Tuesday, March 23, 2010

No More Sorrow in Heaven

Blessed be God! There shall be no sorrow in heaven. There shall not be one single tear shed within the courts above. There shall be no more disease and weakness and decay. The coffin, the funeral and the grave shall be things unknown. Our faces shall no more be pale and sad. No more shall we go out from the company of those we love and be parted asunder – that word, ‘farewell’, shall never be heard again. There shall be no anxious thought about tomorrow to mar and spoil our enjoyment. There shall be no sharp and cutting words to wound our souls. Our needs will have come to a perpetual end, and all around us shall be harmony and love.

~J.C. Ryle

Sunday, March 14, 2010

The Reading of Good Books

Why does today's Christian find the reading of great books always beyond him? Certainly intellectual powers do not wane from one generation to another. We are as smart as our fathers, and any thought they could entertain we can entertain if we are sufficiently interested to make the effort. The major cause of the decline in the quality of current Christian literature is not intellectual but spiritual. To enjoy a great religious book requires a degree of consecration to God and detachment from the world that few modern Christians have. The early Christian Fathers, the Mystics, the Puritans, are not hard to understand, but they inhabit the highlands where the air is crisp and rarefied, and none but the God-enamored can come.

A.W. Tozer

Thursday, March 11, 2010

"The strongest support of the doctrine of Endless Punishment is the teaching of Christ, the Redeemer of man."
~William G.T. Shedd