Seeing From Afar

“Has any mortal seen Heaven? Well, actually, all of us have seen the outskirts. If you ask a typical modern if he has ever seen an angel, you will likely get laughed at. You are likely to get this treatment even if the modern you ask happens to be a professing Christian. ‘Seeing angels’ is something our more excitable brethren on the charismatic fringes do, and we by contrast are sober, responsible, upright, not drunk, and pretty dude. And so when one of these buttoned-up-tight Christians tells you that he has never seen an angel, has it ever occurred to you to point at the night sky and ask, ‘So what are those?’”

The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 140

A Terrible Weapon

“A minister’s life is the life of his ministry . . . In great measure, according to the purity and perfections of the instrument, will be the success. It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.”

Robert Murray M’Cheyne, as quoted in Beeke, Reformed Preaching, p. 82