H A Ironside Quotes

The hardest thing in the world to do is to attempt to live a Christian life and meet the obligations of a Christian, when you have no Christian life to live.

It is, generally speaking, a far more pleasant task to preach the gospel to lost poor sinners than to minister to the needs of wayward saints.

God's servants would preach better if you prayed for them more; there would be more response to the preaching if they were more upheld in the secret closet by the people of God.

To prophesy is not only to be able to foretell coming events, but to give the mind of God in relation to the present or future.

While faith is in exercise, all is bright. When self is looked to, all becomes dark.

God never seeks to gratify mere curiosity.

Do not be afraid that you will ever lose by obedience to the Book.

God does not put a premium upon ignorance.

They thought they had gotten rid of Him. They said, “We have no king but Caesar”; they cried, “Crucify Him, crucify Him,” and their will was carried out and His precious dead body sealed up in Joseph’s tomb; but God had not changed His mind. He is to reign in Zion yet. He is going to have the throne just as surely as He had the cross.

I am sure that at the judgment-seat of Christ, when our blessed Lord is giving a reward to the Apostle Paul, He will call up many of the saints of whom we have never heard and have them stand with Paul, for they were his fellow-helpers in his ministry, and He will say, "You held up his hands in prayer, and you must share in the reward.

Not saved are we by trying; From self can come no aid; ’Tis on the blood relying, Once for our ransom paid. ’Tis looking unto Jesus, The Holy One and Just; ’Tis His great work that saves us— It is not “try” but “trust”! No deeds of ours are needed To make Christ’s merit more: No frames of mind or feelings Can add to His great store; ’Tis simply to receive Him, The Holy One and Just; ’Tis only to believe Him— It is not “try” but “trust”!

one who gives himself/herself preeminently to the Word, neglecting prayer, will become heady and doctrinal-likely to quarrel about "points", and occupied with theoretical Christianity to the hurt of his soul and irritation of his brethren. On the other hand, one who gives himself/herself much prayer while neglecting the Word is likely to become introspective, mystical, and sometimes fanatical. But he/she who reads the Word of God reverently and humbling seeking to know the will of God, and then gives himself/herself to prayer, confessing and judging what the scriptures have condemned in his ways and words, and thoughts, will have his/her soul drawn out in worship also, and thus grow both in grace and in knowledge, becoming a well rounded follower of Christ. Apart from a knowledge of the Word, prayer will lack exceedingly in intelligence ; for the objective must never precede the subjective, and must not be divorced there from

Exposing error is most unpopular work. But from every true standpoint, it is worthwhile work. To our Saviour, it means that He receives from us, His blood-bought ones, the loyalty that is His due. To ourselves, if we consider "the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt," it insures future reward, a thousandfold. And to souls "caught in the snare of the fowler"- how many of them God only knows- it may mean light and life, abundant and everlasting.

But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.” Here He, the holy One, is in contrast to every good man in all past ages. It was never known that God forsook a righteous man. There He is on that Cross, the absolutely righteous One, dying, forsaken of God. Oh, He says, I have gone down lower than any man ever went before, “I am a worm, and no man.” The word He used for worm is the word “tola,” and the tola of the orient is a little worm something like the cochineal of Mexico which feeds on a certain kind of cactus. The people beat these plants until the cochineal fall into a basin and then they crush those little insects and the blood is that brilliant crimson dye that makes those bright Mexican garments. In Palestine and Syria they use the tola in the same way and it makes the beautiful permanent scarlet dye of the orient It was very expensive and was worn only by the great and the rich and the noble. It is referred to again and again in Scripture. Solomon is said to have clothed the maidens of Israel in scarlet. Daniel was to be clothed in scarlet by Belshazzar. And that word “scarlet” is literally “the splendor of a worm.” “They shall be clothed in the splendor of a worm.” Now the Lord Jesus Christ says, “I am a worm; I am the tola,” and He had to be crushed in death that you and I might be clothed in glory. The glorious garments of our salvation are the garments that have been procured as a result of His death and His suffering.

Old Ironsides, the only American tank division to see desert combat in World War II, was the only one to get no desert training. Hamilton H. Howze, the 1st Armored operations officer and a future four-star general, later asserted, “None of the division was worth a damn.

...Christ Himself reigns, but we are to reign with Him from the heavenly Jerusalem above. This, of course, is the New Jerusalem, the Bride, the Lamb's wife of Rev. 19 and 21. It embraces all the heavenly saints, that is, all those who have died in faith throughout the centuries, all who in every dispensation believed God and were therefore quickened by His Spirit. The heavenly Jerusalem is preeminently the Home of the Church and therefore is designated as the bridal city; but saints of all other dispensations who have passed through death and entered into resurrection life will, as one has expressed it, be upon its "Burgess roll.

The present is no time for temporizing. He who has saved us, and is Lord of all, looks for clear-cut separation from all spiritual or ecclesiastical as well as carnal or fleshly evil, in sanctification to Himself. To Christendom as a whole, as to Judah then, there is little use to make appeals, nor does the Lord do it. "Their ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken: behold, the word of the lord is unto them a reproach; they have no delight in it" (Jeremiah 6:10). So it has often been noted that after the days of Pergamos, in Rev. 2 and 3, the call is alone to the overcomer-- not to the mass.

It has pleased God to honor our faith, because faith is that which honors Him. Faith takes Him at His Word, and counts the things which are not as though they were (Rom. 4:17). But it is not faith that does the work. It is but the means which God uses to unloose His unlimited power. Faith is the hand which lays hold of Omnipotence.

Men of this world are happy when things go well with them outwardly. We have often pointed out that there is a great difference between peace and happiness. Happiness depends upon the “haps.” The old English word “hap” means a chance, and with the world if the “haps” are agreeable, if the chance events of life are satisfactory, then the worldling is happy, and if the “haps” are not satisfactory, he is un-happy. But with the Christian, whatever the “haps” are, if everything he has counted on goes to pieces, it does not make any difference. God is not going to pieces. God is there just the same, and so the soul can rest in Him.

A Christian’s life consists in doing good and suffering evil.” He is to rejoice for the privilege of suffering for Him who has redeemed us with His own blood.

All who do not repent shall be consumed together by the fierce anger of Jehovah as a withered oak, a waterless garden, and as tow to which the Lord shall apply the spark. Nor have the words of this section a voice for the Jew alone. They are also written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have arrived. The failure of the professing Church has been even greater than that of Jerusalem, because of the greater light against which we have sinned. Soon must the Holy and the True, disgusted with such corruption, vomit out of His mouth all that is unreal and opposed to His Word. But He stands knocking at the door, and whenever there is reality and a heart for Himself, He will come in and sup there in hallowed, blest communion, though the doom of guilty Christendom is so near. Chapter Two Zion’s Future Glory The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation (verse 9). One can imagine something of the exultant joy of the remnant as they look upon the once-despised Jesus and see in Him the God of their fathers

The Old Testament closes with the people of the Jews partially restored to their land, but under Persian dominion. The New Testament opens with the same people greatly multiplied and dwelling in the the same country, but under Roman sway, and yet with an Edomite vice-king exercising jurisdiction over part of the land.

Men presume to criticize and to sit in judgment on the Word of God, but here we are told that the Word itself is the supreme critic of our inmost thoughts and inclinations. It is plain that throughout this twelfth verse it is the written Word that is in view, but in that which immediately follows we have the personal pronouns used, showing us that the Living Word is now before the soul, He from whom nothing is hidden but to whose all-seeing eyes everything is naked and open. How important that those who have to do with Him be real and true in all their ways!

He ever emphasized the supreme importance of the word of God, though he himself was looked up to in later days as if among the inspired, and in this we have another serious lesson for our own times. For there is the constant danger of either setting aside God-given teachers, or else actually allowing their ministry to supersede the Bible. Such men would indeed be the last to wish that such a place be given them. The object of all divinely-gifted servants of God would be to assert the authority of Scripture; their one desire in oral or written ministry would be the elucidation of the Word, and recalling the people of God to the Book, in place of giving them a substitute for it. But again and again has the ministry of great gifts, justly valued, been put in place of the Word of the living God, and thus made into a creed, which to maintain is to be orthodox, and to vary from is to be accounted heterodox.

familiar with the history of the Church, can fail to see that the same snare has ever been the bane of every movement which in its early beginnings was marked by devotedness to Christ and reliance upon the living God, but which as the freshness of early days passed away, and numbers were added who had obtained the truth at little cost (often coming into it almost by natural birth), lost this peculiar link with the Divine, and depended more and more on what was merely human?

For us, who are seeking to learn lessons of practical value from all this, one thing stands out as a solemn warning: the people of the Jews had largely lost that godly separation and dependence which should have been their sanctification. In their distresses, in place of implicit reliance on the God of their fathers, they turned to alliances with the heathen, depending on an arm of flesh that often failed them, and was to be their ruin in the end.

The Pharisees were still the dominant party in Jerusalem, while the king was openly a Sadducee. He detested the strictness of the separatists and publicly defied them on one memorable occasion by pouring the water from the Pool of Siloam upon the ground instead of the altar, at the feast of tabernacles. This was a ceremony prescribed, not in the law, but the ritual, and referred to by our Lord in John 7:37, 38. A terrible uproar was precipitated by what the Pharisees regarded as a sacrilegious act, and Alexander called in his foreign troops to quell the riot. So fearful was the disturbance, that ere it was put down six thousand people had been slain. But this was only the beginning. Rebellion and insurrection broke out everywhere, and before peace was established some fifty thousand persons were killed.

His reign was somewhat lengthy (twenty-seven years), and in his later years he vigorously carried on his policy of subjugating and proselytizing by force the surrounding nations, who were given the alternative of submitting to circumcision or being put to death. He died in 79 B.C., and in his will directed that his body be given to his old opponents the Pharisees to do with it as they would. This unexpected submission of the grim warrior so surprised and pleased them that they buried him in great honor.

No one who really wants to count for God can afford to play at Christianity.