Where it is revered and taught and believed and followed, the Bible is certainly the most potent civilizing influence in the world. It is the most powerful influence both for morals and happiness. It is not simply the church which is uplifting and blessed in its influence on human society; but it is the church as it teaches and preaches and practices the Bible, as it knows the Christ of the Bible, as it has the salvation and life offered in the Bible, and as it promotes the righteousness of God revealed there. - John R. Rice [The Home, pg. 263]
Christianity is the religion of a Book, the Bible. The Christ of Christianity is the Christ of the Bible, the Messiah, foretold in the Old Testament, the Jesus of the Gospels, the Lord Jesus Christ of the Epistles, the virgin born Son of God. There is no authentic Christianity which does not accept the infallible authority of the Bible. - John R. Rice [The Home, pg. 263-264]
The home is the best place in the world to teach the Bible. THAT IS WHERE GOD PUTS THE RESPONSIBILITY. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 says, "And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." Note the divine language says, "Thy children." The teaching is to be done "when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." That is a clear picture of parents teaching the Word of God to their children in the home. And it is a picture of such diligent, earnest, line-upon-line, precept-upon-precept teaching, woven through all the fabric of home life, as could not be adequately done anywhere else but in the home. - John R. Rice [The Home, pg. 264-254]
Often Sunday School teachers are worldly or even unconverted, and are so woefully unfit to understand or teach the child about God. Spiritual truths are spiritually discerned, and one who is not taught by the Holy Spirit of God cannot understand and cannot successfully or even safely teach others to understand Bible truth. - John R. Rice [The Home, pg. 266-267]
I was a strong, rather impatient and hot-tempered boy of about seventeen, though a Christian, when my father taught me a great lesson from Scripture. I had been rough to my team on the farm, and he simply said, "Son, the Bible says, 'A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel' " (Prov. 12:10). That simple word went to my heart with such force that one hearing of the verse printed it indelibly on my mind. I never consciously memorized it, but from that time on I remembered it. And I saw that true mercy and kindness in the heart would be reflected in the way I treated the dumb brutes God had given into my care. How powerful those few words from God's Scripture! - John R. Rice [The Home, pg. 275-276]
Until little children reach the time when they know right from wrong, and so become accountable sinners, or course they are kept safe. After they know themselves to be sinners, after they are sinners by choice as they were before sinners by nature, children are lost sinners, aliens from God, and need to be saved the same as any other unconverted, lost sinner. - John R. Rice [The Home, pg. 279]
It is my own conviction that not even the junior church, as good as it is, can take the place of the public preaching service in which little children sit by mothers and fathers and learn to become cooperating members of society while they hear sweet songs and understand what they can of the services. - John R. Rice [The Home, pg. 312]
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