158 Quotes About Scripture

Only one thing validates a message or a messenger: The whole counsel of the word of God.

I speak as a man of the world to men of the world; and I say to you, Search the Scriptures! The Bible is the book of all others, to be read at all ages, and in all conditions of human life; not to be read once or twice or thrice through, and then laid aside, but to be read in small portions of one or two chapters every day, and never to be intermitted, unless by some overruling necessity.

It is not mere reading, but meditation -- "meditation all the day," as the Psalmist says -- which extracts the sweetness and the power out of Scripture.

God has condescended to become an author, and yet people will not read his writings. There are very few that ever gave this Book of God, the grand charter of salvation, one fair reading through.

On all sides it is recognized that any who would take the New Testament seriously must be confronted by eschatology... Preaching that has lost urgency and passion reveals a loss of the eschatological perspective of the New Testament... He is not aware that he ministers in the time of the ascended Christ, the time of the fulfillment of all the prophets in his saving rule.

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

The preaching of God's word is hateful and contrary unto them. Why? For it is impossible to preach Christ, except thou preach against antichrist; that is to say, them which with their false doctrine and violence of sword enforce to quench the true doctrine of Christ.

A readiness to believe every promise implicitly, to obey every command unhesitatingly, to stand perfect and complete in all the will of God, is the only true spirit of Bible study.

Watch the morning watch. Do not see the face of man until you have seen the face of God. Before you enter on the day with its temptations, look up into His face and hide His Word in your heart.

The self-confidence of a Christian is nothing but trusting in his wisdom, thinking he knows every teaching of the Scriptures and how to serve God.

Doctrinal rightness and rightness of ecclesiastical position are important, but only as a starting point to go on into a living relationship - and not as ends in themselves.

I perceived how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue.

The Word of life may be so distorted from the life of the Word till it becomes the food of death.

It seems to me better to get the Book of books for food for your soul, for the strengthening of your faith, and the building up of your character in God, so that all the time you are being changed and made meet to walk with God.

Let us know, then, that the true meaning of Scripture is the natural and obvious meaning; and let us embrace and abide by it resolutely. Let us not only neglect as doubtful, but boldly set aside as deadly corruptions those pretended expositions which lead us away from the natural meaning.

In opposition... to all the suggestions of the devil, the sole, simple, and sufficient answer is the word of God. This puts to flight all the powers of darkness. The Christian finds this to be true in his individual experience. It dissipates his doubts; it drives away his fears; it delivers him from the power of Satan.

When attempts are made by Christians to combine psychology with the teachings of Scripture, it is, wittingly or unwittingly, the addition of "a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death" (Proverbs 14:12) and a variation of the "Yea, hath God said...?" dialogue, resulting in the corruption of God's Word.

Let Christian kings therefore keep their faith and truth, and all lawful promises and bonds, not one with another only, but even with the Turk or whatsoever infidel it be. For so it is right before God; as the scriptures and ensamples of the bible testify.

Like a chain which depends upon its weakest link, if God's Word is not absolutely and completely true, it is too weak a cable to fix our anchorage and guarantee our eternal peace.

In general, He guides and directs His people, affording them, in answer to prayer, the light of His Holy Spirit, which enables them to understand and to love the Scriptures.

The Sermon on the Mount cannot be a merely human production. This belief enters into the very depth of my conscience. The whole history of man proves it.

Before I translated the New Testament out of the Greek, all longed after it; when it was done, their longing lasted scarce four weeks. Then they desired the books of Moses; when I had translated these, they had enough thereof in a short time. After that, they would have the Psalms; of these they were soon weary, and desired other books. So it will be with the book of Ecclesiastes, which they now long for, and about which I have taken great pains. All is acceptable until our giddy brains be satisfied; afterwards we let familiar things lie, and seek after new.

But the challenge is always this: Are men and women going to allow the Word of God to sit in judgment on their puny minds, or are they going to make their puny minds the judges of the Word of God?

God's Word will never fall into disrepair. But here's what happens when we don't travel on it: We fall into disrepair!

I don't mean that there is too little New Testament language in our prayers; but there is too little both Old and New Testament language meditated on, understood, believed, realized and felt. There is too little Scripture substance, Scripture strength, Scripture depth, and Scripture height, in our prayers.

Many people hear the Word of God, but to some of them it is only words; they do not accept it as the Word of God. What a paradox it is that all creation obeys His Word except we who are made in the image of God and have the ability to choose.

Faith is to rest, not in the best of God's servants, but in His unchanging Word.

What is Science but what the Natural World has said to natural men? What is Revelation but what the Spiritual World has said to Spiritual men?

I have taken much pains to know everything that is esteemed worth knowing amongst men; but with all my reading, nothing now remains to comfort me at the close of this life but this passage of St. Paul: "It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." To this I cleave, and herein do I find rest.

Whenever a man takes upon him to make additions to the Scriptures, he is likely to end with valuing his own additions above Scripture itself.

Yes, it is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams, the most abundant and most marvelous liquor that has ever flowed to relieve the thirst of men! Through it , God will spread His Word. A spring of truth shall flow from it: like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light heretofore unknown to shine amongst men.

Compare Scripture with Scripture. False doctrines, like false witnesses, agree not among themselves.

The only "Scripture" most of today's uncertain souls know is an emasculated, paraphrased "Bible," rewritten to eliminate conviction of sin and catering to the rebellion of those who insist upon having the gospel modified to suit their unbelief. God will not accommodate their rebellion!

I seek the will of the Spirit of God through or in connection with the Word of God. The Spirit and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone without the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions also.

It is as impossible to understand the Scriptures without the Spirit's help as it is to read a sundial without the sun.

The Scriptures were written, not to make us astronomers, but to make us saints.

Many things there be in the scripture, which have a carnal fulfilling, even there where they be spoken or done; and yet have another spiritual signification, to be fulfilled long after in Christ and his kingdom, and yet never known till the thing be done.

Amidst the flood of dangerous reading, I plead for my Master's book; I call upon you not to forget the book of the soul. Do not let newspapers, novels, and romances be read, while the prophets and Apostles be despised. Do not let the exciting and sensual swallow up your attention, while the edifying and the sanctifying can find no place in your mind.

While the Christian message is increasingly becoming less acceptable in fashionable society, we must be always living according to Scripture and prepared to be apologists for Jesus Christ in all aspects of our lives.

Let us have one day exclusively to study and read the Word of God. If we can't take time during the week, we will have Sunday uninterrupted.

To those holy men who gave us the sacred Scriptures we owe a debt we can never hope to pay.

Triumphant prayer is almost impossible where there is neglect of the study of the Word of God.

As all types and figures in the Law were but empty shadows without the coming of Christ, so the New Testament is but a dead letter without the Holy Spirit in redeemed men as the living power of a full salvation.

Highly prize the Scriptures. Can he make a proficiency in any art, who doth slight and deprecate it? Prize this book of God above all other books.

Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years.

We encounter the beauty of the Lord when we spiritually ingest the statements of Scripture concerning the wonders of who God is and all He does. When we take the scintillating truths of God and hide them in our hearts, meditate on them, muse on them, soak our souls in them, so to speak, we become infatuated with the exquisite personality of God.

The living Word is able to destroy Satanic forces.

We may be certain that whatever God has made prominent in His Word, He intended to be conspicuous in our lives.

The Word of God is not to be used as a lottery; nor is it designed to instruct us by shreds and scraps, which, detached from their proper places, have no determinate import; but it is to furnish us with just principles, right apprehensions to regulate our judgments and affections, and thereby to influence and direct our conduct.

No, the Scriptures were not given to us to confuse us but rather to instruct us. Certainly God intends that we should believe His Word with all simplicity. A thousand years means a thousand years; a wolf means a wolf; a lion means a lion. If you read your Bible that way, a child can understand it.

Now what is food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the Word of God; and here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water passes through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering it over and applying it to our hearts.

Without prayer the study of Scripture can turn into a merely intellectual exercise. Prayer without Scripture will lack needed motivation and guidance.

The Scripture abounds in commands and cautions for our utmost diligence in our search and inquiry as to whether we are made partakers of Christ or not, or whether His Spirit dwells in us or not--which argue both the difficulty of attaining an assured confidence herein, as also the danger of our being mistaken, and yet the certainty of a good issue upon the diligent and regular use of means to that purpose.

If the word stays not in the memory, it cannot profit. Some can better remember a piece of news than a line of Scripture: their memories are like those ponds, where frogs live, but fish die.

If I did not believe in the infallibility of Scripture - the absolute infallibility of it from cover to cover, I would never enter this pulpit again!

Those who would like the God of scripture to be more purely ethical, do not know what they ask.

We need to attack the false foundation of autonomous human reasoning that leads to evolution and millions of years, and proclaim that God's revealed Word is authoritative and its history of the world is foundational to Christian morality and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is not hasty reading, but seriously meditating upon holy and heavenly truths that makes them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the bee's touching on the flowers that gathers the honey, but her abiding for a time upon them, and drawing out the sweet. It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most on divine truth, that will prove the choicest, wisest, strongest Christian.

I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.

I call the New Testament the Book of Joy. There is nowhere in the world another book that is pervaded with such a spirit of exhilaration.

Resistance is one of the indispensable elements in spiritual combat. The best defense is a continuous offense. Oppose with the will as well as with the strength in the spirit. How shall we resist? With the Word of God which is the Sword of the Holy Spirit.

As you spend time in God's Word and understand his love, the Holy Spirit will create new desires within you to love and serve others like never before.

God speaks to man through the Scriptures, and He does not reveal normative truth except as it is already revealed in the Scriptures themselves. The test of truth must remain not what man experiences today but what the Scriptures have stated long ago.

Jesus endorsed the inspiration of the Old Testament, not only as "full" or "plenary," but even "literal" in the sense that the very letters of the words were inspired.

A readiness to believe every promise implicitly, to obey every command unhesitatingly, to stand perfect and complete in all the will of God, is the only true spirit of Bible study.

I call God to record against the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus, that I never altered one syllable of God's Word against my conscience, nor would do this day, if all that is in earth, whether it be honor, pleasure, or riches, might be given me.

Only what God has commanded in His word should be regarded as binding; in all else there may be liberty of actions.

Give me the plenary, verbal theory of biblical inspiration with all its difficulties, rather than the doubt. I accept the difficulties and humbly wait for their solution. But while I wait, I am standing on the rock.

Disbelieve hell, and you unscrew, unsettle, and unpin everything in Scripture.

The word of God is the food by which prayer is nourished and made strong.

The Scripture is the library of the Holy Ghost; it is a pandect of divine knowledge, an exact model and platform of religion. The Scripture contains in it the credenda, "the things which we are to believe," and the agenda, "the things which we are to practice."

He that despairs degrades the Deity, and seems to intimate that He is insufficient, or not just to his word; in vain hath he read the Scriptures, the world, and man.

All portions of Scripture ought to be approached with deep humility and earnest prayer for the teaching of the Spirit. On no point have good people so entirely disagreed as on the interpretation of prophecy; on no point have the prejudices of one group, the dogmatism of a second and the extravagance of a third done so much to rob the church of truths which God intended to be a blessing.

We corrupt the Word of God most dangerously, when we throw any doubt on the plenary inspiration of any part of Holy Scripture.

Let me repeat that no greater curse has ever afflicted the Church of Jesus Christ than the curse of spiritualizing Scripture, that is, making Scripture mean something other than its literal meaning... Instead of spiritualizing, it is 'demonizing' of the Scriptures, for if any 'spirit' has anything to do with that school of Scripture interpretation it must be an 'evil spirit.'

There are so many people who want to get together to have a great prayer meeting or other great gatherings. Friend, have you ever tried being alone? That is where God will meet with you. Take the Word of God and go off alone with Him. It will do you a lot of good.

How fast we learn in a day of sorrow! Scripture shines out in a new effulgence; every verse seems to contain a sunbeam, every promise stands out in illuminated splendor; things hard to be understood become in a moment plain.

The books of Nature and of Revelation equally elevate our conceptions and invite our piety; they are both written by the finger of the one eternal, incomprehensible God.

The meanness of the earthen vessel which conveys to others the Gospel of treasure, takes nothing from the value of the treasure. A dying hand may sign a deed of gift of incalculable value. A shepherd's boy may point out the way to a philosopher. A beggar may be the bearer of an invaluable present.

The Christian is bred by the Word, and he must be fed by it.

We are told in scripture that with God all things are possible. But Lewis states that this does not mean that God can do anything. God cannot, for example, answer nonsensical questions...He cannot do both of two mutually exclusive things; for example, He cannot create creatures with free will and at the same time withhold free will from them.

Now, in order that true religion may shine upon us, we ought to hold that it must take its beginning from heavenly doctrine and that no one can get even the slightest taste of right and sound doctrine unless he be a pupil of Scripture.

I am perfectly convinced that whatever the gospels are they are not legends. Christ bent down and scribbled in the dust with His finger. Nothing comes of this. No one has based any doctrine on it. And the act of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convincing is purely a modern art.

Be on guard against any tampering with the Word, whether disguised as a search for truth, or a scholarly attempt at apparently hidden meanings; and beware of the confusion created by the senseless rash of new versions, translations, editions, and improvements upon the tried and tested Bible of our fathers and grandfathers.

I don't mean that there is too little New Testament language in our prayers; but there is too little both Old and New Testament language meditated on, understood, believed, realized and felt. There is too little Scripture substance, Scripture strength, Scripture depth, and Scripture height, in our prayers.

Read whatever chapter of scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it - yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon him.

Study detains the mind by the perpetual occurrence of something new, which may gratefully strike the imagination.

We also need a regular systematic study of the Scriptures. We cannot maintain our spiritual life without it any more than we can maintain our physical bodies without proper nourishment.

It's time for a new Reformation in the Church--to call the Church back to the authority of the Word of God, beginning in Genesis.

There is mention of a sword turning every way: parallel whereto is the Word of God in a wounded conscience. Man's heart is full of windings, turnings, and doublings, to shift and shun the stroke thereof, if possible: but this sword meets them wheresoever they move; it fetches and finds them out; it haunts and hunts them, forbidding them, during their agony, any entrance into the paradise of one comfortable thought.

There is no excuse for falling into delusion, which is so contrary to the Word of God.

Our claim is that God has revealed Himself by speaking; that this divine (or God-breathed) speech has been written down and preserved in Scripture; and that Scripture is, in fact, God's Word written, which therefore is true and reliable and has divine authority over men.

God speaks by the Church (the true Church we mean); but He speaks nothing by her but what He speaks in the Scriptures, which she does only ministerially declare to us; and therefore the authority of God and His law is above hers, who, though she publish, yet did not make it, but is herself subject to it.

When the honest, sincere Christian is faced with the decision regarding whether a thing is right or wrong, he should ask, does it agree with all that the Scripture has to say on the subject?

The seed once sown grows of itself, from its own impulse and power of life. The self-inherent power of growth of the kingdom of God.

If you do not understand a book by a departed writer you are unable to ask him his meaning, but the Spirit, who inspired Holy Scripture, lives forever, and He delights to open the Word to those who seek His instruction.

No one can be a good Christian who does not with holy zeal set out to know, delight in, and live by the Word of God!

The Scripture can only be read intelligently by inspired men and women. The value we get from our reading is in direct proportion to the measure in which we are filled with God's Spirit.

There are four things that we ought to do with the Word of God - admit it as the Word of God, commit it to our hearts and minds, submit to it, and transmit it to the world.

Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, there a church of God exists, even if it swarms with many faults.

The Word of God confronts us as our adversary before he makes himself our Lord and Master.

No one statement wrested from its context is a sufficient warrant for actions that plainly controvert other commands. How excellent a thing it would be if the whole Church of Christ had learned that no law of life may be based upon an isolated text. Every false teacher who has divided the Church, has had, "it is written" on which to hang his doctrine.

Since no daily responses are given from heaven, and the Scriptures are the only record in which God has been pleased to consign His truth to perpetual remembrance, the full authority which they ought to possess with the faithful is not recognized unless they are believed to have come from heaven as directly as if God had been heard giving utterance to them.

Beware of reasoning about God's Word - obey it.

The Word of God I think of as a straight edge, which shows up our own crookedness. We can't really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture.

I believe that the Holy Spirit is indispensable for an interpreter's reaching a correct interpretation of the text. The Spirit must work in the interpreter's heart so that he or she welcomes the biblical message that one's egotistic, sinful heart otherwise hates with a vengeance.

God's Word must be so strongly fixed in our minds that it becomes the dominant influence in our thoughts, our attitudes, and our actions. One of the most effective ways of influencing our minds is through memorizing Scripture. David said, "I have hidden Your Word in my heart that I might not sin against You" (Psm. 119:11).

We search the world for truth; we cull The good, the pure, the beautiful, From all old flower fields of the soul; And, weary seekers of the best, We come back laden from our quest, To find that all the sages said Is in the Book our mothers read.