Coming Events and Present Duties Quotes

“The family of Abraham will no longer feel temptations, and the family of Job will not feel afflictions. The family of David will no longer mourn loss and death, the family of Paul will not feel thorns in the flesh, and the family of Lazarus will no longer be afflicted by poverty and sores.”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“Oh! The second Eden will be far better than the first! In the first Eden the door was not shut; our joy was just for a moment. But blessed be God, in the second Eden the Lord will shut us in.”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“Let young people go to every party and social event but utterly neglect their souls, and no one interferes. No one says, “Save yourselves.” No one says, “Be careful. Remember God, judgment, and eternity.” But let them start to read their Bibles and be diligent in prayer, let them avoid worldly amusements and use their time wisely, let them seek an evangelical ministry and live like an immortal being – let them do this, I say, and all their friends and relatives will be up in arms. “You are going too far. You are being extreme. Live a little.”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“The world will let a man serve the devil and quietly go to hell; no one lifts a finger to stop him or even says, “May God have mercy on your soul.” But the world will never let a man serve Christ and go to heaven quietly. Everybody cries, “Stop, wait!” and does anything and everything to keep him back.”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“It will come on men suddenly. It will break on the world all at once. It will not have been talked over, prepared for, and looked forward to by everyone. It will awaken minds like the cry of fire at midnight. It will startle hearts like a trumpet blown at bedside during a dead sleep. Like Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, they will know nothing until the very waters are upon them. Like Dathan, Abiram, and their followers when the earth opened under them, the moment they hear the report of Christ’s coming will be the same moment they see it with their eyes (Numbers 16). Before they can recover their breath and know where they are, they will find that the Lord has come.”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“Remember that a man may be mistaken on this subject, but yet be a holy child of God. It is not the slumbering on this subject that ruins souls, but the lack of grace! Above all, avoid dogmatism and overconfidence, especially when dealing with symbolic prophecy. It is a sad truth, but a truth never to be forgotten, that none have injured the doctrine of the second coming more than its overzealous friends.”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“I can only give my own individual testimony, but the little I know experimentally of the doctrine of Christ’s second coming convinces me to regard it as most practical and precious, and makes me long to see others regard it the same way. I find it a powerful spring and stimulus to holy living, a motive for patience, for moderation, for spiritual-mindedness, a test for how I use my time, and a gauge for all my actions. “Would I want my Lord to find me in this place, doing what I am doing?”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“It is possible to greatly disagree on the meaning of the symbols in the book of Revelation, yet agree entirely and substantially on the matter of Christ’s coming and kingdom.”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“In the matter of Christ’s second coming and kingdom, the church of Christ has not dealt fairly with the prophecies of the Old Testament. For too long we have refused to see that there are two personal advents of Christ spoken of in those prophecies: an advent in humiliation and an advent in glory, an advent to suffer and an advent to reign, a personal advent to carry the cross and a personal advent to wear the crown.”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“To expect wages after doing no work, prosperity after making no effort, or learning after neglecting books is utter foolishness. But to expect heaven without faith in Christ, or the kingdom of God without being born again, or the crown of glory without the cross and a holy walk – all this is greater folly still and yet more common. Sadly, this is the foolishness of the world!”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“The net of the gospel may perhaps be spread far more widely than it has ever been before, but in the last day, the angels will find an abundance of bad fish in it as well as good. There may be millions more people working for the gospel, and I pray that might be, but however faithfully they may sow, a large proportion of tares will be found growing together with the wheat at the time of harvest.”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“The visible church of Christ will always be a mixed body until Christ comes again. The visible church is always in danger of neglecting the doctrine of Christ’s second advent. Whenever Christ does come again, it will be a very sudden event. Christ’s second advent will cause an immense change to all the members of the visible church, both good and bad.”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“Everything around us seems unscrewed, loosened, and out of joint. The fountains of the great deep appear to be breaking up. Ancient institutions are tottering and ready to fall. Social and religious systems are failing and crumbling away. Church and state both seem convulsed to their very foundations, and what the end of this convulsion may be no one can tell.”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“God forbid that anyone should neglect present duties! To sit idly waiting for Christ, and not to attend to the business of our respective positions is not Christianity but fanaticism. Let us only remember in all our daily pursuits that we serve a Master who is coming again. If I can stir up just one Christian to think more of that second coming and to give it more prominence, I feel that this book will not have been published in vain.”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“I do not believe that either the preterist view of interpreting Revelation, which regards the book as almost entirely fulfilled, or the futurist view, which regards it as almost entirely unfulfilled, are to be implicitly followed. The truth, I expect, will be found to lie somewhere between the two.”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“If we have faith, we look backward to Christ dying on the cross, and if we have hope, we must look forward to Christ coming again (John 14:3; 2 Timothy 4:8; 2 Peter 3:12).”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“I believe the world will never be completely converted to Christianity by any existing agency before the end comes. Despite all that can be done by ministers, churches, schools, and missions, the wheat and the tares will grow together until the harvest, and when the end comes, the earth will be in much the same state that it was when the flood came in the days of Noah (Matthew 13:24-30; 24:37-39).”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“I believe the grand purpose of the present age is not to convert all mankind, but to gather out of the world an elect people. It does not surprise me at all to hear that the heathen are not all converted when missionaries preach, and that believers are but a little flock in any congregation in my own land. It is precisely the state of things that I expect to find. The gospel is to be preached as a witness and then the end will come. Now is the time of election, not of universal conversion (Matthew 24:14; Acts 15:14).”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]

“There is nothing I dislike so much in prophetic inquiry as dogmatism or overconfidence. Much of the discredit that has fallen on prophetic study has arisen from the fact that many students, instead of expounding prophecy, have turned into prophets themselves.”
― J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties: What the Bible Tells Us Clearly about Christ’s Return [Updated and Annotated]