JOHN R. RICE Quotes of the Week

To obey the Lord about making your children mind and punishing them when they do wrong is more important than praying for them. I believe in praying when you do right and then expect God to bless your doing right. I do not believe that praying does much good when it is coupled with your disobedience to the plain commands of the Lord. You would like to take prayer instead of obedience and you would like to leave the blame then on God if your boy turns out to be spoiled rotten, disobedient, disrespectful, and wild. - John R. Rice

You say, "What do you think of keeping children in a nursery at church?" I think a nursery is a boon and a help for new people who come to church with small children, and for those who do not have well-trained children. They ought not to allow their children to disturb the service, but since they have not made them mind at home they cannot keep them quiet at church at first. However, I much prefer to have children sit with their parents in the church service as soon as they are taught well to sit still and be quiet. We never did take our children to the nursery and they never disturbed services. However, you can see that this is only for those parents who mean business and who have already set out to teach their children to obey. - John R. Rice

Oh, somebody said, "But I read in the newspaper...." Yes, I know. It would be a good idea for you to quit preaching the newspaper and preach what the Bible says. If there is one thing Jesus said most plainly and most often about the Second Coming it is that no one knows the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh. There are no evidences by which anybody can know. You can't figure up a day or a year; you can't figure it out by what Russia does, or the National Council of Churches does, or what Israel does. You cannot know. It is not for you to know the times nor seasons that the Father put in His own power. - John R. Rice

But where the Bible makes no rules, I think we should make no rules. Instead we should simply find out what will honor God the most as best we can. . - John R. Rice

Why should any of us put up one Scripture to cancel out another Scripture? I think that all the Scriptures fit together and any time we put a meaning in a Scripture that would make it contradict another Scripture, then we have misinterpreted it some way. - John R. Rice

I think it sounds bad for you to say you have about lost confidence in Romans 8:28. Again, that is part of your idea that you have to have everything right this minute and have to have it your way in order for it to please God. Paul spent two years in Arabia. He spent two years in prison in Caesarea. He spent two years in prison in Rome. And from there in Rome he could write, "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content" (Phil. 4:11). Does God have to prove Himself every ten minutes before you believe Him? Can you never trust God in the dark nor wait for Him to work out things His way? Do you really think if you had everything your way and had it day before yesterday, it would always turn out better than if you left God to work it out in His own time? That was part of your trouble about getting married so hastily. It is part of your trouble now about having to have everything settled right quick or you won't trust the Lord! - John R. Rice

And if I were a judge who sentenced a man to the death penalty, I could still in earnest love go and plead with the man to repent of his sins and trust in Christ. And if he would not repent then, you may be sure that many more years lived in sin would not make him any better or any more likely to be saved. I have had the great joy of winning many criminals to Jesus Christ and some of them were facing death. I was not less merciful nor kind because I knew that for the good of society sin must be punished, and God's command ought to be carried out about murderers. - John R. Rice