Thursday, May 27, 2010

Rebuke All Open Sin

Here is a pattern that all ministers ought to follow. Publicly and privately, from the pulpit and in private visits, they ought to rebuke all open sin, and deliver a faithful warning to all who are living in it. It may give offense. It may entail immense unpopularity. With all this they have nothing to do. Duties are theirs. Results are God’s.
~ J.C. Ryle via J.C. Ryle Quotes

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

The Voice of Jezebel

"But I have this against you,
that you tolerate that woman Jezebel..."
~ Revelation 2:20

"'Therefore go out from their midst,
and be separate from them', says the Lord,
'and touch no unclean thing;'"
~ 2 Corinthians 6:17

Through the whole New Testament the call is to separation, to peculiarity, to a clear line of demarcation between the Church and the world. I fear that the voice of Jezebel is yet tolerated, and that the children of God are being seduced.

Things at which our fathers shuddered are today being introduced as necessary to the social and financial success of the Church. In the name of God and humanity, let us keep the line clear and sharp, and know on which side we stand.

Any doctrine, any philosophy, that makes it easy to sin, whether by excusing it, minimizing its enormity, or denying its existence is of hell, and not merely are those held guilty who teach the doctrine and practice the sin, but that church also which is not clear and outspoken in its protests against sin. The church that suffers the woman is guilty.

~G. Campbell Morgan

Thursday, May 20, 2010

The Church at Thyatira

"Nowhere, perhaps, is there a more deeply interesting story; nowhere longer and more unwearied patience; nowhere truer, or perhaps so true, hearts for Christ and for the truth, and for faithfulness to Him against a corrupt church, as in the saints of the Middle Ages.

Through toil and labour, hunted and punished; in spite of a system far more persevering, far better organized, than heathen persecutions, violent as for a time they surely were; with no fresh miraculous revelation, or publicly sustaining body, or profession of the church at large, clothed with universal acknowledgement as such, to give them confidence; with every name of ignominy that people or priest could invent to hunt them with, they pursued their hemmed but never abandoned way with divinely-given constancy, and maintained the testimony of God, and the promised existence of the church against the gates of hades, at the cost of rest and home and life and all things earth could give or nature feel.

And Christ had foreseen and had not forgotten it. Weakness may have been there, ignorance have marked many of their thoughts; Satan may have sought to mix up mischief with their good, and sometimes succeeded but their record is on high, and their Saviour's approbation will shine forth when the books ease-loving questioners have written on them will be as dust on the moth's wing when it is dead. . . . This the Lord owns in Thyatira. It made no part of the church for men then; it makes none for many wise people now. It is the first part for Christ."

~ J.N. Darby

Sunday, May 16, 2010

He Holds the Keys

I'm studying Revelation 2:8-11 tonight. In verse 8 we see Christ as the One "who died and came to life". The risen Christ uses this same title for Himself in Revelation 1:18, but adds, "and I have the keys of Death and Hades." Amen and Hallelujah--He has conquered--HE holds the keys.


Wednesday, May 12, 2010

What Is Biblical Faith?

Biblical faith, in the end, begins and ends with a simultaneous love for the Savior and a hatred for sin. Without either component, faith never leaves the ground. If we profess to love Jesus Christ but never deal with our sin, we are lost, unforgiven by the Father, and will not enter heaven. If we hate our sin but never run to Christ to receive His atoning grace, we have no remission of sins and we will not see eternal life. The Spirit must propel each of these doctrines into the sinful heart and mind if we are ever to know the grace of God and the glory of true Christianity.

~ Jonathan Edwards