JOHN R. RICE QUOTES OF THE WEEK

The fact is that Christians are not interested in the Bible. The average Christian has never even read the Bible through. All over the nation I have put it to a test, and in the average group of Christians not a third profess they have even read through the Word of God! Only a few Christians know how many books are in the Bible, and very, very few can name them. - John R. Rice

You say, "Here are heavenly beings, here are plants and animals and a whole universe but God didn't make these. There is no God." No wonder Psalm 14:1 says you are a fool! "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." The 53rd Psalm says, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." He said it- where is the man mentioned a fool? Not in his head but in his heart. No intelligent mans says, "I have come to see that there is no evidence that anybody with a benevolent... heart to do good prepared it all for men." No intelligent man would say that. Only a fool says that. He says it not in his head, but in his heart. In the Bible the word "fool" means not only an ignorant man, but a man turning from the truth, a man who is not good. So the fool, the man who is against God, says, "There is no God." But he said it not from an intelligent head, but from a wicked heart. - John R. Rice

But that is like all the things we usually do trying to make ourselves right with God. "I ought to join the church." That won't fix your black heart. "Well, I will get baptized." That may wash you outside, but it wont wash away your sins. "Well, I will deprive myself and make sacrifices." Sometimes Hindu people sleep on beds of nails, and some people take long, tiresome journeys and some give all they have and live in poverty trying to seek the blessing of God. Oh, you need more than fig leaves. You need the righteousness of God. - John R. Rice

But you say, as Catholic dogma teaches you to say and not from any independent study of the Scriptures, which you are not allowed to do- you say that Christ said He would build a church on Peter. You refer to Matthew 16:18, which the Catholic dogma currently teaches (but did not always so teach), that Christ founded the church on Peter. But read it: "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not preva...il against it." Now does Jesus here contradict the other Scriptures and say that the church was founded on Peter instead of Himself? No indeed. Here there is a Greek play upon the words, "Thou art Peter [the Greek word Petros, literally a "little rock"], and upon this rock [Petra, a foundation rock, Christ the Rock not Peter] I will build my church." Literally what Jesus told Peter is this: "You are a little rock, but on Myself, the great foundation Rock, I will build my church." - John R. Rice

Little children have something Heavenly, something innocent, something wonderfully sweet about them. They are gifts from God beyond price. But every such little child has a taint of sin inborn. Everyone has a nature that, if not curbed, may lead to murder, to adultery, to blasphemy, to defiance of God, to Hell itself! - John R. Rice

I do not mean that little children, unaccountable infants who do not consciously sin, are lost. Rather, the Bible teaches that they are kept, by God's merciful grace, until they come to the time of accountability to God, to a personal consciousness of sin. No one goes to Hell for the sinful nature he inherited. No one is punished in Hell for Adam's sins of which he is the unconscious partaker by inheritance. First Corinthians 15:22 says, "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Whatever a child lost by inheritance of the taint of Adam's sin, he has gained back in Christ. The child is kept safe until he personally, himself, becomes a sinner. - John R. Rice