The great thing about faith in God is that it keeps a man undisturbed in the midst of disturbance.
– Oswald Chambers –
Persecution
February 18, 2015
Christianity especially has always thrived under persecution. For at such times it has no lukewarm professors. The Christian is then reminded that his Master’s kingdom is not of this world. When all on earth looks black, he looks up to heaven for consolation. Then he sees himself as a pilgrim and a stranger. For it is then as in the hour of death that he will examine well his foundations and cleave to the fundamentals.
But when religion is in a state of quiet and prosperity, the opposite effect tends to take place. The soldiers of the church militant will then tend to forget they are at war. Their ardor slackens and their zeal languishes. John Owen has made an apt comparison: Religion in a state of prosperity is like a colony that is long settled in a strange country. It is gradually assimilated in feature, demeanor, and language to the native inhabitants, until at length every vestige of its distinctiveness has died away.
– William Wilberforce –
from the book Real Christianity, 1797
December 20, 2014
I said to myself if Christianity is dead, I will sit at its tomb and will weep until it arises again, just as Mary Magdalene sat at the tomb of Jesus and wept until Jesus showed Himself. Then when I came out of prison I saw Christianity is not dead. The number of practicing Christians in Romania according to the figures given by the Communists themselves in 20 years of Communist dictatorship has grown 300 percent.
– Richard Wurmbrand –
December 3, 2014
I ask you who love Jesus—does religion ever make you unhappy? Does love to Jesus distress you and make you miserable? It may bring you into trouble, sometimes, and cause you to endure persecution for His name’s sake. If you are a child of God, you will have to suffer tribulation. But all the afflictions which you may be called upon to endure for Him will work for your good, and are not worthy to be compared with the glory which is to be revealed hereafter!
– Charles Spurgeon –
November 18, 2014
A sight of Christ, Brothers and Sisters, will keep you from despondency, and doubts, and despair. A sight of Christ! How shall I stir you to it? It will fire you to duty; it will deliver you from temptation; it will, in fact, make you like He. A man is known by his company; and if you have become acquainted with Christ, and know Him, you will be sure to reflect His light! It is because the moon has converse with the sun, that she has any light for this dark world’s night; and if you talk with Christ, the Sun, He will shine on you so gloriously, that you, like the moon, shall reflect His Light, and the dark night of this world shall be enlightened by your radiance. The Lord help us to know Him!
– Charles Spurgeon –
October 22, 2014
God will not protect you from anything that will make you more like Jesus.
– Elizabeth Elliot –
September 27, 2014
I have been a Christian for over fifty years, but I have never heard God’s voice so clearly as in these days. When the world is at peace, not very many people diligently seek God. Only at such times as these of persecution and disorder by the hands of Satan do believers awaken in the faith.
– Elder Park –
from “If I Perish” by Esther Ahn Kim
from “If I Perish” by Esther Ahn Kim
September 6, 2014
The flowers smell sweetest after a shower;
vines bear the better for bleeding;
the walnut-tree is most fruitful when most beaten;
saints spring and thrive most internally,
when they are most externally afflicted.
Afflictions are the mother of virtue.
Manasseh’s chain was more profitable to him than his crown.
All of the stones that came about Stephen’s ears
did but knock him closer to Christ, the corner-stone.
– Thomas Brooks –
July 6, 2014
It would be no better than madness to despair of the providence of God now.
– Eric Ludy –