Category: Education

Categories
Church History

Outstanding!

I have given this plug before, but I must do so again:

Pastor Joe Morecraft III, of Chalcedon Presbyterian Church in Cumming, GA, has done all those interested in History an outstanding service. By following this link to Sermon Audio, you will arrive at his History of the Reformation series of audio lectures and sermons. I cannot express well enough how illuminating, enlightening, and invaluable these sermons are. In fact, at my Church right now, we’re having a Sunday School series of the Reformed Faith in American History, and I have to say that this is a most valuable pre-supplement to it.

I am particularly fond of his several lectures on John Knox and the Scottish Covenanters. Also to be indulged, are his ones on Oliver Cromwell, a most controversial figure of the Reformation in England. Hearing about the godly lives of these men is a great encouragement in the faith, and is likely to help kindle the fire so already passionately lit by Scripture reading, prayer, and subsequent obedience. Not only are these pictures given by Pastor Morecraft a retelling of the godliness of the Reformation’s leaders, but they are full of suspense, mystery, and much more action than Hollywood is able to give.

I heartily (and when I say heartily, I mean heartily) recommend this 48 sermon series. No, this does not mean you (or I) will agree with everything Pastor Morecraft says, or that Pastor Morecraft is infallibe (as he certainly wouldn’t claim to be), but it means that I believe this is a contribution of great richness given by him and his church. These lectures are free, but after having heard them, I must say they’re worth paying for. Enjoy!

Categories
Education

Spurgeon on Reading

Men have now learned, however, that he will be most fresh and original in his own thoughts who most diligently cultivates his mind by studying and pondering the thoughts of other minds. He who never quotes, will never be quoted, and he who does not read is not very likely to be read.

Categories
Education Quotes

Another Burroughs Quote From Evil of Evils

Sin is so evil that it is not capable of any good at all. Though the air is never so dark, yet it is capable of light. That would be a dismal darkness that was not capable of light coming into it. That which is bitter, though never so bitter, yet is capable of recieving that which will sweeten. That which is never so venemous is yet capable of such things as will make it wholesome; but sin is so dark that it is incapable of light, so bitter that there is no way to make it sweet, so venemous that there is no way to make it wholesome.

Categories
Quotes

What it is to Keep the Heart

To attain a facility and dexterity of language in prayer, and put thy meaning into apt and decent expressions, is easy; but to get thy heart broken for sin whilst thou art confessing it; melted with free grace whilst thou are blessing God for it; to be really ashamed and humbled through the apprehensions of God’s infinite holiness, and to keep they heart in this frame, not only in, but after duty, will surely cost thee some groans and travailing pain of soul: To repress the outward acts of sin, and compose the external part of thy life in a laudable and comely manner is no great matter; even carnal persons by the force of common principles can do this; but to kill the root of corruption within, to set and keep up an holy government over thy thoughts, to have all things lie straight and orderly in the heart, this is not easy.

Categories
Quotes

Spring on Revivalism

I have somewhere met the remark, that “˜the chariot of the gospel never has free course, but the devil tries to be charioteer’. There is nothing he is so much afraid of as the power of the Holy Ghost. Where he cannot arrest the showers of blessing, it has ever been one of his devices to dilute or poison the streams. . .With the obvious signs of the times in view, who does not see that this artful foe would enjoy his malignant triumph, if he sould prejudice the minds of good men against all revivals of religion? This he does, not so much by opposing them, as by counterfeiting the geunine coin, and by getting up revivals that are spurious and to his liking. Revivals are always spurious when they are got up by man’s device, and not brought down by the Spirit of God.

Categories
Quotes

Spurgeon On Revivalism

Things are allowed to be said and done at revivals which nobody could defend. . . If, for a moment, our improvements seem to produce a larger result than the old gospel, it will be the growth of mushrooms, it may even be of toadstools; but it is not the growth of the trees of the Lord.

Categories
Quotes

Burroughs-Evil of Evils

True, there is the bright glass of the Law, wherein we may see the evil of sin; but there is the red glass of the sufferings of Christ, and in that we may see more of the evil of sin that if God should let us down to hell and there let us see all the tortures and torments of the damned in hell. If you could see those people and how they lie sweltering under God’s wrath there, it would not be as much as beholding sin through the red glass of the sufferings of Jesus Christ and His agony.

Categories
Quotes

Subtlelty of Sin

When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone; but as sin is never less quiet than when it seems to be most quiet, and its waters are for the most part deep when they are still, so ought our contrivances against it to be vigorous at all times and in all conditions, even where there is least suspicion.

Categories
Quotes

Owen On Temptation

Temptation is like a knife, that may either cut the meat or the throat of a man; it may be his food or his poison, his exercise or his destruction

Categories
Quotes

Owen On Persistence in Mortification

Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until he be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so will he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death.