Perhaps for almost as long as I’ve been reading, certainly as long as I’ve been writing professionally, I have been an avid collector of quotations. In my reading, I have found so many people who said so many things on so many topics so much better than I could say them, that I quote them in my writing. It lends credibility where I might lack it, I guess. And those quotations say, in effect, “Don’t take just my word for it; look who else thought so. Here’s what they said about that.”
Four men in particular said or wrote a whole lot of things that are so poignant and on target, and I’m not the only one who has quoted them. Entire books have been devoted to their quotations. I’d like to share a few of those quotations with you in this blog post. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have and get the message that each man was trying to communicate at the time.
Charles Spurgeon, the “Prince of Preachers,” has to be one of the most oft-quoted preachers of all time. Here are some things he said.
“God has given no pledge which He will not redeem, and encouraged no hope which He will not fulfill.” “Faith always sees the bow of covenant promise whenever sense sees the cloud of affliction.” “No blessing can come to us or ours through dishonesty or double dealing. . . . If integrity does not make us prosper, knavery will not.” “If we fear God, we have nothing else to fear.” “When my Lord bids me cheer up, I must not dare to be cast down.”
My introduction to C.S. Lewis was through his little parody The Screwtape Letters. Later, my wife and I read his children’s story The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to our children. He had a way of hiding gems of truth within works of fiction. Here are a few of them from the advice of Screwtape, undersecretary of the department of temptation, to his nephew Wormwood, who was a junior tempter.
“If you can once get him to the point of thinking that ‘religion is all very well up to a point,’ you can feel quite happy about his soul. A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all–and more amusing.” “Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” “Tortured fear and stupid confidence are both desirable states of mind.” “Keep your man in a condition of false spirituality.” “The fine flower of unholiness can grow only in the close neighbourhood of the Holy. Nowhere do we tempt so successfully as on the very steps of the altar.”
Perhaps few preachers have addressed the dangers that the church presents to itself than A.W. Tozer. He followed in the footsteps of A.B. Simpson in the Christian and Missionary Alliance and is often quoted. I highly recommend his books, especially The Pursuit of God and The Knowledge of the Holy. Here are a few of his gems.
“At the base of all true Christian experience must lie a sound and sane morality.” “To will the will of God is to do more than give unprotesting consent to it; it is rather to choose God’s will with positive determination.” “Being made in His image, we are by nature constituted so that we are justifying our existence only when we are working with a purpose in mind. Aimless activity is beneath the worth and dignity of a human being. Activity that does not result in progress toward a goal is wasted; yet most Christians have no clear end toward which they are striving.” “Moral power has always accompanied definitive beliefs. Great saints have always been dogmatic. We need right now a return to a gentle dogmatism that smiles while it stands stubborn and firm on the Word of God. . . .”
Finally, here are a few tidbits from a man who was plain-spoken, not eloquent or showy, but he spoke the truth directly to his hearers. Vance Havner “put the cookies on the bottom shelf,” where everyone could understand exactly the heaven-sent message he was delivering.
“When the persecuted become the popular, they are powerless. The church prospers in persecution, but pines in prosperity.” “The Early Church did something because it believed something. We are trying to do what they did without believing what they believed.” “It is always on the backside of the desert that we come to the mountain of God, on the backside of the desert of self, at the end of our own dreams and ambitions and plans.” “God’s Word is not obsolete, it is absolute.” “You really save in this life only that which you spend for the Lord. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, every expenditure is an investment. The Bank of Heaven is sound and pays eternal dividends.”
Copyright (c) 2017, Dennis L. Peterson