John R. Rice Quotes of the Week

I don't have any patience with these who write articles on "easy believism" as if God intended it to be hard to get saved. They claim that preachers who preach it is all free and you can have it in a moment by trusting Christ, teach a false doctrine.
Don't run with that crowd. Don't read that kind of literature. Don't be guilty of thus frustrating the grace of God or playing down the grace of God. - John R. Rice

The more you study the Word of God in detail, the more it proves that it could not have been written by men. The more you study the fulfillment of prophecies, the more it becomes certain that God inspired the prophecies with His great wisdom and that He insures their fulfillment with His mighty power.
Marvelous Book! Marvelous Saviour! - John R. Rice 

John was preaching at the Jordan River and when scribes and Pharisees came out to be baptized John Said, "You bunch of snakes." What did he mean? "You are bitten by the serpent of sin, still with the old nature, still without being born again. You generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance." John refused to baptize those who did not give good indications they were saved. - John R. Rice

Baptism then is immersion, is a burial.
You say, "Well, maybe it isn't always convenient." Oh, yes, it is convenient for people who want to be baptized the Bible way. Immersion is not only convenient but has a meaning. It may not be convenient to bury people, but when they die you bury them anyway. And so the baptism of people when they are saved and changed. Let's bury the old sinner now; he will live a new life, and that is the Bible plan, immersion. - John R. Rice

Another Bible rule about baptism is that nobody is to be baptized before salvation, and baptism is not essential to salvation.
You say, "Can one be saved without baptism?" Yes. You ought never be baptized without salvation. You get salvation first. It would be foolish to be proclaiming yourself saved before you are. Baptism is a public profession, a public declaration of what has already happened in your heart. Baptism doesn't change the heart; it just gets the outside wet. - John R. Rice

You say you are "pretty much of a free thinker." Now if you mean what the word "free thinker" means, then you are open-minded and have a free will, ready to accept the truth wherever you find it properly supported. If free thinker to you means that, then you will seek to know what God's Word says and to know the evidence for its veracity.
If, on the other hand, it means that you are an enemy of God and of the Bible, then you will not read any evidence with an open mind that I shall give and you are not really a free thinker at all, but a slave to a blind prejudice, with animosity against the God of the Bible, the God who made you; a devotee of sin and not willing to repent. - John R. Rice

You had better take to heart my clear statement in the book, Our God-Breathed Book--THE BIBLE, of not trusting the liberal. A liberal is an enemy of God when he is an enemy of the Bible and one who is an unconverted infidel in his theology need not be expected to always tell the truth. People who would spit on the blood of Christ and take the crown of deity from the head of Jesus Christ, would not mind lying if they thought they could thus defend themselves. - John R. Rice