Quotes to Ponder

Below are quotes from our home page which we hope will cause you to stop and think.

The church is a hospital for sinners. It's not a country club for saints. --Frank Turek

Mainline churches are basically "why bother?" churches. When your church has no distinct theology, is blatantly unbiblical in its teaching and is more focused on promoting the latest social justice cause being pushed by the corporate media instead of traditional Christian values, people say, why bother going to church when none of it matters anyway? –JohnnyBoy1982

"God doesn't accept anyone the way they are. He meets them where they are at and takes them to where He wants them to be. Hear Yahweh's voice and obey." --@Tom-cv7sf

"...in times to come instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, you will have clowns entertaining the goats."

--C. H. Spurgeon

"If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and its not so bad." --C. S. Lewis, God In The Dock, p. 52.

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"First we overlook evil. Then we permit evil. Then we legalize evil. Then we promote evil. Then we celebrate evil. Then we persecute those who still call it evil." --Fr. Dwight Longenecker.

In the Last Days, Good will be called Evil and Evil will be called Good.(In comment section of YouTube video.)

"Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times."

--origin unknown

"Moral truth is an elixir that can revive the soul and strengthen the body.  It is a cup of water that can be passed from one person to the next without ever needing refilling.  Truth and virtue grow hope and purpose in once barren lands." 

American Thinker article, A Time for Good People to Fight Back.

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"Moral relativism places the definition of morality in the hands of men, and allows that definition to evolve, as societal expectations evolve. It replaces God’s interpretation of good and evil with that of men, and has enabled:

• The termination of life in the name of choice,
• The indoctrination of children in the name of inclusiveness,
• The advancement of theft and assault in the name of social justice,
• The bearing of false witness against those who stand against tyranny, and
• The impoverishment of mankind in service to Gaia — our new approved god.

American Thinker source article

"Worship and praise are not only necessities for God's people but powers and weapons.

They endow the righteous with the power to do His will, to stand against darkness, to fight their battles and become victorious."

Jonathan Cahn, Chapter 52, The Josiah Manifesto.

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"Was Orwell observing we who inhabit the 2020s when he wrote this?
We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/11/ hey_woke_church_its_time_to_wake_up.html#:

Robert Trout:
My Grandad always use to say if there comes a time in your life where your walk with Jesus has no adversity and doesn't separate you from the world you’re on the wrong road.
–comment section of youtube video, Alisa Childers, "How Secularism is becoming a new religion with Natasha Crain."

Staying silent can no longer be an option. This is what Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel (1928 – 2016) said about issues that affect a society’s direction: "We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/
pass_the_turkey_and_patriotism.html#:

"When innocents are victimized, it reveals the evil that men are capable of when they are no longer guided by something greater than themselves. The will of God leads to understanding and enrichment, while the will of men leads to hatred and suffering. Overarching absolute morality leads to civilized behavior. Moral relativism leads to chaos."

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/
when_men_define_morality_evil_flourishes.html

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"Socialism as viewed within a Christian context becomes the antithesis of Christianity. To use the word in its broad sense, socialism is a form of anti-Christ.

It is clearly so in an ontological sense, given that Christology is about creation, life, and love of humanity, whereas socialism seeks destruction, death, and the collapse of humanity."

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/the_cure_for_socialism. html#:~:text=Socialism%20as%20viewed,collapse%20of%20humanity.

Culture proclaims, “Live your truth.” But in this case, an individual’s truth relies on his feelings to determine what is true and to inform his behavior.

But feelings do not always reflect truth. Emotions change according to experience or perspective. Our desperately wicked hearts can lead us to outbursts of passionate violence, plunge us into depths of depression, and lead to inhuman apathy. And inevitably, one person’s truth will clash with another’s, creating irreconcilable chaos. We find, then, that we need objective truth outside ourselves. Unlike fickle human emotion, God’s truth is immutable, set down before humankind was created.

As we abandon our own understanding of truth and live according to God’s established truth, we testify that God reigns and that he is worthy of our obedience and worship.

--Renton Rathbun, Answers in Genesis. Org article, director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at Bob Jones University.

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The foundations of civilization are no stronger and no more enduring than the corporate integrity of the homes on which they rest. If the home deteriorates, civilization will crumble and fall.
--Billy Graham

"Debauchery is an oft-recurring theme in the demise of empires. Societies develop an abnormally immature obsession with sex. An obsession that requires increasing deviancy to satiate coupled with concurrent abuse of children and the marginalization and exploitation of women. Meanwhile, the use of drugs and alcohol expands exponentially. Debauchery is a symptom of the absence of meaning in people’s lives leading to the self-destruction of society and concomitantly a loss of a sense of duty and patriotism."

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/the_decline_and_fall_of_the _american_empire.html#:~:text=Debauchery%20is%20an,duty%20and%20patriotism.

"Just as politicians have replaced God's will with their own, Westerners have replaced respect for man's character with a celebration of his fleeting desires. However, just as God has not disappeared simply because politicians insist that He must, virtue has not disappeared simply because it goes largely unnoticed. Courage and honor and duty are as real as anything you can touch, and when you commit yourself to their pursuit, you make it impossible for your enemies to subdue you."
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/ 2022/10/win_with_wisdom.html#:

"Look for Christ and you will get Him and everything else, look for your 'self' and you will get loneliness and despair." 

"Our real selves are waiting for us in him."  --C.S. Lewis

There is no such thing as "hate" speech, only people who think their feelings are more important than someone else's.
--Michael Hammond

I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.
- C. S. Lewis

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I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.
John Wesley

Nicholas Berdyaev from Freedom and Spirit, p. 268:

"There is no longer any room in the world for a merely external form of Christianity based upon custom...The world is entering upon a period of castastrophe and crisis when we are being forced to take sides and in which a higher and more intense kind of spiritual life will be demanded from Christians."

Quote related to John 10:17-18:
“The Good consists in always doing what God wills at any particular moment…Human conduct can only be considered good when, and in so far as, God Himself acts in it through the Holy Spirit.” –Emil Brunner (quote in Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 8, p. 628)

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“Jesus is called the Lamb of God. How can He be the Lamb of God and at the same time be the Good Shepherd? (John 1:29)…The fact that He became a Lamb emphasizes the humanity of Christ. The fact that He is the Good Shepherd emphasizes the deity of Christ. He alone was worthy and able to save us. No other human being could do this; He had to be God.” –J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, Vol. IV, p. 431

During the 1980s, North Carolina’s U.S. Senator, the late Jesse Helms, wrote an interesting article about America’s drift from her religious and political moorings. Helms wrote at that time something powerfully astute. He said, “It is debatable at just what point the United States began to drift away… But I think we reached that point when many Americans turned away from the idea of salvation through Christ to that of salvation through technology or science or material affluence or the welfare state.”

William Carr (Pawns in the Game): Today it is common practice for people, especially those who act willfully or unwillfully [as agents of evil], to blame God for the sorry mess in which we find ourselves. The intelligent person will admit that God cannot be blamed. He gave us our Free Will, He gave us the Commandments as our guide, He gave us Christ as a teacher and living example. If we obstinately refuse to accept the teachings and example of Christ, if we also refuse to obey the Commandments of God, how can we reasonably blame any agency other than ourselves for allowing the Forces of Evil to gain supremacy?
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/08/ toward_a_saner_government.html

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I am a Catholic convert from the Mormon church and as a girl and a young woman I was given many lessons on modesty, but one lesson that really stuck with me was a teacher saying, "Modesty is respect for other people. It's not about whether or not YOU are comfortable dressing like that, it's what you are forcing everyone else to see." That really hit home for me.
Maran Lathem comment on YouTube video “The Case for Modest Clothing” by Brian Holdsworth

"True discipleship is tested with 'if you hold to my teaching (John 8:31b).' It may be one thing to follow a Jesus whom we have engineered in our religious consciousness; it is quite another to stay with Jesus when he discloses who he really is.” –Gary M. Burge, NIV Application Commentary, p. 259 (see also Mini-Bible Lesson #37)

"God did not put you in this world to be successful. He put you in this world to be faithful.” –Dr. Peter Kreeft

"Be careful how you live; you may be the only Bible some people read." --Wings of Silver, p. 52.

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“Humanism with its lack of any final case for values or law, always leads to chaos. It then naturally leads to some form of authoritarianism to control the chaos. Having produced the sickness, humanism gives more of the same kind of medicine for a cure.”
–Francis Schaeffer, The Works of Francis Schaeffer, Vol. 5. The Christian Manifesto, p. 430

“You’re born looking like your parents. You die looking like your decisions.”  -- Anthony Zuniga

"We are never defeated unless we give up on God."
--Ronald Reagan

Chisholm also said, “You always have to be optimistic that people can change, and that you can change, and that one act of kindness may make all the difference in the world.”
–Shirley Chisholm, first Black U. S. congresswoman

“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.” ― George Orwell

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"Be careful about anyone saying we need to label or categorize information in order to control or remove speech from the discussion.

You were not born with a requirement to believe everything you are told; rather, you were born with a God-given brain that allows you to process the information you receive and make independent decisions."

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/03/19/you-were-born-with-a-brain-allowing-you-to-process-information/

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Interpreter's Bible, Vol. 8, p. 530

"It was Christ who discovered and emphasized the worth of woman. It was Christ who lifted her into equality with man: not, indeed, into sameness of duty, for nature itself precludes that. Yet as Paul has it, in Christ there is neither male nor female in the sense that both alike are dear to God, and both alike are called to service of the kingdom, and both alike can and should reach the same lofty spiritual goals."

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All About Lying

“We know they are lying. They know they are lying. They know we know they are lying. We know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”  --Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

“It is a sin to tell lies, but it is also complicity to listen to them. You don’t want to be the devil telling lies, but you also don’t want to be the sons of the devil listening to them.”   --Doug Wilson

“…speaking and living the truth is the best way to show kindness. Being nice to avoid conflict is a trap that only causes problems down the road.”  --R. Blackwell (in comments below above youtube podcast)

Do these quotes remind you of what is going on with our governments and leaders and other influencers in the world today? Have you been guilty of going along just to get along? Or to be kind? Where do we draw the line against dishonesty?

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"When a man mints coins --- they are all alike, but when the Divine mints people, each of them is uniquely different even though they all come from the same mold."
— Jewish Saying

“We must be faithful in little things because there are no little things; we must be faithful in God’s absence because God is never absent.” 
--Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 8, pp. 232-233.

“Jesus declared, “everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40b).  Children have multiple teachers in their life: parents, grandparents, pastors, friends, television, school teachers, books, and curricula.  All of these have an influence.  Naturally, the greatest influence will be that which spends the most time with the child actively educating.  A typical student spends about seven to eight hours a day every weekday being taught at school according to the curriculum.  This is far more time than all the other active education sources combined.  Most children are educated in a government school with a secular humanistic curriculum.  So, if 90% of their education comes from a secular curriculum, wouldn’t we expect about 90% of them to become secular adults?  Statistics confirm this.  About 90% of students from Christian homes that attend public schools graduate with a secular worldview.[1]  Jesus was right.”

--biblicalscienceinstitute.com Education: Objections to Biblical Principles by Dr. Lisle, Mar. 11, 2022.

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“Biblically, parents are responsible to ensure that their child’s education is Christ-focused with the goal of learning to reason and behave rightly (in a way that is consistent with God’s character) for the glory of God (Proverbs 22:6; Ephesians 6:4; 1 Corinthians 10:31; Deuteronomy 6:6-9; Psalm 78:3-7).  A biblically-sanctioned education must have the goal of producing graduates with a biblical worldview, faith in Christ, love of God, and a deep conviction for the truth of Scripture.  Is this the goal of public education?  If we are honest about it, we must admit that government schools do not seek any of these things.  They have nothing to do with right-reasoning to the glory of God – the very purpose of education!”

Biblicalscienceinstitute.com, Education and the Myth of Neutrality by Dr. Lisle, Mar. 4, 2022

Dr. Lisle has three good articles on The Purpose of Education, Education and the Myth of Neutrality, and Education: Objections to Biblical Principles. If you are a parent or grandparent who cares for the disposition of your children’s souls, you should read these articles. They are true eye-openers, and help explain one of the most powerful reasons that our children are deserting the Christian faith as they graduate from high school or go on to college. It also explains the weak, doctrinally deficient faith of so many in the Church today.

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“To see sin without grace is despair. To see grace without sin is arrogance. To see them in tandem is conversion.”  -- Max Lucado

"Man is free to choose torment without God rather than happiness in God; he has a right to hell, as it were."
Nicholas Berdyaev, Freedom and the Spirit,1935; p. 324.

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"Moving forward to a new spring necessitates a biblical and theological recovery of the gospel. Both the earliest Christian witness and the Methodist revival focused on what God was doing in and through us, not what we humans are working at. Their focus was on God, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! I am tired of a spiritually atrophied Unitarian United Methodism which acts as if the Holy Spirit is not real. I have had it with a vague deistic theology which condescends to Jesus as an interesting teacher but denies his kingship. The Lord is calling us back to the center of the Christian faith in the great doctrines of the incarnation, sin, salvation, and sanctification in both their personal and social dimensions. Wesley's dying breath was anchored on the incarnation: 'The best of all is that God is with us.'"

Mike Lowery, Bishop of Central Texas Conference of the UMC, quoted in Good News, Sept/Oct 2021, p. 11

"God knows the end from the beginning, and he knows you and our needs far better than even you do. Don't ask, 'Why is this happening to me?' Rather, ask the question, 'How should I respond?' Otherwise, you'll miss the beneficial role suffering plays in life." (from Encouragement for Life by Charles R. Swindoll, p. 115)

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WALLACE: How are we going to get rid of racism until...?
FREEMAN: Stop talking about it. I'm going to stop calling you a white man. And I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman. You`re not going to say, "I know this white guy named Mike Wallace." Hear what I'm saying?

Stop talking about it. Interesting idea, isn't it? I doubt Cory Booker would approve. 'The Squad" would doubtless go apoplectic. Nevertheless, it's the only way to end racism—stop talking about it. We already have laws against it, for a long time now, as we should. And they should be strictly enforced. But the rest of the blah-blah has got to go. It only makes people hate each other. It creates racism rather than solves it. –Roger L. Simon, online at PJ Media, July 16, 2019

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Edmund Burke’s observation is timeless:
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites… in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

"How can you satisfy those who claim that people are guilty of racism by virtue of their race, irrespective of any individual acts of racism? Those accused are given no chance to make their case; there is nothing they can do to acquit themselves, because they are convicted as a matter of who they are, not what they've done."  –David Limbaugh, 7/31/20 on JewishWorldReview.com

"I don't let compliments go to my head, or let insults go to my heart." Dennis Prager

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