On "love"

Love is the Enemy's [God] favorite word, but we've robbed it of God's meaning. Humans love a new car, a piece of pecan pie, a football team, and a person who makes them feel good.

When the new car is no longer new, they no longer love it. Another car catches their eye. When their football team loses long enough, they no longer love it. They're free to choose another team. When their marriage partner grows gray and heavy and boring, they look elsewhere for love.

Don't you see? We've drained love of its original significance. When they hear the Enemy loves them and they are to love Him and each other other, instead of attaching to the word His meaning, they attach ours ... Love, as we've defined it, is not what the Enemy claims, but a transitory good feeling ... Which relieves them of responsibility for their actions.
--Randy Alcorn, Lord Foulgrin's Letters

Religious Conversion

The reason why so many conversions are not genuine is due to the fact that they are merely external conversions, the result of exciting rant called preaching the Gospel, whle prayer for the internal work of the Spirit has been totally ignored.
--H.M. Sydenstricker, The Science of Conversion

Fear & Motivation

I never looked at the consequences of missing a big shot. Why? Because when you think about consequences, you always think of a negative result.

If I'm going to jump into a pool of water, even though I can't swim, I'm thinking about being able to swim. I'm not jumping in thinking to myself--maybe I'll drown. If I'm jumping into any situation, I'm thinking I'm going to be successful. I'm not thinking about what happens if I fail.

But I can see how some people get frozen by that fear of failure. They get it from peers or from just thinking about the possibility of a negative result. They might be afraid of looking bad or being embarrassed. That's not good enough for me.

I realized that if I was going to achieve anything in life, I had to be aggressive. I had to get out there and go for it. I don't believe you can achieve anything by being passive. I know fear is an obstacle for some people, but it's an illusion for me.

---Michael Jordan, I Can't Accept Not Trying

American Christian?

... But I was neither [Christian or Buddhist] growing up [in Korea]. I wasn't really an atheist either. I was just nothing. I didn't think about religion. My feeling was, there might be a God; I didn't know and didn't care, as long as if there WAS one, he left me alone. I worshipped me.

--character of Ming Toy, in 'Left Behind: The Remnant,' Book Ten,
by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye

On Christian fiction

If the book is replacing the church for many, what's coming next from publishing? Somethinbg on the order of Chesterton's 'St. Francis of Assisi' or Thomas Merton's 'Seven Storey Mountain'? not likely. Probably some form of 'God for Dummies.'
--Martin Arnold, New York Times, May 9, 2002

New Age and old belief systems

One of the keenest observers of America has made the remark that "the reason so many new isms are constantly springing up is because the old Gospel is so hard to live." People are looking for a comfortable life here, and an easy way to heaven. they are scanning earth and sky for a royal road. The fight with sin which the Gospel demands is a fierce and bitter fight; and many men and women are anxiously searching for a way of escape, desiring to be "carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease."
--Maurice E. Wilson, written about 1900

Nick: and still so true today--in spades!

Relativism in the church

Relativism reigns in the church--they improvise morals as they go. One recently walked away from her marriage because "the Holy Spirit gave me a peace about it." And her so-called Christian friends offered no argument! After all, they were to "judge not", and show love to their friend by refraining from disagreeing.

There's always been a few who disobey the forbidden book [the Bible], but there have never been so many who kept right on going to church and claiming the spiritual high ground in the midst of their disobedience.

They explain their sin with sanctimonious language like, "We've prayed about ti and sought counsel, and we feel it's the right thing to do." don't let it dawn on them that to the Enemy [God] what they feel is inconsequential. His moral laws don't give a rip about how any of us feel. Christians have no more power to vote them in and out of existence than they have power to revoke the law of gravity. Take cheer--an unholy world will never be won to the Carpenter by an unholy church.
--Randy Alcorn, Lord Foulgrin's letters
(Advice from a senior demon to a subordinate demon)

Tremendous change in education

Within a single generation the framework of our education systems has been so changed that the language which expressed the abiding convictions of our ancestors sounds as strange in the atomosphere of our great universities as the language of a "different race of men," uttering the formulas of some "outlandish savage religion." Whether the change is for the better or for the worse is not, for the moment, in question. What we wish to impress upon our readers' minds at this point is simply the fact that a tremendous change has taken place, with amazing suddenness, and in regard to matters that are of vital importance to the whole wolrd, and particularly to the English-speaking people.
the effect upon the plastic minds of undergraduates of such words as those last quoted can easily be imagined. They artfully convey the suggestion that these young men are, in respect of their philosophical notions, vastly superior to the men of light and learning of past generations, and that it is by the repudiation of Christianity and its "lively oracles" that they furnish convincing proof of their intellectual superiority. there are few minds among men of the age here addressed, or of any age--except they be firmly grounded and estalbished in the truth--which could resist the insidious influence of such an appeal to the innate vanity of men.
Such being then the influences to which the students at our universityies are now exposed, is there not urgent need of impressing upon Christian parents (there are yet a few remaining) the warning of our text, and exhorting them to beware lest their children be despoiled through philosophy and empty deceit?
What does this sudden and stupendous change portend? Is not the very existence of Christianized civilization (i.e., the social system which has been reared under the influence and protection of Christianity) imperiled by it? Beyond all doubt it is.
--Philip Mauro, Modern Philosophy

Nick: these words were written 100 years ago. They could have been written yesterday as they accurately describe the change in American public schools in the last 20 years.

Testimony

When I went back to my room I got hold of "The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life." that night I just meant business, and it seemed to come so plain--old truths, it may be, they seemed to grip me that time. I had known about Jesus Christ's dying for me, but I had never understood that if he had died for me, then I didn't belong to myself. Redemption means 'buying back' so that if I belonged to him, either I had to be a thief and keep what wasn't mine, or else I had to give up everything to God. When I came to see that Jesus Christ had died for me, it didn't seem hard to give up all to him. It seemed just common, ordinary honesty.
--Testimony of Charles T. Studd

Ben Franklin's true religion

I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; and tho' some of the Dogmas of that Persuasion, such as the Eternal Decrees of God, Election, Reprobation, &c. appear'd to me unintelligible, others doubtful, & I early absented myself from the Public Assemblies of the Sect, Sunday being my Studying-Day, I never was without some religious Principles; I never doubted, for instance, the Existence of the Deity, that he made the World, & governed it by his Providence; that the most acceptable Service of God was the doing Good to Man; that our Souls are immortal; and that all Crime will be punished & Virtue rewarded either here or hereafter; these I esteem'd the Essentials of every Religion, and being to be found in all the Religions we had in our Country I respected them all ....
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography

Being a mover and shaker

The Objections and Reluctances I met with i Soliciting the Subscriptions, made me soon feel the Impropriety of presenting one's self as the Proposer of any useful Project that might be suppos'd to raise one's Reputation in the smallest degree above that of one's Neighbors, when one has need of their Assistance to accomplish that Project. I therefore put my self as much as I could out of sight, and stated it as much as a Scheme of a Number of Friends, ... In this way my Affair went on more smoothly, and I ever after practis'd it on such Occasions; and from my frequent Successes, can heartily recommend it. The present little Sacrifice of your Vanity will afterwards be amply repaid.
If it remains a while uncertain to whom the Merit belongs, some one more vain than yourself will be encourag'd to claim it, and then even Envy will be dispos'd to do you Justice, by plucking those assum'd Feathers, & restoring them to their right Owner.
--Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography

It's about Jesus

Who was He? Who did He claim to be? If some group of Christians made this up, that would be one thing. But they didn't. It was Christ himself who made these claims to be God, and the only way to God. If you disagree, your argument's with him ... but if he really died on the cross and rose from the grave, like the Bible says, we'd better take him seriously ...
--Randy Alcorn, Lord Foulgrin's Letters

The most important question everyone answers, and we all must answer this question--every human has to decide at some time in his/her life. Nick.