Ligonier Academy (January 2013)

"What a power was put forth in raising Christ from the grave when such a tombstone lay upon him as the sins of all the world! yet he was raised up by the Spirit. The same power is put forth by the Spirit of God in working faith. The Spirit irradiates the mind, and subdues the will. The will is like a garrison, which holds out against God: the Spirit with sweet violence conquers, or rather changes it; making the sinner willing to have Christ upon any terms; to be ruled by him as well as saved by him." - Thomas Watson

How long shall we lie still under our formal complaints of the decay of Christian piety? How long shall we idly see the retirement of warm religion from the hearts and bosoms of its professors? Do we look into the churches of the Lord Jesus, or into our own souls and observe the deadness and dispiritedness that is there to all the parts of real godliness; and are we content, that so it should be? ... Are we willing to yield to all the lukewarmness and degeneracy that has overspread us? Shall we take no methods to recover and revive? Even the truly pious are dull and heavy in their religion, [and] march on wearily in their appointed race, as if either their Lord had lost His glory or His promise to them; or they [have lost] their faith and hope in Him.... Is it not time to proclaim among the churches, the message of the Mediator sent from heaven to the Church of Laodicea: Be zealous and repent?" - John Reynolds (1667-1727)

"Christianity is Christ. Christianity centres in Christ -- it is in Him. Without Him there is no Christianity. It is the Person who matters; it is the Lord who counts." - D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"God's chief end was not to bring Christ into the world for us, but us for Christ. He is worth all creatures. And God contrived all things that do fall out, and even redemption itself, for the setting forth of Christ's glory, more than our salvation." - Thomas Goodwin

"Will any man that hath not lost his senses, now stand cavilling, and quarrelling, that so few should be saved, instead of making sure of his own salvation? The reason that there are so few is, because they will not be saved upon God's terms." - Richard Baxter

"If there were infinite worlds made of creatures loving, they would not have so much love in them as was in the heart of that man Christ Jesus." - Thomas Goodwin 

"The sum of the sum: Preach one Christ by Christ to the praise of Christ." - William Perkins

"Praying for one another will ease differences, jealousies, and suspicions. It will make the godly of one heart and one mind. If you find yourself thinking how poorly a brother has treated you, pray for that man. It will immediately quiet those wins and waves" - Anthony Burgess

God covers under the wings of His care each single one of His creatures." - John Calvin

"If the unborn is not a human person, no justification for abortion is necessary. However, if the unborn is a human person, no justification for abortion is adequate." - Gregory Koukl

"We alone, as Christians, understand what is wrong with the world. We see powers and principalities, the rulers of the darkness of this world, behind the visible and seen phenomena, and we see perplexed politicians trying to deal with the problems, and failing. We know they must fail because they do not see what is at the back of it all. We see it as the conflict between heaven and hell." - D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

 

"To behold the glory of God is both our privilege and our duty. The duties of the Law were a burden and a yoke; but those of the gospel are privileges and advantages... In the contemplation of this glory consists the principal exercise of faith. And who can declare the glory of this privilege, that we who are born in darkness, and deserved to be cast out into utter darkness, should be translated into this marvellous light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ?" - John Owen

"Only those who have learned well to be earnestly dissatisfied with themselves, and to be confounded with shame at their wretchedness truly understand the Christian gospel." - John Calvin

 

“Here, then, is the real problem of our negligence. We fail in our duty to study God's Word not so much because it is difficult to understand, not so much because it is dull and boring, but because it is work. Our problem is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion. Our problem is that we are lazy. ” ― R.C. Sproul

 

“I'm afraid that in the United States of America today the prevailing doctrine of justification is not justification by faith alone. It is not even justification by good works or by a combination of faith and works. The prevailing notion of justification in our culture today is justification by death. All one has to do to be received into the everlasting arms of God is to die.” ― R.C. Sproul

"If there can be any doctrines, however few, which justly deserve the name of essential doctrines and stand at the root of the Christian life as its conditions, foundations, or presuppositions, it surely becomes the duty as well as the right of the Christian man to study them, to seek to understand them in themselves and in their relations, to attempt to state them with accuracy and to adjust their statement to the whole body of known truth - in a word, the right and function of Systematic Theology is vindicated." - B.B. Warfield