It shall greatly help you to understand Scripture if thou mark not only what is spoken or written …
but of whom
and to whom
with what words
at what time
where
to what intent
with what circumstances
considering what goeth before
and what followeth.
– John Wycliff –
(1330-1384)
My appeal is to the Word of God. What are the reasonings, or opinions, or inferences of men? What is the chaff to the wheat? says the Lord. Let the Bible decide each question
– Horatius Bonar –
‘Not called!’ did you say? ‘Not heard the call,’ I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face — whose mercy you have professed to obey — and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.
– William Booth –
Disbelieve Hell, and you unscrew, unsettle, and unpin everything in Scripture!
– JC Ryle –
True Bible-readers and Bible-searchers never find it wearisome. They like it least who know it least, and they love it most who read it most. They find it newest who have known it longest, and they find the pasture to be the richest whose souls have been the longest fed upon it. When one of our missionaries had to read a certain Book of the Old Testament through a hundred times while he was translating it, he said that he certainly enjoyed the hundredth time of reading it more than he did the first, for he understood it better, and it seemed to him to be fuller and fresher the more familiar he became with it.
– Charles Spurgeon –
… and most important of all, we must earnestly ask God in prayer to open our blind eyes to the meaning of the Scriptures; “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law” (Psalm 119:18); “I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire… and anoint your eyes with eye-salve, that you may see” (Rev. 3:18).
– William Bridge –
A thorough knowledge of the Bible is the foundation of all clear views of religion. He that is well-grounded in it will not generally be found a waverer, and carried about by every wind of new doctrine. Any system of training which does not make a knowledge of Scripture the first thing is unsafe and unsound.
– JC Ryle –
from The Duties of Parents
For some years now I have read through the Bible twice every year. If you picture the Bible to be a mighty tree and every word a little branch, I have shaken every one of these branches because I wanted to know what it was and what it meant.
– Martin Luther –
In scripture, there is no divorce between doctrine and practice.
– Scott R. Clark –