Reformation is a return to the sound doctrine of the Bible. Revival is the practice of that sound doctrine under the power of the Holy Spirit.
If man has been kicked up out of that which is only impersonal by chance, then those things that make him man-hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication-are ultimately unfulfillable and thus meaningless.
To fail to exhibit that we take truth seriously at those points where there is a cost in our doing so, is to push the next generation in the relative, dialectical millstream that surrounds us.
How should an artist begin to do his work as an artist? I would insist that he begin his work as an artist by setting out to make a work of art.
God has communicated to man, the infinite to the finite. The One who made man capable of language in the first place has communicated to man in language about both spiritual reality and physical reality, about the nature of God and the nature of man.
Tell me what the world is saying today, and I’ll tell you what the church will be saying in seven years.
Today the separation of church and state in America is used to silence the church. When Christians speak out on issues, the hue and cry from the humanist state and media is that Christians, an all religions, are prohibited from speaking since there is a separation of church and state.
The church’s or Christian group’s methods are as important as its message.
If Christianity is really true, then it involves the whole man, including his intellect and creativeness. Christianity is not just ‘dogmatically’ true or ‘doctrinally’ true. Rather, it is true to what is there, true in the whole area of the whole man in all of life.
Thank God for the reality for which we were created, a moment-by-moment communication with God himself.
Christianity provides a unified answer for the whole of life.
And the purpose of our creation, in which all our subsidiary purposes fit, is to be in a personal relationship to God, in communion with him, in love, by choice, the creature before the Creator.
When my conscience under the Holy Spirit makes me aware of a specific sin I should at once call that sin sin and bring it consciously under the blood of Christ.
Modern man has not only thrown away Christian theology, he has thrown away the possibility of what our forefathers had as a basis for morality and law.
Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society the way a child catches measles.
The purpose of apologetics is not just to win an argument or a discussion, but that people with whom we are in contact may become Christians and then live under the Lordship of Christ in the whole spectrum of life.
It is only as we consciously bring each victory to His feet, and keep it there as we think of it – and especially as we speak of it – that we can avoid the pride of that victory, which can be worse than the sin over which we claim to have had the victory.
If there is no absolute beyond man’s ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.
As Christians, we must see that just because an artist-even a great artist-portrays a worldview in writing or on canvas, it does not mean that we should automatically accept that worldview. Good art heightens the impact of that worldview, but it does not make it true.
If there is no final place for civil disobedience, then the government has been made autonomous, and as such, it has been put in the place of the living God.