John R. Rice Quotes of the Week

I think that to do right and to obey God and to put down crime is not a sign of lack of Christian love. It is not wrong for a parent to whip a child who needs it. It is not wrong for an officer to arrest a criminal. It is not wrong for a government to put to death a murderer. These things should be settled by the plain Word of God instead of by an emotional appeal to prejudice. So warfare may be necessary and right to put down an international criminal like Hitler, or to save a nation from enslavement. - John R. Rice

There are those in America who would count it a crime to criticize the party and the administration in power. That is the way it is in General Franco's dictatorship in Spain. That is the way it was under Hitler in Germany. That is the way it is in Russia. Thank God, it is not yet true in America. A man has a right to vote for the man he thinks he should vote for, for office and he has a right to criticize the man in office whom he thinks does not adequately fulfill his duties. America is still a country of free speech. - John R. Rice

"Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him..." (Hab. 2:15). Liquor is a curse to everyone who drinks it and a curse to every person who serves it, a curse to every bartender who sells it, to every newspaper that advertises it, a curse to every citizen who votes for it. It has brought endless woe to America. - John R. Rice

If man be made in the image of God by a special act of divine creation, as the Bible teaches, then a man is accountable as a higher being. If man is a fallen creature, as the Bible teaches, he needs to beware, to restrain himself, to discipline himself. If sin is rebellion against God and certain for punishment, and if unrepentant sinners go to Hell, as the Bible teaches, then men must have a system of morality based on these eternal truths. Man must give an account to God. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom for morality and righteousness, as in everything else. - John R. Rice

Those who leave the authority of the Bible and the doctrines of the Bible concerning God and sin and judgment and the need for a new heart, leave also the morals of the Bible. And those who leave these standards of the Bible leave the proper attitude of society toward sin. Parents who do not control their children in the home grow children who do not control themselves. Those who allow lawbreaking, disobedience and self-will to get by in the home grow delinquents, sex perverts, and criminals who are not amenable to the laws of society.
So the Scripture very clearly teaches. - John R. Rice

I thank God this matter of rearing godly children need not be a matter of indefinite hopes and fears. We may make sure our children turn out right. The plain promise of God is, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Prov. 22:6). In the American Standard Version it is "...even when he is old," that is, when he is grown and away from home, the child will not depart from his rearing.
Someone says, "Well, you can never tell how children will turn out." No, you cannot tell if you leave it to the movies and the public schools and the mores of a degenerate generation. But, thank God, you need not leave it to the schools and the neighbors and the movies and the newsstands and the TV to turn out your children. You may bring them up in the nurture (or chastening) and admonition of the Lord as we are commanded to do (Eph. 6:4). - John R. Rice

The father and husband in the home is God's deputy, God's high priest in that home. Then he ought to represent not only God's authority but God's righteousness. In my home as we eight children were growing up my father said to us many times, "When you hear me and your mother quarrel, then you children may quarrel, but not before." I thank God for a father for whom I had not only respect but a godly reverence. I grew up to hate liquor because my father hated liquor. I grew up with a reverence for womanhood because of the courtly southern Christian gentleman that my father was and because of the obvious purity of my mother. The lad who knows that his father drinks beer in the tavern, the children who see cocktails served at parties in their home may turn out to be drunkards with all the lewdness and irresponsibility and crime which follow drunkenness, despite any teaching the parents may give. - John R. Rice

It is sad that too many preachers are, as God said through Isaiah, "dumb dogs, they cannot bark" (Isa. 56:10). Where there is no preaching on sin there is no conviction of sin. Where there is no preaching of the certain punishment of sin, the wrath of God and coming judgment, people do not tremble over the warnings of conscience and over the enslavement of sin. We need preaching like that of Paul who "reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come," which made Felix tremble (Acts 24:25). - John R. Rice