by J.C. Ryle
Do you want to understand what the times require of you in reference to your own soul? Listen, and I will tell you. You live in times of peculiar spiritual danger. Never perhaps were there more traps and pitfalls in the way to heaven; never certainly were those traps so skillfully baited, and those pitfalls so ingeniously made. Mind what you are about. Look well to your goings. Ponder the paths of your feet. Take heed lest you come to eternal grief, and ruin your own soul. Beware of practical infidelity under the specious name of free thought. Beware of a helpless state of indecision about doctrinal truth under the plausible idea of not being party–spirited, and under the baneful influence of so–called liberality and charity. Beware of frittering away life in wishing and meaning and hoping for the day of decision, until the door is shut, and you are given over to a dead conscience, and die without hope. Awake to a sense of your danger. Arise and give diligence to make your calling and election sure, whatever else you leave uncertain. The kingdom of God is very near. Christ the almighty Savior, Christ the sinner’s Friend, Christ and eternal life, are ready for you if you will only come to Christ. Arise and cast away excuses; this very day Christ calls you. Wait not for company if you cannot have it; wait for nobody. The times, I repeat, are desperately dangerous. If only few are in the narrow way of life, resolve that by God’s help you at any rate will be among the few.
by J.C. Ryle
by Paris Reidhead
Years ago I asked a congregation of about a hundred people, "How many of you have ever been lost? Really lost? Aware of the fact you were lost. If you died as you were would you surely have gone to hell? How many of you were in a conscious state of lostness?"
Four hands went up.
"How many of you are saved?" All hands went up.
"Isn’t that amazing. Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost. The only kind of people He can save are lost people."
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by A.W. Tozer
No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. Luke 16:13
The notion that we enter the Christian life by an act of acceptance is true, but that is not all the truth. There is much more to it than that. Christianity involves an acceptance and a repudiation, an affirmation and a denial. And this not only at the moment of conversion but continually thereafter day by day in all the battle of life till the great conflict is over and the Christian is home from the wars. To live a life wholly positive is, fortunately, impossible. Were any man able to do such a thing it could be only for a moment. Living positively would be like inhaling continuously without exhaling. Aside from its being impossible, it would be fatal. Exhalation is as necessary to life as inhalation. To accept Christ it is necessary that we reject whatever is contrary to Him. This is a fact often overlooked by eager evangelists bent on getting results. Like the salesman who talks up the good points of his product and conceals its disadvantages, the badly informed soul-winner stresses the positive side of things at the expense of the negative.
by A.W. Tozer
by Joseph Chambers
An encounter with Jesus Christ where you are totally transformed into a new creature is the greatest moment you will ever experience. Heavens joy will flood your soul and at the same time the burden of sin will disappear. Martin Luther rightly said, “A Born Again Christian can do what they please to do.” When you have been totally “re-born” by the Word and the Spirit, you are a free soul. A “New Born” Christian is not bound to the Law they actually live above the Law. The law was a “school master” to bring us to Christ. It shows us how wretched we are and how desperately we need a Redeemer.
We must remember that regardless of how religious or upright we live, unless we are “Born Again” we are still eternally lost. The multitude of decent people that will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire is the saddest thought I ever have. I watch people, share their burdens, even preach funerals and see their lost condition and weep. Jesus left no room to doubt,
“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” (John 3:3b)
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by J.C. Ryle
Christ has purchased a full forgiveness, if we are only willing to receive it. He has done all, paid all, suffered all that was needful to reconcile us to God. He has provided a garment of righteousness to clothe us. He has opened a fountain of living waters to cleanse us. He has removed every barrier between us and God the Father, taken every obstacle out of the way, and made a road by which the vilest may return. All things are now ready, and the sinner has only to believe and be saved, to eat and be satisfied, to ask and receive; to wash and be clean.
by J.C. Ryle
by Vance Havner
And believers were the more added to the Lord. Acts 5:14
If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed. John 8:31
Ye shall be witnesses unto me. Acts 1:8
What is a New Testament Christian? He is a heart-believer in a crucified and risen Saviour and Lord. But our churches are filled with believers who do not continue in His Word and so are poor disciples. Salvation is free – not cheap- and we have only to trust Christ to be believers. But discipleship calls for all we are and have.
We have unwittingly created an artificial distinction between trusting Christ as Saviour and obeying Him as Lord. The New Testament recognizes no such false compartments of experience. “Believe on the LORD Jesus Christ,” said Paul to the jailer. No man can be a Christian by knowingly and willfully taking Christ on the installment plan, as Saviour now, as Lord later.
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by Oswald Chambers
. . . who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree . . . —1 Peter 2:24
The Cross of Christ is the revealed truth of God’s judgment on sin. Never associate the idea of martyrdom with the Cross of Christ. It was the supreme triumph, and it shook the very foundations of hell. There is nothing in time or eternity more absolutely certain and irrefutable than what Jesus Christ accomplished on the Cross— He made it possible for the entire human race to be brought back into a right-standing relationship with God. He made redemption the foundation of human life; that is, He made a way for every person to have fellowship with God.
The Cross was not something that happened to Jesus— He came to die; the Cross was His purpose in coming. He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). The incarnation of Christ would have no meaning without the Cross. Beware of separating “God was manifested in the flesh. . .” from “. . . He made Him. . . to be sin for us. . .” (1 Timothy 3:16 ; 2 Corinthians 5:21). The purpose of the incarnation was redemption. God came in the flesh to take sin away, not to accomplish something for Himself. The Cross is the central event in time and eternity, and the answer to all the problems of both.
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by J.C. Ryle
