrine is nothing but the biblical answer to our questions... the
Bible is full of doctrine; the Bible answers our questions. God is so gracious
that He even asks them for us and then answers them." Romans - Saving Faith
"You cannot believe truly in the resurrection without
believing in the doctrine of the wrath of God upon all sin... If you deny one of
these doctrines, fairly soon you will be denying them all. If you are logical
and consistent you will have to. All these doctrines belong together -- every
single one of them. It is a complete body of doctrine. Omit any one of them and
you are bound to be in trouble with all the rest." Romans - Saving Faith
"If our Lord had not risen from the dead and been
glorified, He would never have been able to send the Spirit as He did on the day
of Pentecost. This was a very important doctrine in the early church, and it
should be in the church today. Often it is not; but it should be. It has been a
vital doctrine in every great period of revival, and it is something that is
intimately connected with the resurrection." Romans - Saving Faith
"We are living in a time when there is a great emphasis on
evangelism, and when pressure is brought upon preachers to get decisions... I
myself have been in meetings when I would have said that the gospel was not
preached at all. Nevertheless, appeals have been made at the end and people have
come forward: but did they know what they were doing? This is a danger that
confronts us at a time like this. Men and women may think that a mere
subscription to a formula saves them; indeed, according to some, merely going
forward saves them. Many people think that, having gone forward, they are
automatically saved, though they do not know what they believe and exactly what
they have done." Romans - Saving Faith
"We are living in a time of trouble; may people are unhappy
and face great problems... Now if you merely say to those people, 'Confess with
your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God hath raised him
from the dead,' I say you are misleading them. If you merely say to them,
'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved,' and then ask, 'Do you
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ?' and they say, "Yes!', if you then reply, 'You
are saved,' you are misleading them. It is our business to make quite certain
that they know what they are believing." Romans - Saving Faith
"There is all the difference in the world between having
your preaching controlled by theology, and preaching theology." Romans - Saving
Faith
"We must not say that we have saved ourselves by believing,
because the answer is, 'For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of
yourselves: it is the gift of God.' So we must clear that preliminary point."
Romans - Saving Faith
"'Faith is not the basis of our salvation; it is only the
instrument. The foundation, the basis, of our salvation is the Lord Jesus Christ
and His work on our behalf. Faith, then, is nothing but the channel by means of
which the work of the Lord Jesus Christ becomes efficacious in the children of
God." Romans - Saving Faith
"Theological intellectualism is as bad as Sandemanianism,
it is as bad as the Roman Catholic position, it is as bad as believism or
decisionism. A man who thinks that mere acceptance of a body of doctrine is
saving faith, is a man who is deluding himself." Romans - Saving Faith
"It is a terrible thing to feed people's intellects at the
expense of their souls." Romans - Saving Faith
"You do not merely accept the truth with your mind, you
must be born again. That is the New Testament teaching, and I am convinced that
the main explanation of the state of the Christian church today is the neglect
of the doctrine of regeneration. That is the fundamental need. There is too much
believism without regeneration. There is intellectualism without life. But the
whole emphasis of the Lord's teaching is on the absolute necessity of
regeneration." Romans - Saving Faith
"Conviction is not repentance; conviction leads to
repentance. But you can be convicted without repentance." Romans - Saving Faith
"You cannot have saving faith without knowing something
about this sorrow - sorrow that you have grieved a holy, loving God, sorrow that
you have treated God, who has been so kind and gracious, in the way that you
have... And if you have never felt that you are unworthy, if you have never
hated yourself, then I think you had better examine the foundations again.
Christians are people who hate themselves because they see that they are
miserable sinners who have rebelled against their Maker and Creator. Godly
sorrow! It is essential." Romans - Saving Faith
"I cannot possibly regard men and women as Christians
unless they have known an element of fear: fear because they have sinned against
God; fear because they realize that they are in the hands of God, and that He is
a holy, just and righteous God, and they have got to stand before Him in the
Judgment. If people know nothing about the fear of death and of the Judgment, I
cannot see how they can be Christians at all. Fear! It is a vital part of saving
faith." Romans - Saving Faith
"If you have the true view of saving faith and belief, you
will know that when people are convicted by the Spirit of God, they will seek
help. You need not force them to: they will have to, they will be so miserable,
frightened and alarmed." Romans - Saving Faith
"You can believe with your mind that Jesus is the Son of
god, you can have your head packed with theology, but unless you have felt your
need of a Saviour, and unless you have committed yourself utterly to Him and
rely only upon Him and give yourself to Him that He may save you, you have not
got saving faith." Romans - Saving Faith
"Saving faith is not a natural quality which everybody
possesses... Saving faith is a matter of the heart, and the human heart is by
nature desperately wicked and deceitful... When we realize this, when we
understand that we are all dead in trespasses and sins, that we must be born
again, that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for
they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are
spiritually discerned, then we see that it is no use saying we have all got the
faith we need. We have not; not one of us has it... Saving faith is something
that is wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit of God." Romans - Saving Faith
"Faith is the first active, positive demonstration the soul
gives that it is born again. Before men and women can believe, their hearts must
be changed... We have not got this faith! It is the gift of the Spirit of God.
It is the work that He does in the soul, in the heart, and without that, saving
faith is a sheer impossibility." Romans - Saving Faith
"Faith is not some natural endowment which we all have. As
the Scripture teaches everywhere, it is the gift of God... Nobody has faith
except the believer. It is the special possession of those who are the called by
God and are the children of God." Romans - Saving Faith
"When men and women are convicted, they know and feel it,
something has happened in the realm of their emotions. So there is always that
element of knowledge in true saving faith. Those who have never felt anything at
all have not got saving faith." Romans - Saving Faith
"If a man tells me that ht has believed in Christ and tells
me at the same time that he feels exactly as he did before, that he has no
desire which is different from what he had before, that he is not anxious not to
sin, that he has no sense of anxiety to serve God and the Lord Jesus Christ --
then I say that that man is not saved." Romans - Saving Faith
"This distinction between accepting Christ as Saviour and
taking Him as Lord is utterly unscriptural... You cannot divide Him, He is one."
Romans - Saving Faith
"The difficult point, of course, is the point at which you
decide where you cross the line from proclaiming that you are a Christian to
parading the fact... It is one thing to proclaim, it is another and a very
different thing to parade." Romans - Saving Faith
"My thinking, if I believe that Jesus is the Lord, must be
governed entirely by the Bible. In other words, I am not governed by modern
thought. If I am governed by that, then Jesus is not the Lord of my intellect.
So I cannot be governed by modern thought or by recent knowledge or by the
latest discoveries of science. The moment I begin to be governed by those
things, then Jesus is no longer Lord to me. I am putting myself in a superior
position. I am making myself the lord." Romans - Saving Faith
"I have no understanding of the way of salvation unless I
believe that an individual man fell -- that is the argument of Romans 5:12-21.
The whole case depends upon this: that as in Adam... so in Christ. The one man
fell and brought down calamity; the other man gave obedience and thereby saves.
That is Christian salvation. The moment I begin to deny the fall of man or
believe that man is gradually evolving upwards, there is no need for an
atonement, no need for miracles and so on." Romans - Saving Faith
"When you hear certain modern scholars talking about a new
morality you just know that it is the lie of the devil." Romans - Saving Faith
"It is not a light matter to say that you believe that
Jesus is Lord, and that God has raised Him from the dead. If these things are
true, then nothing else matters. This is everything. Everything is subordinated
to this and has to be fitted in to it. This is the thing that controls my life
-- mind, and heart, and will, the whole personality, everything I am... Our
whole person proclaims that Jesus is the Lord, that He is our own personal
Saviour and Redeemer, and that we have no hope in life, in death, or in
eternity, save in this same Jesus, who is Son of God and Lord of glory." Romans
- Saving Faith
"This element of foretelling in prophecy is one of the
greatest proofs of the divine inspiration and inerrancy of the Scripture and
therefore of the authority of the Bible as a whole." Romans - Saving Faith
"The law of God has become an enemy to us, thought it is
the law of God. It is an enemy because of our weakness. It makes a demand of us
that, in and of ourselves, we can never fulfill. So Christ, in order to save us,
has to deal with the law. And he has. Believe on Him and there will never be an
occasion when the law can bring anything whatsoever against you which will
condemn you." Romans - Saving Faith
"The Lord Jesus Christ, as we say in working out the
meaning of the statement that Jesus is Lord, is Jehovah, and Jehovah -- God --
is the Lord of the whole universe." Romans - Saving Faith
"If all fullness is in Him, you do not need to add to Him.
You cannot add to God, can you? Well, you do not add to Jesus Christ either. It
is an insult to Him to do so... That is why some of us cannot abide nor tolerate
a doctrine which tells us that Mary is Co-redemptrix! That is why we cannot
grant that we need to pray to any of the saints, or to anybody else, for help,
or do penances and so on. It is simply a denial of this teaching in the Epistle
to the Colossians, as of the whole of the "Bible." Romans - Saving Faith
"Faith is a gift of God: He gives us the faith... What else
do you need? Well, anything you may need is all in Christ, in His glorious
all-sufficiency." Romans - Saving Faith
"If you have any confidence in the flesh you are not a
Christian." Romans - Saving Faith
"There is no greater sin than not to see your need of
Christ... There is nothing more abhorrent to God than that men and women should
think that anything about them is sufficient to commend them to God. There is no
greater sin than to refuse the Son of God and His sacrificial atoning death."
Romans - Saving Faith
"There is only one way of salvation, there has always been
only one way and there will never be another. Salvation is always by the grace
of God in and through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Romans - Saving Faith
"There is a general call to tell people everywhere to
repent and believe the gospel. But it is not efficacious in the case of all. A
person belongs to the company of the 'whosoever' because of the efficacious
call, this special call, which goes beyond the general." Romans - Saving Faith
"The primary cause of anybody's condemnation is the sin of
Adam... Adam was the representative of the entire human race, and when Adam
sinned we all sinned. That is the main cause of our condemnation. If we had done
nothing at all, we are all already condemned in Adam. It is quite unscriptural
and wrong to say that it is belief or rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ that
now determines salvation. It is not. A man or woman is already condemned...
Everyone is born in sin and in condemnation. We have all sinned and we are all
dead in Adam." Romans - Saving Faith
"The message of the Bible needs to be presented in a manner
that is calculated to lead to salvation." Romans - Saving Faith
"Today, because people do not believe in preaching, they
believe in new translations of the Bible... great terms like justification and
sanctification, glorification and many others, I would argue, cannot be
presented simply by using alternative translations. They are terms that have to
be expounded and illustrated. Modern translations are evacuating these terms of
their real meaning. It is only the preacher who can really show their profound
content... Many translations are ultimately standing between the people and the
real meaning of the terms." Romans - Saving Faith
"Christianity is Christ. Christianity centres in Christ --
it is in Him. Without Him there is no Christianity. It is the Person who
matters; it is the Lord who counts." Romans - Saving Faith
"I believe that the state of the church is to be explained
by one thing only, and that is that the message of the gospel is not being
preached, and has not been preached for a number of years. I believe that the
people have been more or less driven out of the churches by false gospels, by
false preaching, and that is why it is so important that we must be clear
concerning the true gospel." Romans - Saving Faith
"When God has started doing something to me, He will finish
it; and if He gave up His Son to the death of the cross that I might be
forgiven, He is not going to abandon me now. He will go on with the work until
it is complete. If I am reconciled by the death of the Son, how much more shall
I be saved by the life of the Son!" Romans - Saving Faith
"You can never have such a thing as general faith. Faith is
always specific and it is always about Christ. There is no saving faith unless
it is centred on Jesus Christ and Him crucified. People may think they believe
in God, they may think they are being blessed by God, but if their faith is not
centred on Jesus Christ and Him crucified, it is of no avail." Romans - Saving
Faith
"Faith comes out of -- is produced by -- that Word of God
as it is applied and planted in us by the Holy Spirit." Romans - Saving Faith
"There are so many people who give an intellectual assent
to the truth, but that is not faith. We have got to draw the line between merely
accepting propositions, merely giving an agreement with our minds to certain
things we hear, and a real and a true faith." Romans - Saving Faith
"Nobody can have faith unless the Lord opens the heart. It
is impossible." Romans - Saving Faith
"The great danger that people fall into is this: they
forget that an essential part of biblical teaching in connection with election
and predestination is to assert, at the same time, our responsibility... Faith
is the gift of God. All who are saved are saved because God has foreknown them,
chosen them, predestinated and called them. Yes, but those who hear the gospel
and who do not believe it are responsible for their unbelief." Romans - Saving
Faith
"The true way of salvation can be summed up like this: it
is entirely the result of God's election... There is only one explanation of why
any single person has ever been saved, and it is the action and the choice of
God. There is nothing in us that contributes to salvation - nothing at al!"
Romans - Saving Faith
"There is a general call of the gospel, and there is a
special call. The universal invitation goes out but all do not obey. Who are
those who obey? They are the ones who are the called of God, those who receive
this effectual call, this result of the election of grace." Romans - Saving
Faith
"It is to me one of the most inexplicable things that any
Christian person should ever object to the doctrine of the election of God. My
dear friends, the Christian church would have perished centuries ago, probably
in the first century, without the election of God... The Word of God would ahve
taken none effect were it not that God had kept it going, and He keeps it going
by the principle of election, and election is entirely a matter of grace. Nobody
is chose because he is good or because he believes. If you take credit to
yourself because you believe the gospel you are denying the essential teaching
of the New Testament." Romans - To God's Glory
"Nobody is saved apart from the election of God. If you
take credit for the fact that you are a believer in Jesus Christ I almost
suggest to you that you are not saved... the teaching of the Scripture is that
no man can contribute anything to his own salvation; it is all according to the
election of God." Romans - To God's Glory
"Punishment is taught in the whole Bible from beginning to
end. You cannot take it out of the Bible and have a Bible left. It is integral
to its whole message from the very beginning." Romans - To God's Glory
"If the gospel cannot save those to whom we tend to react
so violently, it is no gospel." Romans - To God's Glory
"I know people who say, We now understand things in the
Bible which we did not before, because of our recent knowledge. The moment you
say that you have already gone wrong, because obviously the Apostle uses
illustrations which could be understood two thousand years ago, and if
you can only understand an illustration in terms of modern scientific
knowledge you are wrong. That knowledge was not available then, so the Apostle's
illustration would have been of no value." Romans - To God's Glory
"God does not act according to nature in the matter of
salvation. It takes a miracle to save a man." Romans - To God's Glory
"There is only one way of salvation and it has always been
the same... There has never been a way of salvation except by faith. Never!...
It does not matter who we are, it is always by faith, and it is always by God's
supernatural action." Romans - To God's Glory
"The Christian church is one and one only. It takes the
same grace of God to convert a Jew as a Gentile, and the Gentile as a Jew, and
they will share the same blessings, they are all joint heirs of exactly the same
promise and of the same blessed hope." Romans - To God's Glory
"If you think you are saved by your nationality or by your
own inherent goodness or any merit that belongs to you, you are denying the
whole of the Christian teaching with regard to salvation." Romans - To God's
Glory
"Men and women get into trouble always because instead of
taking the revelation of the character of God and His ways with respect to men
as we have it revealed in the Bible, they substitute their own ideas for that,
or they take a part of the teaching of the Bible and they reject the remainder."
Romans - To God's Glory
"The devil, our adversary, cannot prevent our becoming
Christians, but he can cause much damage among us. One of his methods is to make
us look back on that from which we were called, rather than forward to that to
which we are called." Ephesians - Christian Unity
"By and large, we have forgotten that we are strangers and
pilgrims in this world. The fact is, the New Testament does not offer us very
much in this world." Ephesians - Christian Unity
"Protestantism has become almost the exact opposite of what
it was at its beginning in the sixteenth century. Why does such a thing happen?
It occurs as a result of the struggle between the spirit and the form... Certain
dangers arise, and the biggest danger of all is that the form tends to cripple
the spirit... Now perhaps one of the clearest illustrations of all this is the
way in which the so-called Higher Critical movement came in, in the nineteenth
century. There was the church; she was orthodox; perhaps not as alive as she
should have been but at any rate she was fairly orthodox up until about 1830.
But this teaching gradually came in from Germany and it began to insinuate its
way into theological colleges in this country. People began to notice but
instead of dealing with it they thought that these new ideas would gradually
pass. It went on and by now it has become dominant and the truth is having to
fight for its life." Romans - To God's Glory
"The history of the church shows a constant repetition of
this -- that it is those who belong to the visible church who are always the
most bitter persecutors of the true Israel. It is as true today as it has always
been." Romans - To God's Glory
"We have nothing to do with a church that is apostate, with
a church that puts organization before the truth, tradition before the truth,
which has forgotten the very principle that brought it into being and made it
what it is. A church which has departed from that is no longer a church, and for
us to be associated with such a body is to partake of its sin and to be partly
responsible for its apostasy." Romans - To God's Glory
"There is only one thing that admits anybody into the
church of God and that is faith. Or putting it negatively, the only hindrance
and obstacle is unbelief. There is only one principle which God ever uses in His
dealings with men and He has never used another, it has always been faith from
the very beginning. There never will be any other way whatsoever. Salvation is
always by faith, and by faith only. This is the cardinal doctrine of
justification by faith only." Romans - To God's Glory
"There is nothing here to teach that a man can be saved,
then lost, then saved again. Such a thing is taught nowhere in the Scriptures.
There is only one reason why people ever teach anything like that and that is
that they forget the doctrine of regeneration. They put so much emphasis on a
man's decision." Romans - To God's Glory
"The way to unity is to preach the Gospel, not to set up
new offices and organizations. Unity results from a comprehension and
understanding of the truth." Ephesians - Christian Unity
"The end of all doctrine is to lead us to the knowledge of
God, and the worship of God; any knowledge we may have is useless if it does not
bring us to that point." Ephesians - Christian Unity
"Every individual Christian has been saved in exactly the
same manner as everyone else. The Apostle Paul's salvation is no different qua
salvation from any other Christian's salvation. All conversions are essentially
the same... Regeneration is the work of the Spirit of God, and Him alone. It is
a miracle in every single case, and it is always the same miracle." Ephesians -
Christian Unity
"Let us be careful to observe that the Apostle does not lay
down a rigid system of church order. Indeed it is questionable whether any such
thing is to be found anywhere in the Scriptures... Christ in the Church is the
Head of the Church, and wherever two or three are gathered together in His name
He is there in the midst." Ephesians - Christian Unity
"Nothing is so far removed from the Apostle's picture of
the Church as institutionalism and ecclesiasticism. These 'isms' are not to be
found anywhere in the New Testament. Institutionalism is a denial of the picture
of the Church as the body of Christ, and of Christ alone as the Head, and of the
Holy Spirit making and preserving this blessed unity." Ephesians - Christian
Unity
"There is a gradation of offices in the Church; some are
more important and others are less important, but all are essential... But I
must add immediately that we must no harden this into a rigid absolute division.
There is nothing in the Scriptures to support a monarchial idea of Church
government. We are to call no man lord in the Church." Ephesians - Christian
Unity
"The first question with regard to the problem of
evangelization is not the state of the world outside, it is the condition of the
Church. Defective views of the Church and her functioning lead to the employment
of worldly and carnal methods... The real problem is the still the nature of the
Church." Ephesians - Christian Unity
"The work of the ministry does not consist in talking about
current affairs or events, the minister is not to find his message in
newspapers, he is not to be entertaining the people by telling them stories, or
provoking laugher. He is to preach the Word." Ephesians - Christian Unity
"The history of the Church shows clearly that her great and
glorious periods, such as during and after the Protestant Reformation, always
follow the mighty preaching of doctrine... The great doctrines of the faith must
be the basis of the Christian diet. Following the doctrine must come the
teaching which applies the doctrine." Ephesians - Christian Unity
"There is far too much complacency in the Church. The
position is really desperate, and judgment must begin at the house of God. Do we
realize our responsibility for the state of the Church, and the state of the
world? We shall be held accountable." Ephesians - Christian Unity
"Nothing is more devastating than a ministry which is only
intellectual, and which never disturbs." Ephesians - Christian Unity
"Any presentation of Christian truth that tends to produce
a sameness in its people is, by that test, wrong and false. The cults, as we
have seen, always reproduce a type; their members are almost identical, and all
conform to a pattern. They use the same expressions, they speak them in the same
manner. There is no suggestion of this in the New Testament; and it is never a
characteristic of a true work of the Holy Spirit... Counterfeits are always
mechanical and they show that they are such by reproducing people who are
identical in most respects. The glory of the Church lies in this extraordinary
variety and variation; there is not only unity but also the perfection of each
of the parts." Ephesians - Christian Unity
"There is one invariable characteristic of the false
teaching, which is, that it always takes from and detracts from the glory of the
Lord Jesus Christ... Everything is to be tested by the position given to the
Lord Jesus Christ. If He is not essential, if He is not central, if He is not
unique and above and beyond all, and dwarfing everyone and everything, then the
teaching is false." Ephesians - Christian Unity
"There is only one way of salvation, and Jew and Gentile
enter into it in exactly the same way. And there is only one position for
Christians, whether Jews or Gentiles, and that is members of the Body of
Christ." Romans - To God's Glory
"It is not scriptural to speak of the church OF anywhere
under the sun, because we must ever preserve this distinction. The church is a
gathering of Christian believers... I think that a great deal of the modern
confusion is due to the fact that we are talking far too much about the "church"
instead of thinking in terms of "churches", instead of thinking of gatherings of
the saints where Christ is in the midst, and it is rather an important
distinction." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"Martyrs are men who know what they believe." Romans - The
Gospel Of God
"This idea that you can believe in Christ first as your
Saviour only, and then perhaps, years later, go on to take Him as your Lord, is
a denial of Scripture." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"My friends, the doctrine of the Trinity is the
differentiating doctrine of the Christian faith... There are other religions
that believe in God, but there is not another that preaches and teaches the
doctrine of the blessed Holy Trinity." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"Scripture is my authority and I must never go outside it.
I must never add to it; I must never take from it. This is the whole revelation
of God to man, and it is the only authority." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"Hold on to your Old Testament, my friend, and beware lest
you interpret the New at any point or in any respect in a manner that does not
show that the New is the fulfillment of the Old." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"There are people today who seem to teach and to believe
that you can take Christ as your Saviour without taking Him as your Lord. They
say you can take justification without taking sanctification. They say you can
get forgiveness of sins without holiness. It is a lie." Romans - The Gospel Of
God
"There is no such thing as Christianity apart from the
Person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. That does not mean that the Lord
Jesus Christ is a bearer of good news from God. No! It means that He Himself is
the good news." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"There is nothing which I know of which is more
unscriptural, and which is more dangerous to the soul, than to divide doctrine
from life... The reason for this is that if your life and your mode of living is
not the outcome of your doctrine, it is not Christian living; it is something
else." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"God does not look on a man favourably until he is in
Christ." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"God is Father to the Christian. He is not Father to
anybody else." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"A revival never needs to be advertised, it always
advertises itself. You do not need to advertise the work of the Holy Spirit; it
is its own advertisement." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"Oh, that the church would concentrate on experiencing the
power of the Holy Ghost! Believe me that when the Holy Ghost descends into a
single heart or into a group of people in power, in a most amazing manner, in a
manner that no one can understand, the news will go and spread, and hearts will
be kindled and people will make journeys." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"The only authority in the church that the New Testament
recognizes is spiritual authority. I mean by that, authority given, not to an
office, but to a man. There is no inherent authority in an office. The authority
is the presence of the Holy Spirit in the man." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"Face to face with God all men are miserable, wretched,
hopeless sinners, and you and I as Christians must make that clear to them."
Romans - The Gospel Of God
"Had you ever noticed that Christ gives repentance quite as
much as He gives forgiveness of sins?... Repentance is the gift of grace, the
gift of God." God The Holy Spirit
"Regeneration must come at the very beginning because if it
is possible for me to do something which will eventually lead to my
regeneration, I do not need regeneration... So regeneration is not only
essential, but is essential at the beginning; you can have nothing without it.
It is impossible for anything to happen in us which can make us Christians until
regeneration has taken place." God The Holy Spirit
"The seed of faith is placed in us in regeneration and will
be called into activity by the effectual call." God The Holy Spirit
"Faith is not a matter of reason. Some people teach that it
is. They say that if only men and women would use their minds, they would be
bound to become Christians; they can reason themselves into Christianity. But
that is thoroughly unscriptural. They cannot because the natural man or woman's
reason is also fallen. Not only that, there are supernatural and miraculous
elements in faith to which reason cannot attain." God The Holy Spirit
"The gospel is the power of God. It does not depend upon me
or my faithfulness. If it did we would all be lost. It is God's power to save
and to keep, to justify and to sanctify and to glorify - to take us right into
heaven itself... The gospel works and will work, until all that God has purposed
by its means shall have been completed." Romans - To God's Glory
"All that God has done in and through the Lord Jesus Christ
for us, all the riches of God's grace in Christ, come to us by the power of the
Holy Spirit through the word of the gospel. That is how God does it." Romans -
To God's Glory
"There is no such thing as being too great a sinner to be
saved. The number of your sins does not come into the matter at all. The
character of your sins does not matter one scrap. There is no difference in the
sight of God between the murderer and the most self-righteous person - none
whatsoever! Both are equally lost." Romans - To God's Glory
"Let us be clear about this expression "By faith". What
does it mean? Well, it does not mean that faith is the condition of salvation.
It does not mean that our faith is the thing that determines our salvation. It
does not mean that faith is something which is demanded as a condition of our
being saved." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"Faith is the contradiction of everything that is
meritorious in man. Faith is the contradiction and the negation of every
tendency in man to say that his merit is enough... so that if what you call your
faith has not pushed right out of your life every sense of worthiness you ever
had, you have not got faith." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"There is the theory of Evolution, for instance, which the
average man takes for granted now, a century or so after the publication of
Charles Darwin's book, The Origin of Species. Now what an important book that
was! That one book, I suppose, has been more responsible for undermining
people's faith and belief in the Scriptures, and in God's way of salvation, than
any other single book." Romans - The Gospel Of God
"The gospel that was preached by the Apostle Paul was never
man-centered; it was always and invariably God-centered." Romans - The Gospel Of
God
"The business of the gospel is to bring people to God, and
to 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." Romans - The
Gospel Of God
"The business of Christianity is not to improve the world.
No! it is to take men out of the world, to save them from it, and to form this
new realm, this new kingdom, and this new humanity. We must get hold of that
idea. It is not a kind of Christianisation of the world that is taught in the
Bible. People are to be taken out of it, to be separated from it, and to be
translated into a different position." Ephesians - Darkness And Light
"We can never repeat this too often; a mere knowledge of
doctrine, which does not lead to a new life, is of the devil... A knowledge, a
personal knowledge of the Saviour, is the end and object of all doctrine."
Ephesians - Darkness And Light
"It is in Christ Jesus that are hid ALL the treasures of
wisdom and of knowledge. All the truth is in Jesus, and there is no truth apart
from Him, for everything is in Him and He alone IS the Truth... God forbid, I
say again, that we should ever separate our doctrine from His Person! God forbid
that we should become academic and theoretical and detached, and forget even for
a second that salvation has come in a Person, in this particular Person, Jesus,
in whom God has stored all the treasures of His own wisdom and His own
knowledge." Ephesians - Darkness And Light
"We must always put ourselves under the Word and look up to
it and listen to it as it speaks to us. We must never study the Bible
academically. Never become theoretical! That has been the curse of theological
seminaries. Men who have gone in full of lie have come out dead, and all because
of this academic interest in the Scriptures. Beware of it!" Romans - The
Righteousness Judgment Of God
"No argument is put up so frequently against these truths -
the doctrines of the wrath of God, and the judgment of God, and the
righteousness of God, and the absolute necessity of the death of the Son of God
as One bearing the punishment of sin
- no argument is brought up and adduced and advanced against them so frequently
as this argument of God's goodness and God's kindness kindness and God's love."
Romans - The Righteousness Judgment Of God
"It is generally said that this biblical teaching about the
justice, the righteousness and the wrath of God (as taught especially by the
Apostle Paul) is something that is quite wrong, and one reason why it is wrong
is that it represents God as a kind of Victorian father... They are using God's
goodness as a license and a liberty, a cloak and an excuse for their own sin.
And that is simply to use God -- even God -- to serve our own ends. I can
imagine nothing more appalling than this, and yet it seems to me to be the
controlling idea amongst people today with respect to God. They are
manipulating, or trying to manipulate, even the character of God to serve their
own ends." Romans - The Righteousness Judgment Of God
"The idea seems to have come in that the business of
preaching is to bring people to Christ and that later on they will repent. Now
it is no accident that in the Scriptures themselves the order is always put
otherwise, and, surely, it is very dangerous for us if, purely for the sake of
results, we vary and reverse this clear scriptural order, which has always
characterized the preaching of the church in every great period of revival and
reawakening... If we go back and read the great story of the Christian church in
every period of revival and reawakening, we will find that this note of
repentance has always been central and it has always been primary." Romans - The
Righteousness Judgment Of God
"There is no question but that judgment will begin among
those who make a profession of Christian faith." Romans - The Righteousness
Judgment Of God
"We must never stop at just believing -- we must always
emphasize regeneration -- the rebirth -- the new man. Otherwise it seems to me
we are leaving souls in a very dangerous position." Romans - The Righteousness
Judgment Of God
"The business of a preacher is not to give people
intellectual treats; it is to present spiritual truth to them in a spiritual
manner." Romans - The Righteousness Judgment Of God
"It is in spite of His people that God goes on with His
great purposes and fulfills His wonderful covenant... What God has purposed, God
will most surely bring to pass... God's faithfulness and God's justice are
absolutes." Romans - The Righteousness Judgment Of God
"If your presentation of the gospel does not expose it to
the charge of antinomianism you are probably not putting it correctly... if you
are not misunderstood and slanderously reported from the standpoint of
antinomianism, it is because you do not believe the gospel truly and you do not
preach it truly." Romans - The Righteousness Judgment Of God
"We must not hesitate to say that an evangelism which does
not start by a call to repentance and conviction of sin is unscriptural... The
business of preaching is to show men where they are under sin, and to show them
the only way of getting out of it and of being under grace." Romans - The
Righteousness Judgment Of God
"To be righteous means that you are blameless with respect
to God and with respect to your fellow men. To be righteous does not just mean
being good, or moral, or respectable... So that we can define righteousness in
this way: it means living a life in perfect conformity to the law of God; it is
living as God desires man to live... It is man defined in his relationship to
God and God's law, and to be righteous means to be in absolute conformity to
that law, without any blemish or without any lack." Romans - The Righteousness
Judgment Of God
"Some of us still say that you must hold on to the early
chapters of Genesis and that we cannot co-operate, even in evangelism, with
people who do not hold on to them, because we do not quite know what sort of a
Christ they are offering, and we do not quite know what they are offering Him
for. This is the biblical and the scriptural position; you start with this
fundamental fact, that everybody is unrighteous." Romans - The Righteousness
Judgment Of God
"Man in sin, man under sin, lacks an understanding of
himself, of his own nature, and of his spiritual character. He is content to
regard himself as an animal, and he even boasts of that. He dislikes this
biblical account of himself as a living soul. He puts himself among the animals.
He says that he has evolved from them, that he belongs to them, and that that is
his state. He has no conception of the biblical teaching of man, which is that
man is essentially a spiritual being meant for God, and meant to live a
spiritual kind of life in relationship God. In the same way he has no
understanding of sin, no understanding of his own sinful nature, no
understanding of the precarious position in which he finds himself, no
understanding of the wrath of God, and no understanding of God's way of
salvation." Romans - The Righteousness Judgment Of God
"To have some kind of intellectual interest in the
possibility of God, or the being of God, is not to seek God... Seeking God means
that you are really looking for something... Seeking God means that you are
trying to find God, and to get into His presence, and to realize His presence.
That is seeking... To seek God means to desire God above everything and
everybody, to seek His glory, to be anxious to promote His glory. To seek God in
the biblical sense means that God is the centre of our thinking, and it is the
supreme object of our lives to know Him and to love Him, and to live to His
glory." Romans - The Righteousness Judgment Of God
"No man by nature and left to himself has ever sought
God... If you and I can claim as Christian people that we are seeking God, there
is only one explanation for it, and that is that God has first sought us... Show
me a man who can say honestly that he is seeking after God, and I will show you
a man who has been quickened by God's Spirit, whom God has sought." Romans - The
Righteousness Judgment Of God
"Man's actions, every one of them, are polluted at the
source. Sin is in control, it vitiates everything. All our actions are
self-centered. There is no such thing as disinterested action in the natural,
sinful man." Romans - The Righteousness Judgment Of God
"Goodness really means to do things for the glory of God,
and your naturally good man does not do things for the glory of God. He does not
think of God. He is doing it entirely for his own glory and satisfaction. That
is why it is useless... There is no such thing as a disinterested action in a
sinful man; it does not come up to God's standard." Romans - The Righteousness
Judgment Of God
"The explanation of this twentieth century and of life
today is that it is but another instance of God giving mankind over to a
reprobate mind." Romans - Atonement And Justification
"Whatever man may discover, however much he may advance,
however much he may introduce social amelioration and mitigate injustices and
wrongs, all is of value in the sight of God unless it has brought man to
repentance and acknowledgment of his folly in turning away from God." Romans -
Atonement And Justification
"The Law was never given in order to save us. That was the
fallacious supposition of the Jew, as it is also the case with so many today...
God knew that the Law could not save us, because of the weakness of our flesh.
He never gave it in order to save." Romans - Atonement And Justification
"No man can be a Christian without realizing his utter
hopelessness. It is of no use to talk about coming to Christ if you do not see
your hopelessness and your helplessness. You cannot just come to Him for help or
something else; there is but one reason for going to Christ, and that is that
you realize that no flesh can possibly be justified by the Law in the sight of
God." Romans - Atonement And Justification
"The Christian faith is not a philosophy, it is not merely
a teaching. It is based on a series of historical events. The teaching derives
from and is grounded in the historical events. That can never bee too much
emphasized, because this is he point at which our faith differs from every
so-called religion. All religions are teachings; this [Christianity] is event
and historical happening before it is a teaching; it is an announcement of
events, of actions and of facts." Romans - Atonement And Justification
"To have our sins forgiven does not of itself admit us to
heaven. Before we can be admitted to heaven we must be clothed with
righteousness." Romans - Atonement And Justification
"The Law has not been removed; God has not done away with
the Law. The Lord Jesus Christ has satisfied it and kept it, and we are given
the fruit and the results of what He has done." Romans - Atonement And
Justification
"We must never say that it is our faith that saves us... It
is the Lord Jesus Christ who saves you. If you say that your faith saves you,
your faith has become a work, and you have something to boast of... Faith is
only the instrument, it is not the cause of my justification." Romans -
Atonement And Justification
"Salvation is a gift that comes to us freely from God
without our deserving it in any respect whatsoever." Romans - Atonement And
Justification
"There is always this danger of following some expert on
language. It has been the curse of the last hundred years. Men have fixed on
particular words, they have tracked them through classical Greek literature and
then they have tried to attach a new meaning to scriptural statements. They have
ignored the context, they have ignored the whole tenor of the biblical teaching,
and have decided and determined vital issues on an odd meaning or shade of
meaning of a word." Romans - Atonement And Justification
"If you take out of the Bible this idea of the wrath of God
against sin there is very little Bible left." Romans - Atonement And
Justification
"Our interpretation of the New Testament must never
contradict the Old Testament teaching. If it does, it is wrong, because the two
fit in and belong together perfectly. All we have in the New was predicted in
the Old. The New is the fulfillment of the Old." Romans - Atonement And
Justification
"Wolves are rampant at the present time; and it is a part
of the duty of any man who claims to be a teacher of the Scriptures to warn men
and women against these subtle heresies that subvert the Christian faith."
Romans - Atonement And Justification
"If our view of the Cross is one that makes us feel sorry
for the Lord Jesus Christ it just means that we have never seen it truly. It is
God who set him forth. It was not an accident, but something deliberate... At
the Cross God is declaring His own righteousness, His own righteous character,
His own inherent and essential righteousness and justice." Romans - Atonement
And Justification
"The Scriptures argue and debate and dispute; they are full
of polemics... We should always regret the necessity; but though we regret it
and bemoan it, when we feel that a vital matter is at stake we must engage in
argument. We must earnestly contend for the truth, and we are all called upon to
do that by the New Testament." Romans - Atonement And Justification
"If in any way you are proud of the fact that you believe,
then you do not believe." Romans - Atonement And Justification
"Faith is nothing but the instrument or the channel by
which this righteousness of God in Christ becomes ours. It is not faith that
saves us. What saves us is the Lord Jesus Christ and His perfect work. It is the
death of Christ upon Calvary's Cross that saves us. It is His perfect life that
saves us. It is His appearing on our behalf in the presence of God that saves
us. It is God putting Christ's righteousness to our account that saves us."
Romans - Atonement And Justification
"Faith is never something isolated or alone. You must never
divorce faith from its object. Faith is always linked to an object. The object
is the Lord Jesus Christ and His perfect work and His perfect righteousness."
Romans - Atonement And Justification
"Faith is not just intellectual assent. A man can give
intellectual assent to the teaching of the whole Bible and go straight to hell."
Romans - Atonement And Justification
"There is another error which perhaps comes a little nearer
to us who are evangelicals in outlook... It is what may be described as the
dispensational error. I mean the teaching that emphasizes that there is still a
real distinction and difference between the Jews and the Gentiles... God's great
method of salvation has always been by faith. The distinction between Jew and
Gentile has gone, and it has gone for ever, and will never come back. It is the
only way of salvation, and we must never hint at, or even suggest in the
slightest manner, any other way." Romans - Atonement And Justification
"The blood of Christ is essential; He is the propitiation.
And that applies to everybody. All must come this way. There is no fellowship
possible between those who rely on Him and on Him alone and on His blood, and
those who claim that they know God without Him... For myself I cannot even pray
with a man who tells me that he can go to God without the blood of Christ."
Romans - Atonement And Justification
"By taking upon Himself the punishment of our sins demanded
by the Law, the Lord Jesus Christ was establishing the Law." Romans - Atonement
And Justification
"The first function of the Law is to make clear to us the
utter, absolute, indescribable holiness and righteousness of God. Now there is
nothing that shows that so plainly and clearly as what happened on the Cross;
and if we do not see first and foremost in the Cross a manifestation of the
holiness and the righteousness of God, we are not seeing it truly. It
establishes the Law in that way; it brings that out." Romans - Atonement And
Justification
"There is nothing in the whole of history, there is no
point in the whole course of mankind's story, there is no place in the universe
which has so manifested the wrath of God against sin, His detestation of it, and
His determination to punish it, as the death of our Lord upon the Cross." Romans
- Atonement And Justification
"The man who is truly blessed is the man whose sin is
forgiven as debt, whose sin is covered up so that God will never look at it
again. He is one to whom it is never going to be imputed as a crime. There is
the negative aspect. But it goes beyond that; he is also one to whom God reckons
this righteousness of Jesus Christ. That is the doctrine of justification by
faith." Romans - Atonement And Justification
"It is the whole tragedy of mankind that it keeps on
arguing against its own salvation." Romans - Atonement And Justification
"There is nothing so insulting to God as not to believe
Him. That is the terrible thing about unbelief, it is insulting to God." Romans
- Atonement And Justification
"If you really love the Lord you must hate evil." Ephesians
- Darkness And Light
"It is not enough to confess sin in general, we must
confess particular sins. It is rather a dangerous thing to confess sin in
general." Ephesians - Darkness And Light
"And as I see the position today, this is largely the
trouble, that the people who ought to be preaching the gospel are preaching
politics and morality, and those whose business it is to handle politics and
morality are trying to preach. As a result there is utter confusion and both
realms are failing to carry out the thing for which God has ordained them."
Ephesians - Darkness And Light Ephesians - Darkness And Light
"The Christian Church is not a moral agency. What is she
then? She is a regenerating agency! She is NOT a moral agency; there are many
other moral agencies; the Church is not, she is supernatural, she is divine, she
is filled with the Spirit; she converts men, she regenerates men; I say SHE does
it, she is used of God to do it. That is her realm. Furthermore, the Church does
not exist to produce good men. The Church exists to produce NEW men!" Ephesians
- Darkness And Light
"We are not in the realm of morality and goodness, we are
in the realm of sainthood and of the Spirit! And therefore I argue that the
acceptance of a moral-agency role by the Church means that the Church is
misrepresenting her own message." Ephesians - Darkness And Light
"When the church preaches the gospel as the power of God,
as spiritual dynamic that can operate in men and change them, it is THEN that
she deals with the social problem; not when she is talking about the social
problem, and giving statistics and making moral appeals. That is a waste of
time, and we must reject it as a temptation from the devil! I do not hesitate to
say so. The devil is perfectly satisfied as long as the church is just reading,
Sunday by Sunday, little moral essays, trying to give a little moral uplift, and
making an appeal to people to be decent. I am certain that at such times the
devil rejoices, because he knows that his kingdom will not be affected."
Ephesians - Darkness And Light
"It is not ministers occupying pulpits who should be
preaching political sermons." Ephesians - Darkness And Light
"There is nothing that the Roman Catholic Church has done
which is worse than here misuse of the word "saint"; according to that view,
only certain Christians are saints. The Roman Church canonises them, and a man
or woman then becomes Saint So-and-so. It is quite false. Every Christian is a
saint... Everyone os us is a saint, so let us denounce and deny that Roman
Catholic error." Ephesians - Darkness And Light
"What is the ultimate object of this Christian message,
this Christian faith? It is to make us HOLY -- not to make us happy!" Ephesians
- Darkness And Light
"You cannot reason with people who are deceived by the
devil; it needs the trumpet call of God, it needs the power of the Spirit."
Ephesians - Darkness And Light