John R. Rice Quotes of the Week

We have plenty for which to thank God today. We have plenty in which to rejoice today. We have the unfailing God, and He is the secret of peace for all needed blessings all the time, and that has not changed, and will not change a shadow; will not change, will not vary a shadow. He is the unchanging, unvarying God! - John R. Rice

I am here in a Baptist church, and I am a Baptist preacher; but there is one article in the Baptist statement of faith, the old New Hampshire Statement of Faith, that I do not believe. It says: "We believe in the perseverance of the saints." I don't believe anything of the kind. I believe God does the persevering, not the saints. I believe the saints are preserved. "They are preserved forever" (Psa. 37:28), they do not persevere. That old-fashioned language perhaps meant something else, but I would not be safe any five minutes of persevering I ever did in the world! - John R. Rice

An old fellow said the other day at the noonday meetings, "I have been on the Lord's side fifty-eight years, and in that fifty-eight years I have never turned aside; I have never been backslidden. I have been right on the firing line all the time." I said to myself what perhaps I did not have the nerve to say aloud, but I felt like saying, "Hypocrite! liar! I don't believe a word of it! I don't believe anybody has been saved fifty-eight years, nor fifty-eight minutes, who never turned aside." - John R. Rice

You say, "I am determined to go through for God." I am not determined; I have turned that over to somebody else and He is determined to do it. - John R. Rice

You say, "I am striving to make Heaven my home." You will burst your head against a stone wall. People do not get to Heaven by striving. They get to Heaven by turning it over to Somebody else who does all the striving. - John R. Rice

Somebody asked me, "Can a child of God fall away and be lost? We are all in a big controversy about it." I said, "That depends. If you are keeping yourself, then the first wobble you make, you are gone. But if God does the saving, and the keeping, He does not wobble, then you are still saved. You take your choice. If you are going to do the saving, you are in a pretty tight fix, for you wobble all the time." - John R. Rice

It is the unvarying goodness of God that keeps me, not my unvarying goodness. I vary; God does not. - John R. Rice