John R. Rice Quotes of the Week

These days preachers do not use the term "hell fire," but Jesus did. I would rather pattern after Him. He is a better preacher than anybody else I know. - John R. Rice [Sweet Family Ties in Heaven and Hell, pg. 213]

Somebody says, "Why, Brother Rice, in the first place people don't believe it if you insist there is fire in Hell." Well, all right, tell the Lord Jesus that. If He made a mistake about it and did not put it in politic language so everybody would like it, you will have to take it up with Him. I have no authority to change what He said about it. - John R. Rice [Sweet Family Ties in Heaven and Hell, pg. 213]

"Well," somebody else says, "I do not think it is a good policy; I do not think it is a matter of wisdom; I do not think it is prudent." Well, never mind whether it is prudent or not. We are not especially commanded to be tactful. We are supposed to be true to the Word and to Jesus Christ. And the Bible says in the words of Jesus Himself that in Hell there is a furnace of fire and that poor, lost sinners go to Hell to be tormented in flame. - John R. Rice [Sweet Family Ties in Heaven and Hell, pg. 213]

I want you to notice that Jesus said that people who turn down Christ are going to be cast into Hell with the Devil and his angels. I want you to know there is a literal Devil. He is a literal personality, Satan, that fallen angel, that wicked enemy of your soul. Oh, the names the Bible calls him! He is sometimes called Satan. He is sometimes called Apollyon. He is called "the Accuser." He is called "that old serpent," and the Devil--that horrible enemy of your souls! You say, "Well, I wouldn't want to be in Hell with the author of all the ills in the world, the author of all disease, the author of all sorrow, the parent of all tears, the instigator of all iniquity, the father of all lies and theft." Well, that is where you are going to be if you turn down Jesus Christ. All fallen angels are going to be in Hell, and you are going to be there with them if you turn down Christ. - John R. Rice [Sweet Family Ties in Heaven and Hell, pg. 215-216]

You who reject Christ will be shut up in Hell forever with the Devil and his angels. It will be their home. Do not ever think that Satan is going to run Hell; he himself will be a prisoner of Hell. And you and he are two of the same kind, the prisoners of Almighty God and the subjects of God's wrath, when you turn down Jesus Christ. - John R. Rice [Sweet Family Ties in Heaven and Hell, pg. 216]

The Christ-rejector is not a child of God. If unconverted, you have not been born of God. You are not in the family of God. You do not have the Spirit of God. You are a child of the Devil. You are following the wickedness of Satan. You are led by him, and when you die you are going to the same Hell that he is going to. Will it not be a terrible thing to be shut up in the torments of the damned with Satan and fallen angels where every wicked being from this world is? That is going to happen. The Bible says so. - John R. Rice [Sweet Family Ties in Heaven and Hell, pg. 216-217]

I think it is a tragedy unspeakable that when God made man in His image, made man for His joy, made man for Heaven, that he should follow Satan's lies and turn down Christ and then land in Hell, the lake of fire prepared for the Devil and his angels. What a horrible tragedy that any many should so wickedly turn away from the good and choose the evil and land in Hell! But that is what the Bible says will happen. To those who reject Him as personal Saviour, Jesus is going to say, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." - John R. Rice [Sweet Family Ties in Heaven and Hell, pg. 217]