Category Archives: Words of Wisdom

The True Church Bishop J.C. RYLE

Where is this one true Church? What is this one true Church like? What are the marks by which this one true Church may be known? You may well ask such questions. The one true Church is composed of all believers in the Lord Jesus. It is made up of all God’s elect – of all converted men and women – of all true Christians. In whomsoever we can discern the election of God the Father, the sprinkling of the blood of God the Son, the sanctifying work of God the Spirit, in that person we see a member of Christ’s true Church.

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When Tolerance is Sin

[William MacDonald has been a fulltime Bible teacher for over 40 years. His writings include ‘God’s answers to Man’s questions’ and ‘The Believer’s Bible Commentary’. He has also served on the board of directors of ‘Good News For Catholics’ based in California]

Tolerance can be a virtue, but it can also betray an inexcusable weakness of character. We admire the person who tolerates differences where no great issue is at stake. He allows for a variety of preferences, methods and unimportant viewpoints. He would rather be killed for a sheep than for a lamb.

But there is another tolerance that is despicable. This is the willingness to remain silent when God’s name is blasphemed or when Christ is dishonoured. It is the treachery of silence when truth is on the scaffold. It is the unwillingness to speak out against evil. Tolerance that condones deceit and unrighteousness is sin.

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The Legacy of the True Historical Patrick

by Richard Bennett

Ireland has a very distinctive history. It was an island untouched by the Roman legions, and Patrick, the Evangelist, brought to it the Gospel of grace. Patrick was himself descended from a family that had been, for two generations at least, in Christ Jesus. His father, he tells us was “the deacon Calpurnius, son of the late Potitus, a presbyter, of the settlement of Bannaven Taburniae.”[1][1]

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‘Sola Scriptura’ – Greg Bahnsen

Is ‘Sola Scriptura’ a Protestant Concoction?

A Biblical Defence of ‘Sola Scriptura’

by Dr. Greg Bahnsen

(Transcribed by David T. King from a taped lecture and edited for the WWW by James Anderson)

The issue of Scripture and Scripture Alone (or what Protestants have come to call the principle of Sola Scriptura) is a matter that divides professing Christians as to the foundation of their faith and what defines their faith. Back in the days of the Reformation when there were men who felt that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ had been not only corrupted by the Roman Catholic Church, but had virtually disappeared under the mask of human traditions and rituals and things that kept people from actually hearing the good news of Jesus Christ, in order to reform the Church, in order to have the grace of God more clearly proclaimed to people, Protestants realized they had to take a stand not only for ‘Sola Gratia’ (i.e., in Latin, ‘By Grace Alone’ for our salvation), but that had to be proclaimed on the basis of Sola Scriptura (‘Scripture Alone’) because the Roman Catholic Church used its appeal to human tradition in the Church (or what they considered divine tradition in the Church) as a basis for its most distinctive doctrines.

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The Perfect Sacrifice by C.H. Spurgeon

“It shall be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no blemish therein” Leviticus 22:21.

Thus, then our text shuts out all self-righteousness. IT ALSO SHUTS OUT ALL PRIESTLY PERFORMANCES.

There is a notion among some people that the priest is to save them alias the minister, for men easily in these charitable days make even Dissenting ministers into priests.

I have heard people say “Just as I employ a lawyer to attend to my temporal business, and I do not bother my head any more about it; so I employ my priest or my clergyman to attend to my spiritual business, and there is an end of it”.

This is evil talk, and ruinous to the man who indulges in it. I will speak of this priestcraft very plainly. Recollect “it shall be perfect to be accepted;” therefore all that this gentleman does for you must be perfect.

I do not know what it is that he does, I am sure. I never could make out what a priest of the Roman or Anglican order can be supposed to do in his highest function of the mass. I have seen him walk this way, and I have seen him walk that way: and I have seen him turn his back, and it has been decorated with crosses and other embelishments; and I have seen him turn his face; and I have seen him bow; and I have seen him drink wine and water; and I have seen him munch wafers; and I have seen him perform many genuflections and prostrations; but what the performance meant I have not been able to gather. To me it seemed a meaningless display.

I should not like to risk my soul on it; for suppose that during that service he should think of something that he ought not to think upon, and suppose he should have no intention whatever of performing the mass, what then becomes of those who trust in him and it?

Everything, you know, depends upon the intention of the priest. If a good intention be not there, according to the dictates of his own church, it is all good for nothing, so that your souls all hang upon the intention of a poor mortal in a certain dress.

Perhaps he has not after all been rightly anointed, and is not in the apostolical succession! Perhaps there is no apostolical succession! Perhaps the man himself is living in mortal sin! Ah, me! There are many dangers about your confidence. Are you going to hang your soul on that man’s orders or disorders? Mine is too heavy to hang upon so slender a nail, driven into such rotten wood.

If you have a soul big enough to think, you will feel ‘No, no; there cannot be sufficient ground for dependence in the best pontiff that ever officiated at an altar. God requires of me, myself, that I bring to him a perfect sacrifice; and it is all a device of my folly that I should try and get a sponsor, and lay this burden on him. It cannot be done.

I have to stand before the judgment-bar of God in my own person, to be tried for the sins that I have done in the body; and I must not deceive myself with the idea that another man’s performance of ceremonies can clear me at the judgment-seat of Christ. This man cannot bring a perfect sacrifice for me, and it must “be perfect to be accepted”.

O sirs, do not be deluded by priestcraft and sacramentarianism, whether the priest be of the school of Rome, or of Oxford: you must believe in the Lord Jesus for your selves, or you will be lost for ever! &

“It shall be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no blemish therein” & as this rule shuts out all other confidences, SO THIS RULE SHUTS US UP TO THE SACRIFICE OF JESUS CHRIST &

My heart rejoices as I think of Gethsemane, and Calvary, and of him who by one offering hath perfectly sanctified all who put their trust in him. “It is finished” said he, and finished it is for ever.

Our Lord has presented a perfect sacrifice. “It shall be perfect to be accepted;” and it is perfect. “There shall be no blemish therein;” and there is no blemish in it.

Glory be to God Most High.

 

“CATHOLICISM and ISLAM – TIES that BIND”

November 2002

The above title became a source of controversy when I used it for a talk given at a recent prophecy conference. What I found curious about the commotion was that it came from Catholics (and some evangelicals) who had yet to hear my presentation. Furthermore, the title reflects the hope and prayers of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Rome has been tilling this “common ground” with Islam for decades, as evidenced by the 1994 Vatican publication, Recognize the Spiritual Bonds Which Unite Us: 16 Years of Christian-Muslim Dialogue. Why, therefore, would anyone be upset by my simply repeating what the Roman Catholic Church very much desires?

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EVANGELICALS and CATHOLICS – DIALOGUE unto DEATH

PART ONE [June 2002]

Recently I returned from a conference sponsored by the Wheaton College Graduate School Department of Bible and Theology and InterVarsity Press. Titled “Catholics and Evangelicals in Conversation,” the event brought together 14 theologians from both traditions, including Catholics Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, and Richard John Neuhaus, co-originator with Charles Colson of “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium” (ECT). Leading ‘evangelicals’ included Timothy George, Dean of Beeson Divinity School, and J.I. Packer, well-known author of Knowing God. However, before sharing my observations concerning the significance of the conference and the increasing influence of ECT, let me share my experiences with the students of Wheaton College.

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