Free Will Quotes

The heart is the main thing in true religion. I make no excuse for asking the special attention of my readers, while I try to say a few things about the heart. The head is not the principal thing. You may know the whole truth as it is in Jesus, and consent that it is good. You may be clear, correct, and sound in your religious opinions. But all this time you may be walking in the broad way which leads to destruction. It is your heart which is the main point. Is your heart right in the sight of God? Your outward life may be moral, decent, respectable, in the eyes of people. Your minister, friends and neighbors, may see nothing very wrong in your general conduct. But all this time you may be hanging on the brink of everlasting ruin. It is your heart which is the main thing. Is that heart right in the sight of God?

J.C. Ryle, Is Your Heart Right in the Sight of God?

 

Then why do you embrace Christ, and your moral Buddhist neighbour across the street does not? Are you smarter than he is? More spiritually sensitive? Better, in any way? What makes you to differ? Is the Holy Spirit working just as hard on him as He did on you? If so, why do you believe, and he does not? No matter how hard you try, you can’t avoid coming to the conclusion that, in a 'free will' system of salvation, those who believe do so because there is something different about them. If the Spirit is bringing equal conviction to bear upon each individual, the only deciding factor, given equality in everything else, is something in the person himself. I believe the only possible difference between the redeemed in heaven and the guilty, condemned, punished sinner in hell is a five-letter word ... It’s called 'grace

~ James White

Free will has carried many souls to hell, but yet never a soul to heaven.

 ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Man is nothing; he hath a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him" and "you dishonour God by denying election. You plainly make salvation depend, not on God’s ‘free grace’ but on Man’s ‘free will.’ 

~ George Whitefield

 

A man’s free will cannot cure him even of the toothache, or a sore finger; and yet he madly thinks it is in its power to cure his soul. 

~ Toplady

...the whole Pelagian poison of free-will … a clear exaltation of the old idol free-will into the throne of God … That the decaying estate of Christianity have invented. 

~ John Owen 

...the general consent of all that sect is that God (by his foreknowledge, counsel, and wisdom) has no assured election, neither yet any certain reprobation, but that every man may elect or reprobate himself by his own free will, which he has (say they) to do good or evil … [All these things are] forged by their own brains, and polished by the finest of their wits, when yet in very deed they are but the rotten heresies of … Pelagius, long ago confuted by Augustine …

~ John Knox 

They go and set up free-will with the heathen philosophers and say that a man’s free will is the cause why God chooseth and not another, contrary to all scriptures.

~ Tyndale 

 

I once laboured hard for the free will of man, until the grace of God at length overcame me.

~ Augustine

Mormonism Declared War on Christianity

Courtesy of Apprising Ministries:  

Apprising Ministries is an online apologetics and discernment work the Lord has raised up to help you see the abysmal apostasy spreading now even throughout the mainstream of the evangelical community.

1 Peter 4:17 judgments sent by Jesus Himself are falling upon His visible church as spiritual darkness grows. A good example today is the April 2012 Christian Post pieceRomney Not Cultist, Fuller President Says Cautiously.

Therein we’re told Richard Mouw, who in my opinion is an absolutely pitiful example of a Christian leader, continues trying to muddy the waters around the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons):

As Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith has become an issue in the GOP presidential nomination race prompting the Latter-day Saints to launch an ad campaign, President of Fuller Theological Seminary Richard J. Mouw has declared, though cautiously, that Mormonism is not a cult.

“While I am not prepared to reclassify Mormonism as possessing undeniably Christian theology, I do accept many of my Mormon friends as genuine followers of the Jesus whom I worship as the divine Savior,” Mouw, head of the Pasadena, Calif., seminary wrote in an article on CNN Sunday.

But can Mormons be called Christians? Mouw said that’s a “complicated question.”
(Online source)

Here, let me once again help out this president of one of the most visible evangelical institutions in the United States: No, faithful Mormons cannot be called Christians; Mormonism is a non-Christian cult, period. And who cares if Richard Mouw’s not prepared to reclassify Mormonism; he hasn’t any authority to do so anyway.

In his day Dr. Walter Martin (1928-1989), author of the classic textbook The Kingdom of the Cults, was a universally recognized expert in the field of Comparative Religion and non-Christian cults having their origins in the United States, such as Mormonism. He wrote:

A cult, then, is a group of people polarized around someone’s interpretation of the Bible and is characterized by major deviations from orthodox Christianity relative to the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith, particularly the fact that God became man in Jesus Christ.[1]

Martin classified Mormonism as a non-Christian cult because:

The Savior of Mormonism, however, is an entirely different person, as their official publications clearly reveal. The Mormon “Savior” is not the second person of the Christian Trinity,… Mormons reject the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and he is not even a careful replica of the New Testament Redeemer.

Read more --> HERE.

Iron sharpens iron

Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. ~ Proverbs 27:17

Pondering upon this verse...iron, sharpen, countenance, friend...

Browsed commentaries and settled on Matthew Henry:

Proverbs 27:17

"This intimates both the pleasure and the advantage of conversation. One man is nobody; nor will poring upon a book in a corner accomplish a man as the reading and studying of men will. 

Wise and profitable discourse sharpens men's wits; and those that have ever so much knowledge may by conference have something added to them. It sharpens men's looks, and, by cheering the spirits, puts a briskness and liveliness into the countenance, and gives a man such an air as shows he is pleased himself and makes him pleasing to those about him. 

Good men's graces are sharpened by converse with those that are good, and bad men's lusts and passions are sharpened by converse with those that are bad, as iron is sharpened by its like, especially by the file. Men are filed, made smooth, and bright, and fit for business (who were rough, and dull, and inactive), by conversation.

This is designed:

1. To recommend to us this expedient for sharpening ourselves, but with a caution to take heed whom we choose to converse with, because the influence upon us is so great either for the better or for the worse.
2. To direct us what we must have in our eye in conversation, namely to improve both others and ourselves, not to pass away time or banter one another, but to provoke one another to love and to good works and so to make one another wiser and better."

Bad men's lusts and passions are sharpened by converse with those that are bad...made me think of this verse:

Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. ~ 1 Corinthians 15:33

Which made me think of this verse:

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. ~ Galatians 6:7

O' Lord help us Your children to be faithful unto You...to not be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, that we may prove what is good and profitable.  Help us to encourage and be encouraged by our fellow sojourners.  Give us strength for the days ahead...let us ever be mindful of being found faithful servants in Your field.