QUOTABLES/ZINGERS
 
 


"It is widely acknowledged that we tend to find in scripture exactly what we have conceived as already being there, since none of us can easily face the threatening possibility that our 'received' understanding does not coincide with the Bible. (The problem is compounded if we are involved in teaching or preaching the Bible.) A religious doctrine which has been accepted intellectually and emotionally is dislodged with great difficulty."

 

Anthony F. Buzzard
Charles F. Hunting
The Doctrine of the Trinity;
Christianity's Self-Inflicted Wound

 
 

"No trumpets, no shouts, marked the beginning of the dispensation of the mystery.  Just the simple statement, 'The salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles'... There is no evidence that the end of the dispensation of the mystery will be anymore spectacular than its beginning.  It is likely that it will never make the headlines in the papers.  It has been going on so secretly and silently during all these centuries since Paul spoke those words in Rome, that the great bulk of Christendom does not know anything about it.  It is still a secret, made known only to such as are saints and faithful.  It is not known by a study of the Bible as a book among other books.  No amount of worldly learning or degrees can search out the secret.  One must receive the gift of the spirit of wisdom and knowledge.  The understanding must be enlightened.  There are those who talk about the mystery, but that is no guarantee that they know it.  Many know that there was a dispensational boundary at the end of Acts, but know nothing of what lies beyond.  This is especially true of some sects which have agreed with the teaching that there is a change of dispensation so that they might catch some unaware.  But they are unable to define the mystery.  You get absolutely no light on the subject from their writings.  This is a good thing to keep in mind when examining anything new."
Silently, Secretly, Mysteriously  by Oscar Baker

 
 




Life's lessons need not "turn to nothing".  The "exercise" may yield peaceable fruits of righteousness, the sorrows may accomplish our perfecting.  A professor of economics once said to his students, "LIVE ALL THE TIME".  His meaning was - "Do not set out in life with the idea that you will work hard till you are, say, 50 years of age, and that then you will retire to some nice country house, with well-kept lawns, and enjoy life, for you will do no such thing".  "Live all the time".   Think, that little one of yours, for whose "future" you anxiously and wearily toil, whose budding life you hardly know you are engrossed so much with the imaginary youth of the future.  If you would learn the lesson of Ecclesiastes, you will put aside that opportunity of "extra business", which would add so many more pounds [money] to your reserve for your child's "future", and you will go and "live" with the little one for an hour or so; you will then enter into your portion, all the rest is simply vanity and vexation of spirit.  Too late many a parent wakes up to the fact that in thus slaving and saving he has really robbed his child and himself of their true inheritance.  "Live all the time".

Entertain no false ideas of life, and then life can be a blessed thing.  Life is a pilgrimage, a series of halts and moving on again.  When we make up our minds to achieve anything for its own sake then we find that all is vanity and vexation of spirit.  When we realize that nothing is a goal in itself, but merely a means to an end, we shall not call the time wasted that helped us on another stage of our pilgrimage, even though the moment we achieved some object of desire, it ceased to attract or be of service.  

 

Ecclesiastes  by Charles H. Welch

 
 

My aversion to humane creeds as bonds of Christian union, as conditions of Christian fellowship, as means of fastening chains on men's minds, constantly gains strength.

 

Donald R. Snedeker

Our Heavenly Father Has No Equals

 
 
No sooner is any new impulse given either to philosophy or to religion than there arises a class of men who copy the form without the substance, and try to make the echo of the past sound like the voice of the present. So it has been with Christianity. It came into the educated world in the simple dress of a Prophet of Righteousness. It won that world by the stern reality of its life, by the subtle bonds of its brotherhood, by its divine message of consolation and of hope. Around it thronged the race of eloquent talkers who persuaded it to change its dress and to assimilate its language to their own. It seemed thereby to win a speedier and completer victory. But it purchased conquest at the price of reality. With that its progress stopped.

 
Edwin Hatch,

The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity

 
 



Oh, the tragedy of unlearned lessons!  The trial passed through without being exercised, the suffering endured without result, the heavy stroke without the blessed fruit.  God has so ordered the affairs of men that this world shall not yield only joy and gladness; sorrow, vexation and worry at every turn beset the sons of men, not out of caprice or indifference, but that they may be exercised, humbled therewith.  And the Christian too passes through sore trials, so that he may learn to lean harder and more completely upon his Lord.

Has the reader been "exercised" thereby?  Have you gone on your knees with your trouble to ask that you may not miss its lesson?  Have you realized that He who sends the trial shapes the issue?   (1 Cor. 10:13 lit.).

Ecclesiastes  by Charles H. Welch