There is a trend today that would put a new robe on the prodigal son while he is still feeding hogs. Some would put the ring on his finger while he’s still in the pigsty. Others would paint the pigsty and advocate bigger and better hog pens.

– Vance Havner

1901 – 1986

HT: Fide-O

We have been given a clear message for the purpose of confronting the world’s unbelief. That is what we are called, commanded, and commissioned to do (1 Corinthians 1:17-31). Faithfulness to Christ demands it. The honor of God requires it. We cannot sit by and do nothing while worldly, revisionist, and skeptical attitudes about truth are infiltrating the church. We must not embrace such confusion in the name of charity, collegiality, or unity. We have to stand and fight for the truth–and be prepared to die for it–as faithful Christians always have.

– John MacArthur

Law tells you what to do, but does not give you the power to do it, and curses you if you don’t. Grace teaches you what to do, and gives you the power to do it, and rewards you when you do. So law carries the threat of punishment while grace carries the promise of reward.

Law condemns the best, since even the best cannot keep the Ten Commandments. Grace justifies the worst. Law reveals sin. Grace takes away sin. Law encourages boasting. Grace excludes boasting. Under the law, the work is never finished. Grace tells you of the One who finished the work.

The law demands, “You shall love.” Grace announces, “God so loved.” The law lays heavy burdens on people. The burdens of grace are light. Law is a system of bondage, grace of liberty. There is no mercy in the law. It is cold, hard, and inflexible. Grace tells of a God who is rich in mercy.

– William MacDonald

If only a small percentage of the 80 million people who claim to be born-again Christians in this country were to sponsor a native missionary, we could have literally hundreds of thousands of evangelists reaching the lost villages of Asia. When we look at the unfinished Great Commission and compare it to our personal lifestyles–or to the activity calendars of our churches and organizations–how can we explain our disobedience? We must see a great repentance from the sin of our unbelief in God’s judgment.

– K. P. Yohannan

Certain avant-garde evangelicals sometimes act as if the demise of certainty is a dramatic new intellectual development, rather than seeing it for what it actually is: an echo of the old unbelief. It is unbelief cloaked in a religious disguise and seeking legitimacy as if it were merely a humbler kind of faith. But it’s not faith at all. In reality, the contemporary refusal to regard any truth as sure and certain is the worst kind of infidelity. The church’s duty has always been to confront such skepticism and answer it by clearly proclaiming the truth God has revealed in His Word.

– John MacArthur

The resounding cry of freedom in the Bible is, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2). In other words, be free! Don’t be duped by the gurus of the age. They are here today and gone tomorrow. One enslaving fad follows another. Thirty years from now today’s tattoos will not be marks of freedom, but incredible reminders of conformity.

– John Piper

   Many self-styled evangelicals today are openly questioning whether such a thing as truth even exists. Others suppose that even if truth does exist, we can’t be sure what it is, so it can’t really matter much. The twin problems of uncertainty and apathy about the truth are epidemic, even among some of the evangelical movement’s most popular authors and spokespersons. Some flatly refuse to stand for anything because they have decided that even Scripture isn’t really clear enough to argue about. Except for the massive scale on which such thinking has attained popularity today, and the way it is seeping into the church, such ideas themselves are really nothing new or particularly shocking. It is exactly the same attitude with which Pilate summarily dismissed Christ: “What is truth?” (John 18:38)

– John MacArthur

Let it not be said of you at last, as it is of many, that your “youth was a disorder, your manhood a struggle, and your old age a regret.”

– J. C. Ryle

1816 – 1900

Many in the academic and philosophical realms . . . . no longer believe in truth as a sure and knowable reality. Make no mistake: unbelief is the seed of that opinion. The contemporary aversion to truth is simply a natural expression of fallen humanity’s innate hostility toward God (Romans 8:7).

– John MacArthur

The millions of Asians who are dying and going to Hell are people for whom Christ died. We say we believe it–but what are we doing to act on that faith? Without works, faith is dead. No one should go to hell today without hearing about the Lord Jesus. To me this is an atrocity much worse than the death camps of Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia. As horrible as the 1.3 million abortions are in the United States each year, the eternal loss of multiplied millions of additional souls every year is the greatest preventable tragedy of our times.

– K.P. Yohannan

Absolutely everything is for our good. The problem is many times we do not understand the good. The good isn’t big ministries, the good isn’t fame in the Christian life, the good isn’t that after we die someone will write a book about us, the good isn’t that we’re respected as the greatest pastor in the world. The good is that we look like Jesus; that we look like Christ.

– Paul Washer

   God and truth are inseparable. Every thought about the essence of truth–what it is, what makes it “true,” and how we can possibly know anything for sure, quickly moves us back to God. That is why God incarnate–Jesus Christ–is called the truth (John 14:6). That is also why it is not particularly surprising when someone who repudiates God rejects His truth as well. If a person can’t tolerate the thought of God, there is simply no comfortable place for the concept of truth in that person’s worldview, either. So the consistent atheist, agnostic, or idolater might as well hate the very idea of truth. After all, to reject God is to reject the Giver of all truth, the final Judge of what really is true, and the very essence and embodiment of truth itself.

– John MacArthur

Our Lord Jesus Christ prayed on a mountain; Isaac prayed in the fields; Hezekiah turned his face to the wall as he lay upon his bed; Daniel prayed by the riverside; Peter, the Apostle, on the housetop. I have heard of young men praying in stables and haylofts. All that I contend for is this, you must know what it is to”go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen” (Matthew 6:6). There must be stated times when you must speak to God face to face, you must every day have your times for prayer–You must pray.

– J.C. Ryle

1816 – 1900

Grace transcends reason and logic, but it doesn’t violate them. Reason would never have the shepherd die for the sheep, the judge die for the condemned, or–most incredible–the Creator die for the creature. Logic would insist that the sinner die for his sins, that the penalty of the broken law be carried out. Grace does the unthinkable.

– William MacDonald

   Much of the visible church nowadays seems to think Christians are supposed to be at play rather than at war. The idea of actually fighting for doctrinal truth is the furthest thing from most churchgoers’ thoughts. Contemporary Christians are determined to get the world to like them–and of course in the process they also want to have as much fun as possible. They are so obsessed with making the church seem “cool” to unbelievers that they can’t be bothered with questions about whether another person’s doctrine is sound or not. In a climate like that, the thought of even identifying someone else’s teaching as false (much less “contending earnestly” for the faith) is a distasteful and dangerously countercultural suggestion. Christians have bought into the notion that almost nothing is more “uncool” in the world’s eyes than when someone shows a sincere concern about the danger of heresy. After all, the world simply doesn’t take spiritual truth that seriously, so they cannot fathom why anyone would.
– John Macarthur

The evangelical movement itself must take some blame for devaluing the truth by catering to people’s itching ears (2 Timothy 4:1-4). Does anyone really imagine that many of the entertainment-hungry churchgoers who pack today’s megachurches would be willing to give their lives for the truth? As a matter of fact, many of them are unwilling to take a bold stand for the truth even among other Christians in an environment where there is no serious threat against them and the worst effect of such a stand might be that someone’s feelings get hurt.
– John MacArthur

Few indeed are to be found who pray: there are many who go down on their knees, and say a form perhaps, but few who pray; few who cry out to God, few who call on the Lord, few who seek as if they wanted to find, few who knock as if they hungered and thirsted, few who wrestle, few who strive with God earnestly for an answer, few who give Him no rest, few who continue in prayer, few who pray always without ceasing and do not grow weak. Yes, few pray! It is just one of the things assumed which is everybody’s business, but in fact hardly anybody performs.

– J.C. Ryle

1816 – 1900

    In every generation across the history of the Church, countless martyrs have similarly died rather than deny the truth. Were such people just fools, making too much of their own convictions? Was their absolute confidence in what they believed actually misguided zeal? Did they die needlessly? Many these days evidently think so–including some who profess faith in Christ. Living in a culture where violent persecution is almost unknown, multitudes who call themselves Christians seem to have forgotten what faithfulness to the truth often costs. Did I say “often”? As a matter of fact, faithfulness to the truth is always costly in some way or another (2 Timothy 3:12), and that is precisely why Jesus insisted that anyone who wants to be His disciple must be willing to take up a cross (Luke 9:23-26).
 

– John MacArthur

So many of us–so many times–fight against a certain work of God without which we will never produce excellent fruit. We have been so led into believing that everything difficult, everything that conflicts, everything that scrapes us and works as a rasp in our life to take away our comfort–that it’s from the devil. That’s what America has taught us; a comfortable Christianity. When what we do not realize is those who say such things are blaspheming. Because in the life of God’s people, in His Church, in His vineyard, God the Father is the vine dresser and He is the One that is cutting away at us. He is the One that is pruning us. He is the one that is cleaning us.

– Paul Washer