Why are wisdom and folly depicted as women in Proverbs? Something hit me a while back for you to test against the Word: traditionally a female is pursued, so is wisdom and wickedness–each require deliberate action, so we must consider carefully what we chase; you wouldn’t exactly chase a dude in that way, so any comparison to a male would seem more like a conquering of an enemy rather than a catching of a prize. In Proverbs, one prize kills you, but the other is an eternal treat.
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
–Voltaire
We ought to have far more fear of God than we do of someone’s concept of God.
Recently, I just starting noticing (it’s been happening since…let’s see…creation?!) the number of concepts people communicate about God. On a weather site, the following comment was published:
If any GOD had any pull on weather [conditions] , We’d have beautiful days forever.
How common is this kind of statement? I’m reminded of Job’s friends who all thought they knew God. I’m reminded of the false prophets from Jeremiah’s day who were ousted by God in His revelation to Jeremiah. I’m reminded of…well…pretty much everyone, including myself, who has ever looked to an “image” of God, either molten or mental, as J. I. Packer says, thereby reducing His glory.
“I also withheld rain from you
when the harvest was still three months away.
I sent rain on one town,
but withheld it from another.
One field had rain;
another had none and dried up.
People staggered from town to town for water
but did not get enough to drink,
yet you have not returned to me,”
declares the Lord. – Amos 4
Let us take care that we do not reduce God with statements like “No God would…” or “God wouldn’t” or [ad infinitum].
We ought to have far more fear of God than we do of someone’s concept of God.
We will not believe more than we know, and we will not live higher than our beliefs. The many fronts of Christian compromise in this generation can be directly traced to biblical illiteracy in the pews and the absence of biblical preaching and teaching in our homes and churches.
This generation must get deadly serious about the problem of biblical illiteracy, or a frighteningly large number of Americans–Christians included–will go on thinking that Sodom and Gomorrah lived happily ever after.
–Albert Mohler
According to El-Arabi, there are three forms of knowledge: 1) intellectual knowledge, which is “only information and the collection of facts”; 2) the “emotionalism” that consists of getting in touch with and expressing your feelings; and 3) “real knowledge, which is called the Knowledge of Reality. In this form man can perceive what is right, what is true” (Shah 1968, p. 85). The first two forms–the false forms–of knowledge outlined by El-Arabi are the forms that dominate the current confusion surrounding issues in education. They can be seen in the talk about technological innovation and feeling good about one’s self.
–David Patterson, 36
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
–Bill Vaughn
Near the end of Heinz Schirk’s film on the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich tells Eichmann to “be as clear as necessary and as vague as possible” in the execution of his duty. This statement is a formulation of the principle of the lie that breeds death and is directly opposed to education’s quest for the truth that sanctifies life. Where the affirmation of the truth of the sacred is concerned, one must be as clear as possible and only as vague as necessary.
–David Patterson, When Learned Men Murder, 24
Questions convict the conscience. Accusations harden the heart.
Today’s surrender is tomorrow’s freedom.
There can be no doubt that at the Wannsee Conference sophisticated, cultivated, educated men passed the children through fire in an offering to Moloch, the god of mammon and power. And the ritual was all the more ghastly because it was performed with all the trappings and pretense of civilization.
–David Patterson, When Learned Men Murder, 26
Alice Paul, the original author of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) back in 1923, was the first person to describe abortion as ‘the ultimate exploitation of women.’
It is a glorious phrase…that ‘he led captivity captive.’
The very triumphs of His foes, it means, he used for their defeat. He compelled their dark achievements to sub-serve his end, not theirs.
They nailed him to the tree, not knowing that by that very act they were bringing the world to his feet.
They gave him a cross, not guessing that he would make it a throne.
They flung him outside the gates to die, not knowing that in that very moment they were lifting up all the gates of the universe, to let the King of Glory come in.
They thought to root out his doctrines, not understanding that they were implanting imperishably in the hearts of men the very name they intended to destroy.
They thought they had defeated God with His back the wall, pinned and helpless and defeated: they did not know that it was God Himself who had tracked them down.
He did not conquer in spite of the dark mystery of evil. He conquered through it.
James Stewart (1896–1990) was a minister of the Church of Scotland
Give God His breath back–you owe Him!
— Rapper Propaganda – G.O.S.P.E.L.
How do I love?
To love, I must consider Him.
To consider, I must learn Him.
To learn, I must search for Him.
To search, I must have information about Him.
To have information, I have been reached by Him.
To be reached, I am found by Him.
To be found, I am known by Him.
To be known by Him, I am loved by Him.
We love because we were first loved by Him.
Thanks, C. S. Lewis
Today, the word orgies has a purely sexual connotation, but…It comes from the word komos and was used to describe the festivals of Bacchus where the participants took part in a nocturnal and riotous procession of half-drunken and frolicsome. Fellows who paraded through the streets with torches and music and sang and played before the houses of their male or female friends. It was the drinking parties that were protracted into the late night with loud and boisterous merry making. Sound familiar?
–Mike Owens
Belief surpasses acknowledgment. I can acknowledge that greens are good for me without changing anything I do. Belief that greens are good for me results in me incorporating them into my diet. So it is with Christ.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
–Galatians 5:1
Will we refuse to come to Christ to have life? #loversofdeath
Not only is all your affliction [in the path of obedience] momentary, not only is all your affliction light in comparison to eternity, and the glory there, but all of it is totally meaningful. Every millisecond of your pain…every millisecond of your misery in the path of obedience is producing a peculiar glory…I don’t care if it’s cancer or criticism. I don’t care if it was slander or sickness. It wasn’t meaningless. It’s doing something. It’s not meaningless. Of course you can’t see what it’s doing. Don’t look to what is seen. When your mom dies, when your kid dies, when you got cancer at 40, when a car careens into the sidewalk and takes her out, don’t say, “it’s meaningless!” It’s not. It’s working…an eternal…glory. Therefore…do not lose heart, but take these truths and day by day focus on them. Preach them to yourself every morning. Get alone with God and preach his word into your mind until your mind sings with confidence that you are new, that you are cared for.
–Piper
The truth is always disturbing because coming to know the truth entails coming to know ourselves to be in error; we must become something other than what we are.
–David Patterson
the cancer of consumerism eats away at the fabric of reflection
–When Learned Men Murder
Tremble, and do not sin; Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.
–Psalm 4:4
Where God is not honored, something basic is awry, spoiling even what would otherwise be good
–Stephen Westerholm
Before Christ, sin is not an alien power. Sin is our preference for anything over God. Sin is our disapproval of God. Sin is our exchange of his glory for substitutes. Sin is our suppression of the truth of God. Sin is our heart’s hostility to God. It is who we are to the bottom of our hearts. Until Christ.
–Piper