Fire vs. Theological Craft

    Enthusiasm sees God. Love sees God. Fire sees God. But we have escaped the revealing, sympathetic fire and have built our prudent religion upon the sand. On the sand! Think of it! So we go to it, and walk around it, and measure it, and break it up into propositions, and placard it on church walls, and fight about it with infinite clamor and some spitefulness.

    My soul, amid all Unknowableness, Incomprehensibleness, and other vain and pompous nothings, hold fast to the faith that you can know God and yet know nothing merely about Him. You can know Him by love and pureness, and not know about Him by intellectual art or theological craft.

 

Joseph Parker: Poet, Seer, Preacher

Ripping Open Graves


God! God! God! Ever hidden, ever present, ever distant, ever near; a Ghost, a Breath, making the knees knock in terror, ripping open a grave at the very feet of our pleasure; a mocking laugh at the feast, filling all space like the light, yet leaving room for all His creatures; a Terror, a Hope—Undefinable, Unknowable, Irresistible, Immeasurable. God is a Spirit!

More Messages by J. Parker HERE

Joseph Parker: Poet, Seer, Preacher

Deus Absconditus

     

 Deus absconditus. God hides Himself, most often in the light; He touches the soul in the gloom and vastness of night, and the soul, being true in its intent and wish, answers the touch without a shudder or a blush. It is even so that God comes to me.

      God does not come through man’s high argument, a flash of human wit, a sudden and audacious answer to an infinite enigma, or a toilsome reply to some high mental challenge. His path is through the pathless darkness—without a footprint to show where he stepped; through the forest of the night he comes, and when he comes the brightness is all within!
     My God—unknown and unknowable—cannot be chained as a Prisoner of logic or delivered into the custody of a theological proposition or figured into literal art. Shame be the portion of those who have given Him a setting within the points of the compass, who have robed Him in cloth of their own weaving, and surnamed Him at the bidding of their cold and narrow fancy!

More Messages by J. Parker HERE

Joseph Parker: Poet, Seer, Preacher

IMAGES:   Mirella Ricciardi, Vanishing Africa

Attributes of God

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I recently picked up the book Classic Sermons on the Attributes of God from my local Goodwill store for one dollar. There were several more books in the series Classic Sermons (from Kregel Publications, edited by Warren Wiersbe) and I wish I had bought them all.
This one is so good. I recommend it. Among others, it contains sermons by Moody, Beecher, Wesley, and Spurgeon. I will be posting some sections of sermons by Joseph Parker here soon.

 

From the preface:

In these difficult days, we do not need “clever” pulpiteers who discuss the times;
we need dedicated ambassadors who will preach the eternities.