Favorite Quotations
President John Adams
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — President John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798
“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.” –President John Adams
“The Bible is of all books in the world, that which contributes most to make men good, wise and happy.” — President John Quincy Adams, September 1811
Anonymous
“Pro-choice, that’s a lie, babies don’t choose to die”
Anonymous
“When I die I want to go like Grandpa did, quietly in my sleep, rather than the undignified kicking and screaming of his passengers.”
Anonymous
Augustine
“To Him Who is everywhere, men come, not by travelling, but by loving“
-Augustine
Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.
Augustine
Michael Behe
“The audacious claim that unguided natural forces organized nonliving matter into cells and then produced the complex biological systems we see today is as solid as Swiss cheese.”
Michael Behe
Calvin Beisner
In a January 1989 article in World Magazine E. Calvin Beisner provided the following statistics —
You know how the magazines love to tell you how much it costs to raise a child? Well, consider these statistics. The average person will represent a combined liability or economic cost, of $192,600 during his first 18 years plus his lifetime after retirement at age 65. But the same person will occasion the production, directly or indirectly, of goods and services worth, if a male, $55,277 per year, or, if a female, $26,680 per year, from age 18 to 65. This means the average male occasions the production of $2,598,000 worth of goods and services during his lifetime and the average female will occasion the production of $1,253,960 worth of goods and services in her lifetime. This means the average male’s net worth to society … will be $2,405,400, and the average female’s $1,061,300 … figuring solely on the basis of measurable income, not including the tremendous value of the unpaid work people – especially women – perform at home.
E. Calvin Beisner
Milton Berle
Milton Berle ended his years appearing before senior citizens in Miami Beach. Once, a little old lady in the front row kept shouting, “That stinks, I’ve heard it before!” Exasperated, Berle said, “Lady, do you know who I am?” “No,” she said, “but if you go up to the desk, they’ll tell you.”
Elizabeth Brevick
“I want a duper, duper daddy kiss!”
Elizabeth B.
Thomas Brooks
“He that does not believe that there is a God, is viler than a devil. To deny there is a God, is a sort of atheism that is not to be found in hell.”
THOMAS BROOKS
John Bunyan
Steps of Backsliders:
(1) They choose to put their thoughts on things other than God, His law, and the judgment to come — Because such things are not agreeable to the natural heart
(2) They gradually give up their inner spiritual duties such as secret prayer, controlling their lusts, vigilant watching, and the like — Because such things are burdensome to Him who has taken His thoughts of Christ
(3) They shun the company of hot and lively Christians — Because they remind them that they themselves are lukewarm
(4) They begin to grow cold to public spiritual duties such as Church and Prayer Meetings where God’s word is preached and His praises sung! — Because their thoughts and hearts are out of place there
(5) They begin to perceives the specks of dust in the eyes of the godly — Because this enables them to be blind in their own eyes and gives them a reason to throw all religion to the wind
(6) Next they began to spend time in company with loose and wanton persons (meaning people who are careless about God and Christianity)
(7) (A.) They begin to enjoy carnal conversation and enjoy the contemplation of sin (B.) They rejoice if they can find any evil in one who is counted honest that they may sin the more boldly
(8) They begin to play with little sins openly
(9) Lastly, They harden their hearts, and cast off all pretense of goodness!
JOHN BUNYAN
Jeremiah Burroughs
Oh, do not be content with yourselves till you have learned this lesson of Christian contentment.
Jeremiah Burrough’s from the last page of his book “The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment”
John Calvin
The Gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue, but of the life. John Calvin
“The unborn, though enclosed in the womb of his mother, is already a human being, and it is a monstrous crime to rob it of life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. JOHN CALVIN
“… No one is fit for the kingdom of God until he has put aside such indulgence and has learned to desire the food of the soul so much that he is not hampered by his human appetite. John Calvin
Amy Carmichael
“Make Me Thy Fuel”
From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher,
From silken self, O Captain, free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.
From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings,
(Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the crucified)
From all that dims Thy Calvary,
O Lamb of God, deliver me.
Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay,
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire;
Let me not sink to be a clod:
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.
Amy Carmichael
Stephen Charnock
“In nature, we see God, as it were, like the sun in a picture, in the law, as the sun in a cloud; in Christ we see Him in His beams, He is the brightness of His glory, and the exact image of His person.
STEPHEN CHARNOCK
Saint Bernard
What we love we shall grow to resemble.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
Ann Coulter
“Liberals are more upset when a tree is chopped down than when a child is aborted. Even if one rates an unborn child less than a full-blown person, doesn’t the unborn child rate slightly higher than vegetation?”
Ann Coulter
The Church of Liberalism
Godless
On the media’s ignorance of religion: In another interview, [the Rev. Richard John] Neuhaus told a reporter that political corruption had “been around ever since that unfortunate afternoon in the garden.” The reporter mulled it over before asking, “What garden was that?” In defense of the American educational system, every single one of these reporters knew how to put on a condom.
On AIDS: Koop took his campaign on the road, describing heterosexual sex as the sort of “very high risk behavior” that could lead to AIDS, He mentioned homosexual sex third in his list of “high risk behavior” that could transmit AIDS. In 1987, the CDC predicted that AIDS would be the number-one killer on campus by 1991.
It was as if the government had issued a scientific report stating, “Sharks will eat people, but so will rainbow trout!” – so as to not stigmatize sharks.
On Darwinism: Liberals creation myth is Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is about one notch above Scientology in scientific rigor. It’s a make-believe story, based on a theory that is a tautology, with no proof in the scientist’s laboratory or the fossil record – and that’s after 150 years of very determined looking. We wouldn’t still be talking about it but for the fact that liberals think evolution disproves God.
On the fossil record: The preposterous conceit that the fossil record has produced a mosaic of organisms consistent with evolution except for the occasional “gap” is absurd. Evolution is nothing but a gap. It’s a conjecture about how species might have arisen that is contradicted by the fossil record and by nearly everything we have learned about molecular biology since Darwin’s day.
On Darwinism and Nazism: Hitler’s embrace of Darwinism is not a random fact, unrelated to the reason we know his name. It is impossible to understand Hitler’s monstrous views apart from his belief in natural selection applied to races. He believed Darwin’s theory of natural selection showed that “science” justified the extermination of the Jews.
On Darwinism’s appeal to liberals: Liberals subscribe to Darwinism not because it’s “science,” which they hate, but out of wishful thinking. Darwinism lets them off the hook morally. Do whatever you feel like doing – screw your secretary, kill Grandma, abort your defective child – Darwin says it will benefit humanity! Nothing is ever wrong as long as you follow your instincts. Just do it – and let Mother Earth sort out the winners and losers.
On Democrat’s opposition to profiling terrorists: They oppose profiling Muslims at airports. They oppose every bust of a terrorist cell, sneering that the cells in Lackawanna, New York City, Miami, Chicago and London weren’t a real threat like, say, a nondenominational prayer before a high school football game. Now that’s a threat.
William Gurnall
“This is the difference between religion and atheism, religion does not grow without planting, but will die even where it is planted without watering. Atheism, irreligion, and profaneness are weeds that will grow without setting, but they will not die without plucking up.”
WILLIAM GURNALL
Max Heine
“Children Are BURDENS! It is no exaggeration to say that they require everything from a to Z. They need to be Answered, Bathed, Combed, Diapered, Encouraged, Fed, Groomed, Helped, Instructed, Judged, Kissed, Led, Managed, Nurtured, Observed, Praised, Quiet, Reminded, Spanked, Trained, Utilized, Valued, Wedded, X-Rayed, and Yearned-for-Zealously!!!
Max Heine in Children Blessing or Burden
Matthew Henry
The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam;
not made of his head to rule over him,
nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him,
but out of his side to be equal to him,
under his arm to be protected,
and near his heart to be beloved.
Matthew Henry
Commentary on Genesis 2:21-25
“You may as soon find a living man without breath as a living saint without prayer.”
Matthew Henry
Commentary on Zechariah 12:10
God made more account of Noah than of all the world besides, and this made him greater and more truly honorable than all the giants that were in those days, who became mighty men and men of renown. Let this be the summit of our ambition, to find grace in the eyes of the Lord; herein let us labor, that, present or absent, we may be accepted of him, 2 Cor. v. 9. Those are highly favored whom God favors.
Matthew Henry
Commentary on Genesis 6:8
HEAR! Listen!
The ear of the learned, to receive instruction. Prophets have as much need of this as of the tongue of the learned; for they must deliver what they are taught and no other, must hear the word from God’s mouth diligently and attentively, that they may speak it exactly, Ezek. iii. 17. Christ himself received that he might give. None must undertake to be teachers who have not first been learners. Christ’s apostles were first disciples, scribes instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, Matt. xiii. 52. Nor is it enough to hear, but we must hear as the learned, hear and understand, hear and remember, hear as those that would learn by what we hear. Those that would hear as the learned must be awake, and wakeful; for we are naturally drowsy and sleepy, and unapt to hear at all, or we hear by the halves, hear and do not heed. Our ears need to be wakened; we need to have something said to rouse us, to awaken us out of our spiritual slumbers, that we may hear as for our lives. We need to be awakened morning by morning, as duly as the day returns, to be awakened to do the work of the day in its day. Our case calls for continual fresh supplies of divine grace, to free us from the dullness we contract daily. The morning, when our spirits are most lively, is a proper time for communion with God; then we are in the best frame both to speak to him (my voice shalt thou hear in the morning) and to hear from him. The people came early in the morning to hear Christ in the temple (Luke xxi. 38), for, it seems, his were morning lectures. And it is God that wakens us morning by morning. If we do anything to purpose in his service, it is he who, as our Master, calls us up; and we should doze perpetually if he did not waken us morning by morning. Part of Matthew Henry’s Commentary on Isaiah 50
Matthew Henry on Colossians 3:2
He explains this duty (v. 2): Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. Observe, To seek heavenly things is to set our affections upon them, to love them and let our desires be towards them. Upon the wings of affection, the heart soars upwards, and is carried forth towards spiritual and divine objects. We must acquaint ourselves with them; esteem them above all other things and lay out ourselves in preparation for the enjoyment of them. David gave this proof of his loving the house of God, that he diligently sought after it, and prepared for it, Ps. 27:4. This is to be spiritually minded (Rom. 8:6), and to seek and desire a better country, that is, a heavenly, Heb. 11:14, 16. Things on earth are here set in opposition to things above. We must not dote upon them, nor expect too much from them, that we may set our affections on heaven; for heaven and earth are contrary one to the other, and a supreme regard to both is inconsistent; and the prevalence of our affection to one will proportionally weaken and abate our affection to the other.
Arthur Jackson
“It is common sense to put the seal to the wax while it is soft.”
ARTHUR JACKSON
Jeremy Klein
It is fashionable these days to touch superficially upon spirituality issues in medicine. In fact, when done properly, medicine is always deeply spiritual, because the physician has a God-given duty to promote his patient’s welfare, even at cost to himself. Failure to recognize this fact has led the profession to the sorry state it is in now, where it is considered acceptable practice to kill an unborn child at the request of his mother, to provide the means for suicide on demand, to prescribe Viagra to be used outside of wedlock–the list goes on. All too soon we will find ourselves doing as the Dutch do, killing elderly patients even without their consent, and doing as Dr Peter Singer (PhD professor of bioethics at Princeton) advises, killing disabled newborns at birth or on demand of their parents. Why not? After all, we wouldn’t want to impose our morality on anyone, would we? And it all depends on your point of view, doesn’t it?
Ah, relativism…feet firmly planted in midair!
Sincerely, Jeremy Klein, M.D., F.A.A.F.P. Louisa, KY
C. S. Lewis
“For the first time I examined myself … and … found what appalled me; a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of hatreds. My name was legion! Amiable agnostics would talk cheerfully about ‘man’s search for God.’ To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat.” Finally, I 1929, “I gave in and admitted God was God, and knelt and prayed.”
CS Lewis (pre-conversion thoughts)
General Douglas MacArthur
In this day of the gathering storms, as moral deterioration of political power spreads its growing infection, it is essential that every spiritual force be mobilized to defend and preserve the religious base upon which this nation is founded; for it has been that base which has been the motivating impulse to our moral and national growth. History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual reawakened to overcome the moral lapse or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur supreme commander of the Allied forces in the Pacific during World War II December 1951 .
J. Gresham Machen
It is impossible to be a true soldier of Jesus Christ and not fight.” J. Gresham Machen
John Owen
To be morose, implacable, inexorable, revengeful, is one of the greatest degeneracies of human nature. To remember injuries, to retain a sense of wrongs, to watch for opportunities for revenge, to hate and be maliciously perverse, is to represent the image of the devil to the world in its proper colors; he is the great enemy and self-avenger. On the other hand, no grace, no duty, no ornament of the mind is in itself so lovely, so praiseworthy, or so useful to mankind, as are meekness and readiness to forgive. This is that principally, which renders a man a good man, for whom one would even dare to die. And I am sorry to add that this grace or duty is recommended by its rarity.”
From The Forgiveness of Sin: A Practical Exposition of Psalm 130 By John Owen, page 209.
Lawrence J. Peter
“The noblest of all dogs is the hot dog; it feeds the hand that bites it.”
Lawrence J. Peter
Samuel Rutherford
“The thorn is one of the most cursed and angry and crabbed weeds that the earth yields, and yet out of it springs the rose, one of the sweetest smelled flowers, and most delightful to the eye.”
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD
J. C. Ryle
The man who is about to sail for Australia or New Zealand as a settler, is naturally anxious to know something about his future home, its climate, its employments, its inhabitants, its ways, its customs. All these are subjects of deep interest to him. You are leaving the land of your nativity; you are going to spend the rest of your life in a new hemisphere. It would be strange indeed if you did not desire information about your new abode. Now surely, if we hope to dwell forever in that “better country, even a heavenly one,” we ought to seek all the knowledge we can get about it. Before we go to our eternal home, we should try to become acquainted with it.
J. C. Ryle
Sir Walter Scott
To every lovely lady bright,
I wish a gallant faithful knight.
To every faithful lover, too,
I wish a trusting lady true.
Sir Walter Scott
William Henry Seward
I do not believe human society, including not merely a few persons in any state, but the whole masses of men, ever have attained, or ever can attain, a high state of intelligence, virtue, security, liberty, or happiness without the Holy Scriptures; even the whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever-growing influence of the Bible.
William Henry Seward (1801 – 1872) the Secretary of State under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson who negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia.
C. H. Spurgeon
“Man can always find ways of sinning against God. I remember, in my younger days, a school-boy who, when at play with his companions, would fly into furious passions, and would at once throw something at the person with whom he was angry; and the point I noticed was that he always had something to throw. Let him be in the school-room, playground, or in the street, there would surely be a stone, or a book, or a slate, or a cup ready to his hand.
So, it is with men who fight against the Lord; they discover weapons everywhere, in the fury of their rebellion. The evil brain is quick in devising, the depraved ear is swift in apprehending, and the sinful hand is deft in carrying any and every disobedience to the Lord.”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
“If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they will perish, let them perish with our arms around their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions and let not one go there unwarned and un-prayed for.” – C.H. Spurgeon.
“First, let us deeply regret that we have sinned against so good a God. While I regarded God as a tyrant, I thought sin a trifle; but when I knew Him to be my Father, then I mourned that I could ever have kicked against Him. When I thought that God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast to think that I could have rebelled against one who loved me so and sought my good. Will you not now think of the goodness of God, brothers and sisters, and shall it not lead you to repentance? Shall we not feel within our hearts a burning indignation against sin, because it is committed against so holy, so good, so glorious a being as the infinitely blessed God?” – C.H. Spurgeon
To be divided from the world, its possessions, its maxims, its motives is the mark of the true disciple of Christ and in order to keep up the feeling of separateness among His followers the Lord bade them Remember Lot’s wife. She is to be a caution to us all, for God will deal with us as with her if we sin as she did. If our hearts are glued to the world we shall perish with the world; if our desires and delights look that way, and if we find our comfort in it, we shall have to see our all consumed, and shall be ourselves consumed with it in the day of the Lord’s anger. Separation is the only way of escape. We must flee this world or perish with it.
C.H. Spurgeon
Excerpt from Spurgeon’s Sermon: Free Will- A Slave
Anyone who believes that man’s will is entirely free, and that he can be saved by it, does not believe the fall…
But I tell you what the best proof of that will be; it is the great fact that you never did meet a Christian in your life who ever said he came to Christ without Christ coming to him. You have heard a great many Arminian sermons, I dare say; but you never heard an Arminian prayer – for the saints in prayer appear as one in word, and deed and mind. An Arminian on his knees would pray desperately like a Calvinist. He cannot pray about free-will: there is no room for it. Fancy him praying,
“Lord, I thank thee I am not like those poor presumptuous Calvinists Lord, I was born with a glorious free-will; I was born with power by which I can turn to thee of myself; I have improved my grace. If everybody had done the same with their grace that I have, they might all have been saved. Lord, I know thou dost not make us willing if we are not willing ourselves. Thou givest grace to everybody; some do not improve it, but I do. There are many that will go to hell as much bought with the blood of Christ as I was; they had as much of the Holy Ghost given to them; they had as good a chance, and were as much blessed as I am. It was not thy grace that made us to differ; I know it did a great deal, still I turned the point; I made use of what was given me, and others did not-that is the difference between me and them.”
That is a prayer for the devil, for nobody else would offer such a prayer as that. Ah! when they are preaching and talking very slowly, there may be wrong doctrine; but when they come to pray, the true thing slips out; they cannot help it. If a man talks very slowly, he may speak in a fine manner; but when he comes to talk fast, the old brogue of his country, where he was born, slips out. I ask you again, did you ever meet a Christian man who said, “I came to Christ without the power of the Spirit?” If you ever did meet such a man, you need have no hesitation in saying, “My dear sir, I quite believe it-and I believe you went away again without the power of the Spirit, and that you know nothing about the matter, and are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity.” Do I hear one Christian man saying, “I sought Jesus before he sought me; I went to the Spirit, and the Spirit did not come to me”? No, beloved; we are obliged, each one of us, to put our hands to our hearts and say-
“Grace taught my soul to pray,
And made my eyes to overflow;
‘It was grace that kept me to this day,
And will not let me go.”
From Spurgeon’s Sermon, Free Will – A Slave
Repentance is to leave
The sins we loved before
And show that we in earnest grieve,
By doing so no more.
C.H. Spurgeon
David Vaughan
The famous church historian Philip Schaff said of the Institutes: “This book is the masterpiece of a precocious genius of commanding intellectual and spiritual depth and power. It is one of the few truly classical productions in the history of theology and has given its author the double title of the Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas of the Reformed Church.”
Assuming all this to be true (and there is no reason to doubt it), then why are fewer Evangelicals reading Calvin? Several reasons could be offered:
1. an overall decline in reading
2. the dumbing-down of the pulpit.
3. the changing view of the pastorate (the pastor is now an executive and not a teacher scholar).
4. the cultural bias in favor of novelty – the old is mold mentality
5. the prejudice against doctrine (doctrine divides, while love unites”); and many others.
David Vaughan
Thomas Watson
The glory of God is a silver thread which must run through all our actions. Thomas Watson
Keep your heart as you would a prisoner. — Thomas Watson
The best mirror is not that which is most gilded, but that which shows the truest face. That preaching is to be preferred which makes the truest discovery of man’s sins and shows them their hearts. Thomas Watson
Zeal is a mixed affection, a compound of love and anger; it carries forth our love to God, and our anger against sin in an intense degree.
Thomas Watson
A good Christian is like the sun, which not only sends forth heat, but goes its circuit around the world. Thus, he who glorifies God, has not only his affections heated with love to God, but he goes his circuit too; he moves vigorously in the sphere of obedience.
Thomas Watson
Isaac Watts
“The Use of the Passions in Religion,” … “Does divine love send dreaming preachers to call dead sinners to life, preachers that are content to leave their hearers asleep on the precipice of eternal destruction? Have they no such thing as passion belonging to them? Have they no piety? Have they no fear? Have they no sense of the worth of souls? Have they no springs of affection within them? Or do they think their hearers have none? Or is passion so vile a power that it must be all devoted to things of flesh and sense, and must never be applied to things divine and heavenly? Who taught any of us this lazy and drowsy practice? Does God or his prophets, or Christ or his apostles, instruct us in this modish art of still life, this ‘lethargy of preaching?’ Did the great God ever appoint statues for his ambassadors, to invite sinners to his mercy? Words of grace written upon brass or marble, would do the work almost as well! How cold and dull and unaffected with divine things, is mankind by nature! How careless and indolent is a whole assembly, when the preacher appears like a lifeless engine, pronouncing words of law or grace, when he speaks of divine things in such a dry, in such a cold and formal manner, as though they had no influence on his own heart! When the words freeze upon his lips, the hearts of hearers are freezing also.”
Isaac Watts