“Among all the nations of the Oriental world, only Israel developed an eschatology . . .”
Hans K. LaRondelle, The Israel of God in Prophecy: Principles of Prophetic Interpretation (Berrien Springs: Andrews University Press, 1983), 35; citing H. D. Preuss, Jahweglaube und Zukunftserwartung, BEANT 7 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1964).
“Most people go through life afraid that people will not think enough of them; Paul went through life afraid that people would think too much of him (2 Cor. 12.5-6).”
D. A. Carson, Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 131.
“When I was a young man, I heard D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones comment that he would not go across the street to hear himself preach. Now that I am close to the age he was when I heard him, I am beginning to understand. It is rare for me to finish a sermon without feeling somewhere between slightly discouraged and moderately depressed that I have not preached with more unction, that I have not articulated these glorious truths more powerfully and with greater insight, and so forth. But I cannot allow that to drive me to despair; rather, it must drive me to a greater grasp of the simple and profound truth that we preach and visit and serve under the gospel of grace, and God accepts us because of his Son. I must learn to accept myself not because of my putative successes but because of the merits of God’s Son. The ministry is so open-ended that one never feels that all possible work has been done, or done as well as one might like. There are always more people to visit, more studying to be done, more preparations to do. What Christians must do, what Christian leaders must do, is constantly remember that we serve our God and Maker and Redeemer under the gospel of grace. Dad’s diaries show he understood this truth in theory, and sometimes exulted in it (as when he was reading from Machen’s What is Faith?), but quite frankly, his sense of failure sometimes blinded him to the glory of gospel freedom.”
D. A. Carson, Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 92-3.
“We should so reason that the splendor of the divine countenance, which even the apostle calls ‘unapproachable’ [1 Tim. 6.16], is for us like an inexplicable labyrinth unless we are conducted into it by the thread of the Word; so that it is better to limp along this path than to dash with all speed outside of it.”
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, 7, 3.
“I know she had rather wear my pelt tann’d
In a pair of dancing pumps, . . .”
De Flores knows that his boss’s daughter, Beatrice, hates him; Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, The Changeling, I.ii.228-29.
“Death is very likely the single best invention in life. All external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”
Giving advice to students at Stanford University, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer, quips that his personal bout with cancer focused his priorities. “Face value: The resurrection of Steve Jobs,” The Economist (Sept. 17, 2005), 68.
