Patrick Henry - "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here."
Patrick Henry - "Whether this will prove a blessing or a curse, will depend upon the use our people will make of the blessings which a gracious God hath bestowed on us. If they are wise, they will be great and happy. If they are of a contrary character, they will be miserable. Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation. Reader! Whoever thou art, remember this: and in thy sphere practice virtue thyself, an encourage it in others."
Paul Blanshard - "In religious matters it is now fashionable to define tolerance as the absence of criticism of any standard religion. All too often, this absence of criticism degenerates into a conspicuous absence of thought."
Paul Copan - "The scriptures are basically a narrative of God's interaction with human kind. If we lose this notion of God's desire for relationship with human beings, we're in danger of losing the heart of the Christian faith. Doctrines, of course, will flow from that, but when the scriptures call us to Believe, we're being called to put our trust in Someone, not just agree with a bunch of doctrine. Demons could do that. We are to commit ourselves to Christ."
Paul Lemoine - "The theory of evolution is impossible. At base, in spirit of appearances, no one any longer believes in it... Evolution is a kind of dogma which the priests no longer believe, but which they maintain for their people."
Paul Miller - "Anxiety wants to be God but lacks God's wisdom, power, or knowledge."
Paul Miller - "As my friend Cathie reflected on why this is true in her own life, she observed, 'I make the jump from optimism to darkness so quickly because I am not grounded in a deep, abiding faith that God is in the matter, no matter what the matter is. I am looking for pleasant results, not deeper realities."
Paul Miller - "Don't be embarrassed by how needy your heart is and how much it needs to cry out for grace. Just start praying."
Paul Miller - "If God is sovereign, then he is in control of all the details of my life. If he is loving, then he is going to be shaping the details of my life for my good. If he is all-wise, then he's not going to do everything I want because I don't know what I need. If he is patient, then he is going to take the time to do all this."
Paul Miller - "Jesus never used his power to show off. He used his power for love. So he wasn't immediately noticeable. Humility makes you disappear, which is why we avoid it."
Paul Miller - "Majesty and humility are such an odd fit. This is one reason we struggle with prayer. We just don't think God could be concerned with the puny details of our lives. We either believe he's too big or that we're not that important. No wonder Jesus told us to be like little children! Little children are not daunted by the size of their parents. They come, regardless."
Paul Miller - "There is far too much depth in people to be able to capture love easily. Likewise, there is far too much depth in God to capture prayer easily."
Paul Miller - "We can't do battle with evil without letting God destroy the evil in us as well. The world is far too intertwined."
Paul Miller - "You cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever; you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it... If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see."
Paul Miller - "You don't experience God; you get to know him. You submit to him. You enjoy him. He is, after all, a person."
Peter Kreeft - "Subtract miracles from Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, or Toaism, and you have essentially the same religion left. Subtract miracles from Christianity, and you have nothing but the cliches and platitudes most American Christians get weekly (and weakly) from their pulpits."
Peter Kreeft (and Ronald K. Tacelli) - "A man walking through a wall is a miracle. A man both walking and not walking through a wall at the same time and in the same respect is a contradiction. God can perform miracles but not contradictions - not because his power is limited, but because contradictions are meaningless."
Peter Kreeft (and Ronald K. Tacelli)- "The resurrection is of crucial practical importance because it completes our salvation. Jesus came to save us from sin and its consequence, death. The resurrection also sharply distinguishes Jesus from all other religious founders. The bones of Abraham and Muhammad and Buddha and Confucius and Lao-Tzu and Zoroaster are still here on earth. Jesus' tomb is empty. The existential consequences of the resurrection are incomparable. It is the concrete factual, empirical proof that: life has hope and meaning; "love is stronger than death"; goodness and power are ultimately allies, not enemies; life wins in the end; God has touched us right here where we are and has defeated our last enemy; we are not cosmic orphans, as our modern secular worldview would make us. And these existential consequences of the resurrection can be seen by comparing the disciples before and after. Before, they ran away, denied their Master and huddled behind locked doors in fear and confusion. After, they were transformed from scared rabbits into confident saints, world-changing missionaries, courageous martyrs and joy-filled touring ambassadors for Christ."
Peter Stoner - "We find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in 10 to the 17th power. That would be 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. In order to help us comprehend this, we take 10 to the 17th power silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote them according to their own wisdom. Now these prophecies were either given by inspiration of God or the prophets just wrote them as they thought they should be. In such a case the prophets had just one chance in 10 to the 17th power. of having them come true in any man, but they all came true in Christ. This means that the fulfillment of these eight prophecies alone proves that God inspired the writings of those prophecies to a definiteness which lacks only one chance in 10 to the 17th power of being absolute."
Peter Stoner - "We find that the chances that any one man fulfilled all 48 prophecies to be 1 in 10 to the 157th power. This is really a large number and it represents an extremely small chance. Let us try to visualize it. The silver dollar, which we have been using, is entirely too large. We must select a smaller object. The electron is about as small an object as we know of. It is so small that it will take 2.5 times 10 to the 15th power of them laid side by side to make a line, single file, one inch long. If we were going to count the electrons in this line one inch long, and counted 250 each minute, and if we counted day and night, it would take us 19,000,000 years to count just the one-inch line of electrons. If we had a cubic inch of these electrons and we tried to count them it would take us, counting steadily 250 each minute, 19,000,000 times 19,000,000 times 19,000,000 years or 6.9 times 10 to the 21st power years. With this introduction, let us go back to our chance of 1 in 10 to the 157th power. Let us suppose that we are taking this number of electrons, marking one, and thoroughly stirring it into the whole mass, then blindfolding a man and letting him try to find the right one. What chance has he of finding the right one? What kind of a pile will this number of electrons make? They make an inconceivably large volume."
Peter Van Inwagen - "Each of our beliefs and assertions represent the World as being a certain way, and the belief or assertion is true if the World is that way, and false if the World is not that way. It is, as one might put it, up to our beliefs and assertions to get the World right; if they don't, they're not doing their job, and that's their fault and no fault of the World's. Our beliefs and assertions are thus related to the World as a map is related to the territory: it is up to the map to get the territory right, and if the map doesn't get the territory right, that's the fault of the map and no fault of the territory."
Philip Brooks - "Do not pray for easy lives, pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle."
Philip Exner - "Don't think about what other people think about you, because most people don't."
Philip Shaff - "His [Jesus'] zeal never degenerated into passion, nor His constancy into obstinacy, nor his benevolence into weakness, nor His tenderness into sentimentality. HIs unworldliness was free from indifference and unsociability, His dignity from pride and presumption, His affectibility from undue familiarity, His self-denial from moroseness, His temperance from austerity. He combined child-like innocency with manly strength, absorbing devotion to God with untiring interest in the welfare of man, tender love to the sinner with uncompromising severity against sin, commanding dignity with winning humility, fearless courage with wise caution, unyielding firmness with sweet gentleness."
Philip Schaff - "The resurrection of Christ is therefore emphatically a test question upon which depends the truth or falsehood of the Christian religion. It is either the greatest miracle or the greatest delusion which history records."
Philip Schaff - "This Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; without science and learning, He shed more light on things human and divine than all the philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of schools, He spoke such words of life as were never spoken before or since and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet; without writing a single line, He set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art, and songs of praise, that the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times."
Philip Yancey - "A person who lives in faith must proceed on incomplete evidence, trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse."
Philip Yancey - "How would telling people to be nice to one another get a man crucified? What government would execute Mister Rogers or Captain Kangaroo?"
P. J. O'Rourke - "I'm a member of the 1960's generation. We didn't have any wisdom. We were the moron generation. We were the generation that believed we could stop the Vietnam War by growing our hair long and dressing like circus clowns. We believed drugs would change everything - which they did, for John Belushi. We believed in free love. Yes, the love was free, but we paid a high price for the sex. My generation spoiled everything for you. It has always been the special prerogative of young people to look and act weird and shock grown-ups. But my generation exhausted the Earth's resources of the weird. Weird clothes - we wore them. Weird beards - we grew them. Weird words and phrases - we said them. So, when it came your turn to be original and look and act weird, all you had left was to tattoo your faces and pierce your tongues. Ouch. That must have hurt. I apologize."
Publius Cornelius Tacitus - "To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a desolation and call it peace."