church

My life has far exceeded my expectations not because of my own personal efforts or mindset but because of my friends who have enriched my existence

Your outlook affects your outcome

live as temporal, serve as eternal

If you perceive right you receive right. If you perceive wrong you receive wrong.

Love is dangerous because it makes you an individual. And the state and the church . . . they don__ want individuals, not at all. They don__ want human beings, they want sheep. They want people who only look like human beings but whose souls have been crushed so utterly, damaged so deeply, that it seems almost irreparable.

Living according to God's truth means that my ego must die, and I must live entirely for God and for my neighbors. Living according to God's truth means not following the crowd and not being dismayed when even your friends misunderstand you. For the God whom you serve will have the final word. On the day of judgement he will speak the final word over the whole of your life.

I became a Christian at the age of seventeen. I made a very conscious act of commitment and my only desire was to be kept in purity and holiness throughout the whole time of my earthly pilgrimage. I didn't choose Christ's narrow path for the riches, fame, or comfortable life it would bring, for I had experienced several times in my family before I became a Christian that true discipleship would mean a life of persecution.

Without Christ a people may always have the freedom to do, but never the power to complete.

To promise to abide by this legislation, so inimical to God, would mean forsaking the gospel and turning away from God's law. This is why Christians have a choice to make, either to trade in their loyalty to God for freedom from persecution, or to remain true to Christ and consequently run the risk of persecution.

All sorts of darkness and evil are now hiding themselves under the umbrella of religion, Christianity, church etc.

[The Church] has lived through its early travails and has now come to accept an easier way of life. It is content to carry on its painless program with enough money to pay its bills and a membership large enough to assure its future. Its members now look to it for security rather than for guidance in the battle between good and evil. It has become a school instead of a barracks. Its members are students, not soldiers. They study the experiences of others instead of seeking new experiences of their own.

The disgrace of the church in the twentieth century is that more zeal is evident among Communists and cultists than among Christians.

Persecution for Christians is not a possibility, it's a promise, it's not a maybe, it's a surely! Following Jesus can mean finding the trouble you've been looking for!

Finally, the work of the minister tended to be judged by his success in a single area - the saving of souls in measurable numbers. The local minister was judged either by his charismatic powers or by his ability to prepare his congregation for the preaching of some itinerant ministerial charmer who would really awaken its members. The 'star' system prevailed in religion before it reached the theater. As the evangelical impulse became more widespread and more dominant, the selection and training of ministers was increasingly shaped by the revivalist criterion of ministerial merit. The Puritan ideal of the minister as an intellectual and educational leader was steadily weakened in the face of the evangelical ideal of the minister as a popular crusader and exhorter. Theological education itself became more instrumental. Simple dogmatic formulations were considered sufficient. In considerable measure the churches withdrew from intellectual encounters with the secular world, gave up the idea that religion is a part of the whole life of intellectual experience, and often abandoned the field of rational studies on the assumption that they were the natural province of science alone. By 1853 an outstanding clergyman complained that there was 'an impression, somewhat general, that an intellectual clergyman is deficient in piety, and that an eminently pious minister is deficient in intellect.

Zeal, if it be well ordered, is most beautiful in a Christian; but if not, it is a thing of exceeding great danger: as fire in moderation is most comfortable, but in extremity most fearful.

Refusal to engage in spiritual warfare does not exempt you from being among the next casualties of war

Except... what Jesus said was: "I will build My church," not you. The verse is not a prediction, it is a proclamation of the Lord of the Earth, who never once talked of "children in subjection." or "wives be grave... sober, faithful in all things." In fact, reading the New Testament from the Gospels into Paul's letters, is like watching the Wizard of Oz backwards -- going from a world of color and amazement, into a land of black-and-white with insane devout women trying to kill your dog. -- editorial 2014

Any church that operates in prayerless and powerless Christianity spend their days and years conducting dust to dust rites in the burial grounds.