John R. Rice Quotes of the Week

A man ought to be able to win his boy. In Mark 9 is the story of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus said, "What's going on?" A man said, "It's my boy! My poor boy- the Devil is in him. He throws him in the water and fire and tries to kill him. I brought him to Your nine disciples, and they couldn't do anything with him. Maybe You can't either, but if You can do anything, have mercy." Jesus said, "You've got the 'if' in the wrong place." Mark 9:23 says, "Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." "Bring him to Me," Jesus said. And Jesus cast out the devil and turned him over to the others there. The boy's father said, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief" (Mark 9:24).
Every father can win every one of his sons if he begins in time, and lives right, and means business. Sure he can. - John R. Rice

Denominations start small and grow big. They start poor and grow wealthy. They start representing common and uneducated masses and they grow to be controlled by the scholarly and distinguished. And the bigness and the scholarly emphasis and the wealth inevitably turn out to be a snare. So denominations and Christian schools and other Christian organizations inevitably turn toward worldliness, to low moral standards, and finally to unbelieving leadership. Since mankind is made up of fallen creatures, and even saved people have still the old carnal nature, the trend always for things in this world is down instead of up. - John R. Rice

Then what should a Christian do? First, he should make sure that not a penny of his money goes to the denominational program that supports anything contrary to Christ and the Bible. He ought not support with money what he cannot defend by conviction. To call a snake names and then feed the snake is dishonest and hypocrisy and a sin. - John R. Rice

But this Gospel is that all this was "according to the Scriptures." So Paul here [I Cor. 15] states twice. There is no Gospel but the Gospel as it is revealed in the infallible Bible. We know no Christ but the Christ who is revealed in God's Word. There is no salvation except through the Gospel that is part and parcel, blood, bone, and sinew of the Bible itself.
To call anything else the Gospel, or to preach any other way of salvation but by the atoning death and bodily resurrection of the virgin-born Son of God who died for our sins, is to earn the curse, the damnation, the anathema of Galatians 1:8 and 9. - John R. Rice

And so Christians ought to be good neighbors to lost people, ought to be friends to them in trouble, ought to love and help and seek to win to Christ lost people all around about us. The Lord Jesus loved sinners and so should we. He ate with them in their homes, though He never let them set the pattern of life, He never obligated Himself to please them. - John R. Rice

The lodge member may be taught that if he subdues his passions, if he is kind to his neighbor, if he supports his family, if he pays his debts and is loyal to his government, at last "the Grand Architect of the universe will receive him in the Elysian fields." But that is paganism, infidelity, not Christianity. You know, salvation in Christ is exclusive. The Christian religion is intolerant. It brooks no substitution and no competition and even no human assistance to the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ given freely to the sinner who trusts in Him. - John R. Rice

We preach the historic Christian faith. Fundamentalism means, of course, as it ought to mean to everybody, simply believing in the historic Christian faith; and when we teach that Christians should not yoke up with unbelievers, we teach what the Bible emphatically teaches. So it is expected that the great Christians through the years had this same conviction. All who take the Scripture at face value, without a bias of denominational loyalty or the pull of special friendship or the fear of the cost, will see the wrong of compromise here. - John R. Rice