My neighbour, or my servant, or my child, has done me an injury, and it is just that he should suffer an injury in return. Such is the doctrine which Jesus Christ summoned his whole resources of persuasion to oppose.
[to Jesus] You did not come down from the cross when they shouted to you, mocking and reviling you: "Come down from the cross and we will believe that it is you." You did not come down because, again, you did not want to enslave man by a miracle and thirsted for faith that is free, not miraculous...I swear, man is created weaker and baser than you thought him! How, how can he ever accomplish the same things as you? ...Respecting him less, you would have demanded less of him, and that would be closer to love, for his burden would be lighter.
How grateful we are that the heavens are indeed open, that the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored, and that the Church is founded on the rock of revelation. We are a blessed people, with apostles and prophets upon the earth today.
To me, my Dad's the greatest guy - next to Jesus Christ - who ever walked this planet. He's been that outstanding male role model in my life. And he's still the same guy I grew up around, very conscious of the image he sets forth. As he would say, 'Wouldn't do anything behind your back that I wouldn't do to your face.'
In the Lord Jesus Christ we see most clearly the union of prayer and life, the harmony and continual interpenetration of the two spheres of life - communion with God and the work on earth.
. . . an absurd problem came to the surface: 'How COULD God permit that (crucifixion of Jesus Christ)!' . . . the deranged reason of the little community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE . . . The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its most repugnant and barbarous form - the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism!
I read the Bible and know little of its history, but the human beings who wrote it were instruments of Divine Power, and Jesus forged a far stronger bond than the ten commandments: love. Birds and monkeys, or any of God's creatures, obey their instincts and merely do what they're programmed to do. In the case of the human being, things are more complicated because we know about love and its traps.
Muhammad was a prince; he rallied his compatriots around him. In a few years, the Muslims conquered half of the world. They plucked more souls from false gods, knocked down more idols, razed more pagan temples in fifteen years than the followers of Moses and Jesus did in fifteen centuries. Muhammad was a great man. He would indeed have been a god, if the revolution that he had performed had not been prepared by the circumstances.
Take Jesus for your king, and by baptism swear allegiance to him; take him for your prophet, and hear him; take him for your priest, to make atonement for you.
Do you who are a Christian desire to be revenged and vindicated, and the death of Jesus Christ has not yet been revenged, nor His innocence vindicated?
Thinking as I do that the Creator of this world is a very cruel being, and being a worshipper of Christ, I cannot help saying: ''the Son, O how unlike the Father!'' First God Almighty comes with a thump on the head. Then Jesus Christ comes with a balm to heal it.
I am looking for the fellowship of the burning heart--for men and women of all generations everywhere who love the Savior until adoration becomes the music of their soul until they don't have to be fooled with and entertained and amused. Jesus Christ is everything, all-in-all.