“Touching His human nature, Jesus is no longer present with us. Touching his Divine nature, He is never absent from us.” – R.C. Sproul

“Conscience is the internal perception of God’s moral Law.” – Oswald Chambers

“Do you know what sparked the Great Awakening? It was a series of sermons Edwards preached in 1734 on ‘Justification By Faith’ in response to what he considered to be the greatest danger to America. Do you know what he saw as the greatest danger to America? It would ruin the colonies, Edwards said. ARMINIANISM – a plague that would rob God of His glory. It was a plague that would strip the church of the power of God and diminish the worship of God. It was a faulty theology that was centered upon man that brought God down to man’s terms. That’s what Arminianism is my friends.” – Steven Lawson

“If you were asked to define the difference between a Calvinist and a hyper-Calvinist, how would you do it? It is a question worth asking for this reason; I know large numbers of people who, when they use the term ‘hyper-Calvinist’ generally mean Calvinist [and vice-versa]. In other words, they do not know what a hyper-Calvinist is. A hyper-Calvinist is one who says that the offer of salvation is only made to the redeemed, and that no preacher of the Gospel should preach Christ and offer salvation to all and sundry. A hyper-Calvinist regards anyone who offers, or who proclaims salvation to all as a dangerous person. For what its worth, there is a society in London at the moment that has described me as a dangerous Arminian because I preach Christ and offer salvation to all!” – Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Great Doctrines Of The Bible)

Someone Said: “Christians can’t use ‘circular reasoning’ by trying to prove the Bible by quoting from the Bible!”

Ray Comfort Answers: The “circular reasoning” argument is absurd. That’s like saying you can’t prove that the President lives in the White House by looking into the White House. It is looking into the White House that will provide the necessary proof. The fulfilled prophecies, the amazing consistency, and the many scientific statements of the Bible prove it to be the Word of God. They provide evidence that it is supernatural in origin.

“The meaning of atonement is not to be found in our penitence evoked by the sight of Calvary, but rather in what God did when in Christ on the cross He took our place and bore our sin.” – John Stott, The Cross of Christ

“[The] term ‘decide’ has always seemed to me to be quite wrong. A sinner does not ‘decide’ for Christ; the sinner ‘flies’ to Christ in utter helplessness and despair saying — Foul, I to the fountain fly, Wash me, Saviour, or I die.

No man truly comes to Christ unless he flies to Him as his only refuge and hope, his only way of escape from the accusations of conscience and the condemnation of God’s holy law. Nothing else is satisfactory. If a man says that having thought about the matter and having considered all sides he has on the whole decided for Christ, and if he has done so without any emotion or feeling, I cannot regard him as a man who has been regenerated. The convicted sinner no more ‘decides’ for Christ than the poor drowning man ‘decides’ to take hold of that rope that is thrown to him and suddenly provides him with the only means of escape. The term is entirely inappropriate.” – Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) taken from: Preaching and Preachers, Zondervan, 1972, pp. 279-280.

“We preachers do not preach hell enough, and we do not say enough about sin. We talk about the gospel and wonder why people are not interested in what we say. Of course they are not interested. No man is interested in a piece of good news unless he has the consciousness of needing it; no man is interested in an offer of salvation unless he knows that there is something from which he needs to be saved. It is quite useless to ask a man to adopt the Christian view of the gospel unless he first has the Christian view of sin. But a man will never adopt the Christian view of sin if he considers merely the sin of the world or the sins of other people. Consideration of the sins of other people is the deadliest of moral anodynes; it relieves the pain of conscience but it also destroys moral life. Many persons gloat over denunciations of that to which they are not tempted; or they even gloat over denunciations, in the case of other people, of sins which are also really theirs. King David was very severe when the prophet Nathan narrated to him his sordid tale of greed. ‘As the Lord liveth,’ said David, ‘the man that hath done this thing shall surely die.’ But Nathan was a disconcerting prophet. ‘And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.’ (II Samuel 12:5, 7) That was for David the beginning of a real sense of his sin. So it will also be with us.” – J. Gresham Machen

“You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by a few great things. If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on for centuries and into eternity, you don’t have to have a high IQ or EQ; you don’t have to have to have good looks or riches; you don’t have to come from a fine family or a fine school. You have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things, and be set on fire by them.” – John Piper: Boasting Only in the Cross, 2000

John Newton: “When we are deeply conscious of our defects in duty. If we compare our best performances with the demands of the law, the majesty of God, and the unspeakable obligations we are under; if we consider our innumerable sins of omission, and that the little we can do is polluted and defiled by the mixture of evil thoughts, and the working of selfish principles, aims, and motives, which though we disapprove, we are unable to suppress; we have great reason to confess, ‘To us belong shame and confusion of face.’

But we are relieved by the thought, that Jesus, the High Priest, bears the iniquity of our holy things, perfumes our prayers with the incense of his mediation, and washes our tears in his own blood.

This inspires a confidence, that though we are unworthy of the least of his mercies, we may humbly hope for a share in the greatest blessings he bestows, because we are heard and accepted, not on the account of our own prayers and services, but in the beloved Son of God, who maketh intercession for us.” (“The Intercession of Christ,” Sermon 47, The Works of John Newton, vol. 4, 1820 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2007), 531)

“Anything that keeps me from my Bible is my enemy, however harmless it may appear to be.” – A.W. Tozer

“Theology therefore, is to us, the ultimate and the noblest of all the exact teaching arts. It is a guide and master plan for our highest end, sent in a special manner from God, treating of divine things, tending towards God, and leading man to God.” – William Ames

“Love is not maximum emotion. Love is maximum commitment.” – Sinclair Ferguson

“We cannot use the doctrine of sanctification to renegotiate our acceptance with God.” – Scott Clark

the perfect humanity, and he sees in Christ all his people, and treats them accordingly. He looks upon his people as if they themselves had magnified the law and made it honorable by a sinless life. Wondrous doctrine this, but he that believes it shall find rest unto his soul; and it is because of it that we are authorized to come forth this day and declare the day of salvation. The guilt of the believing sinner is put away, for Christ has carried it; and now righteousness belongs to the sinner, for God imputes it to him without works: therefore this is the day of salvation.” – From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled “The Day Of Salvation,” delivered January 13, 1878.

“To the self-righteous, being judged according to deeds does not seem too alarming but to the man who knows himself the thought is terrifying.” – Paul Washer

“Don’t believe everything you think. You cannot be trusted to tell yourself the truth. Stay in The Word.” – Jerry Bridges

“Tell the truth” is to the preacher what “First, do no harm” is to the physician.” – R.C. Sproul Jr.

“Historic confessions and creeds protect the Church from foolish ‘cereal aisle’ autonomy. The Spirit who authored Scripture has through the years drawn the Church to understand it, and the great Church confessions greatly aid us in employing faithful hermeneutics. We are not advocating a paper pope, but a biblically grounded confidence in the historic analogy of faith. God is able to reveal clearly in his Word precisely what he wishes – not only to this generation, but consistently over the entire life of the Church.” – David B. Garner

“When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I beat my breast to think I could ever have rebelled against One who loved me so and sought my good.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“You can be as straight as a gun barrel theologically—and be as empty as one spiritually.” – A.W. Tozer

“This is your best life, if your next life is in hell. But, on the other hand, if you are a child of God and your sins are forgiven and you’ve come to embrace Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, this is not even close to your best life! You can’t even comprehend what your best life looks like because ‘Eye hath not seen nor has ear heard what God has prepared for those that love Him.’ Contrary to what is popular today, even in religious circles, even in Christian circles, even in the name of Jesus, the Lord is not promising you here and now a full, happy, rich, satisfying, trouble-free life of health, wealth and success. Oh He does promise that, absolutely – a full, happy, rich, satisfying, trouble-free life of health, wealth and success and absolute joy and peace and perfection, but not now. Not now. In fact, quite on the other hand, our Lord has promised to those that know Him and love Him, in this life, trouble, persecution, rejection, difficulty, trials, temptation, pain, suffering, sorrow, sickness, and even physical death. So, for Christians, this is our worst life now. It isn’t that it’s bad, but comparatively, it’s the worst when you think of the life that is to come, which is the best. Your best life as a Christian begins when this life ends. Christians through the centuries have understood this, certainly the early Christians understood it. The Bible makes it clear. You just can’t expect all the promises that God has made to you for Heaven to necessarily show up here. Any sensible Christian understands that. Don’t expect more than this life can deliver.” – John MacArthur

“Whenever any person comes to saving faith in the Lord, it is because he has been supernaturally drawn to believe.” – Steven Lawson

“It is a reading age, a preaching age, a working age, but it is not a praying age.” – C.H. Spurgeon

“The glory of the gospel is that when the church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it.” – Martyn Lloyd-Jones

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “The resurrection is the proclamation of the fact that God is fully and completely satisfied with the work that His Son did upon the Cross.”

Donald Grey Barnhouse, “Note well that it was not His resurrection that produced our justification, but our justification that produced His resurrection.”

“Scripture sets forth a distinction of the Father from the Word, and of the Word from the Spirit. Yet the greatness of the mystery warns us how much reverence and sobriety we ought to use in investigating this. And that passage in Gregory of Nazianzus vastly delights me: “I cannot think on the one without quickly being encircled by the splendor of the three; nor can I discern the three without being straightway carried back to the one.” Let us not, then, be led to imagine a trinity of persons that keeps our thoughts distracted and does not at once lead them back to that unity. Indeed, the words “Father,” “Son,” and “Spirit” imply a real distinction—let no one think that these titles, whereby God is variously designated from his works, are empty—but a distinction, not a division.” – John Calvin

“Christ makes intercession, by his appearing in our nature continually before the Father in heaven, in the merit of his obedience and sacrifice on earth, declaring his will to have it applied to all believers; answering all accusations against them, and procuring for them quiet of conscience, notwithstanding daily failings, access with boldness to the throne of grace, and acceptance of their persons and services.” – #55 Westminster Larger Catechism

“It is a good fall when a man falls on his knees.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“If we are true Christians, we must not expect everything smooth in our journey to heaven. We must count it no strange thing, if we have to endure sicknesses, losses, bereavements, and disappointments, just like other people. Free pardon and full forgiveness, grace by the way and glory to the end – all this our Savior has promised to give. But He has never promised that we shall have no afflictions. He loves us too well to promise that.” – J.C. Ryle

“You should tell the devil: Just by telling me that I am a miserable, great sinner, you are placing a sword and weapon into my hand with which I can decisively overcome you; yea, with your own weapon I can kill and floor you. For if you can tell me that I am a poor sinner, I, on the other hand, can tell you that Christ died for sinners and is their Intercessor You remind me of the boundless, great faithfulness and benefaction of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The burden of my sins and all the trouble and misery that were to oppress me eternally He very gladly took upon His shoulders and suffered the bitter death on the cross for them. To Him I direct you. You may accuse and condemn Him. Let me rest in peace; for on His shoulders, not on mine, lie all my sins…” – Martin Luther

“I believe the doctrine of election, because I am quite sure that if God had not chosen me I should never have chosen him; and I am sure he chose me before I was born, or else he never would have chosen me afterwards; and he must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why he should have looked upon me with special love.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“We rob the gospel of its power if we leave out its threatenings of punishment.” – C.H. Spurgeon

“It’s the centrality of the Word and not the person who preaches it that’s important.” – Sinclair Ferguson

“Where persons love little, do little, and give little, we may shrewdly suspect that they have never had much affliction of heart for their sins and that they think they owe but very little to divine grace.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

“But someone will say, ‘Didn’t Jesus say that, to be saved, you have to be as a little child?’ Of course he did. But did you ever see a little child who didn’t ask questions? People who use this argument must never have listened to a little child or been one. My four children gave me a harder time with their endless flow of questions than university people ever have. . . . What Jesus was talking about is that the little child, when he has an adequate answer, accepts the answer. He has the simplicity of not having a built-in grid whereby, regardless of the validity of the answer, he rejects it.” – Francis A. Schaeffer, “Form and Freedom in the Church,” International Congress on World Evangelization, July, 1974.

“The law is an entity, a whole, in the sight of God and was given in order to demonstrate to man that he could never do anything that could satisfy the perfect God who must demand perfection.” – Donald Grey Barnhouse

“Unless God stoops in His grace to change our hearts, we will not love Him.” – R.C. Sproul

“The universe is no democracy. It is a monarchy. God Himself has appointed His beloved Son as the preeminent King.” – R.C. Sproul

“The object of our faith is neither our actions or our knowledge, but the person of Jesus Christ. Of course, trusting a person involves knowledge and assent, but we’re saved by Christ, not by doctrines. The purpose of the doctrine is to direct us to the right person and to keep us looking to him until that day when faith yields to sight.” – Michael Horton

“The clear message from Genesis to Revelation is either go to hell with your own righteousness, or go to heaven with the righteousness of Christ credited to your account by faith alone. Faith in Christ is saving; faith in anything or anyone else is superstition” – Michael Horton

John Witherspoon commenting on Revelation 6:14-17 and the terror that will come upon sinners when they stand before the wrath of the Lamb:

Mark this extraordinary expression, the wrath of the Lamb, that meekest and gentlest of all creatures; teaching us, that his former meekness and patience and suffering shall inflame and exasperate his future vengeance.

Could I conduct you to the gates of the infernal prison, I am persuaded you will hear Judas Iscariot, and all the other treacherous disciples, crying out, “O that Christ had never come in the flesh! The thunders of Sinai would have been less terrible. The frowns of Jesus of Nazareth are insupportable. O the dreadful, painful, and uncommon wrath of a Saviour on the judgment seat!”

The Lord speaks consolation to his own people, and pierce the hearts of his enemies, that they may be brought to repentance. (Sermon 6, The Love of Christ in Redemption)

“God not only initiated my salvation, He not only sowed the seed, but He made sure that that seed germinated in my heart by regenerating me by the power of the Holy Ghost.” – R.C. Sproul

“The aim of the climb is not intellectual satisfaction. The aim is worship. God gets more honor when we worship on the basis of what we know about him than he gets if we worship on the basis of what we don’t know. If our effort to know God more clearly is not an effort to love him more dearly, it will be fatal. ‘Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up’ (1 Corinthians 8:1). This means that the only knowledge worth having in the end is knowledge that leads to love — love for God and love for people.” – John Piper

“The extent of man’s fall is so great and extensive that no man by the exercise of his own will or understanding can ever save himself or become a Christian.” – Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“They who avow the doctrines distinguished by the name of Calvinistic, ought, if consistent with their own principles, to be most gentle and forbearing of all men, inmeekness instructing them that oppose. With us, it is a fundamental maxim, that a man can receive nothing but what is given him from heaven (John 3:27). If, therefore, it has pleased God to give us the knowledge of some truths, which are hidden from others, who have the same outward means of information; it is a just reason for thankfulness to him, but will not justify our being angry with them; for we are no better or wiser than they in ourselves, and might have opposed the truths which we now prize, with the same eagerness and obstinacy, if his grace had not made us to differ. If the man, mentioned in John 9, who was born blind, on whom our Lord graciously bestowed the blessing of sight, had taken a cudgel and beat all the blind men he met, because they would not see, his conduct would have greatly resembled that of an angry Calvinist.” – John Newton, Memoirs of the Life of the Late William Grimshaw (London, 1825), page 67.

Calvinists who treat others harshly fall short of the gospel they mean to defend.

“I fear men who have spent most of their life telling other men that they are saved. I fear you if you’ve done that. You don’t tell men they are saved; you tell men how to be saved. God tells them they are saved.” – Paul Washer

“The religion of the Bible thus announces itself, not as the product of men’s search after God, if haply they may feel after Him and find Him, but as the creation in men of the gracious God, forming a people for Himself, that they may show forth His praise. In other words, the religion of the Bible presents itself as distinctively a revealed religion. Or rather, to speak more exactly, it announces itself as the revealed religion, as the only revealed religion; and sets itself as such over against all other religions, which are represented as all products, in a sense in which it is not, of the art and device of man.” – B. B. Warfield

Augustine, writing to Jerome and discussing his view of the Holy Scriptures:

For I confess to your Charity that I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the Ms. is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it. As to all other writings, in reading them, however great the superiority of the authors to myself in sanctity and learning, I do not accept their teaching as true on the mere ground of the opinion being held by them; but only because they have succeeded in convincing my judgment of its truth either by means of these canonical writings themselves, or by arguments addressed to my reason. I believe, my brother, that this is your own opinion as well as mine. I do not need to say that I do not suppose you to wish your books to be read like those of prophets or of apostles, concerning which it would be wrong to doubt that they are free from error. Far be such arrogance from that humble piety and just estimate of yourself which I know you to have, and without which assuredly you would not have said, ‘Would that I could receive your embrace, and that by converse we might aid each other in learning!’ (Letter 82.3)

“When we shall see the dead rise from the grave by their own power, then may we expect to see ungodly sinners of their own free will turning to Christ.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“We are called to love others. We share the gospel because we love people. And we don’t share the gospel because we don’t love people. Instead, we wrongly fear them. We don’t want to cause awkwardness. We want their respect, and after all, we figure, if we try to share the gospel with them, we’ll look foolish! And so we are quiet. We protect our pride at the cost of their souls. In the name of not wanting to look weird, we are content to be complicit in their being lost.” – Mark Dever

“The Bible is worth all other books which have ever been printed.” – Patrick Henry