A Christian not yielded to the Spirit does not manifest the Christ-life. The Spirit of God has to permeate a life if that life is to radiate Him. We cannot do anything apart from being filled with the Spirit.
I have a glove. If I say to the glove, “Play the piano”, what does the glove do? Nothing. The glove cannot play the piano. But if I put my hand in the glove and play the piano, what happens? Music! If I put my hand in a glove, and glove moves. The glove does not get pious and say, “Oh hand, show me the way to go.” It does not say anything; it just goes. Spirit-filled people do not stumble and mumble around trying to find out what God wants. They just go!
– John MacArthur
If man is merely the result of a cosmic accident, there is no inherent dignity or value in human life. In fact, it was this type of evolutionary thinking that led to the atrocities of the Nazi regime in Hitler’s Germany. If there are races of people who represent a higher level of evolution than others, then it is incumbent on the more evolved race to dominate and/or exterminate the less evolved. While most secular humanists would abhor such thinking, my question to them would be, on what grounds?
I cannot see how any man deserves to be called “holy,” who willfully allows himself in sins, and is not humbled and ashamed because of them.
Answering a student’s question, “Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?” thus, it is more a question with me whether we, who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.
It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the gospel to every creature, you need rather to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home.
Few things are so distasteful to the proud human heart as the truth that God does as He pleases, without consulting with the creature; that He dispenses His favors entirely according to His imperial will. Fallen man has no claims upon Him, is destitute of any merit, and can do nothing whatever to win God’s esteem.
The problem is not that Christians have disappeared, but that Christian faith has become so deformed. Under the influence of modernity, we modern Christians are literally capable of winning the world while losing our own souls.
“‘Not called!” did you say? “Not heard the call,” I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face — whose mercy you have professed to obey — and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.
It was quite refreshing one night to find in the inquiry room a young man who thought he was not worth saving, he was so vile and wicked. There was hope for him because he was so desperately in earnest about his soul. He thought he was worthless. He had a sight of himself in God’s looking glass and had a very poor opinion of himself. One can always tell when a man is a great way from God–for he is always talking about himself, and how good he is. But the moment he sees God by the eye of faith, he is down on his knees, and, like Job, he cries, “Behold, I am vile.” All his goodness flees away.
When God changes the heart and spirit, the physical changes also. If you want to meet the needs of the poor in this world, there is no better place to start than by preaching the Gospel. It has done more to lift up the downtrodden, the hungry, and the needy than all the social programs ever imagined by secular humanists.
A man is either 100% righteous, or he is condemned. If a murderer is charged with seven counts of murder and only convicted of one, he’s still a condemned man! Reader, if you have even one sin that you have to pay for yourself, you will be in Hell forever.
“If missions languish, it is because the whole life of godliness is feeble. The command to go everywhere and preach to everybody is not obeyed, until the will is lost by self-surrender in the will of God. There is little right giving because there is little right living, and because of the lack of sympathetic contact with God in holiness of heart, there is a lack of effectual contact with him at the Throne of Grace. Living, praying, giving and going will always be found together, and a low standard in one means a general debility in the whole spiritual being.”
Catholic bishops have condemned us as heretics and have cursed us over 100 times with anathemas pronounced by the Council of Trent and the 2nd Vatican Council. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “Every heretic is to have part with the Devil and his angels in the flames of eternal fire, unless before the end of his life, he be restored to the Catholic Church.” What a paradox! Christians, who embrace God’s infallible truth, are eternally condemned by this apostate religion, and then called Catholic-bashers for trying to rescue Catholics who are enslaved by doctrines of demons (1 Tim. 4:1).
Men tell us that our preaching should be positive and not negative, that we can preach the truth without attacking error. But if we follow that advice we shall have to close our Bible and desert its teachings. The New Testament is a polemic book almost from beginning to end . . . . It is when men have felt compelled to take a stand against error that they have risen to the really great heights in the celebration of the truth.
Christ Alone Wyoming 