John R. Rice Quotes of the Week

Now the "land flowing with milk and honey" will belong to Israel, the children of Abraham. God's promise to Abraham was "for ever" (Gen. 13:15). So God can devastate the country by war, can restore it in the millennium, can purge it with fire as II Peter 3:7 foretells, but the land will not pass away, Abraham and his seed have eternal title to it. - John R. Rice

There is great frailty in the human heart. We look for the incidentals instead of the fundamentals. Men want to reverence places, houses, men, instead of God. Men call the church auditorium "the sanctuary," which it is not. The only temple God has on earth is now the body of the Christian. They want to "reverence the house of God" instead of God and the Gospel. So we must take particular caution not to make more of incidental object lessons than God intended. - John R. Rice

Our Catholic friends had a great custom of building a church over every place of some historical, biblical significance. To me, that someway takes away the beauty of the places. One young college girl who went with us on the tour of the Holy Land sat down and wept, saying, "They have ruined it all!" She could not see the things as they had been when Jesus was here because of the churches built in Bethlehem, in Jerusalem, in the Garden of Gethsemane, in Nazareth and elsewhere. I said rather facetiously, "I am glad to find they haven't built a church yet over the sea of Galilee."
But, thank God, we have all the historical truth, and we have the Person of Christ and the blessed, wonderful history of it all in the eternal Word of God. - John R. Rice

It is strange that "Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man" (Luke 2:52). How could Jesus, the sinless, perfect God in human form grow in wisdom? I think we can understand that the Lord Jesus gladly laid aside much of the outward show of His deity and much of the wisdom and knowledge which He had from the beginning of the world. He chose to be a Man, with man's temptations and trial, but not with man's sin. So He "took on him the form of a servant." He emptied Himself somewhat of the outward manifestations of deity. He set out to learn as other boys must learn. He grew in body as other boys grow. - John R. Rice

He grew "in favour with God." That is strange, too, isn't it? But God the Father loved His Son because He offered Himself as a Sacrifice, and if righteousness brings approval of God, then the Father is more and more pleased with His Son. So Jesus grew to manhood being subject to His mother and His foster father Joseph. And all the mothers would say to the boys around there, "You ought to be like Jesus. Don't you see how good He is?" - John R. Rice

We may be sure that Jesus studied the Scriptures earnestly. When He came back to Nazareth He attended the synagogue "as he was wont." They asked Him to read because they knew how well He knew the Bible. He was the best Reader and the best One to explain the Scriptures. So they gave Him the roll of Isaiah and "He found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me..." (Luke 4:16, 17, 18). He knew where it was and turned to it. Jesus knew the Scriptures and loved them. All of His life on earth would be spent beautifully and carefully fulfilling the Scriptures. - John R. Rice

When Jesus came to John to be baptized of him, John hesitated. John did not know that Jesus was the Messiah until He was baptized and the Holy Spirit came visibly upon Him in the form like a dove. But already He knew that Jesus was so good and pure and clean, and John had a holy reverence for Him. He said, "I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?" You can see that though people did not know He was the Messiah (except, perhaps, His mother Mary), yet the good people who knew Him knew Him to be holy and good. - John R. Rice