The time of testing that marks and mightily enriches a soul’s spiritual career is no ordinary one,
but a period when all hell seems to let loose, a period when we realize our souls are brought into a net,
when we know that God is permitting us to be in the devil’s hand. Alpha White
From Streams in the Desert Volume 1 by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
…an impersonal beginning explains neither the form of the universe nor the personality of man…But the Judeo-Christian tradition begins with the opposite answer. And it is upon this that our whole Western culture has been built.
The universe had a personal beginning – a personal beginning on the high order of the Trinity. That is, before ” in the beginning ” the personal was already there. Love and thought and communication existed prior to the creation of the heavens and the earth.
Modern man is deeply plagued by the question “Where do love and communication come from?” Many artists who pour themselves out in their paintings, who paint bleak messages on canvas, many singers, many poets and dramatists are expressing the blackness of the fact that while everything hangs upon love and communication, they don’t know where these come from and they don’t know what they mean.
The biblical answer is quite otherwise: Something was there before creation. God was there; love and communication were there; and therefore, prior even to Genesis 1:1, love and communication are intrinsic to what always has been.
Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984)
Stones are not broken except by an earnest
use of the hammer, and the stone-breaker usually
goes down on his knees…
…You can force your way through anything
with the leverage of prayer. Thoughts and
reasoning may be like the steel wedges that
may open a way into truth, but prayer is the
lever, the crowbar that forces open the iron
chest of sacred mysteries so that we may get
the treasures hidden in it for those who can
force their way to reach it. “Until now the
kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the
violent take it by force. ” (Matt 11:12).
Take care that you work with the mighty
implement of prayer, and nothing can stand
against you.
Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)
Christianity is a very diverse religion, containing
elements meant to satisfy every part of our make-up.
We have minds, and Christianity has food for our minds.
It is a thinking man’s religion.
Christianity takes us to the very beginning of creation and
introduces us to God who is
all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-wise.
It provides us with the most profound of all analysis
of man’s nature and condition – made in the image of God,
yet tragically marred by rebellion against God and resulting
accumulation of wickedness.
Christianity reveals God’s amazing provision for salvation through
the work of Jesus Christ, and it stretches our minds beyond the past
and present to the future, where we view the ransomed saints of God in
God’s presence in great glory.
These doctrines challenge our minds and reward diligent study.
James Montgomery Boice (1938-2000)
I believe that for a nation and for an
individual it is possible to continue in
sin until you cross over a mark. I do not
know where the mark is – I don’t pretend 
to be able to say when this takes place – but there is such a place. When you pass over that mark, it is not that the grace of God cannot reach you but that you cannot reach God for the simple reason that you have come to the place where you are hardened and in a state of unbelief which cannot be changed. This can be true of a nation, and it can be true of an individual.
J.Vernon McGee (1904-1988)
The Greek for ‘word’ is Logos, a term that was used by stoic philosophers for the rational principle behind the universe and subsequently invested with additional meaning by Christians, who used it to describe the second person of the Trinity. The term ‘word’ itself conveys to us notions of command, meaning, code, communication – thus information; as well as the creative power needed to realize what was specified by that information. The Word, therefore, is more fundamental than mass-energy. Mass-energy belongs to the category of the created. The Word does not.
John C. Lennox
After forty days Noah opened the window
he had made in the ark and he sent out
a raven, and it kept flying back and forth
until the water had dried up from the earth.
Genesis 8: 6,7
Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: “Leave
here, turn eastward and hide in the ravine of Kerith,
east of the Jordan.You will drink from the
brook, and I have ordered the ravens to feed
you there. So he did what the LORD had told
him. He went to the ravine of Kerith, east
of the Jordan, and stayed there.The ravens
brought him bread and meat in the morning
and bread and meat in the evening, and he
drank from the brook. 1 Kings 17:2
Life is more than food, and the body more
than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do
not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or
barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more
valuable you are than the birds!
Luke 12:23,24
No man can be prepared for any deep and vital work in the world who has not gone through the school of the devil. You cannot be taught to preach by reading books, however good and eloquent.
You overshoot my life; I must hear something in your tone and accents that tell me that
you too have been in the pit, have been dragged through the lake of fire, and have understood what it is to be almost – gone.
Joseph Parker (1830-1902)
“Who among the gods is like you, O Lord?
Who is like you — majestic in holiness,
awesome in glory, working wonders?”
Exodus 15:11
O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive
my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out
and my lying down; you are familiar with all my
ways. Before a word is on my tongue you 
know it completely, O Lord…. Where can I go from your
Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if
I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I
settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me, your
right will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely
the darkness will hide me and the light become
night around me,” even the darkness will
not be dark to you; the night will shine like
the day, for darkness is as light to you.
Psalm 139: 1-4,7-12
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and
forgives the transgression of the remnant of
his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever
but delight to show mercy. Micah 7:18
We have heard how the Lord dried up the water 
of the Red Sea for you when you came out of
Egypt, … for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on earth below.
Joshua 2:10…11
…“O Lord, God of Israel, There is no God like
you in heaven above or on earth below—you who
keep your covenant of love with your servants
who continue wholeheartedly in your way.”
1 Kings: 8: 23
Who is like the Lord our God, the One who
sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to
look on the heavens and the earth?
Psalm 113:5-6
“To whom will you compare me or count me equal?
To whom will you liken me that we may be compared?
Some pour out gold from their bags and weigh out silver 
on the scales; they hire a goldsmith to make it into a
god, and they bow down and worship it.
They lift it to their shoulders and carry it; they set
it up in its place, and there it stands. From that spot
it cannot move. Though one cries out to it, it does
not answer; it cannot save him from his troubles.”
Isaiah 46:5-7
Before the mountains were born or you brought
forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to
everlasting you are God.
Psalm 90: 2
“To be, rather than to seem”