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Do you not know that God dwells in light inaccessible? We weak and ignorant creatures want to probe and understand the incomprehensible majesty of the unfathomable light of the wonder of God. We approach; we prepare ourselves to approach. What wonder then that his majesty overpowers us and shatters!"'-"
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R.C. Sproul |
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To be spiritually dead is to be worldly. It is to buy into and follow slavishly the values and customs of the secular culture. Not only do the spiritually dead follow the course of this world, they follow "the prince of the power of the air"
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R.C. Sproul |
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Paul's favorite description of himself was doulos, which means "slave"-one purchased for service. He said the same status applies to all believers, for we all have been "bought at a price" (1 Cor. 6:20). We belong to the one who has paid for us in order to redeem us, and now we are called to serve Him." --
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R.C. Sproul |
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Seek the kingdom. Seek righteousness. These are the priorities of the Christian life.
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R.C. Sproul |
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If Paul does not mean that all who are called are justified, the only alternative would be that some who are called are justified. If we supply the word some instead of the word all here, then we must supply it throughout the Golden Chain. Then it would read like this: Some of those he foreknew, he also predestined. Some of those he predestined, he also called. Some of those he called, these he also justified. Some of those he justified, he..
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R.C. Sproul |
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Only the justified person can be comfortable in the presence of a holy God.
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R.C. Sproul |
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if God is not sovereign, God is not God. If there is even one maverick molecule in the universe--one molecule running loose outside the scope of God's sovereign ordination--we cannot have the slightest confidence that any promise God has ever made about the future will come to pass. This,
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R.C. Sproul |
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It is your duty to believe and to teach what the Bible teaches, not what you would like it to teach.
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R.C. Sproul |
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The punitive measures against murder underscore the gravity of the crime precisely because of the value of the victim.
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R.C. Sproul |
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Chance is nothing. It has no power because it has no being; therefore, it can exercise no influence over anything. Yet,
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R.C. Sproul |
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Have you ever considered the deeper implications of the slightest sin, of the most minute peccadillo? What are we saying to our Creator when we disobey Him at the slightest point? We are saying no :o the righteousness of God. We are saying, "God, Your law is not good. My judgment is better than Yours. Your authority does not apply to me. I am above and beyond Your jurisdiction. I have the right to do what I want to do, not what You command ..
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R.C. Sproul |
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Our thinking goes like this: If there is a God at all, He is certainly not holy. If He is perchance holy, He is not just. Even if He is both holy and just, we need not fear because His love and mercy override His holy justice. If we can stomach His holy and just character, we can rest in one thing: He cannot possess wrath. If we think soberly for five seconds, we must see our error. If God is holy at all, if God has an ounce of justice in H..
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R.C. Sproul |
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Defending the faith to the best of our ability is not a luxury or an indulgence in intellectual vanity.It is the task given to each one of us as we bear witness to our faith before the world.I
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R.C. Sproul |
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If you don't believe that God ordains everything that comes to pass, you don't believe in God." I"
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R.C. Sproul |
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God's holiness is more than just separateness. His holiness is also transcendent. The word transcendence means literally "to climb across." It is defined as "exceeding usual limits." To transcenc is to rise above something, to go above and beyond a certain limit. When we speak of the transcendence of God, we are talking about that sense in which God is above and beyond us. Transcendence describes His supreme and absolute greatness. The word..
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R.C. Sproul |
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The church is called to be semper reformanda, "always reforming."
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R.C. Sproul |
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We affirm that the Holy Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative Word of God. We deny that the Scriptures receive their authority from the church, tradition, or any other human source.
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R.C. Sproul |
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In discussions among the participants at the summit and because of requests to the Draft Committee, there was considerable sentiment for striking the words "sixty-six canonical books" from the early drafts. This was due to some variance within Christendom as to the exact number of books that are to be recognized within the canon. For example, the Ethiopic Church has included more books in the canon than sixty-six."
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R.C. Sproul |
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The idea that God "always wills healing" has been a destructive distortion in the Christian community. The pastoral problems emanating from this are enormous."
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R.C. Sproul |
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Prayer is not magic. God is not a celestial bellhop ready at our beck and call to satisfy our every whim. In some cases, our prayers must involve travail of the soul and agony of heart such as Jesus Himself experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane. Sometimes the immature Christian suffers bitter disappointment, not because God failed to keep His promises, but because well-meaning Christians made promises "for" God that God Himself never auth..
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R.C. Sproul |
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Every Christian is a theologian. We are always engaged in the activity of learning about the things of God. We are not all theologians in the professional or academic sense, but theologians we are, for better or for worse.
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R.C. Sproul |
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Infallibility has to do with the question of ability or potential; that which is infallible is said to be unable to make mistakes or to err. By contrast, that which is inerrant is that which, in fact, does not err. Theoretically, something may be fallible and at the same time inerrant. That is, it is possible for someone who errs to not err. However, the reverse is not true. If someone is infallible, that means he cannot err, and if he cann..
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R.C. Sproul |
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A razao exige convincentemente um ser que possui asseidade; sem ele, nada poderia existir neste mundo. Jamais poderia ter havido um tempo em que nada existia, porque, se esse tempo tivesse existido, nada existiria agora.
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R.C. Sproul |
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We affirm that the Scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the authority of the church is subordinate to that of Scripture. We deny that church creeds, councils, or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible.
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R.C. Sproul |
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Lord your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods which you have not known" (Deut. 11: 26-28, NIV). The curse is the judgment of God on disobedience, on"
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R.C. Sproul |
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around the world on the daily radio program Renewing Your Mind. During his distinguished
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R.C. Sproul |
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Every time we celebrate the Lord's Supper in this world, we shouldn't only look back to Christ's past accomplishments, but to the future feast that is yet to be fulfilled.
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R.C. Sproul |
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The way of suffering was the Father's plan. It was the Father's will. The cross was not Satan's idea. The passion of Christ was not the result of human contingency. It was not the accidental contrivance of Caiaphas, Herod, or Pilate. The cup was prepared, delivered, and administered by almighty God.
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R.C. Sproul |
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Shadows in a cave are given to change. They dance and flicker with ever-changing shape and brightness. To contemplate the truly holy and to go beyond the surface of creaturely things, we need to get out of our self-made cave and walk in the glorious light of God's holiness.
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R.C. Sproul |
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theology touches every dimension of our lives. The
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R.C. Sproul |
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The Sacred and the Profane. Eliade insists that we have never been able to create an existence of pure and utter profanity. He says, "To whatever degree he may have desacralized the world, the man who has made his choice in favor of a profane life never succeeds in completely doing away with religious behavior."
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R.C. Sproul |
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Man alone can think of the future and speculate upon or imagine a better life than he currently enjoys or could ever bring to pass, and this is the source of his misery.
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R.C. Sproul |
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But while Paul is silent about the question of future choices in verse 11, he does not remain so. In verse 16 he makes it clear: "So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy." This is the coup de grace to Arminianism and all other non-Reformed views of predestination. This is the Word of God that requires all Christians to cease and desist from views of predestination that make the ultimate decision f..
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R.C. Sproul |
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Everything has a cause, and the ultimate cause, as we have seen, is God.
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R.C. Sproul |
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Actually, any Christian who has tried to bear witness to others has heard that charge: "Who do you think you are?" The greatest answer to that question that I've ever heard is the old answer, "I'm just one beggar telling other beggars where they can find bread." That's really all I anl, and that's all any of us are."
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R.C. Sproul |
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Articles of Affirmation and Denial. (The Preamble and the Short Statement were also subjected to editorial revisions. The Exposition was left largely as received.) After considerable discussion, the Draft Committee's submission received a very substantial endorsement by the participants: 240 (out of a total of 268) affixed their signatures to the Nineteen Articles. It was indicated that the Draft Committee would meet within the year to revi..
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R.C. Sproul |
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The great message of atheism is that "chance" has causal power."
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R.C. Sproul |
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If God knows what I'm going to say before I say it, His knowledge, rather than limiting my prayer, enhances the beauty of my praise.
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R.C. Sproul |
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Our labor must not be simply for the acquisition of wealth, but for the glory of God.
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R.C. Sproul |
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That God in some sense foreordains whatever comes to pass is a necessary result of his sovereignty. In itself it does not plead for Calvinism. It only declares that God is absolutely sovereign over his creation. God can foreordain things in different ways. But everything that happens must at least happen by his permission. If he permits something, then he must decide to allow it. If he decides to allow something, then in a sense he is foreo..
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R.C. Sproul |
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does God ordain evil? There is only one biblical answer to that question: yes. If God did not ordain evil, there would be no evil, because God is sovereign.
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R.C. Sproul |
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He ordained that His creatures should have the capacity for evil. He did not force them to exercise that capacity, but He knew that they would exercise it. At
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R.C. Sproul |
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God did not sanction it, but He did not stop it. In choosing not to stop it, He ordained it.
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R.C. Sproul |
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I am saying it must be good that evil exists, because God sovereignly, providentially ordains only what is good. In terms of His eternal purpose, God has esteemed it good that evil should be allowed to happen in this world.
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R.C. Sproul |