Quotable

“Come now, and let us reason together,” was the Divine appeal to His people in the old time, even in days of apostasy. And coupled with that appeal was the Divine lament, “My people doth not consider....” The word “consider” means using their intelligence, and thinking for themselves, instead of blindly following their religious leaders....

In his exposition of the parable of Matthew:12:43-45 [43] When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. [44] Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. [45] Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.
See All..., Dean Alford...[writes]: “Strikingly parallel with this runs the history of the Christian Church. Not long after the Apostolic times, the golden calves of idolatry were set up by the Church of Rome. What the effect of the captivity was to the Jews, that of the Reformation has been to Christendom. The first evil spirit has been cast out. But by the growth of hypocrisy, secularity and rationalism, the house has become...swept and garnished by the decencies of civilization and discoveries of secular knowledge, but empty of living and earnest faith. And he must read prophecy ill who does not see under all these seeming improvements the preparation for the final development of the man of sin, the great repossession, when idolatry and the seven more wicked spirits shall bring the outward frame of so-called Christendom to a fearful end.”

   Sir Robert Anderson, The Bible or the Church (c. 1910), pp. 3,4;9,10

“[I’m] into spirituality, not religion...” is an expression that downplays dogma, and revels in direct experience of the divine—whether it’s called the “Holy Spirit” or “cosmic consciousness” or the “true self.” It is practical and personal, more about stress reduction than salvation, more therapeutic than theological. It’s about feeling good, not being good.

   American Demographics, April 1999, pp. 60-65, cited by Gary E. Gilley in This Little Church Went to Market, pp. 20,21