Blog

  • Dallas Willard Said:

    In his book “Renovation of the Heart” Dallas Willard said:

    But what is this “self-denial” or “death to self,” which goes hand in hand with restoration of the soul and eventually the whole person? At first it sounds like some dreadfully negative thing that aims to annihilate us. And frankly, from the point of view of the ruined soul, self-denial is and will always be every bit as brutal as it seems to most people on first approach. The ruined life is not to be enhanced but replaced. We must simply lose our lives—that ruined life about which most people complain so much anyway. “Those who have found their life (soul) shall lose it,” Jesus said, “while those who have lost their life (soul) for my sake shall find it” (Matthew 10:39, PAR). And again, “Whoever aims to save their life shall lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake shall findit. For what have you gained by possessing the entire world if in the process you forfeit your life (soul)—lose yourself. What would you trade your very soul for?” (Matthew 16:25-26, PAR; also Mark 8:35-36; Luke 9:24-25).

  • Joni Eareckson Tada says:

    In “Heaven: Your Real Home” Joni Eareckson Tada says:

    The Bible provides the symbols. But it is faith that makes the hieroglyphics of heaven come alive. And heaven has to come alive! After all, you’re a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, and according to Philippians 3:20, you’re supposed to be eagerly awaiting it. Heaven is your journey’s end, your life’s goal, your purpose for going on. If heaven is the home of your spirit, the rest for your soul, the repository of every spiritual investment on earth, then it must grip your heart. And your heart must grip heaven by faith.

  • C. S. Lewis said:

    In “Heaven” by Randy Alcorn is this from a C. S. Lewis book:

    C. S. Lewis depicts another source of our misconceptions about Heaven: naturalism, the belief that the world can be understood in scientific terms, without recourse to spiritual or supernatural explanations. In The Silver Chair, Puddleglum, Jill, and Eustace are captured in a sunless underground world by an evil witch who calls herself the queen of the underworld. The witch claims that her prisoners’ memories of the overworld, Narnia, are but figments of their imagination. She laughs condescendingly at their child’s game of “pretending” that there’s a world above and a great ruler of that world.

    When they speak of the sun that’s visible in the world above, she asks them what a sun is. Groping for words, they compare it to a giant lamp. She replies, “When you try to think out clearly what this sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only tell me it is like the lamp. Your sun is a dream; and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp.” When they speak of Aslan the lion, king of Narnia, she says they have seen cats and have merely projected those images into the make-believe notion of a giant cat. They begin to waver. The queen, who hates Aslan and wishes to conquer Narnia, tries to deceive them into thinking that whatever they cannot perceive with their senses must be imaginary—which is the essence of naturalism. The longer they are unable to see the world they remember, the more they lose sight of it. She says to them, hypnotically, “There never was any world but mine,” and they repeat after her, abandoning reason, parroting her deceptions. Then she coos softly, “There is no Narnia, no Overworld, Overworld, no sky, no sun, no Aslan.” This illustrates Satan’s power to mold our weak minds as we are trapped in a dark, fallen world. We’re prone to deny the great realities of God and Heaven, which we can no longer see because of the Curse. Finally, when it appears they’ve succumbed to the queen’s lies, Puddleglum breaks the spell and says to the enraged queen, “Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that . . . the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow.”

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  • Matthew Henry Said:

    In “The New Matthew Henry Commentary” for Jeremiah 12:1 it says:

    This shows us that when we are most in the dark about the meaning of God’s ways with us, we must still decide to keep right thoughts about God, and we must be confident that he never did and never will do the slightest wrong to any of his creatures. Even when his judgments are as unsearchable as a great deep and altogether inexplicable, his righteousness is still as strong and immovable as the great mountains (Ps 36:6). Jeremiah 12:1

  • Pastor Charles Spurgeon Said:

    In his commentary on the whole Bible, Charles Spurgeon said:

    “Light be.” “Light was.” God had but to speak the word, and the great wonder was accomplished. How there was light before there was any sun, — for the sun was not created until the fourth day of the week — it is not for us to say. But God is not dependent upon his own creation. He can make light without a sun, he can spread the gospel without the aid of ministers, he can convert souls without any human or angelic agency, for he does as he wills in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.

  • Pastor Paul Tripp Says:

    In “Forever: Why You Can’t Live Without it” Pastor Paul Tripp says:

    If you name yourself a Christian and you say that you have placed your trust in Jesus but are living in the here and now as if nothing in your life is sure, you have a miserable faith. You have put your faith in Jesus only to have your life end up being harder than it ever was. Surety, which will not be weakened or victimized by the trials of life, comes only as the result of a deep grasp of the unshakable reality that there will be a final restoration of all that sin has broken.

  • Pastor R. C. Sproul Said:

    In “Essential Truths of the Christian Faith”, R. C. Sproul, with reference to the subject of predestination, said:

    No one receives injustice. God is not obligated to be merciful to any or to all alike. It is His decision how merciful He chooses to be. Yet he is never guilty of being unrighteous toward anyone (see Romans 9:14-15)

    Romans 9:14-15 in the NIV says:

    What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

  • Pastor R. C. Sproul Said

    In “The Mystery of the Holy Spirit”, R. C. Sproul said:

    The fact that something is mysterious does not mean that it is not true. It is possible that with further information that we will understand it, but for the present it eludes us. The Bible reminds us of this:

    For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. (1 Cor. 13:12)

  • Pastor Don Fortner Says

    Pastor Don Fortner says in Basic Bible Doctrine:

    We must never suggest, or imply, or imagine that God must do anything, or that he must do anything in a specific way.