John R. Rice Quotes of the Week

John 20:21-23 Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.

I have the authority from God to tell a man how he may have his sins remitted and assure him it is done when he trusts the Lord. I have authority to tell a man he is doomed and going to Hell when he refuses to take Christ as Saviour. - John R. Rice [A Grand Success of the Christian Life, pg. 196]

Christians, the personal seeking, wooing, winning of Christ's lost sheep is God's balm of Gilead to restless, worrying, unhappy hearts. To win souls is the greatest glory to Jesus, the greatest gain in Heaven, the greatest growth to the winner, and the highest joy on earth. - John R. Rice, A Grand Success of the Christian Life, pg. 204]

The Great Commission is basic to any understanding about Holy Spirit power. Anywhere the Lord talks about enduement of power, it is in connection with carrying out the Great Commission. He didn't say, "Do you want to feel light as a feather? Then be filled with the Spirit." "Do you want to talk in tongues? Then be filled with the Spirit." He didn't mean that. "Do you want to have some sign to prove to everybody you have what they don't have?" He didn't say that. No, "You are to go and preach the Gospel, that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem."

Oh, but he said, "Tarry . . . until ye be endued with power from on high. You are witnesses. You are supposed to tell it, but tarry until ye be endued with power from on high." . - John R. Rice, A Grand Success of the Christian Life, pg. 206-207]

There are good people who say that if you just surrender to the Lord, then you have all the power that God has. But that is not what the Bible teaches. That is not what the disciples did before Pentecost. That is not what they did in Acts 4:31. Surrender is not enough. One should ask the Lord and ask persistently for Holy Spirit power. . - John R. Rice, A Grand Success of the Christian Life, pg. 232]

The Christian should make a definite, once-for-all surrender of himself to Christ. Promise the Saviour that you here and now resolve to follow His will at any cost the rest of your life. Resolve that in every particular, large and small, as soon as you know the will of Christ you will try to do it. Nothing less than that could satisfy Jesus Christ. Oh, I cannot say that I have lived up to that vow. But with all my heart I made it! I want to do the will of Jesus Christ. Oh, if He but give me grace, I will, I will do what He wishes me to do, when He shows me His will. He wants souls saved! - John R. Rice [The Power of Pentecost, pg. 311-312]

What did Spurgeon and Moody and Torrey and Carroll and Haldeman and Scarborough and the Bible institutes and multitudes of Christians mean --what do they mean when they say they believe in the "verbal inspiration" of the Bible? VERBAL inspiration means WORD inspiration, from the Latin term for WORD. They mean that God gave the very words to the writers that they were to write down. God did not give the general thought and allow the human authors to put the thought in their own words. God did not simply superintend the writings so that the writers would be kept from error. No, by verbal inspiration we mean that God gave the words in the Bible. - John R. Rice [Twelve Tremendous Themes, pg. 18]

Of course copyists occasionally made mistakes in copying by hand the Scriptures. But we have so many hundreds of manuscripts of both the Old and New Testaments that by comparing them we find there is not one word in ten thousand of the original manuscripts that cannot be reproduced as it was first given in the original languages. And so many earnest scholars have made so many careful translations of the Bible in our own language, through hundreds of years of time, that we can depend with confidence upon our English translations of the Bible. - John R. Rice [Twelve Tremendous Themes, pg. 18-19]