A.D. 2019 Quotes of the Week


Posted January 6

Pleasure without God, without the sacred boundaries, will actually leave you emptier than before. And this is biblical truth, this is experiential truth. The loneliest people in the world are amongst the wealthiest and most famous who found no boundaries within which to live. That is a fact I've seen again and again. — Ravi Zacharias


Posted January 13

Some believers are much surprised when they are called to suffer. They thought they would do some great thing for God; but all that God permits them to do is to suffer. — Robert Murray M'Cheyne


Posted January 20

A prayer for Sanctity of Life Sunday. "Lord God we give thanks to You! For You formed each of us in his or her mother's womb and since our births have daily given us the breath of life. We marvel as we read in scripture that John who You appointed to be the Savior's forerunner leapt for joy in his mother Elizabeth's womb.

We whom You have made stewards of creation and especially we who You have called to be disciples of the Lord of life ask that you make us faithful and constant in seeking to safeguard the dignity of every human life whether unborn, afflicted with congenital deformity of body or mind, or debilitated by infirmity.

We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, Whose mother brought Him to full term despite her humble circumstances and in defiance of the appearance of immorality which her miraculous virginal pregnancy presented to the world, amen."


Posted January 27

The excellence of the Church does not consist in multitude but in purity. — John Calvin


Posted February 3

Yes, Forrest, life is like a box of chocolates! If you read the chart inside the box which describes the piece you select, you'll know what you're gonna get.

If you read God's word the holy Bible, you'll know what you're gonna get from the choices you make in life.


Posted February 10

The only reason for my being killed is that I have taught the doctrine of Christ. I thank God it is for this reason that I die...after Christ's example, I forgive my persecutors. I do not hate them. I ask God to have pity on all, and I hope my blood will fall on my fellow men as a fruitful rain. — Paul Miki, martyred by crucifixion in Japan, 5 February A.D. 1597


Posted February 17

To the Unborn Child

Oh Wondrous Child!
Sleeping in your liquid sea
Sheltered from our curious eyes
You bear the image of Divinity.

Oh Beauteous Child!
Fearfully and wonderfully wrought
In the depths of the secret place
Proclaiming in your unformed substance
The mystery of Creation's grace

— Maureen Sutton, Bible teacher and counsellor


Posted February 24

Say what men will, obedience to Law is liberty; compliance with Law is harmony, not discord...Law does not interfere with true liberty, but only with that which is untrue, promoting and directing the former, discouraging only the latter. — Horatius Bonar


Posted March 3

"Though individual virtue is a fundamental goal of Christianity, our greatest strength lies in Christian union. The church provides critical support to the individual and the family in their Christian duty. The church supports the home with a regularity which the family often finds difficult in its informal, organic life. (Accordingly, the church is essentially a local institution)." — Ronald Kirk


Posted March 10

Prayer is the one great medicine with nothing but good side effects! — Rev. James Sharp


Posted March 17

This life, therefore, is not righteousness but growth in righteousness; not health but healing; not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it; the process is not yet finished but it is going on; this is not the end but it is the road; all does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified. — Martin Luther


Posted April 7

Generational segregation in worship does more than create problems for churches. When we segregate age groups in worship, we are also disrupting the families in our churches. There are God-given responsibilities to parents for the development of their children that we undermine when we remove them from worship. — Mike Harland


Posted April 14

The devil and his works demonstrate the frequent coexistence of extreme cleverness and great wickedness in high places. It should not surprise us when very evil people who also are very subtle and crafty seek and abuse positions of leadership.

For a while, they will outsmart many and do some damage. But in their arrogance they forget the almighty and all wise One, Who will both call them to account and in His time right all wrongs. In the meantime, those who know their God and patiently wait on Him are not ignorant of the devices of the ancient serpent, the father of lies and liars.


Posted April 21

The first thing that stuck in the minds of the disciples was not the empty tomb, but rather the empty grave clothes – undisturbed in form and position. — Josh McDowell


Posted April 28

As satisfying as it can feel to hear that your foes are irredeemable, stupid and deviant, remember: When you find yourself hating something, someone is making money or winning elections or getting more famous and powerful. Unless a leader is actually teaching you something you didn't know or expanding your worldview and moral outlook, you are being used. — Arthur C. Brooks


Posted May 5

We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won't need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don't fire cannons to call attention to their shining – they just shine. — D.L. Moody


Posted May 12

Perception of the unfathomable distance between a person of the other gender and oneself is meant to be a school for learning the practice and joy of appreciation, openness, honor, service, and fidelity, all of which belong to the courtesy that the mysterious reality of the other gender requires.

The ideology of 'unisex,' which plays down the significance of the two genders, thus perverts God's order, while the French tag on gender distinction, 'vive la difference!' (Long live the contrast)! expresses the Biblical viewpoint. — J.I. Packer


Posted May 19

If God is self-sufficient, he alone is self-explanatory. And if he alone is self-explanatory, then he must be the final reference point in all human predication. He is then like the sun from which all lights on earth derive their power of illumination.

You do not use a candle in order to search for the sun. The idea of a candle is derived from the sun. So the very idea of any fact in the universe is that it is derivative. God has created it. It cannot have come into existence by itself, or by chance. God himself is the source of all possibility, and, therefore, of all space-time factuality. — Cornelius Van Til


Posted May 26

Both testaments have names for it that display its ethical character as rebellion against God's rule, missing the mark God set us to aim at, transgressing God's law, disobeying God's directives, offending God's purity by defiling oneself, and incurring guilt before God the judge.

This moral deformity is dynamic: sin stands revealed as an energy of irrational, negative, and rebellious reaction to God's call and command, a spirit of fighting God in order to play God. — J.I. Packer


Posted June 2

If an explosive volcanic eruption is large enough, it can cool Earth by blocking out sunlight. For example, the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia caused the 'year without summer' across Europe in 1816. Michael Oard refers to this temporary cooling of Earth as the 'anti-greenhouse' effect. — Tim Clarey, Ph.D.


Posted June 9

Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone's lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don't have to compromise convictions to be compassionate. — Rick Warren


Posted June 16

A-millenialism, post-millenialism, pre-millenialism and any other doctrinal position named for the millenium of Revelation chapter 20 share a common weakness.

When it comes to hermeneutics, the Revelation of Jesus Christ (a.k.a. the Apocalypse) is probably the most difficult book of the Bible. All three of those eschatological positions derive their names from a subject found in a single brief passage of that very symbolic book and mentioned nowhere else in Scripture.

Should an entire doctrine of the eschaton...the summing of all things in Christ (Ephesians 1; 3:11) i.e. the consummate realization of God's eternal purpose, have such a fragile expositional foundation?

In the words of James the Just, "My brethren, these things ought not to be so." (James 3:10)


Posted June 23

Whoever isolates himself from the church, i.e., from Christianity as a whole, from the history of dogma in its entirety, loses the truth of the Christian faith. That person becomes a branch that is torn from the tree and shrivels, an organ that is separated from the body and therefore doomed to die. Only within the communion of the saints can the length and the breadth, the depth and the height, of the love of Christ be comprehended. — Herman Bavinck


Posted June 30

I shall take my present leave; but not without resorting once more to the benign Parent of the human race, in humble supplication, that since He has been pleased to favor the American people with opportunities for deliberating in perfect tranquility, and dispositions for deciding with unparalleled unanimity on a form of government for the security of their union, and the advancement of their happiness, so His divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations and the wise measures, on which the success of this government must depend. — George Washington

(These remarks were made by our first president after he was administered the oath of affirmation of office, as prescribed by Article II Section 1, on April 29, A.D. 1789, to which oath he added, "So help me God.")


Posted July 7

Help me to journey beyond the familiar and into the unknown. Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You. Christ of the mysteries, I trust You to be stronger than each storm within me. I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now, are in Your hand. Tune my spirit to the music of Heaven, and somehow, make my obedience count for You. — Brendan the Navigator


Posted July 14

The one misery of man is selfwill, the one secret of blessedness is the conquest over our own wills. To yield them up to God is rest and peace. If we "stand before God," then that means that our wills are brought into harmony with His. And that means that the one poison drop is squeezed out of our lives, and that sweetness and joy are infused into them. For what disturbs us in this world is not "trouble" but our opposition to trouble. The true source of all that frets and irritates, and wears away our lives, is not in external things, but in the resistance of our wills to the will of God expressed by external things. — A.W. Pink


Posted July 21

It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail. The religion and public liberty of a people are intimately connected; their interests are interwoven, they cannot subsist separately; and therefore they rise and fall together. For this reason, it is always observable, that those who are combined to destroy the people's liberties, practice every art to poison their morals. How greatly then does it concern us, at all events, to put a stop to the progress of tyranny. — Samuel Adams


Posted July 28

I do not try, Lord, to attain Your lofty heights, because my understanding is in no way equal to it. But I do desire to understand Your truth a little, that truth that my heart believes and loves. I do not seek to understand that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I believe this also, that unless I believe, I shall not understand. — Anselm of Canterbury


Posted August 4

It costs something to be a real Christian, according to the standard of the Bible. There are enemies to be overcome, battles to be fought, sacrifices to be made, an Egypt to be forsaken, a wilderness to be passed through, a cross to be carried, a race to be run. Conversion is not putting a person in an arm-chair and taking them easily to heaven. It is the beginning of a mighty conflict, in which it costs much to win the victory. — J. C. Ryle


Posted August 11

O, meditate and mind the infinite, free love of God in all the sweet streams of it, and dwell upon the meditation of it, and be ravished with it, and give the God of grace and love the glory of it for ever! — William Cooper


Posted August 18

It is not enough to say that we are not guilty. We must also be perfectly righteous. The law must be fulfilled by perfect obedience if we would enter into eternal life. And this is found only in Jesus (Romans 5:10). His death reconciled us to God. Now we are saved by His life. The perfect actual obedience that Christ rendered on earth is that righteousness by which we are saved. His righteousness is imputed to me so that I am counted as having perfectly obeyed the law myself. — John Owen


Posted August 25

...And we, too, being called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. — Clement of Rome, expounding on the faith of Abraham. Per tradition Clement was martyred c. A.D. 100


Posted September 1

Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them. — Elisabeth Elliot


Posted September 8

Though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. — G.K. Chesterton


Posted September 15

We cannot kill the devil, nor in the least weaken his power; but as we mortify lusts, which are the matter that he works upon, and the less of it he finds in us, the less able he is to hurt us. — William Spurstowe, A.D. 1605-1666


Posted September 22

You may notice that some of the biblical accounts differ, where Mark might say one thing and Luke, for example, might mention something slightly different about the same event. Does this mean that the Bible has errors?

The answer is 'No!' The Bible is without any error whatsoever. The slight variations occur when the different authors described something they each remembered about the same event. On occasion, they were even describing similar but different events. These different details are given for our complete instruction. — Mount Zion Bible Institute Study Booklet, The Life of Jesus Christ


Posted September 29

Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray for the blessing of God; in nothing which you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed; in nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act. — Richard Baxter


Posted October 6

A proud faith is as much a contradiction as a humble devil. — Stephen Charnock


Posted October 13

Good observational science is an adoring, ever advancing knowledge of the pervasive, universal, and perpetual providence of the living God.

Good applied science is subduing the earth (and possibly other places and things in the cosmos) for God's glory, according to God's creation mandate, and with confidence in God's faithfulness and promises (i.e. Genesis 8:21,22)

Junk science is based on the proud, foolish, and wicked delusion that God can be ignored or marginalized in any human observation or manipulation of His own creation, which includes humanity and which exists only by His will and expressly for His purposes.

Like their ancient counterparts, in our era the myths of junk science hold sway over the minds of many, hindering the advance of godly knowledge.


Posted October 20

Get and keep communion with God. Your strength to stand and your strength to withstand all assaults is from your communion with God. Communion with God is that that will make you stand fast and triumph over all the enemies, difficulties, dangers, and deaths. — Thomas Brooks


Posted October 27

Darwin now poses a final challenge. Whether biology will rise to this last one as well as it did to the first, when his theory upset every applecart, remains to be seen. How cleanly and quickly can the field get over Darwin, and move on? This is one of the most important questions facing science in the twenty-first century. — David Gelernter, Claremont Review of Books


Posted November 3

Regardless of race, everybody faces adversity and must choose whether to buckle down and surmount it, shaping his own fate, or to blame the outcome on powerful forces that make him ineluctably a victim of forces that only a mighty government can master. The Framers' constitution presupposes citizens of the first kind. Without them, and a culture that nurtures them, no free nation can long endure. — Myron Magnet, author of Clarence Thomas and the Lost Constitution


Posted November 10

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward…promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased. — C.S. Lewis


Posted November 17

The best proof that He will never cease to love us lies in that He never began. — Geerhardus Vos


Posted November 24

Do not bury our glorious orthodoxy in the treacherous pit of a spurious conservatism. — Abraham Kuyper


Posted December 1

Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, d. A.D. 1832


Posted December 8

Paradoxically, learning is actually an ever increasing awareness of how exceedingly little one knows. But we have a sure foundation against the despairing thought that ignorance will eventually just swallow us up. What is that sure foundation?

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. That godly fear also provides a reliable frame on which the learner, like a vine, can grow. The one who fears the LORD has been given an enlightenment which ever brightens and becomes more satisfying to the mind and heart. Look up Proverbs 4:18


Posted December 15

Let me be thankful first because I was never robbed before; second, although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed. — Bible commentator Matthew Henry, after he was robbed


Posted December 22

Bishop Hippolytus of Rome ( c. 170 AD – c. 235 AD) wrote a commentary on the Book of Daniel sometime around 202 AD in which he claimed: "The first coming of our Lord, that in the flesh, in which he was born at Bethlehem, took place eight days before the Kalends of January, a Wednesday, in the forty-second year of the reign of Augustus, 5500 years from Adam." This puts the birth of Christ at December 25th, 2 BC.

Julius Sextus Africanus claimed the same date in his Chronographiai, which was written around the same time as Hippolytus. — Joshua Gibbs, teacher of classical literature at Veritas School in Richmond, Virginia


Posted December 29

How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, His precepts! — Benjamin Franklin


Unattributed quotes are the words of the web site editor.

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