The Kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of mercy, grace, and goodness. The kingdom of the Pope is a kingdom of lies and damnation!
– Martin Luther
1483 – 1546
Instead of the Bible’s masculine doctrine of salvation in which an initiating God acts with efficacious love to subdue His chosen people to Himself, much of the church now proclaims a passive God who offers His love but would not think of imposing His love on His bride. The pallid Jesus stands at the door and knocks, hoping we’ll let Him in. God is no longer presented as the very archetype of masculine power and love. This kind of feminized doctrine has contributed to the proliferation of feminized men who stand fearful even before their wives. If God is feminized, what chance do Christian men have?
– Philip Lancaster
“The next week,” says the sinner, “I will begin to be sober and temperate, serious and devout.” But the true sense of what he says is this, “I am fully bent to spend this present week in riot and excess, in sensuality and profaneness, or whatever vice it is that I indulge myself in.” And if we do this often, and it becomes our common practice to put off our repentance from time to time, this is a shrewd sign that we never intended to repent at all. . . . It is with the wicked men in this case, as it is with a bankrupt. When his creditors are loud and clamorous, speaking big and threatening high, he answers them with many good words and fair promises. He arranges for them to come another day, entreats their patience but a little longer, and then he will satisfy them all, when all the time the man never intends to pay them one farthing. . . . In the same way men endeavor to pacify and calm their consciences, by telling them they will listen to them another time. All this is only to delude and cheat their consciences with good words and specious pretenses, making them believe they will certainly do what they cannot endure to think of, and what they would fully desire to excuse themselves from.
– Edmund Calamy
1671 – 1732
The Law speaks of what man must do for God; grace tells of what Christ has done for men. The Law demanded righteousness from men; grace brings righteousness to men. The Law brought out God to men; grace brings in men to God. The Law sentenced a living man to death; grace brings a dead man to life. The Law never had a missionary; the Gospel is to be preached to every creature. The Law makes known the will of God; grace reveals the heart of God!
– A.W. Pink
1886 – 1952
For too long we have been committed to forms of evangelism that ignore the crucial discipleship element explicit in the Great Commission. We have been called to make disciples, not converts.
– Voddie Baucham
It is not enough to hear God’s voice, but we must obey. Obedience is a part of the honor we owe to God. . . . Obedience carries in it the lifeblood of religion. . . . Obedience without knowledge is blind, and knowledge without obedience is lame. . . . Saul thought it was enough for him to offer sacrifices, though he disobeyed God’s command; but “to obey is better than sacrifice.” God disclaims sacrifice, if obedience be wanting.
– Thomas Watson
1620 – 1686
The church is in a sad state today. Never mind the mainline denominations that have long-since abandoned biblical faith; we’re talking about the bible-believing church. Here, too often, we see much ado about nothing. There is talk of revival without the reality. The church today measures its success by the numbers on its rolls, the size of its offerings, or the volume of its worship bands—rather than by the holiness of its members.
– Philip Lancaster
Our hearts are filled with gratitude for the privilege He gave us in being the wives of men who were chosen to be slain for His sake. None of us is worthy. It is all of His grace, but we know that the Lamb is worthy, a thousand times, the lives of our husbands and of us. He chose to glorify Himself in their death—may He now glorify Himself in our lives.
[…]
Not only do we ask that Christ be glorified in the Aucas and in us, but also in our children. Most of them will have no recollection of their fine fathers. But our Lord gave His word, ‘All they children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of they children.’ We ask for His wisdom in training them, for His Spirit in us, that they may be as obedient as their fathers. How wonderful it would be if He should prepare one or more of them to go to the Aucas! We would give them to Him for his use, asking that they come to know Him as Savior and Lord at an early age. Far be it from us to withhold from the Lord the lives of these little ones, children of the men who did not withhold their own lives. May they sing from true hearts,
Faith of our Fathers, Holy faith
We would be true to Thee till death.
—Elisabeth Elliott, Marjorie Saint, Marilou McCully, Olive Fleming, Barbara Youderian (respectively)
(Hat Tip: The Gospel Coalition)
When the sun is under a total eclipse, it loses nothing of its native beauty, light, and glory. Yet it appears to us as a dark useless meteor. When it frees itself from the lunar interruption, it again manifests its native light and glory. So it was with the divine nature of Christ. He veiled His glory by assuming our nature as His own and taking the “form of a servant,” a person of mean and low degree. But now this temporary eclipse is past, and His glory shines forth in the infinite luster and beauty that belong to the exaltation of His person. . . . Let the world rage while it pleases; let it set itself with all its power and craft against everything of Christ. We have this to support us and to oppose all their attempts–what Jesus says of Himself: “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death” (Revelation 1:17-18).
– John Owen
1616 – 1683
The Gospel tells us that Christ died not for good people, who never did anything very bad, but for lost and godless sinners, who never did anything good.
– A.W. Pink
1886 – 1952
It is not the job of the youth pastor to evangelize my child—that’s my job. It is not the youth pastor’s job to equip (disciple) my child—it’s mine. And it is not the youth pastor’s job to send my child out to engage the world; you guessed it—that’s my job too.
– Voddie Baucham
In the creation, man was made in God’s image; in the incarnation God was made in man’s image. . . . He took our flesh that He might take our sins, and so appease God’s wrath. . . . Christ’s taking our flesh was one of the lowest steps of His humiliation. For Christ to be made flesh was more humility than for the angels to be made worms. . . . He stripped Himself of the robes of His glory, and covered Himself with the rags of our humanity.
– Thomas Watson
1620 – 1686
Paganism was a system of deceivableness. It was the worship of a false god, under the pretence of being the worship of the true God. But popery [Roman Catholicism] is a deceivableness on a scale far beyond that of paganism. The one was a counterfeit of the religion of the Gospel. Popery has … a saviour of its own -the Church, to wit. It has a sacrifice of it own -the Mass. It has a mediator of its own -the Priesthood. It has a sanctifier of its own -the Sacrament. It has a justification of its own -that even of infused righteousness. It has a pardon of its own -the pardon of the Confessional; and it has in the heavens an infallible, all-prevailing advocate unknown to the Gospel -the “Mother of God.” It thus presents to the world a spiritual and saving apparatus for the salvation of men, and yet it neither sanctifies nor saves anyone. It looks like a church; it professes to have all that a church ought to have; and yet, it is not a church. It is a grand deception -“the all-deceivableness of unrighteousness.”– J.A. Wylie (from The Papacy is the Antichrist)
– 1808 – 1890
O, the work that sin has done in the world! This is the enemy that has brought in death; that has robbed and enslaved man, that has turned the world upside down, and sown the dissensions between man and the creatures, between man and man, yea, between man and himself, setting the physical part against the rational, the will against the judgment, lust against conscience; yea, worst of all, between God and man, making the sinner both hateful to God and the hater of God. This is the traitor that thirsted for the blood of the Son of God, that sold Him, that mocked Him, that scourged Him, that spat in His face, that mangled His body . . . condemned Him, nailed Him, crucified Him. . . . This is the bloody executioner that has killed the prophets, burned the martyrs, murdered all the apostles, all the patriarchs, all the kings and potentates; that has destroyed cities, swallowed empires, and devoured whole nations. Whatever weapon it was done by, it was sin that caused the execution. Do you still think it is only a small thing? If Adam and all his children could be dug out of their graves, and their bodies piled up to heaven, and an inquest was made as to what matchless murderer was guilty of all this, it would be all found in sin.
– Joseph Alleine
1634 – 1668
Care not so much for [your children] being mighty in the catechism as for their being mighty in the Scriptures.
J.C. Ryle
1816 – 1900
A sword in a madman’s hand, and the Word of God in some wicked man’s mouth, are used much alike.
– William Gurnall
1617 – 1679
Will you put God to this, that either He must work constant miracles in every age, and before every man, or else He must not be believed?
– Richard Baxter
1615 – 1691
We cannot prescribe how God should be glorified. . . . How have men fooled themselves and dishonored God in the matter of worship! They invent and prescribe forms and modes, when they have no ground to believe that He will accept them. . . . We must not determine these things ourselves, as to how, when, where, whom we please, for this would dishonor rather than credit the cause of God, because this matter wholly depends upon His pleasure. Now anything of our will would . . . subtract from that divine symmetry and concord which encompasses the wisdom, holiness, power, and sovereign grace of God. And we might as well teach Him how He should govern the world, as how He should dispose of us. . . . God is not glorified but in His own way.
– Dr. John Singleton
Died – 1706
Any system of training that does not make knowledge of Scripture the first thing is unsafe and unsound.
– J.C. Ryle
1816 – 1900