c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
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!
The only sure rule is to remember that the Bible is indeed God's gift to the church, to equip that church for its work in the world, and that serious study of it can and should become one of the places where, and the means by which, heaven and earth interlock and God's future purposes arrive in the present.
— N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
Secular humanists of every type may ridicule the Bible, but they cannot escape it; and in their obsession with change, calls for reform, doomsday warnings, and utopian visions, they continue to steal from it.
— Gene Edward Veith Jr., Loving God With All Your Mind: How to Survive and Prosper As a Christian in the Secular University and Post-Christian Culture
Wherever he found his speech growing too modern -- which was about every sentence or two -- he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.
— Mark Twain, Roughing It
Atheists/agnostics scored an average of 6.7 out of 12 on questions specifically regarding the Bible and Christianity. This is a higher score than (Protestant) Christians (6.2) and Catholics (5.4).
— Pew Report
The marvel of our Bible never shows more marvellous than at such times, when you see it in deed and in truth the Sword of the Spirit, and it cuts.
— Amy Carmichael
We must come to the Bible with the purpose of self-exposure consciously in mind. I suspect not many people make more than a token stab in that direction. It's extremely hard work. It makes Bible study alternately convicting and reassuring, painful and soothing, puzzling and calming, and sometimes dull - but not for long if our purpose is to see ourselves better.
— Larry Crabb, Inside Out: Real Change Is Possible If You're Willing to Start from The...
Understanding Scripture in a language other than the heart language in which we think and experience emotion is "like trying to eat soup with a fork. You can get a little taste, but you cannot get nourished.
— William Cameron Townsend
We ought not to READ the scriptures, but listen to them, for our Beloved is present and speaks to us through them. (vs. it being like a love letter sent to us from afar).
— M. Basil Pennington, Centering Prayer: Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer Form
Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and beheld a flying roll.
— Zechariah 5:1
The business of reading and interpreting the Bible in South Afria is a tricky one! The Bible is everywhere and in the hands of many, including the pain inflictors. ~ Mogomme Alpheus Masoga
— Gerald O. West, Reading Otherwise: Socially Engaged Biblical Scholars Reading with their Local Communities
The book in my hands became my trusted companion. What was written there had so much power that it forced me to stop avoiding myself, to make my own choices as well. And through some sort of vital intuition, I understood that I had a long way to go, that it would bring about a profound transformation within me, even though I could not determine it's essence, or its scope. In that book there was a voice, and behind that voice threw was an intelligence that sought to establish contact with me. It was not merely the company of written words that distiller my boredom. It was a living voice, speaking. To me.
— Ingrid Betancourt, Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle
t's [King James Bible] subject is majesty, not tyranny, and it's political purpose was unifying and enfolding, to elide the kingliness of God with the godliness of kings, to make royal power and divine glory into one invisible garment which could be wrapped around the nation as a whole.
— Adam Nicolson, God's Secretaries : The Making of the King James Bible
In itself this Christian education is partly the product of the retreat of biblical scholarship from the faith community to the academy. In removing themselves to the academy biblical scholars have ceased to engage with the people of the issues of the contemporary faith context. ~ Janet Lees (p. 84). In Reading Other-Wise
— Gerald O. West, Reading Otherwise: Socially Engaged Biblical Scholars Reading with their Local Communities
The Old Testament is actually pretty raunchy. You might enjoy it.
— Nicki Elson, Three Daves
It is a bad indication when, in any period, men will so exalt their confessions that they force the Scriptures to a secondary importance, illustrated in one era, when as Tulloch remarks: 'Scripture as a witness, disappeared behind the Augsburg Confession" ...No decrees of councils; no ordinances of synods; no "standard" of doctrines; no creed or confession, is to be urged as authority in forming the opinions of men. They may be valuable for some purposes, but not for this; they may be referred to as interesting parts of history, but not to form the faith of Christians; they may be used in the church to express its belief, not to form it.
— L.S. Chafer
If we believe the Canon is closed and Scripture is sufficient, then we believe God is not speaking new words apart from Scripture.
— Dan Phillips
Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” Matthew 7:21(KJV)“But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” I Corinthians 2:9 (KJV)
— God, Bible
The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can "prove" anything from it.
— Robert A. Heinlein, The Number of the Beast
The Apostles used their voice not to change the current political situation, but to change the world forever by changing hearts
— Jason Soroski
Did you wake up feeling fragile? Read the bible till you find a promise strong enough to carry you through the day.
— John Piper
Do everything in love.
— 1 Corinthians 16:14
The Truth is the testimony about God.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
If I am too busy to read The Bible ... am I too busy?
— Rip.
The shock which the Nazi horrors produced was so great, because they came after two hundred years of Roussellian propaganda about the goodness of human nature and also because the Germans were literate, clean, technologically progressive, hard working, “modern,” sober, “orderly,” and so forth. Yet about human nature we get more concrete and more pertinent information from the Bible than from statistics dealing with secondary education, the frequency of bathtubs or the mileage of superhighways.
— Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism Revisited: from de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot
An abundance of pictorial fancy, after all, furnished the simple mind quite as much matter for deviating from pure doctrine as any personal interpretation of Holy Scripture.
— Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages
The Word of God is Spirit-taught words.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
…Take every word as spoken to yourself, with this essential anchor in place: Seek to understand first how God’s words fell on the original hearers, and how they relate to Jesus’ person and work, and then bring them home to yourself.
— David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines
The Bible is gloriously for us, but it is not mainly about us.
— David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines
Lest anyone dispute that the Bible is not the inspired Word of God but rather the direct and dictated Word of God, let us consider the uniqueness of the 66 books of the Bible. Why is it that we can tell that a certain book of the Bible was written by one author rather than another? Why do the different books of the Bible use different languages (e.g., Greek, Hebrew) and different vocabularies? Why are the styles of books like Proverbs and Chronicles so different from one another? It is because people were vessels for the inspiration of God, but they were not empty vessels; God did not bypass their humanity. The way in which these people recorded their encounters with God bears the indelible stamp of their place in time, their culture, and their individual personalities.
— Aaron R. Yilmaz, Deliver Us From Evolution?: A Christian Biologist's In-Depth Look at the Evidence Reveals a Surprising Harmony Between Science and God
Strange how the perspective changes with the point of view, isn’t it? Most people who claim to believe in the Bible don’t actually know what it says
— Karl Wiggins, Shit my History Teacher DID NOT tell me!
I have underlined words and sentences in one of the Bibles that has always been my study Bible, but when I look at those words and sentences now, I can’t remember why they were underlined. One day I was rereading a short story by Joanne Greenberg, and I came across a long passage that I had marked off, but as I looked at it, I couldn't remember why. Perhaps I had meant to ask her about it the next time we talked on the phone, but now I have no idea what it could be that I wanted to ask her. My Revised Standard version of the Bible is filled with markings, for I have gone through it word for word with study groups at least four times, and of course, I have used it on various occasions to begin speeches. I know that the underlined passages served some purpose, but here and there are verses that have no special meaning to me. It is almost as if a friend had secretly opened the book and made some markings just to tease me. What was the spirit trying to say to me then that I no longer need to hear? Or, what was I listening for then that I no longer care about?
— Charles M. Schulz, You Don't Look 35, Charlie Brown!
Indeed, these people are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.
— Acts 2:15
I have my gun and my bible under my pillow, having to fight physically and spiritually is a foregone conclusion, I will kill whoever comes to kill me, no mercy.
— Elijah Onyenmeriogu
America's foundational philosophy is what sets her apart from the troubles and tribulations of the other nations around the globe. If we continue to move away from a biblical foundation, we will find ourselves facing troubles we will be ill equipped to overcome.
— Karla Perry, Back to the Future: Rebuilding America's Stability
All of Western civilization is highly influenced by the Bible, so much so that today people take for granted that our morals and our values are not common sense, but biblically based.
— Karla Perry, Back to the Future: Rebuilding America's Stability
Any attempt to reduce the Bible to a guidebook for how to live is not only wrong, it's also idolatrous. It replaces Christ at the center with something else, with moralism. The point of the Word, the goal of Christianity, is not to teach you how to be a good person, or a good man. The goal is repentance and forgiveness, given freely to sinners, because of the substitutionary death of the God-man, Jesus.
— Jeffrey Hemmer, Man Up!: The Quest for Masculinity
Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.
— Acts 2:15
Lets us not just read the Bible; let us learn it; let us experience it; let us live it distinctively, in truth and in spirit, as a pleasant sacrifice unto the Most High God
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
When we consistently consume the God-breathed Words of the Bible, it teaches us, rebukes us, corrects us, trains us and it thoroughly equips us for every good work. God’s Word is filled with love, redemption, blessing, and promise.
— Teresa Schultz
One who has unreliable friends may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
— Proverbs 18:24
The Spirit inspired the Word and therefore He goes where the Word goes. The more of God's Word you know and love, the more of God's Spirit you will experience.
— John Piper
The Bible depicts a world that, seen through modern eyes, is staggering in its savagery. People enslave, rape, and murder members of their immediate families. Warlords slaughter civilians indiscriminately, including the children. Women are bought, sold, and plundered like sex toys. And Yahweh tortures and massacres people by the hundreds of thousands for trivial disobedience or for no reason at all. These atrocities are neither isolated nor obscure. They implicate all the major characters of the Old Testament, the ones that Sunday-school children draw with crayons. And they fall into a continuous plotline that stretches for millennia, from Adam and Eve through Noah, the patriarchs, Moses, Joshua, the judges, Saul, David, Solomon, and beyond.
— Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
The serpent’s objective is clear. He seeks to drive a wedge of doubt into Adam and Eve’s confidence in what God has told them. Satan knows the power of undermining a human being’s confidence in what God has revealed. Sadly, the serpent’s temptation was successful. Adam and Eve second-guessed God’s trustworthiness and then rejected his command. They sinned and ate the forbidden fruit. This was the beginning of the fallen world we all experience. All generations following would have a natural bent for rebelling against God and being skeptical or indifferent to what he has said. To this day, Satan’s objective has not changed. Though his questions look a little different at times, they all contain the same idea
— Jon Morrison, Clear Minds & Dirty Feet: A Reason to Hope, a Message to Share
When the Bible offends you, be encouraged that it offends everyone at some point. Consider the responsibility of the Bible. It must speak the truth to every culture through every era of history. I believe that there has never been a culture on earth that has not been offended by the Bible on some issue. What offends one group could be common sense to another and vice versa. Some cultures are offended that God would judge people for their sin. Some cry out to God to judge people because of sin. There are some cultures that are appalled at how God would forgive people no matter what they have done. For other cultures, that kind of forgiveness is expected of God.
— Jon Morrison
The testimony of scripture is so plain that to add anything were superfluous, were it not that the world is almost now come to that blindness, that whatsoever pleases not the princes and the multitude, the same is rejected as doctrine newly forged, and is condemned for heresy.
— John Knox
The preaching of God's word is hateful and contrary unto them. Why? For it is impossible to preach Christ, except thou preach against antichrist; that is to say, them which with their false doctrine and violence of sword enforce to quench the true doctrine of Christ.
— William Tyndale
Unfortunately, preachers who distort God's Word are all too common today. Sometimes this springs from a sincere desire to soften hard hearts, but hearts aren't changed by compromise.
— Alistair Begg
There is a kind of gospel being proclaimed today which conveniently accommodates itself to the spirit of the age, and makes no demand for godliness.
— Duncan Campbell
Tragically, some people believe they are going to heaven when they die just because a few drops of water were sprinkled over their heads a few weeks after their birth. They have no personal faith, have never made a personal decision, and are banking on a hollow ceremony to save them. How absurd.
— Max Lucado
But now ask the beasts, and let them teach you; And the birds of the heavens, and let them tell you. Or speak to the Earth, and let it teach you; And the fish of the sea declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this,In whose hand is the life of every living thing,And the breath of all mankind?
— Job 12:7-10
I would say much of religious heresy is the result of a misunderstanding of the basic nature of God. And once we have a proper understanding of God, then usually most of the areas of our life coincide with who God is and what He desires for each one of us.
— Josh McDowell
Tragically, some people believe they are going to heaven when they die just because a few drops of water were sprinkled over their heads a few weeks after their birth. They have no personal faith, have never made a personal decision, and are banking on a hollow ceremony to save them. How absurd!
— Max Lucado
To reverence the impersonal creation instead of the personal God who created us is a perversion designed for escaping moral accountability to the Creator. God indicts those who worship the creation instead of its Creator (Rom 1:18-23)
—  and warns of the corruption of morals and behavior which results.
The fanaticism which discards the Scripture, under the pretense of resorting to immediate revelations is subversive of every principle of Christianity. For when they boast extravagantly of the Spirit, the tendency is always to bury the Word of God so they may make room for their own falsehoods.
— John Calvin
It is of the utmost importance to us to be kept humble. Consciousness of self-importance is a hateful delusion, but one into which we fall as naturally as weeds grow on a dunghill. We cannot be used of the Lord but that we also dream of personal greatness, we think ourselves almost indispensible to the church, pillars of the cause, and foundations of the temple of God. We are nothings and nobodies, but that we do not think so is very evident, for as soon as we are put on the shelf we begin anxiously to enquire, ‘How will the work go on without me?’ As well might the fly on the coach wheel enquire, ‘How will the mails be carried without me?’ Far better men have been laid in the grave without having brought the Lord’s work to a standstill, and shall we fume and fret because for a little season we must lie upon the bed of languishing? God sometimes weakens our strength in a way at the precise juncture when our presence seems most needed to teach us that we are not necessary to God’s work, and that when we are most useful, He can easily do without us. If this be the practical lesson, the rough schooling may be easily endured for assuredly it is beyond all things desirable that self should be kept low and the Lord alone be magnified.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
If the Bible is called the Good Book, it's not because its people are. Blood flows as freely through the stories as the ink through the quills that penned them.
— Max Lucado, He Chose the Nails
Beneath all the rhetoric about relevance lies a profoundly disturbing possibility - that people may base their lives upon an illusion, upon a blatant lie. The attractiveness of a belief is all too often inversely proportional to its truth... To allow "relevance" to be given greater weight than truth is a mark of intellectual shallowness and moral irresponsibility.
— Alister E. McGrath
If forgers and malefactors are put to death by the secular power, there is much more reason for excommunicating and even putting to death one convicted of heresy.
— Thomas Aquinas
The concern of the scholar is primarily with what the text meant; the concern of the layperson is usually with what it means. The believing scholar insists that we must have both. Reading the Bible with an eye only to its meaning for us can lead to a great deal of nonsense as well as to every imaginable kind of error—because it lacks controls. Fortunately, most believers are blessed with at least a measure of that most important of all hermeneutical skills—common sense.
— Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
Saturday, May 22d.---It is now Saturday night, and I must prepare for the holy Sabbath. My Bible and Confession of Faith are my traveling companions, and precious friends have they been to me. I bless God for that glorious summary of Christian doctrine contained in our noble standards. It has cheered my soul in many a dark hour, and sustained me in many a desponding moment. I love to read it, and ponder carefully each proof text as I pass along.
— James Henley Thornwell, The Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell, D.D., LL.D; Ex-President of the South Carolina College, Late Professor of Theology in the Theological
The Bible describes everything, including you!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
If the Bible were the most boring book in the world--dull, uninteresting and seemingly irrelevant--it would still be our duty to study it. If its literary style were awkward and confusing, the duty would remain. We live as human beings under an obligation by divine mandate to study diligently God's Word. He is our Sovereign, it is his Word, and he commands that we study it. A duty is not an option. If you have not yet begun to respond to that duty, then you need to ask God to forgive you and to resolve to do your duty from this day forth.
— R.C. Sproul
There is nothing, he tells me, more odious than a German. However, their women are seductive, and they make the world's most beautiful music. My employer sings me a German song. He sounds like a buffalo in distress. Afterward he makes me read to him from the Bible.
— Sofia Samatar, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2016
Whether one likes it or not, every reader is at the same time an interpreter. That is, most of us assume as we read that we also understand what we read. We also tend to think that our understanding is the same thing as the Holy Spirit’s or human author’s intent. However, we invariably bring to the text all that we are, with all of our experiences, culture, and prior understandings of words and ideas. Sometimes what we bring to the text, unintentionally to be sure, leads us astray, or else causes us to read all kinds of foreign ideas into the text.
— Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
Because the Bible is God’s Word, it has eternal relevance; it speaks to all humankind, in every age and in every culture.
— Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
The problem with a “free” translation, on the other hand, especially for study purposes, is that the translator updates the original author too much…On the one hand, these renditions often have especially fresh and vivid ways of expressing some old truths and have thus each served to stimulate contemporary Christians to take a fresh look at their Bibles. On the other hand, such a “translation” often comes very close to being a commentary, but without other options made available to the reader. Therefore, as stimulating as these can sometimes be, they are never intended to be a person’s only Bible; and the reader needs constantly to check particularly eye-catching moments against a true translation or a commentary to make sure that not too much freedom has been taken.
— Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
One crucial thing to keep in mind as you read any Hebrew narrative is the presence of God in the narrative. In any biblical narrative, God is the ultimate character, the supreme hero of the story.
— Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
I accepted that the Bible was inspired. with out that one piece you might as well be in a library looking for answers
— Chuck Bridges
God’s Word is absolutely true
—  it never fluctuates or varies.
Original sin is a very commercial idea,” said Duyckinck. “How do you think the Bible stays in print year after year?
— Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story
First, I have not minded so much leaving the Garden because God, blessed be his holy name, has never abandoned us.
— Katerina Whitley
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails;...
— God through Paul in Corinthians 13:4-8a
What does matter is that you understand this one great truth I have learned in my life: having knowledge, even at the expense of leaving the Garden, has been worth it. For it is through this great gift of knowledge that I have understood something of the Creator's power - yes, even the Creator's love. Out of what seemed punishment, came a great good; out of physical pain, all of you have emerged. The pain has been forgotten while the pleasure of your presence endures. Adam and I have known joy - how would we have tasted it had we not known its opposite, sorrow? And we have seen how darkness is dispelled when light arrives, night and day, after night and day. We never tire of it.
— Katerina Whitley
Be true to yourself, help others, make each day your masterpiece, make friendship a fine art, drink deeply from good books – especially the Bible, build a shelter against a rainy day, give thanks for your blessings and pray for guidance every day.
— John Wooden
What we need today is men who take a stand on the Word of God and stop trying to fit in or preach a socially acceptable Gospel ...We need men like Caleb, when they see the giants of Atheism, Political Correctness, Social Pressure to alter the Bible and a polluted education system and say "we are well able to overcome it.
— Pastor Steve Bainbridge
While the bible is GOD because the word of GOD is GOD, please understand that GOD cannot be contained in the bible. To believe otherwise is to make an infinite GOD finite.
— TemitOpe Ibrahim
But while the story [of the Bible] is simple, it is also deep. There is always more to learn, to discover, and to enrich our understanding of who God is and what he is doing in the world. We study the Bible in depth in order to teach its story in all its richness. Greek is one tool of many that give us access to the richness of the Bible. Without it, our teaching may be sound, but it may also lack depth. In other words: Keep your Greek for the sake of others.
— Constantine R. Campbell
The first hands he heard banging at the outside walls felt like nails pushing into his temples. Then there were more hands. Pounding. Punching. Scratching. Then kicks and shrieking that even drowned out the sound of the rain.The worst was when Ham could make out individual voices. He could hear their neighbor Zebeleh and her little daughter Ariel
— Jonathan Goldstein, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bible!
Talk of an angel and you’ll hear his wings.
— Proverbs
Judge the spirit of the prophecy before you judge the truth of the word.
— Graham Cooke
Prophets often foretold destruction and sometimes the destruction did not come, yet this did not disprove their divine mission, as in the case of Jonah. For God is gracious, and ready to turn away his wrath from those who turn away from their sins. But the prophet who prophesied peace and prosperity absolutely and unconditionally without adding the necessary proviso, that they do not by willful sin put a bar in their own door and stop the coming of God's favors, will be proved a true prophet only by the accomplishment of his prediction.
— Matthew Henry
No other work of man in any language even faintly resembles the intricate structure and design of the Bible. The fact remains – only an infinite mind could have devised this Book of books.
— Winkie Pratney
We need words from heaven. Too many words come from the human heart and not from heaven. God wants prophets who will bring words from heaven that will change things on earth.
— Terry Collins
The body of Christ needs to mature until we can distinguish a true prophetic word from merely the word of a prophet. Many modern Christians are afraid to reject anything spoken by one who claims to be a prophet or prophetess.
— Iverna Tompkins, Advancing in the Prophetic: Communicating the Heart of God
There is often a prophetic word in the words of a prophet, but not everything said is true prophecy.
— Iverna Tompkins, Advancing in the Prophetic: Communicating the Heart of God
There is the prophetic ministry of promise born of the will of the Father and there is the prophetic ministry born of flesh and the will of man. Though both are conceived through a genuine desire to fulfil God's plan and promise, the one birthed by flesh must be maintained by flesh while the one birthed by the Spirit will be sustained by the Spirit. Flesh reproduces flesh and therefore speaks directly to the desires of man. Spirit reproduces spirit and therefore speaks forth the desire of God.
— John Bevere, Thus Saith The Lord: How to know when God is speaking to you through another
Prophets (must) humbly accept the truth that they see through a glass darkly, that they know only in part. In other words, they make mistakes. Mature prophets urge everyone to who they prophesy to judge, test and compare with scripture everything they say. They are not offended when people are careful.
— Stephen Mansfield
There is some prophecy, however, that is unconditional. It depends solely on God himself for fulfillment. Normally it relates to the overview of his plans and purposes for mankind as a whole.
— Graham Cooke, Developing Your Prophetic Gifting
Prophecy will confirm and broaden the vision; it cannot create one if nothing is there. Vision is created through prayer, seeking God and sharing our hearts with people in the work. If these things are absent we need to be restoring people to God, not creating vision for empty hearts.
— Graham Cooke, Developing Your Prophetic Gifting
People who continue in blatant sin whilst exercising spiritual gifts create this ever widening gulf in their personality which results in spiritual failure, emotional collapse, sometimes mental breakdown, physical illness, relational difficulties and quite often a complete moral lapse.
— Graham Cooke, Developing Your Prophetic Gifting
It is easier for the leaders to reject the prophecy and the prophet, particularly if there are some unresolved character issues in the life of the prophet. It provides a legitimate reason to reject the word in the eyes of the people, though not necessarily in the eyes of the Lord. Prophecy has a way of testing our true motives.
— Graham Cooke, Developing Your Prophetic Gifting
One of the most important things to do in a church that wants to nurture and administrate prophetic ministry is to dial down the mysticism and the carnal desire to look superspiritual. We need to keep our eyes off people and remain focused on Jesus and His purpose for us.
— Mike Bickle, Growing in the Prophetic
Prophets do not bring new truth. Revelation is simply a revealing of what is already true and bringing it to bear upon our heart and soul. Revelation is based upon insight into the written Word of God, not into visions and dreams and prophecies. These other things are simply tools for expressing the Word, they are not the Word; no more than the water hose is water, it simply delivers the water.
— Chip Brogden
Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Now we see how the astronomical evidence supports the Biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and Biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.
— Robert Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom
Themes of descent often turn on the struggle between the titanic and the demonic within the same person or group. In Moby Dick, Ahab’s quest for the whale may be mad and “monomaniacal,” as it is frequently called, or even evil so far as he sacrifices his crew and ship to it, but evil or revenge are not the point of the quest. The whale itself may be only a “dumb brute,” as the mate says, and even if it were malignantly determined to kill Ahab, such an attitude, in a whale hunted to the death, would certainly be understandable if it were there. What obsesses Ahab is in a dimension of reality much further down than any whale, in an amoral and alienating world that nothing normal in the human psyche can directly confront.The professed quest is to kill Moby Dick, but as the portents of disaster pile up it becomes clear that a will to identify with (not adjust to) what Conrad calls the destructive element is what is really driving Ahab. Ahab has, Melville says, become a “Prometheus” with a vulture feeding on him. The axis image appears in the maelstrom or descending spiral (“vortex”) of the last few pages, and perhaps in a remark by one of Ahab’s crew: “The skewer seems loosening out of the middle of the world.” But the descent is not purely demonic, or simply destructive: like other creative descents, it is partly a quest for wisdom, however fatal the attaining of such wisdom may be. A relation reminiscent of Lear and the fool develops at the end between Ahab and the little black cabin boy Pip, who has been left so long to swim in the sea that he has gone insane. Of him it is said that he has been “carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro . . . and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps.”Moby Dick is as profound a treatment as modern literature affords of the leviathan symbolism of the Bible, the titanic-demonic force that raises Egypt and Babylon to greatness and then hurls them into nothingness; that is both an enemy of God outside the creation, and, as notably in Job, a creature within it of whom God is rather proud. The leviathan is revealed to Job as the ultimate mystery of God’s ways, the “king over all the children of pride” (41:34), of whom Satan himself is merely an instrument. What this power looks like depends on how it is approached. Approached by Conrad’s Kurtz through his Antichrist psychosis, it is an unimaginable horror: but it may also be a source of energy that man can put to his own use. There are naturally considerable risks in trying to do so: risks that Rimbaud spoke of in his celebrated lettre du voyant as a “dérèglement de tous les sens.” The phrase indicates the close connection between the titanic and the demonic that Verlaine expressed in his phrase poète maudit, the attitude of poets who feel, like Ahab, that the right worship of the powers they invoke is defiance.
— Northrop Frye, Words with Power: Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature
Why do people believe what they read in the newspapers, but question what they read in the Bible?
— Denise R. Solomon, Life Is a Faithwalk: Navigating Is Easier with Jesus
And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them.-Revelations 20:9
— A J.J. Graves
The irony of informing nearly naked people in a wilderness setting about the story of naked Adam and Eve eating the fruit of knowledge and inventing the fashion industry due to a sudden need for clothing to hide their shame is not lost on Williams.
— Sarah Vowell, The Wordy Shipmates
One difference between the Bible and the Constitution is that we can still talk to the author of the Bible to discover original intent.
— Ron Brackin
The Bible is a hologram and Jesus is on every page.
— R.A.Delmonico
Dynamic equivalence is a central concept in the translation theory, developed by Eugene A. Nida, which has been widely adopted by the United Bible Societies...Purporting to be an academically linguistic concept, it is in fact a sociocultural concept of communication. Its definition is essentially behavourist: determined by external forces, such as society--with strong pragmatist overtones--focusing on the reader rather than the writer. [M]ost twentieth-century American philosophical endeavours are predominantly pragmatist, dwelling in the shadows cast by William James and John Dewey.
— J. Cammenga, The Lord has preserved His Word: The doctrine of Holy Scripture, its providential preservation and its faithful translation
I admire the way the Bible defies anybody who wants to nail it on a preferred meaning. There are so many ways to interpret the Bible as there are different opinions about what a certain passage or verse really means. So anybody can go there and read a meaning into (eigesis) whatever passage or verse he wants to suit his inclinations. Proof that the Bible is inspired? It caters for all sorts of people and views.
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
— Jesus of Nazareth
Stop being fake and start being real. Start being real with the people around you, and start being real with God. Churches are not Broadway musicals where we can play the role of a Christian. You may think that you can play a role with people and get away with it, but I tell you today that you can't play that role with God. He sees through your plastic smiles and fake veneers.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13)
— John the Evangelist
Torah is not merely a collection of prohibitions, rigid strictures and boring observances. Rather, it is a narrative of the blessings and promises of God initially offered to one person and family, but through which the whole world will ultimately be blessed.
— Walter C. Kaiser Jr.
Maturity is learning not to be run by your emotions. You control your emotions
—  they don't control you.
We've become very good in our churches today at faking our concern when really we couldn't care less about the people around us.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
There is a lost and dying world out there. They need to see that the Church is different from their socially-segregated high schools. They need to see a 'family' operating as a team, not a bunch of cliques playing a role.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
Having true compassion for people isn't about the words that are spoken and the actions that are done. Having true compassion is an attitude from the heart that can't be faked.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
I believe that forgiveness is a processes. You might be able to release some offenses right away, but some offenses hurt deeper. You have to choose to let go and let God.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
Selfishness is the root of all jealousy. When we are caught up thinking about ourselves, we can't think about anyone else.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
If your temper is violent towards your brothers and sisters in the Lord, whose kingdom are you trying to build?
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
In today's society, Christians have a bad rap for things like holding picketing signs, screaming mantras of hate, and bombing abortion clinics. Somehow, I don't think that's showing love.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
We used to live in a society where if we saw one person struggling in our boat, we'd all stop what we were doing and help that person. We'd all work together as a team. In today's world, we see that person struggling in the boat, feel glad it's not us, and pick them up and throw them in the water. We just don't really care about each other anymore.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
In order to get some help in your love walk, all you have to do is ask God to let you see these people through His eyes.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
One person does make a difference. Jesus was one person. He made a difference. Stop telling the Lord that the problem is too big. Stop looking at your problem. The more you look at the problem, the bigger it gets. God is bigger than that problem. Keep your eyes on God! Let God be bigger than your feats! You are one person, but you have the life of God on the inside of you. You can and will make a difference!
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
You can choose to be part of the solution or part of the problem.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
When new believers come into the Church-when the young and innocent who are so full of life come in-we must treat them with honor and respect. We must be careful not to violate them in anyway. We are held accountable for their spiritual growth.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
Gossip is multiplying like breeding rabbits in the Church today. We may pretend it isn't, but we're only lying to ourselves. We like to put pretty little bows on it in the Church today. We like saying that we're just passing on some information so that so-and-so can be prayed for by our other sister. We like to justify it in our heads, but sin is sin so I'm going to call it that.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13).
— John the Evangelist
God isn't looking for a bunch of actors. He is looking for people who are sold out to His plan and purpose.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
Accuracy is not the measure of a true prophet. You will know the true prophets by their fruit.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
The story of Balaam is also a good reminder that just because a person can flow in the gifts of the Holy Spirit doesn't mean they have character.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
There were no oceans on Oasis, no large bodies of water, and presumably no fish. He wondered whether this would cause comprehension problems when it came to certain crucial fish-related Bible stories. There were so many of those: Jonah and the whale, the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, the Galilean disciples being fishermen, the whole ‘fishers of men’ analogy . . . the bit in Matthew 13 about the kingdom of heaven being like a net cast into the sea, gathering fish of every kind . . . Even in the opening chapter of Genesis, the first animals God made were sea creatures. How much of the Bible would he have to give up as untranslatable?
— Michel Faber, The Book of Strange New Things
The Abrahamic God is a disease masquerading as its own remedy which we desperately need to cure.
— Priscilla Vogelbacher, Hallowed Be Thy Name: Lucifer, Origins & Revelation
Abortion is not allowedbecause apparently it is against the law of god.Yes, that butter-wouldn't-melt deitywho ordered babies to be slaughtered,killed all the first-born in EgyptAnd caused an entire human race to drown.From: "Gesels van een imaginaire god"(Scourges of an imaginary god)
— A.J. Beirens
The holy word is story, and story is the holy word.
— Yann Martel, The High Mountains of Portugal
The Abrahamic God’s greatest achievement was convincing us he is not the Devil.
— Priscilla Vogelbacher, Hallowed Be Thy Name: Lucifer, Origins & Revelation
If any young man reads this Book aright, he becomes large-hearted. He cannot hold his soul within the narrow bound of his ribs, but his great heart looks out to see where it can scatter benefits.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Is it too bold to point out that there is nothing in the ten commandmentsabout protecting children against cruelty?Nothing against rape and nothing against slavery,and nothing agains genocide.Could this be because these crimesare positively recommendedin the rest of the bible?
— A.J. Beirens
In order for us to become the Bride of Christ, we must stop being so divided. We must start coming together. We must be places of refuge for the nonbelievers and start being places they want to come. That doesn't mean that we will always agree on everything, but we must start pursuing unity.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
The world sees the junk that is going on in the churches, and they don't want any part of it. If we really accept the Great Commission in Matt 28:19, we will put our differences aside, we'll stop asking, 'What is in it for me?' and we will genuinely start loving each other.
— Anna M. Aquino, Cursing the Church or Helping it?: Exposing the Spirit of Balaam
You don't have to go back to the way things were. Just go back to the point where you left off. Don't start over... just keep going, but there's a right way of keeping going. And no one here is going to be angry at you for leaving. We all have to leave sometimes. And some of us never come back. But there's always a choice, even if you've already decided never to return. You can still come back from this. That is the only kind of faith that matters. Not in the world, not in...God..., not in our friendship... just in yourself.
— Dave Matthes, Return to the Madlands
You can exaggerate your authority in handling the Scriptures, but you cannot exaggerate the Scriptures' authority to handle you. You can use the word of God to come to wrong conclusions, but you cannot find any wrong conclusions in the word of God.
— Kevin DeYoung, Taking God at His Word: Why the Bible Is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough, and What That Means for You and Me
Sometimes, we are unable to break free because we are held captive by divine assignment because in our problem God has given us a unique purpose.
— Shannon L. Alder
Human half-truth logic, dates back to Adam and Eve, when he tried to deceive God with a truth, 'we knew we were naked so we hid', leaving God to understand that something was wrong with Adam's logic, because if Adam knew THE TRUTH, he would know that you can't hide from God.
— Caesar J. B. Squitti, The Jesus Christ Code: The Light: The Rainbow of Truths
The Bible is not a book of answers but a library of questions.
— Timothy Beal, The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book
Cope laughed. “I wouldn’t worry yourself, my friend. Eobasileus has been extinct for thirty-seven million years.”At this, the preacher could no longer contain himself. “Nonsense! Utter nonsense!”“Nonsense?” asked Cope.“The archbishop James Ussher, using the Holy Bible itself, worked back generation by generation, mathematically, and calculated that the Earth was created on Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC at precisely eight a.m.”“Did he, now? Eight a.m., precisely?”“Precisely,” the preacher insisted.Copy and Sternberg exchanged amused looks.“Well,” Cope replied, “since the rotation of the Earth assures us that it’s always eight a.m. somewhere in the world, I suppose I should applaud him for guessing the correct time, at least.” The cowboy couldn’t help but interject.“Pardon me, Preacher, but if I recall correctly, didn’t the Bible say something about the Lord resting on the seventh day?”The preacher looked confused. “What?”“I’m certain of it.” The cowboy quickly snatched the Bible from the preacher’s hands and opened it to the first page of Genesis. “Sure. Here it is. He got started on a Monday, making light and darkness. By the time he got around to creating the Earth it was well into the third day. I make that to be Wednesday, not Sunday.”Nonplussed and blushing, the preacher snatched his Bible back. The cowboy shrugged. “Looks to me like your archbishop pulled a fast one, Preacher. Or maybe he just wasn’t all that good at calculating.
— Wynne McLaughlin, The Bone Feud
In many ways, those dedicated to removing all potential biblical contradictions, to making the Bible entirely consistent with itself, are no different from irreligious debunkers of the Bible, Christianity, and religion in general. Many from both camps seem to believe that simply demonstrating that the Bible is full of inconsistencies and contradictions, as I have just done, is enough to discredit any religious tradition that embraces it as Scripture. Bible debunkers and Bible defenders are kindred spirits.
— Timothy Beal, The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book