Beware of manufacturing a god of your own: a god who is all mercy but not just, a god who is all love but not holy, a god who has a heaven for everybody but a hell for none, a god who can allow good and bad to be side by side in time, but will make no distinction between good and broad in eternity. Such a god is an idol of your own, as truly an idol as any snake or crocodile in an Egyptian temple. The hands of your own fancy and sentimentality have made him. He is not the God of the Bible, and beside the God of the Bible, there is no God at all.
Beware of making selections from your Bible to suit your taste. Dare not to say, ‘I believe this verse, for I like it. I refuse that, for I cannot reconcile it with my views’. Nay! But O man, who art thou that repliest against God? By what right do you talk in this way? Surely it were better to say over EVERY chapter in the word, “Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth”. Ah! If men would do this, they would never deny the unquenchable fire.
-J.C. Ryle {from ‘Fire, Fire!’}
1816-1900
Pilgrim
thejunglemissionary
Bill
fourpointer
Manfred
abidingthroughgrace
Chris Hohnholz
Excellent quote! So telling, and written for today, even if it is over a century ago.
But then, there is nothing new under the sun. People just don’t change in character.
Always inventing, and reinventing god. Not God.
His admonition about selective Bible acceptance is strikingly comparable to the first chapter in this book, where CJ Mahaney begins with a reflection called “Is This Verse in Your Bible?” He charges that we are all too often mentally doing what Thomas Jefferson physically did with his Bible, as we selectively accept or reject the Word of God.
Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World
Thanks be to God for faithful men who remind us Who’s Word we so lightly regard.
Amazing…….times never change really do they.
What a great quote!
I really hope that the ‘pastors’ of our day repent and believe.
Read the dead guys!
How I long that some of the emergent crowd would read and digest messages such as this!
I’ve just tried to leave a comment on the recent “Jesus Manifesto” http://ajesusmanifesto.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/a-jesus-manifesto-by-leonard-sweet-and-frank-viola/ that offered some balance to what they were saying. And yet even though I wrote sensitively, and almost entirely from Scripture, the comment was rejected without so much as an explanation.
Glad Chris Rosebrough has started up the new post-emergent movement for those who’ve just about had enough! LOL.
And this is why Ryle continues to be my favorite preacher of old. Sorry all you Spurgeon and Calvin fans. :o)~
Ryle’s writings are from a century past but are still so applicable and “relevant” (in the proper use of the term) to true Believers today.
Thanks for posting this Unworthy1.
- The Pilgrim