Friday, January 18, 2008

Contending for the faith



Stand to God’s Word and you stand safely. Alter one dot of the i, one cross of the t, and you are nowhere at all; you are in an enemy’s country, and you cannot defend yourself. When we have got Scripture to back us up we defy the world; but when we have nothing but our own whims or the work of some great preacher, or the decree of a council, or the tradition the Fathers, we are lost. we are trying to weave a rope of sand, we are building a house of cards, that must totter to the ground.

The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible is the religion of Christ’s Church. And until we come back to that the Church will have to suffer. She will not carry the ark up to the hill of Zion; she will not see His kingdom come, or his will done in earth as it is in heaven, till she has done with those bullocks and that new cart, and goes back to the New Testament plan of keeping consistently to the truth as it is in Jesus, and contending earnestly for the faith.

From a sermon entitled, "Importance Of Small Things In religion," delivered April 8, 1860. Flickr photo by Steve Jurvetson; some rights reserved.

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