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In the Bible Knowledge Commentary with reference to Jeremiah 15:5-7 which says:
⁵ “Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem? Who will mourn for you? Who will stop to ask how you are?
⁶ You have rejected me,” declares the LORD. “You keep on backsliding. So I will lay hands on you and destroy you; I can no longer show compassion.
⁷ I will winnow them with a winnowing fork at the city gates of the land. I will bring bereavement and destruction on my people, for they have not changed their ways.

The Bible Knowledge Commentary which applies to this set of verses is very eloquent. That is all I feel necessary to say. It says:

God asked Jerusalem…. who would pity her or mourn for her when she was judged. The only One who had ever cared for her was God, but she had rejected Him. Therefore God vowed to destroy her without compassion. He would winnow her as a farmer winnowed his grain to remove the unbelievers who were like chaff.

In his book “Rightly Dividing the Word” which is a treatise on Dispensationalism (like it or not) Clarence said:

The prominent Gentile nations of the world have been Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome. When God’s chosen people the Israelites fell into idolatry, and were carried into Captivity to Babylon, they were supplanted by the Gentiles. For a long time the nations of Egypt, Assyria and Babylon were anxious to fall upon Israel and conquer them, but God held them in an unseen leash until the iniquity of Israel was full, and then let them loose, and permitted the world power to pass into *For a fuller account of the Jews see my book on “Dispensational Truth,” the chapters on “The Jews,” “The Tribulation” and “The Kingdom.” the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. This happened in B. C. 606, and marked the beginning of the “Times of the Gentiles,” spoken of by Christ in Luk 21:24, and which is a period that in the mind of God has certain chronological limits. It is not to be confounded with the “Fulness of the Gentiles” spoken of by Paul in Rom 11:25. The “Fulness of the Gentiles” refers to the Gentiles that are “gathered out” to make up the Church, and “blindness in part” will continue among the Jews until the “Fulness” (the whole number of the elect) of the Gentiles be come in, then the Church is “caught out” and the Jews restored to their own land. The “Fulness of the Gentiles” began at Pentecost and ends at least seven years before the “Times of the Gentiles” end. The “Times of the Gentiles” are fully outlined in the Book of Daniel. The Book of Daniel contains one “Dream” by Nebuchadnezzar, and four “Visions” of Daniel all relating to the “Times of the Gentiles.” In the second year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign he had a dream. Dan 2:31-45.

My take is this: Clarence makes an extremely strong case for Dispensationalism in this book. This is just one example of how, like the Bereans, Clarence proves all with Scripture.

In “Divine Providence” Pastor Stephen Charnock said:

If all things happened by chance, no one could predict future things or their fulfillment, yet we frequently find such predictions in Scripture. It is impossible for anything to continue without God’s care. If for the least moment God should withhold the influence of his providence, we would melt into nothing, just as our reflections in a mirror vanish the instant we step away. The light of day is the light of the sun, and it withdraws when the sun departs. The physical and moral goodness of the creature would vanish if God were removed, because he is the fountain of both.

My take is this: I like that he uses the analogy of the sun, because it is one of God’s more impressive creations IMHO. Many heathens once worshiped the sun long ago, but always worship the creator NOT the creation I say.

As quoted in “Heaven” by Joni Eareckson Tada is a short poem by C. S. Lewis from “his latest book” back then:

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in Eternity’s sun rise.

My take is this: this is meant for those who can’t get past the negatives of heaven (no passionate love, no delicious food). It certainly helps me.

In “The Existence and Attributes of God” Stephen Charnock said:

For, 1. God in regard of his existence is not only the discovery of faith, but of reason. God hath revealed not only his being, but some sparks of his eternal power and godhead in his works, as well as in his word. (Rom. i. 19, 20), “God hath showed it unto them,” — how? in his works; by the things that are made, it is a discovery to our reason, as shining in the creatures; and an object of our faith as breaking out upon us in the Scriptures: it is an article of our faith, and an article of our reason. Faith supposeth natural knowledge, as grace supposeth nature. Faith indeed is properly of things above reason, purely depending upon revelation. What can be demonstrated by natural light, is not so properly the object of faith; though in regard of the addition of a certainty by revelation it is so.

My take is this: I find it very hard to have faith enough to be an Atheist and this succinctly shows why. There is a book by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek with that title.

Once again from “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”

Isaac Newton (1642–1727) implicitly confirmed the validity of the Teleological Argument when he marveled at the design of our solar system. He wrote, “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”1 Yet it was William Paley (1743–1805) who made the argument famous by his commonsense assertion that every watch requires a watchmaker. Imagine you’re walking along in the woods and you find a diamond-studded Rolex on the ground. What do you conclude is the cause of that watch: The wind and the rain? Erosion? Some combination of natural forces? Of course not! There’s absolutely no question in your mind that some intelligent being made that watch, and that some unfortunate unfortunate individual must have accidentally dropped it there.

My favorite part of this is from Isaac Newton. Especially in his younger years Isaac was very passionate about the Bible. Most people are not aware of this.

In “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist” Norman Geisler and Frank Turek say:

The extent of the universe’s fine-tuning makes the Anthropic Principle perhaps the most powerful argument for the existence of God. It’s not that there are just a few broadly defined constants that may have resulted by chance. No, there are more than 100 very narrowly defined constants that strongly point to an intelligent Designer. We’ve already identified five of them. Here are ten more:

1. If the centrifugal force of planetary movements did not precisely balance the gravitational forces, nothing could be held in orbit around the sun.

2. If the universe had expanded at a rate one millionth more slowly than it did, expansion would have stopped, and the universe would have collapsed on itself before any stars had formed. If it had expanded faster, then no galaxies would have formed.

3. Any of the laws of physics can be described as a function of the velocity of light (now defined to be 299,792,458 meters per second). Even a slight variation in the speed of light would alter the other constants and preclude the possibility of life on earth.

4. If water vapor levels in the atmosphere were greater than they are now, a runaway greenhouse effect would cause temperatures to rise too high for human life; if they were less, an insufficient greenhouse effect would make the earth too cold to support human life.

5. If Jupiter were not in its current orbit, the earth would be bombarded with space material. Jupiter’s gravitational field acts as a cosmic vacuum cleaner, attracting asteroids and comets that might otherwise strike earth.

6. If the thickness of the earth’s crust were greater, too much oxygen would be transferred to the crust to support life. If it were thinner, volcanic and tectonic activity would make life impossible.

7. If the rotation of the earth took longer than twenty-four hours, temperature differences would be too great between night and day. If the rotation period were shorter, atmospheric wind velocities would be too great.

8. The 23-degree axial tilt of the earth is just right. If the tilt were altered slightly, surface temperatures would be too extreme on earth.

9. If the atmospheric discharge (lightning) rate were greater, there would be too much fire destruction; if it were less, there would be too little nitrogen fixing in the soil.

10. If there were more seismic activity, much more life would be lost; if there was less, nutrients on the ocean floors and in river runoff would not be cycled back to the continents through tectonic uplift. (Yes, even earthquakes are necessary to sustain life as we know it!)

My take is this. If you find a Rolex in the woods and it is an amazing feat of technology you assume it had an intelligent designer. You don’t assume it was created via rain, wind and erosion. This is also in the book. It is a GREAT book.

In “Heaven” Pastor Randy Alcorn said:

Spiritually speaking, we live in the Country of the Blind. The disease of sin has blinded us to God and Heaven, which are real yet unseen. Fortunately, Jesus has come to our valley from Heaven to tell us about his father, the world beyond, and the world to come. If we listen to him—which will require a concerted effort not to listen to the lies of the devil—we will never be the same. Nor will we ever want to be.

This is not a testimony against the United States. It is an analogy.

I do like the analogy of living in the Country of the Blind in our unregenerate state. That is why I include this quote.

In “The Existence and Attributes of God” Stephen Charnock said:

A secret atheism, or a partial atheism, is the spring of all the wicked practices in the world: the disorders of the life spring from the ill dispositions of the heart. For the first, every atheist is a grand fool. If he were not a fool, he would not imagine a thing so contrary to the stream of the universal reason of the world, contrary to the rational dictates of his own soul, and contrary to the testimony of every creature, and link in the chain of creation: if he were not a fool, he would not strip himself of humanity, and degrade himself lower than the most despicable brute. It is a folly; for though God be so inaccessible that we cannot know him perfectly, yet he is so much in the light, that we cannot be totally ignorant of him; as he cannot be comprehended in his essence, he cannot be unknown in his existence; it is as easy by reason to understand that he is, as it is difficult to know what he is. The demonstrations reason furnisheth us with for the existence of God, will be evidences of the atheist’s folly. One would think there were little need of spending time in evidencing this truth, since in the principle of it, it seems to be so universally owned, and at the first proposal and demand, gains the assent of most men.

I contrast this true wisdom with this from Google AI Overview: According to Carl Sagan’s perspective on the oscillating universe theory, if the universe is indeed cyclical, experiencing repeated cycles of expansion and contraction (“Big Crunch” followed by a new “Big Bang”), then life could potentially exist in each cycle, with new life arising from the remnants of the previous universe; however, he also acknowledged the significant challenges this idea presents, particularly regarding the preservation of information and the potential for drastic changes in physical laws between cycles. 

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).