No man knows the brightness of the gospel ’till he understands the blackness of those clouds which surround the law of the Lord.

– Charles Spurgeon

1834 – 1892

Once, on a 2,000-mile auto trip across the American West, I made it a point to listen to Christian radio all along the way. What I heard revealed much about the secret motivations that drive many Christians. Some of the broadcasts would have been hilarious if they weren’t exploiting the gullible–hawking health, wealth and success in the name of Christianity.

– Some speakers offered holy oil and lucky charms to those who sent in money and requested them.

– Some speakers offered prayer cloths that had blessed believers with $70,000 to $100,000, new cars, houses and health.

– One speaker said he would mail holy soap he had blessed. If used with his instructions, it would wash away bad luck, evil friends and sickness. Again he promised “plenty of money” and everything else the user wanted.

– K. P. Yohannan

We Christians too often substitute prayer for playing the game. Prayer is good; but when used as a substitute for obedience, it is nothing but blatant hypocrisy, a despicable Pharisaism.

– C. T. Studd

1860 – 1931

The fairest babe that has entered life this year, and become the sunbeam of a family, is not, as its mother perhaps fondly calls it, a little “angel,” or a little “innocent,” but a “sinner.” Alas! as it lies smiling and crowing in its cradle, that little creature carries in its heart the seeds of every kind of wickedness! Only watch it carefully, as it grows in stature and its mind develops, and you will soon detect in it an incessant tendency to that which is bad, and a backwardness to that which is good. You will see in it the buds and germs of deceit, evil temper, selfishness, self-will, obstinacy, greediness, envy, jealousy, passion–which, if indulged and let alone, will shoot up with painful rapidity. Who taught the child these things? Where did he learn them? The Bible alone can answer these questions! Of all the foolish things parents say about their children, there is non worse than the common saying, “My son has a good heart at the bottom.” . . . The truth, unhappily, is diametrically the other way. The first cause of all sin lies in the natural corruption of the boy’s own heart . . . .

– J.C. Ryle

1816 – 1900

If you were to challenge me to boil down postmodern thought into its pure essence and identify the gist of it in one single, simple, central characteristic, I would say it is the rejection of every expression of certainty. In the postmodern perspective, certainty is regarded as inherently arrogant, elitist, intolerant, oppressive–and therefore always wrong.

– John MacArthur

For those of you that are in here living a double life–coming here on Sunday but living like the Devil during the week, and thinking that no one knows about it–understand that you are absolutely living on borrowed time. God will expose your sin either in this life or when the judgment comes, take your pick, neither one is going to be very pretty. So you might as well just get serious about repentance now and try and–like Nineveh–call on and see if God won’t relent and withdraw His burning anger against your hypocrisy. Because . . . you do not get away with sin –ever!

– Don Green

Postmodernism’s one goal and singular activity is the systematic deconstruction of every other truth claim. The chief tools being employed to accomplish this are relativism, subjectivism, the denial of every dogma, the dissection and annihilation of every clear definition, the relentless questioning of every axiom, the undue exaltation of mystery and paradox, the deliberate exaggeration of every ambiguity, and above all the cultivation of uncertainty about everything.

– John MacArthur

The trouble with people who are not seeking for a Savior, and for salvation, is that they do not understand the nature of sin. It is the peculiar function of the law to bring such an understanding to a man’s mind and conscience. That is why the great evangelical preachers 300 years ago in the time of the Puritans, and 200 years ago in the time of Whitfield and others, always engaged in what they called a preliminary law work.

– Martin Lloyd-Jones

1899 – 1981

Beware of letting small faults pass unnoticed under the idea it is a little one. There are no little things in training children; all are important. Little weeds need plucking up as much as any. Leaven them alone and they will soon be great.

– J.C. Ryle

1816 – 1900

The only way we can know whether we are sinning is by knowing His moral law.

– Jonathan Edwards

1703 – 1758

Over the past generation–and especially the past two decades–we have seen conclusive changes in society’s moral values, philosophy, religion, and the arts. The upheaval has been so profound that our grandparents’ generation (and practically every prior generation of human history) scarcely would have thought the landscape could possibly change so quickly. Almost no aspect of human discourse has been left unaffected. The traditional, nominal, devotion to ideals and moral standards derived from Scripture is dying with the senior generation. Many believe the paradigm shift has already brought us beyond the age of modernity to the next great epoch in the development of human thought: the postmodern era.

– John MacArthur

The true function of the Law is to accuse and to kill; but the function of the gospel is to make alive.

– Martin Luther

1483 – 1546

Instruction and advice and commands will profit little, unless they are backed up by the pattern of your own life. Your children will never believe you are in earnest, and really wish them to obey you, so long as your actions contradict your counsel. Archbishop Tillotson made a wise remark when he said, “To give children good instruction, and a bad example, is but beckoning to them with the head to show them the way to Heaven, while we take them by the hand and lead them in the way to Hell.”

– J. C. Ryle

1816 – 1900

Sinners must hear the thundering of Mount Sinai before we bring them to Mount Zion.

– George Whitfield

1714 – 1770

Controversy and conflict in the church are never to be relished or engaged in without sufficient cause. But in every generation, the battle for the truth has proved ultimately unavoidable, because the enemies of truth are relentless. Truth is always under assault. And it is actually a sin not to fight when vital truths are under attack. That is true even though fighting sometimes results in conflict within the visible community of professing Christians. In fact, whenever the enemies of gospel truth succeed in infiltrating the church, faithful believers are obliged to take the battle to them even there. That is certainly the case today, as it has been since apostolic times.

– John MacArthur

You won’t hear much about this in modern day Christianity in America, but one of the greatest signs of God being with a people is His discipline. And one of the greatest signs of God not being with a people is the lack thereof.

– Paul Washer

To most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate; but He remains personally unknown to the individual. “He must be,” they say, “therefore we believe He is.” Others do not go even so far as this; they know of Him only by hearsay. They have never bothered to think the matter out for themselves, but have heard about Him from others, and have put belief in Him into the back of their minds along with the various odds and ends that make up their total creed. . . . These notions about God are many and varied, but they who hold them have one thing in common: they do not know God in personal experience. The possibility of intimate acquaintance with Him has not entered their minds. . . . Christians, to be sure, go further than this, at least in theory. . . . This is admitted, I say, in theory, but for millions of Christians, nevertheless, God is no more real that He is to the non-Christian. They go through life trying to love an ideal and be loyal to a mere principle.

– A. W. Tozer

1897 – 1963