Before I can preach love, mercy, and grace, I must preach sin, Law, and judgment.

– John Wesley

1703 – 1791

When Paul says, “If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink,” he does not mean, “Let’s all become lechers.” He means, there is a normal, simple, comfortable, ordinary life of human delights that we may enjoy with no troubling thoughts of heaven or hell or sin or holiness or God–if there is no resurrection from the dead. And what stunned me about this train of thought is that many professing Christians seem to aim at just this, and call it Christianity. Paul did not see his relation to Christ as the key to maximizing his physical comforts and pleasures in this life.

– John Piper

If sinners be damned at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. Let them go with our arms around their knees. Let no one go there unwarned or unprayed for.

– Charles Spurgeon

1834 – 1892

Another thing an underground worker must know, not with his head only, but in his fingertips: he should know that he belongs to the body of Christ. He belongs to a body that has been flogged for nearly 2,000 years. It has always been flogged, not only on Golgotha, but under the Roman emperors and by so many persecutions. It had been flogged under the Nazis and had been flogged in Russia for over seventy years. When converted I have consciously become part of a body that is a flogged body; a mocked body; a body spat upon; and one crowned with a crown of thorns, with nails driven into the hands and feet.

– Richard Wurmbrand

1909 – 2001

They do not really think what God says is true. They secretly flatter themselves with the notion, “It will surely not be fulfilled, there must be some other way to heaven beside that which ministers speak of, there cannot be so much danger of being lost.” In short, they do not put implicit confidence in the words that God has written and spoken, and so do not act upon them. They do not thoroughly believe hell, and so do not flee from it; nor heaven, and so do not seek it; nor the guilt of sin, and so do not turn from it; nor the holiness of God, and so do not fear Him; nor their need of Christ, and so do not trust in Him, nor love Him. Like the boy Passion, in Pilgrim’s Progress, they must have their good things now. They do not trust God, and so they cannot wait.

– J.C. Ryle

1816 – 1900

In a free country, to be a member of a church, it is enough to believe and be baptized. In the Church underground it is not enough to be a member in it. You can be baptized and you can believe, but you will not be a member of the Underground Church unless you know how to suffer. You might have the mightiest faith in the world, but if you are not prepared to suffer, then you will be taken by the police. You will get two slaps and you will declare anything. So the preparation for suffering is one of the essentials in the preparation for underground work.

– Richard Wurmbrand

1909 – 2001

All around us are people who are worldly-minded, money-lovers, pleasure-seekers, Sabbath-breakers, yet who think all is well with them because they have ‘accepted Christ as their personal Savior’. In their aspiration, conversation, and recreation, there is practically nothing to differentiate them from those who make no profession at all. Neither in their home-life nor social-life is there anything except empty pretensions to distinguish them from others. The fear of God is not upon them, the commands of God have no authority over them, the holiness of God has no attraction for them.

– AW Pink

1886 – 1952

Those who have had their “tickets punched” and have been assured, mistakenly, of their salvation solely due to something they did, a card they filled out, a prayer they recited, are some of the hardest people in the world to reach with the real message of repentance and faith.

– James White

There must be a real heartfelt belief that God’ s promises are sure and to be depended on; a real belief that what God says in the Bible is all true and that every doctrine contrary to this is false, whatever anyone may say. There must be a real belief that all God’s words are to be received, however hard and disagreeable to flesh and blood, and that His way is right and all others wrong. This there must be, or you will never come out from the world, take up your cross, follow Christ, and be saved.

– J.C. Ryle

1816 – 1900

The bow of God’s wrath is bent and straining. The arrow is already set on the string, and justice aims it directly at your heart. It is nothing but the mere pleasure of God–an angry God–who is not restrained by any promise or obligation, that keeps that arrow from being drunk with your blood. This means that all of you whose hearts have never been changed by the power of the Holy Spirit, and have never been born-again and made new creatures, raised from being dead in sin to a new light and life–all of you are in the hands of an angry God.

– Jonathan Edwards

1703 – 1758

That is precisely my concern about today’s pragmatic church-growth strategies. The design is to attract the unchurched. For what? To entertain them? To get them to attend church meetings regularly? Merely “churching” the unchurched accomplishes nothing of eternal value. Too often, however, that is where the strategy stalls. Or else it’s combined with a watered-down gospel that wrongly assures sinners that a positive “decision” for Christ is as good as true conversion. Multitudes who are not authentic Christians now identify themselves with the church. The church has thus been invaded with the world’s values, the world’s interests, and the world’s citizen.

– John MacArthur

We fear man so much because we fear God so little.

– William Grunall

1617 – 1679

Are you willing to give up anything which keeps you back from God? Or are you clinging to the Egypt of the world, and saying to yourself, “I must have it, I must have it: I cannot tear myself away”? Is there any cross in your Christianity? Are there any sharp corners in your religion, anything that ever jars and comes in collision with the earthly-mindedness around you? Or is all smooth and rounded off, and comfortably fitted into custom and fashion? Do you know anything of the afflictions of the gospel? Is your faith and practice ever a subject of scorn and reproach? Are you thought a fool by anyone because of your soul? . . . As Bunyan says, “the bitter must go before the sweet.” If there is no cross, there will be no crown.

– J.C. Ryle

1816 – 1900

Do you wish your soul to be saved? Then remember, you must choose whom you will serve. You cannot serve God and mammon. You cannot be on two sides at once. You cannot be a friend of Christ and a friend of the world at the same time. You must come out from the children of this world, and be separate; you must put up with much ridicule, trouble, and opposition, or you will be lost forever. You must be willing to think and do things which are only held by a few. It will cost you something.

– J.C. Ryle

1816 – 1900

But I have come to see that many evangelical Christians do not really believe the Word of God, especially when it talks about hell and judgment. Instead, they selectively accept only the portions that allow them to continue living in their current lifestyles. It is painful to think about hell and judgment. I understand why preachers do not like to talk about it, because I don’t either. It is so much easier to preach that “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” or to focus on the many delightful aspects of “possibility thinking” and the “word of faith” that brings health, wealth and happiness. The grace and love of God are pleasant subjects, and no one more beautifully demonstrated them than our Lord Jesus. Yet in His earthly ministry, He made more references to hell and judgment than He did to heaven. Jesus lived with the reality of hell, and He died on Calvary because He knew it was real and coming to everyone who doesn’t turn to God in this life. Believers are willing to accept the concept of heaven, but they look the other way when they come to passages in the Bible about hell. Very few seem to believe that those who die without Christ are going to a place where they will be tormented forever and ever in a bottomless pit where the fire is not quenched and they are separated from God and His love for all eternity without any chance of return. If we knew the horrors of the potential judgment that hangs over us–if we really believed in what is coming–how differently we would live.

– K. P. Yohannan

Better suffer and obey God, than be at ease and sin.

– J.C. Ryle

1816 – 1900

But if you really are in earnest about your soul, if your religion is something more than a mere fashionable Sunday cloak, if you are determined to live by the Bible, if you are resolved to be a New Testament Christian, then, I repeat, you will soon find you must carry a cross.

– J.C. Ryle

1816 – 1900

There is a common worldly kind of Christianity in this day, which many have, and think they have enough–a cheap Christianity which offends nobody, and requires no sacrifice, which costs nothing and is worth nothing.

– J.C. Ryle

1816 – 1900