Quotes
on Bible - The primary purpose of reading the Bible
“We
can always be sure of one thing—that the messengers of discomfort and sacrifice
will be stoned and pelted by those who wish to preserve at all costs their own
contentment. This is not a lesson that is confined to the Testaments.”
―
Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
“When
we neglect our Bible study we often feel guilty. When you skip a meal do you
feel guilty? No, you feel hungry. The Bible is food for our soul. When we fail
to read it we should not feel guilty, we should feel hungry. Guilt is fueled by
obligation hunger is fueled by desire.”
―
Tyler Edwards
“To
be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all
of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient
period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament.”
―
John Warwick Montgomery, History and Christianity
“You
can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and
punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually
contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented
detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up
in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only
those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for
capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and
"nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles
Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd
codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion.”
―
Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian
“One
of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this:
Why do the children of Israel continue to suffer? My grandmother Dodo thought
it was because the goyim were jealous. The seder for Passover (which is a
shame-faced simulacrum of a Hellenic question-and-answer session, even
including the wine) tells the children that it's one of those things that
happens to every Jewish generation. After the Shoah or Endlösung or Holocaust,
many rabbis tried to tell the survivors that the immolation had been a
punishment for 'exile,' or for insufficient attention to the Covenant. This
explanation was something of a flop with those whose parents or children had
been the raw material for the 'proof,' so for a time the professional
interpreters of god's will went decently quiet. This interval of ambivalence
lasted until the war of 1967, when it was announced that the divine purpose
could be discerned after all. How wrong, how foolish, to have announced its
discovery prematurely! The exile and the Shoah could now both be understood, as
part of a heavenly if somewhat roundabout scheme to recover the Western Wall in
Jerusalem and other pieces of biblically mandated real estate.
I
regard it as a matter of self-respect to spit in public on rationalizations of
this kind. (They are almost as repellent, in their combination of arrogance,
masochism, and affected false modesty, as Edith Stein's 'offer' of her life to
expiate the regrettable unbelief in Jesus of her former fellow Jews.) The sage
Jews are those who have put religion behind them and become in so many
societies the leaven of the secular and the atheist.”
―
Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir
“The
primary purpose of reading the Bible is not to know the Bible but to know God.”
―
James Merritt
“I
choose to believe God had a more direct involvement in the creation of my heart
and consciousness than in the creation of any book, no matter how thick or old
it may be.”
―
P.S. Baber, Cassie Draws the Universe
“The
Bible says that our core problem, the fundamental reason we do what we do, is
sin.”
―
Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands: People in Need of Change
Helping People in Need of Change
“All
I know is that the closer I get to God, the deeper I get into the Bible, and
the heavier the burden seems on my shoulders.”
―
Tim LaHaye, Tribulation Force
“I
have to ask myself how I can possibly expect to know Jesus as he would want to
be known if my life remains unscathed by trouble and grief. How can I hope to
grasp anything of God's heart for this broken planet if I never weep because
its brokenness touches me and breaks my heart? How can I reflect his image if I
never share in his sufferings? And how will any of us ever learn to treasure
his hesed and grace if we never experience phases where these blessings seem
absent?”
―
Carolyn Custis James
“The
Shield was another of the Fear's names. According to Laughter, it means he shields
the seed of Abraham the way a man starting a fire shields the flame. When Sarah
was about to die childless, the Fear gave her a son. When Abraham was about to
slaughter the son, the Fear gave him the ram. He is always shielding us like a
guttering wick, Laughter said, because the fire he is trying to start with us
is a fire that the whole world will live to warm its hands at. It is a fire in
the dark that will light the whole world home.”
―
Frederick Buechner, The Son of Laughter
“The
Bible is useful because it opens our eyes, and because it’s highly impractical
to walk through life with our eyes closed.”
―
Peter J. Leithart
“Living
life ONCE is enough...if you live life RIGHT.”
―
John Paul warren
“Invariably,
I will be referred to Gleason Archer's massive Encyclopedia of Bible
Difficulties, a heavy volume that seeks to provide the reader with sound
explanations for every conceivable puzzle found within the Bible - from whether
God approved of Rahab's lie, to where Cain got his wife. (Note to well-meaning
apologists: it's not always the best idea to present a skeptic with a
five-hundred-page book listing hundreds of apparent contradictions in Scripture
when the skeptic didn't even know that half of them existed before you
recommended it.)”
―
Rachel Held Evans, Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers
Learned to Ask the Questions
“Don't
call what isn't prophecy "prophecy." Don't say "the Lord told
me" if you're not about to quote a Bible verse.”
―
Dan Phillips
“Life
of any real value or substance is not formed during good times merely enjoyed.”
―
John Paul Warren
“I
remembered Robyn telling me the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and
how they'd survived: when the King chucked them in the furnace and an angel or
someone went in with them. The furnace blazed all around them but they didn't
burn.
And
it did calm me. I don't know if it was Robyn or an angel or even God himself
was in the boot, but I was starting to suspect that whenever I wanted God, he
was there. Only not necessarily in the form I wanted, or doing what I
wanted...In the pitch of the black boot I clung to the image of a fiery
furnace, and it wasn't the furnace or Hell either.”
―
John Marsden, The Night Is for Hunting
“When
he heard his father call out for Abel and he saw his borther go forth, it made
him feel like he was nothing. He couldn’t even say that he felt like Cain
anymore. One could not feel like Cain because it had no flavor. Cain was the
absence of flavor. Cain was like saliva or a Wednesday.”
―
Jonathan Goldstein, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bible!
“Whether
the Bible is Law or Gospel depends on the spiritual condition of the one
hearing it. If someone is regenerate and loves God, then the whole Bible is
Gospel to him. If someone is unregenerate and hates God, the whole Bible is Law
to him, the whole thing condemns him.”
―
Douglas Wilson
“The
“Word of God” is not simply the Christian Bible but exists in a threefold form:
“The Word” incarnate (Jesus Followers’ King), the word prophesied and
proclaimed (Prophets), and the word in scripture (Bible). All three are the
self-disclosure of God, The One & Only ...in three, distinct & unique
Persons, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit.”
―
Gary F. Patton
