R.C. Sproul > Quotes

“General revelation is just that: general. It is available to people everywhere. The Bible speaks of God as revealing Himself through nature and conscience (Ps. 19:1; Rom. 2:15). This is general revelation. It tells everyone in the world some of who God is: that He exists, that He is good, that He is powerful (Rom.”
― R.C. Sproul, Can I Trust the Bible?

“when”
― R.C. Sproul, What Is the Church?

“Let us examine briefly a formula that has had some currency in our day: “The Bible is the Word of God, which errs.” Now let us expunge some of these words. Remove “The Bible is,” so that the formula reads: “The Word of God, which errs.” Now erase “The Word of” and “which.” The result is “God errs.” To say the Bible is the Word of God that errs is clearly to indulge in impious doublespeak. If it is the Word of God, it does not err. If it errs, it is not the Word of God.”
― R.C. Sproul, What is Reformed Theology?: Understanding the Basics

“affirmation speaks to the relevance of the doctrine of inerrancy”
― R.C. Sproul, Can I Trust The Bible?

“for that which cannot be seen, that must mean that the faith of which the author is speaking is blind faith. I cannot think of anything that is farther”
― R.C. Sproul, What Is Faith?

“he”
― R.C. Sproul, What Does It Mean to Be Born Again?

“[✞] The LORD has c established his throne in the heavens, and his d kingdom rules over all.”
― R.C. Sproul, ESV Reformation Study Bible

“If God is not sovereign, then he is not God.”
― R.C. Sproul, What is Reformed Theology?: Understanding the Basics

“Christianity is not about involvement with religious experience as a tangent. It involves a meeting with a holy God, who forms the center, or core, of human existence. The Christian faith is theocentric. God is not at the edge of Christians’ lives but at the very center. God defines our entire life and worldview.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

“what basis should we make these decisions? That's where the "ethical theories" come in. The Christian”
― R.C. Sproul, How Should I Live In This World?

“The failures of Judas, of Peter, and of their fellow disciples should cause us to fall to our knees in surrender, asking Christ to cause us to stand. Only by His power will we remain loyal to Him.”
― R.C. Sproul, John

“Chance is nothing. It has no power because it has no being; therefore, it can exercise no influence over anything. Yet,”
― R.C. Sproul, Does God Control Everything?

“Ethics involves the question of authority. The Christian lives under the sovereignty of God, who alone may claim lordship over us. Christian ethics is theocentric as opposed to secular or philosophical ethics, which tend to be anthropocentric. For the humanist, man is the norm, the ultimate standard of behavior. Christians, however, assert that God is the center of all things and that His character is the absolute standard by which questions of right and wrong are determined.”
― R.C. Sproul, How Should I Live In This World?

“Nobody likes curve breakers. They make us all look bad. Jesus Christ was a curve breaker. He was the supreme curve buster. He was the ultimate super-competent. The outcasts of society loved Him because He paid attention to them. But those who held the seats of honor and power could not tolerate Christ.”
― R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

“The principle of priestly absolution was not a major issue. The Roman Catholic Church has always taught that the priestly words Te absolvo (“I absolve you”) find their strength in the promise of Jesus to the church that “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:19), granting the spokesmen of the church a right to speak the pardon of Christ to penitent people. The Roman Catholic Church understands that the power to forgive sins does not reside ultimately in the priest. The priest is merely a spokesman for Christ. In practice, the priestly absolution differs very little from the Protestant minister’s “assurance of pardon,” which is given from pulpits across the land every Sunday.”
― R.C. Sproul, Does Prayer Change Things?

“For an action to be judged good by God, it must fulfill two primary requirements. The first is that the action must correspond outwardly to the demands of the law. Second, the inward motivation for the act must proceed from a heart that is altogether disposed toward the glory of God.”
― R.C. Sproul, How Should I Live In This World?

“beginning”
― R.C. Sproul, What Do Jesus' Parables Mean?

“we could simply enter our prayer closets, let God read our minds, and call that prayer.”
― R.C. Sproul, Does Prayer Change Things?

“divine”
― R.C. Sproul, Can I Trust the Bible?

“The third type of legalism adds our own rules to God’s law and treats them as divine. It is the most common and deadly form of legalism. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees at this very point, saying, “You teach human traditions as if they were the word of God.” We have no right to heap up restrictions on people where He has no stated restriction.”
― R.C. Sproul, How Can I Develop A Christian Conscience?

“orthodox Christianity claims that Scripture not only bears witness to the truth but is the truth. It is the actual embodiment of divine revelation. It does not simply point beyond itself; it gives us nothing less than the veritable Word of God.”
― R.C. Sproul, Can I Trust the Bible?

“if we were to imagine the most pleasant experience possible and thought about doing that for eternity, we would be conceiving of something that would be closer to hell than to heaven.”
― R.C. Sproul, Surprised by Suffering: The Role of Pain and Death in The Christian Life

“Recuerda al Señor cuando vayas ante él. Él no te dará una piedra cuando le pidas pan.”
― R.C. Sproul, ¿Puede la oración cambiar las cosas?

“Unbelief is judged by Jesus not as an intellectual error but as a hostile act of prejudice against God Himself. This sort of unbelief is destructive to the church and to the people of God.”
― R.C. Sproul, Who Is Jesus?

“Before I became a Christian, my heart was beating, my lungs were filling and emptying, and my brain was active (although my teachers wondered at times). But I was spiritually dead. I was dead to the things of God because I existed solely and completely in what Jesus and the Apostles call “the flesh.”
― R.C. Sproul, Who Is The Holy Spirit?

“Lutero dijo que era inevitable que, dentro de poco tiempo, la luz del evangelio sería escondida una vez más en la oscuridad. La razón que dio fue que allí donde se predica el evangelio, este divide y provoca controversia. La gente no quiere constante controversia. Lo que queremos es paz. El mensaje de los falsos profetas de Israel era un mensaje de paz. Pero su paz era ilusoria. Ellos predicaban paz cuando no había paz, o lo que Lutero llamaba una paz carnal. Lutero dijo que cuando el evangelio se predica con pasión y precisión, no trae paz.”
― R.C. Sproul, ¿Qué es la iglesia?

“If I hope in anything or anyone less than One who has power over suffering and, ultimately, death, I am doomed to final disappointment. Suffering will drive me to hopelessness. What character I have will disintegrate. It is the hope of Christ that makes it possible for us to persevere in times of tribulation and distress. We have an anchor for our souls that rests in the One who has gone before us and conquered.”
― R.C. Sproul, Surprised by Suffering: The Role of Pain and Death in the Christian Life

“Though sin often brings immediate pleasure, it gives no lasting joy. If we understand the difference, we can avoid the pitfalls that entice the believer.
The”
― R.C. Sproul, Five Things Every Christian Needs to Grow

“God's people likely will not receive the world's adulation, but we will someday hear the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant.”
― R.C. Sproul, Five Things Every Christian Needs to Grow

“I am not satisfied to believe just anything simply for the sake of believing. If what I believe is not true—if it is superstitious or fallacious—I want to be liberated from it. But the mentality of our day seems to be that in matters of religion, truth is insignificant. We learn truth from science. We get good feelings from religion.”
― R.C. Sproul, Does God Control Everything?