When, in the tempests that sweep over our own lives, we sometimes pass into a great calm as suddenly as if we had entered the centre of a typhoon, we wonder unbelievingly instead of saying, out of a faith nourished by experience, ‘It is just like Him.’ – Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: Mark, 161 …
Category: Quote for the Day
Jesus effects a purification in an ongoing way. That is how the disciple takes part in what Jesus does and is placed by God in the location where Jesus stands. – Adolf Schlatter, Do We Know Jesus?, 415. …
Take your stand as the ambassador of Jesus Christ, sent of God to sinful men. Believe that He who sends you will not have you speak in vain. Seek the salvation of those who hear you, as you do your own. Forget yourselves so as to behold nothing but the glory of God, and the salvation of your hearers. You will then tremble more before God, but you will tremble less before men. – J. W. Alexander, Thoughts on Preaching, …
[W]hen men abandon belief in the retributive justice of God, they give up the strongest reason for the incarnation; and when this reason ceases to have weight with them, belief in the incarnation will not long survive…To give up the doctrine of retribution is to abandon the elements of Christianity which give it worth. – Francis L. Patton, Fundamental Christianity, 282. …
[I]f God has really intended to make known His will to man, it follows that to secure knowledge on our part, He must convey His truth to us in accordance with the well-known rules of language. He must adapt Himself to our mode of communicating thought and ideas. If His words were given to be understood, it follows that He must have employed language to convey the sense intended, agreeably to the laws grammatically expressed, controlling all language; and that, …
He was the high priest of nature; and every mute thing, every dumb beast,every lifeless plant, the majestic heavens, the verdant earth, the rolling sea, mountains, cataracts and plains – every province of being in which he saw the traces of the Divine hand – were to find their tongue in him and through him to pour into the ears of the Most High their ceaseless song of praise. – James Henley Thornwell, Collected Writings, 1.247 …
Here, however, men will continually offer one uniform excuse for Adam – that it was not possible for him to help or avoid that which God Himself had decreed. But to establish the guilt of Adam forever, his own voluntary transgression is enough, and more than sufficient. Nor, indeed, is the secret counsel of God the real and virtual cause of sin, but manifestly the will and inclination of man. – John Calvin, ‘The Eternal Predestination of God”, in Calvin’s …
If God were not to be enjoyed in heaven, but only vast wealth, immense treasures of silver, and gold, great honour of such kind as men obtain in this world…all these would not make up for the want of God and Christ, and the enjoyment of them there. If it were empty of God, it would indeed be an empty and melancholy place. – The godly have been made sensible, as to all creature-enjoyments, that they cannot satisfy the soul; …
This genial providence, this grace without judgment, this love without justice, this forgiveness without redemption, forms the background of the crisis of our [read 21st] century. – G. C. Berkouwer, The Providence of God, 28. …
One of the grossest distortions of the sovereignty of God in his decree and providence is that of passive quiescence, fatalistic inactivity and stoical indifference. This attitude of mind is notorious for its frequency and but it is disastrous in its results. The faith in God’s providence that is true and the hope in God’s faithfulness that is well grounded have as their complement the strictest adherence to and perseverance in the way of divine commandment. The secret things belong …
