The teaching of this and that opinion may please a man’s fancy, but it is only the preaching of Christ that changes the heart, that conquers the heart, that turns the heart. Peter, by preaching a crucified Christ, converts three thousand souls at once.
– Thomas Brooks –
It is a pity when men only think of a dead Savior or of a baby Savior, carried in the Virgin’s arms, as the church of Rome does. It is our joy to have a living Christ, for while He lives we cannot die, and while He pleads we cannot be condemned. Thus, we are led to remember Him as a living Savior and to give Him honor.
– Charles Spurgeon –
from God Loves You
The end of all learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him.
– John Milton –
1608 – 1674 AD
Any manipulation of the Scriptures to make them speak peace to the natural man is evil and can only lead to ruin. … The purpose of the Bible is to bring men to Christ, to make them holy and prepare them for heaven. In this it is unique among books, and it always fulfills its purpose when it is read in faith and obedience.
– AW Tozer –
The history of God’s specific movements with the Church is not the history of His adding something, but of His bringing back to the primal fullness with which He filled His Son.
– T. Austin-Sparks –
True repentance will entirely change you; the bias of your souls will be changed, then you will delight in God, in Christ, in His law, and in His people.
– George Whitefield –
Oh! that the holy life of the blessed Jesus may be always in my thoughts, and before mine eyes, till I receive a deep sense and impression of those excellent graces that shined so eminently in him; and let me never cease my endeavours, till that new and divine nature prevail in my soul, and Christ be formed within me.
– Henry Scougal –
from The Life of God in the Soul of Man
Prayer is not meant to develop us, but to develop the life of God in us after the new birth.
– Oswald Chambers –
… for he that believes in the light, it lets him see the scriptures, the prophets, Christ and the apostles’ words, and by it they do distinguish the true prophets’ words from the false, the holy men’s words from the unholy, the sanctified from them that are not sanctified, Christ’s words from the antichrist’s, the true apostles’ words from the false. So Christ, the light, teacheth his people to believe in that which manifests all things; and they that believe in the light have the witness in themselves of Christ, in whom they do believe, they have the witness in themselves, that he is their redeemer, and savior, and their way, their truth, and their life. …
– George Fox –