Jesus placed the church at the very heart and core of His people's lives in ministry, and it should have that same place in our lives also.

Max Doner

The triumph of Christ over Satan is carried out in the world through the local churches ... The church is where Christ's concern is focused, and that is where our concern should be focused as well.

Max Doner

Study without prayer is atheism. Prayer without study is presumption.

Bishop Saunderson

The sluggard is represented as finding fantastic and preposterous excuses to demonstrate that no idea is too odd or fantastic to keep him off welfare.

Bruce K. Waltke

The slothful man is a coward ... He shrinks from every work likely to involve trouble ... All excuses against doing [the Lord's work] partake of this cowardly spirit.

Charles Bridges (1794–1869)

If it is not a real, hearty ministry of grace, inspired by the Holy Spirit, it will end in nothing. Fine words neither wound nor heal. Oratory may amuse, but it cannot convert; and rhetoric may astonish, but it will never save. We must have more than mere words, however striking... We want living preaching, by men in downright earnest, attended by the living Spirit, or else life will never be created or sustained by it... That is evil preaching which creates the semblance of piety, but never imparts the substance.

C. H. Spurgeon, "Flowers from a Puritan's Garden"

It is his own covenant. He devised it, drew up the draft of it, and voluntarily entered into it: he therefore thinks much of it. It is not a man's covenant, but the Lord claims it as his own. It is an evil thing among men for one to be a "covenant breaker", and such an opprobrious epithet shall never be applicable to the Most High.

C. H. Spurgeon on Psalm 89.34 phrase, "My covenant will I not break," in Treasury of David.

Sadly, because all men without exception or sinners, the most fundamental factor in understanding anthropology is the Thanatos factor. With entirely non-Freudian implications, the Thanatos Syndrome is simply the natural sinful inclination to death and defilement. All men have morbidly embraced death (Ro. 5:12).

George Grant

The more unnatural any act is the more horrid. It is unnatural for a man to be cruel to his own flesh; for a woman to go about to kill the child in her womb - O how your ears tingle at such a flagitious [shockingly brutal] act!

William Gurnall (1616 – 1679)

Baptists have always examined mandated practices and beliefs of Catholics and Protestants in light of Scripture. They refused to toe the line before the Reformation, especially in practices added by Catholicism or retained by Protestantism when it contradicted Scripture.

Dan R. Nelson

People must learn to submit before they can rule, and the best leaders are the best submitters.

Jonathan Leeman

If ever we would go to heaven, we must be fitted for heaven in this world; we must here have our souls molded and fashioned for praise, and they must begin their work here. The beginnings of future things are in this world. The seed must be sown here; the foundation must be laid in this world.

Jonathan Edwards (October 5, 1703–March 22, 1758)

You will not improve as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head. Only books of that sort will make you stretch your mind. And unless you stretch, you will not learn.

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001)

Throughout Scripture, God's judgment always falls on those who slay the unborn.

Peter Barnes

Submission ... involves two things: deferring by moral constraint to another person's judgment and deploying your resources for the sake of fulfilling that person's judgment.

Jonathan Leeman

The proof that the Church universally held to the first day as the day of public worship is found in Justin Martyr's "Apology," presented to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, A.D. 150, where, giving an account of the public worship of Christians, he says: "On the day which is called Saturday, all, whether dwelling in the towns or in the villages, hold meetings; and the memoirs of the apostles, and the writings of the prophets, are read,.… We all commonly hold our assemblies on Sunday, because it is the first day on which God converted the darkness and matter, and framed the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour, on the same day, arose from the dead.

George N. H. Peters (November 30, 1825 – October 7, 1909)

A coherent thinker, and a strict reasoner, is not to be made at once by a set of rules, any more than a good painter or musician may be formed extempore by an excellent lecture on music or painting. It is of infinite importance therefore, in our younger years, to be taught both the value and the practice of conceiving clearly and reasoning right; for when we are grown up to the middle of life, or past it, it is no wonder that we should not learn good reasoning, any more than that an ignorant clown should not be able to learn find language, dancing, or a courtly behaviour, when his rustic heirs have grown up with him until the age of forty.

Isaac Watts (17 July 1674 – 25 November 1748)

To slaughter a man is to stab God in effigy.

Ezekiel Hopkins (1634-1690)

Right thinking, not brains as such characterizes the wise.

Bruce K. Waltke

He that doth not give ... religious worship to God is profane, he that gives into another besides to the true God is an idolater.

William Ames English Puritan minister (1576-1633)

Punctual attendance on the ministrations of the word, is necessary to the spiritual improvement of the church. It is necessary to encourage the heart of the minister. He cannot be expected to preach with earnestness and persevering zeal, if his people manifest no pleasure in listening to the truth which he proclaims. Let him know that they drink in the word with delight, that their souls are refreshed by it, and that it greatly increases their fruitfulness in holiness; with this knowledge, he will be stimulated to go forward in his work with boldness, and to indoor all his toils with the sustaining assurance that his labor is not in vain in the Lord... Nor can spiritual health be expected, if the spiritual nourishment which God has provided, they received at far distant and irregular intervals.

J. L. Dagg (1794–1884

The law of God discountenances the trade of begging, with all its pathetic cries and appeals. (2 Thess. iii.10.)

Charles Bridges (1794-1869)

The idea of the invisible church is foreign to the New Testament, while the interpretation of the real visible church as a merely external means of salvation is not only foreign to it but completely impossible... The thought of Calvin, that the church is an external support for faith, is utterly unintelligible... The ekklesia of the New Testament... Is precisely not that which every "church" is at least in part – an institution, a something. The Body of Christ is nothing other than a fellowship of persons... Where fellowship... signifies a common participation a togetherness, a community life. The faithful are bound to each other through their common sharing in Christ and in the Holy Ghost, but that which they have in common is precisely no "thing", no "it", but a "he", Christ and his Holy Spirit... The Body of Christ... has nothing to do with an organization and has nothing of the character of the institutional about it.

Emil Brunner (1889–1966)

The man who does not meet God outside the temple will not meet God inside the temple, he may rest assured of that.

C. H. Spurgeon

If deacons were everywhere active in holding up the hands of the pastors, as Aaron and Hur held up the hands of Moses, the prosperity of the churches would be greatly advanced, and the success of the gospel far more abundant.

J. L. Dagg (1794–1884)