11 Quotes From “Pleasure & Profit In Bible Study”

Pleasure & ProfitD.L. Moody’s book Pleasure & Profit In Bible Study is a Bible study rejuvenator for both the novice and experienced reader of the Bible. You can read my full book review by clicking here. Below are some of the quotes I especially appreciated in this book.

“The more you love the Scriptures, the firmer will be your faith. There is little backsliding when people love the Scriptures.” 

“I believe we should know better how to pray if we knew our Bibles better. … And if we feed on the Word, it will be so easy then to speak to others; and not only that, but we shall be growing in grace all the while, and others will take notice of our walk and conversation.”

“It is a very interesting fact that of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, it is recorded that our Lord made quotations from no less than twenty-two. … About 850 passages in the Old Testament are quoted or alluded to in the New…. In the Gospel by Matthew there are over a hundred quotations from twenty of the books in the Old Testament. In the Gospel of Mark there are fifteen quotations taken from thirteen of the books. In the Gospel of Luke there are thirty-four quotations from thirteen books. In the Gospel of John there are eleven quotations from six books. In the four Gospels alone there are more than 160 quotations from the Old Testament. … In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians there are fifty-three quotations from the Old Testament; sometimes he takes whole paragraphs from it. In Hebrews there are eighty-five quotations, in that one book of thirteen chapters. In Galatians, sixteen quotations. In the book of Revelation alone, there are 245 quotations and allusions.”

“It is very important that every Christian should not only know what the Old Testament teaches, but he should accept its truths, because it is upon this that truth is based. Peter said the Scriptures are not given for any private interpretation, and in speaking of the Scriptures, referred to the Old Testament and not to the New. … If the Old Testament Scriptures are not true, do you think Christ would have so often referred to them, and said the Scriptures must be fulfilled? When told by the tempter that He might call down the angels from heaven to interpose in His behalf, he said: ‘Thus it is written.’ Christ gave Himself up as a sacrifice that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. Was it not said that He was numbered with the transgressors? And when He talked with two of His disciples by the way journeying to Emmaus, after His resurrection, did He not say: ‘Ought not these things to be? am I not to suffer?’ And beginning at Moses He explained unto them in all the Scriptures concerning Himself, for the one theme of the Old Testament is the Messiah. … Christ referred to the Scriptures and their fulfillment in Him, not only after He arose from the dead, but in the book of Revelation He used them in Heaven. He spoke to John of them on the Isle of Patmos, and used the very things in them that men are trying to cast out. He never found fault with or rejected them.”

“Prophecy is history unfulfilled, and history is prophecy fulfilled. … Between 500 and 600 hundred Old Testament prophecies have been remarkably and literally fulfilled, and 200 in regard to Jesus Christ alone. Not a thing happened to Jesus Christ that was not prophesied from 1700 to 400 years before He was born.”

“Someone has said that there are four things necessary in studying the Bible: Admit, submit, commit and transmit. First, admit its truth; second, submit to its teachings; third, commit it to memory; and fourth, transmit it. If the Christian life is a good thing for you, pass it on to some one else.”

“Application to the Word will tend to its growth within and its multiplication without.”

“We learn that Christ prayed when he was baptized, and nearly every great event in His ministry was preceded by prayer. If you want to hear from Heaven you must seek it on your knees.”

“If you want to reach people that do not agree with you, do not take a club to knock them down and then try to pick them up. When Jesus Christ dealt with the erring and the sinners, He was as tender with them as a mother is with her sick child.” 

“Let us go to the Bible and see what that old Book teaches. Let us believe it, and go and act as if we believed it, too.”

“But we can not be ready if we do not study the Bible. So whenever you hear a good thing, just put it down, because if it is good for you it will be good for somebody else; and we should pass the coin of heaven around just as we do the coin of the realm.”

10 Quotes From “C.S. Lewis In A Time Of War”

In A Time Of WarI loved C.S. Lewis In A Time Of War by Justin Phillips! It appealed to my interests in World War II history, old-time radio, and one of my favorite authors: C.S. Lewis. You can read my book review by clicking here. Below are 10 quotes from this book which will give you a little of the flavor of this work.

“In a time of uncertainty and questioning it is the responsibility of the church—and of religious broadcasting as one of its most powerful voices—to declare the truth about God and His relation to man. It has to expound the Christian faith in terms that can be easily understood by ordinary men and women, and to examine the ways in which that faith can be applied to present-day society during these difficult times.” —James Welch, the BBC director of religious broadcasting responsible for getting C.S. Lewis on the air

“It seems to me that the New Testament, by preaching repentance and forgiveness, always assumes an audience who already believe in the law of nature and know they have disobeyed it. In modern England we cannot at present assume this, and therefore most apologetic begins a stage too far on. The first step is to create, or recover, the sense of guilt. Hence if I gave a series of talks, I should mention Christianity only at the end, and would prefer not to unmask my battery till then.” —C.S. Lewis

“Having seen more of his original manuscripts than probably anybody else, Walter Hooper observes that there is next to no evidence of rewriting or of copious changes. The manuscript of The Screwtape Letters is a case in point. There was only the one draft.” —Justin Phillips

“A charitable trust was set up called The Agape Fund, using the Greek word for love. Until his marriage in 1957, two-thirds of all Lewis’s royalties went into this fund to help those in need—normally under the cover of anonymity.” —Justin Phillips

“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.” —C.S. Lewis

“Walter Hooper had discovered a calculation made by Warnie [Lewis] in 1967, described in his diary some four years after Jack’s [C.S. Lewis] death, that by the time the typewriter was finally packed up Warnie must have written at least 12,000 letters on it on his brother’s behalf.” —Justin Phillips

“Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people’s minds under the cover of romance without them knowing it.” —C.S. Lewis 

“But if you will go to God just as you are, fully admitting that you care about Him very little, and put yourself in His hands, if you’re even ready to be made to care and leave Him to work, He’ll do the rest.” —C.S. Lewis

“All I am in private life is a literary critic and historian, that’s my job. And I am prepared to say on that basis if anyone thinks the Gospels are either legends or novels, then that person is simply showing his incompetence as a literary critic. I’ve read a great many novels and I know a few amount about the legends that grew up among early people, and I know perfectly well the Gospels are not that kind of stuff. They are absolutely full of the sort of things that don’t come into legends. Take one simple example. The passage in which Our Lord is scribbling in the dust before He gives His answer about the woman taken in adultery. Nothing whatever comes of it, no doctrine has ever been based on it, it has no point at all; there’s no conceivable reason why anyone should ever have written it down, unless he’s seen it happening. From first to last the things strike me as records of fact. And, in my opinion, the people who think that any of the episodes in the Gospels are imaginary are the people who have no imagination themselves and have never understood what imaginative story-telling is.” —C.S. Lewis

“Numbers vary, but in the year 2000 some estimates put worldwide sales of Lewis’ books at over 200 million copies in more than thirty languages.” —Justin Phillips

A Mathematical Quote From Gerald Schroeder In “There Is A God”

There Is A GodAs I said in my book review of Anthony Flew’s There Is A God, the real value of this book is in the arguments which contributed to Flew’s shift from atheism to theism. You can read my full book review by clicking here.

Frankly, it’s hard to share a lot of the quotes because the context of the full argument would be lacking, but I’ve been sharing a few of them over several posts. To continue, here is an extensive quote from mathematician Gerald Schroeder, which is set up by a quote from Anthony Flew.

“Schroeder first referred to an experiment conducted by the British National Council of Arts. A computer was placed in a cage with six monkeys. After one month of hammering away at it (as well as using it as a bathroom!), The monkeys produced fifty typed pages—but not a single word. Schroeder noted that this was the case even though the shortest word in the English language is one letter (a or I). A is a word only if there is a space on either side of it. If we take it that the keyboard has thirty characters (the twenty-six letters and other symbols), then the likelihood of getting a one-letter word is 30 times 30 times 30, which is 27,000. The likelihood of getting a one-letter word is one chance out of 27,000. Schroeder then applied the probabilities to the sonnet analogy. ‘What’s the chance of getting a Shakespearean sonnet?’ he asked. He continued:

‘All the sonnets are the same length. They are by definition fourteen lines long. I picked the one I knew the opening line for, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” I counted the number of letters; there are 488 letters in that sonnet. What’s the likelihood of hammering away and getting 488 letters in the exact sequence as in “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” What you end up with is 26 multiplied by itself 488 times—or 26 to the 488th power. Or, in other words, in base 10, 10 to the 690th. 

‘Now the number of particles in the universe—not grains of sand, I am talking about protons, electrons, and neutrons—is 10 to the 80th. Ten to the 80th is one with 80 zeros after it. Ten to the 690 is one with 690 zeros after it. There are not enough particles in the universe to write down the trials; you’d be off by a factor of 10 to the 600th. 

‘If you took the entire universe and converted it to computer chips—forget the monkeys—each one weighing a millionth of a gram and had each computer chip able to spin out 488 trials at, say, one million times a second; if you turn the entire universe into these microcomputer chips and these chips were spinning a million times a second producing random letters, the number of trials you would get since the beginning of time would be 10 to the 90th trials. It would be off again by a factor of 10 to the 600th. You will never get a sonnet by chance. The universe would have to be 10 to the 600 times larger. Yet the world just thinks the monkeys can do it every time.’”

  • More quotes are forthcoming.
  • You can read some direct quotes from Anthony Flew by clicking here.
  • Some Albert Einstein quotes can be found by clicking here.

5 Quotes From Albert Einstein In “There Is A God”

There Is A GodAs I said in my book review of Anthony Flew’s There Is A God, the real value of this book is in the arguments which contributed to Flew’s shift from atheism to theism. You can read my full book review by clicking here.

Frankly, it’s hard to share a lot of the quotes because the context of the full argument would be lacking, but I’ve begun sharing some of them over several posts. To continue, below are some quotes from Albert Einstein.

“I am not a positivist. Positivism states that what cannot be observed does not exist. This conception is scientifically indefensible, for it is impossible to make valid affirmations of what people ‘can’ or ‘cannot’ observe. One would have to say ‘only what we observe exists,’ which is obviously false.” —Albert Einstein

“The man of science is a poor philosopher.” —Albert Einstein

“I want to know how God created this world. … I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.” —Albert Einstein

“I’m not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.” —Albert Einstein

“Every one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.” —Albert Einstein

More quotes are forthcoming. You can read some direct quotes from Anthony Flew by clicking here.

5 Quotes From Anthony Flew In “There Is A God”

There Is A GodAs I said in my book review of Anthony Flew’s There Is A God, the real value of this book is in the arguments which contributed to Flew’s shift from atheism to theism. You can read my full book review by clicking here.

Frankly, it’s hard to share a lot of the quotes because the context of the full argument would be lacking, but I’m going to attempt to share some of them in multiple posts. To start with, below are some of the direct quotes from Anthony Flew.

“I have said in some of my later atheist writings that I reached the conclusion about the nonexistence of God much too quickly, much too easily, and for what later seemed to me the wrong reasons. I reconsidered this negative conclusion at length and often, but for nearly seventy years thereafter I never found the grounds sufficient to warrant any fundamental reversal. One of those early reasons for my conversion to atheism was the problem of evil.” 

“The presumption of atheism can be justified by the inescapable demand for grounds. To believe there is a God, we have to have good grounds for the belief. But if no such grounds are provided, there exists no sufficient reason for believing in God, and the only reasonable position is to be a negative atheist or an agnostic (by negative atheist, I meant ‘a-theist,’ parallel to such words as atypical and amoral). … This argument garnered many and varied responses. Writing as an agnostic, the English philosopher Anthony Kenny maintained that there may be a presumption for agnosticism, but not for positive or negative atheism. He suggested that it takes more effort to show that you know something than that you do not (this includes even the claim that the concept of God is not coherent). But he said this does not let agnostics off the hook; a candidate for an examination may be able to justify the claim that he or she does not know the answer to one of the questions, but this does not enable the person to pass the examination. … By far, the heaviest challenge to the argument came from America. The modal logician Alvin Plantinga introduced the idea that theism is a properly basic belief. He asserted that belief in God is similar to belief in other basic truths, such as belief in other minds or perception (seeing a tree) or memory (belief in the past). In all these instances, you trust your cognitive faculties, although you cannot prove the truth of the belief in question. Similarly, people take certain propositions (e.g., the existence of the world) as basic and others as derivative from these basic propositions. Believers, it is argued, take the existence of God as a basic proposition.”

“If there is an infinite series of books about geometry that owe their pattern to copying from earlier books, we still do not have an adequate answer as to why the book is the way it is (e.g., it is about geometry) or why there is a book at all. The entire series needs an explanation.” 

“Science qua science cannot furnish an argument for God’s existence. But the three items of evidence we have considered in this volume—the laws of nature, life with its teleological organization, and the existence of the universe—can only be explained in the light of an Intelligence that explains both its own existence and that of the world.”

“My discovery of the Divine has been a pilgrimage of reason and not of faith.”

Check back soon for some additional quotes from this thought-provoking book.

Links & Quotes

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Some interesting reading and watching from today…

“I call love to God the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for His own sake, and the enjoyment of one’s self and of one’s neighbor for the sake of God.” —Augustine

Thom Rainer shares 6 symptoms of a dysfunctional church.

This research says that married people are healthier people.

[VIDEO] Greg Koukl addresses the “God of the Gaps” argument.

12 Quotes From “Tactics

TacticsIn Tactics Greg Koukl gives Christians more how than what/why in defending the Biblical faith. It is an outstanding read that I recommend to all Christians (young or old). You can read my full book review by clicking here. Below are just a few of the quotes I highlighted in this empowering book.

“First, Christ’s ambassadors need the basic knowledge necessary for the task. They must know the central message of God’s kingdom and something about how to respond to the obstacles they’ll encounter on their diplomatic mission. … However, it is not enough for followers of Jesus to have an accurately informed mind. Our knowledge must be tempered with the kind of wisdom that makes our message clear and persuasive. This requires the tools of a diplomat, not the weapons of a warrior, tactical skill rather than brute force. Finally, our character can make or break our mission. Knowledge and wisdom are packaged in a person, so to speak. If that person does not embody the virtues of the kingdom he serves, he will undermine his message and handicap his efforts.” 

“The tactical approach requires as much careful listening as thoughtful response.”

“It is not the Christian life to wound, embarrass, or play one-upmanship with colleagues, friends, or even opponents, but it’s a common vice that anyone can easily fall into.” — Hugh Hewitt 

“Always make it a goal to keep your conversations cordial. Sometimes that will not be possible. If a principled, charitable expression of your ideas makes someone mad, there’s little you can do about it. Jesus’ teaching made some people furious. Just make sure it’s your ideas that offend and not you, that your beliefs cause the dispute and not your behavior.”

“The ability to argue well is vital for clear thinking. That’s why arguments are good things. Arguing is a virtue because it helps us determine what is true and discard what is false. … Paul warns against wrangling about words and quarreling about foolish speculations (2 Timothy 2:14, 23). But he also commands us to be diligent workmen, handling the word of truth accurately (2 Timothy 2:15). And, because some disputes are vitally important, Paul solemnly charges us to reprove, rebuke, and exhort when necessary (2 Timothy 4:112). This cannot be done without some confrontation, but disagreement need not threaten genuine unity.”

“If you want skeptics to believe in the Bible, don’t get into a tug-of-war with them about inspiration. Instead, invite them to listen—to engage Jesus’ words firsthand—then let the Spirit do the heavy lifting for you.”

“You have to know why Jesus is the only way before it is helpful to tell people that He is the only way.” 

“There are three specific things you can do to ‘ready’ yourself to respond. You can anticipate beforehand what might come up. You can reflect afterward on what took place. And in both cases you can practice the responses you think of during these reflective moments so you will be prepared for the next opportunity.”

“Knowing when to step back requires the ability to separate the hogs and the dogs from the lost sheep looking for a shepherd. But how do you know when someone has crossed the line? When do we have an obligation to speak, and when should we save our pearls for another time? Part of the answer can be found in Jesus’ next words in Matthew 7:6: ‘…lest they trample [the pearls] under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.’ Be generous with the truth except with someone who shows utter contempt for the precious gift being offered him. He will simply trample it in the mud and then viciously turn on you. … There is an exception to this principle, however. I have learned from my radio show that sometimes my real audience is not the person I’m talking to, but the people who are listening in, eavesdropping on the conversation. … Lee Strobel calls this ‘ricochet evangelism.’” 

“When I face an aggressive challenger, I often give him the last word. Not only is this gracious, it’s also powerful, conveying a deep sense of confidence in one’s own view. Instead of fighting for the final say-so, give it away. Make your concluding point clearly and succinctly, and then say, “I’ll let you have the last word.” But don’t break this promise. Grant him his parting shot, and then let it rest.”

“Know the truth. Know your Bible well enough to give an accurate answer. Tactics are not a substitute for knowledge. Cleverness without truth is manipulation.”

“Culture is most profoundly changed not by the efforts of huge institutions, but by individual people.” —Chuck Colson

 

Tactics (book review)

TacticsI am a big fan of Christian apologetics: defending what I believe as a Christian. But until reading Tactics by Greg Koukl, I have found very few books which discuss how to present what I believe.

Tactics isn’t about parlor tricks, or playing games with words. It is truly a mindset to keep a conversation going with someone who wants to know (or challenge) what you believe. When we make a statement, the conversation comes to a screeching halt or explodes into an intense argument. But if we continue to ask questions, a dialogue can continue.

Greg Koukl uses some insights from TV detective Columbo to give Christians some strategies for productive conversations. Peter Falk’s character was an intuitive detective who got his information by asking people to clarify what they were saying, and getting them to open up and talk more. In similar fashion, Greg gives us some ideas of how to find out not only what the other person believes, but why they believe it, by asking some strategic questions.

From the moment I began reading this book, I have been able to immediately use the tactics Greg outlines. I have recommended this book to a couple of other people, and they are also reporting back to me that they are experiencing similar results. So I wholeheartedly recommend this book to any Christian who wants to have more meaningful conversations with others about their faith.

Links & Quotes

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Great reading (and watching) today.

[VIDEO] John Maxwell reminds us of the value of delays.

Dr. James Dobson defends his comments at the National Day of Prayer address.

[VIDEO] Dr. Brian Mattson discusses the place of the Apocrypha.

[INFOGRAPHIC] Exercise helps your memory.

“The surprise comes for many people that such a tiny little brain is able to form such a rich memory described as a cognitive map,” says co-author Randolf Menzel. Actually, the surprise for me is that many people refuse to believe this amazing little brain was created by an amazing Creator. See how bees build mental maps to get back home.

Links & Quotes

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[VIDEO] Brilliant! The Bible’s place in our worldview.

“The most common remedy for most behavioral and mental disorders today is some form of self-worth enhancement. It pervades our educational institutions, the psychotherapeutic and counseling system, the personnel and motivational industry, advertising, and even the church. I think the remedy is flawed. … What is the root of mental health? My answer is, God. Or seeing God as God and enjoying Him as God, which involves being forgiven by God and welcomed with utterly free grace. I personally believe that these truths are hijacked when they are used to make self-esteem the root of mental health.” —John Piper

[COMIC] What the parishioners think the clergy think the parishioners think the clergy do.

15 great G.K. Chesterton quotes.

Why America doesn’t need Planned Parenthood.

Live Action releases a scathing 6-year investigation of Planned Parenthood.

How we glorify God by sleeping.