God's people should be baptized because God commanded it, not because some church requires it.
JOHN R. RICE, Bible Baptism
I tell you, Heaven is a real, literal, physical place, a city as material, as physical, as literal as Chicago or London or New York or Tokyo.
JOHN R. RICE, Bible Facts about Heaven
If you surrender yourself, and do not rush, but meditate on the Word of God, you will find prayer forming in your heart. It is a prayer inspired by the Holy Spirit, a prayer that God will be pleased to hear.
JOHN R. RICE, Hindrances to Prayer
Salvation is a free gift.
JOHN R. RICE, Bible Facts about Heaven
Do you think that your sin is hidden away? Do you think that men will never know it? Well, you should remember that God knows it already. And you should remember, second, that sin continued in will inevitably come to light. Usually it will be exposed in this life. Certainly it will be exposed when you stand before God and God's record books are opened. That which is whispered in a corner shall be shouted from a housetop. God will bring every secret thing to judgment, we are told. What warning to our hearts!
JOHN R. RICE, What It Costs to Be a Good Christian
And then the dear Lord will take us to the new earth, surrounded by the new Heaven, and the holy New Jerusalem will come down from God out of Heaven. Then we will have an end of pain and sorrow and crying and death. All these, thank God, will be forever done! And then God Himself will wipe away our tears.
JOHN R. RICE, Tears in Heaven
What kind of Christian are you? Did you ever lose a job, or lose a night's sleep, or lose a friend for God? If your Christianity never costs you a dollar, never cost you a friend, never cost any tears or broken heart, then can you really say that you love the Lord very much? To be a really good Christian is going to cost you.
JOHN R. RICE, What It Costs to Be a Good Christian
Any time a Christian is conscious of his sin, judges the sin and takes sides against it with a penitent heart, then he has a perfect right to trust the Lord for instant, complete forgiveness and for perfect cleansing.
JOHN R. RICE, Hindrances to Prayer
The Saviour said He was going to prepare us a place. How wonderful it will be is beyond human computation. Remember that in six days Christ made the heavens and earth and all that in them is.... If He made so many wonders in six days, then what beauties and marvels He has surely prepared during these 1900 years in which He has been preparing our mansions in the Father's House!
JOHN R. RICE, Bible Facts about Heaven
It is far best for the Christian never to see some things, so he will never want them. The old-fashioned Christian who will not have playing cards in his house will never learn to gamble with them. One who never sees, in movies and night clubs or elsewhere, half-clothed girls, drinking, smoking, gambling, petting, making love to many men, is likely to miss being led into that kind of life by these sirens of sin. It is the Devil's game to make people think it necessary for people to "know the ways of the world."
JOHN R. RICE, The Ruin of a Christian
Many a Christian woman has wept as she told me how earnestly she prayed, how diligently she attended the house of God, how eagerly she did church work, and God seemed not to hear her prayers about an unsaved husband or son or daughter! It is a remarkable fact that in nearly every congregation of Christians are godly women, women who pray, who read their Bibles, who live lives more or less separated from worldliness in general, and yet who cannot get their prayers answered for the conversion of their loved ones. "Why? Why?" the cry comes. The answer is not found in the public church services. The answer is not found if you watch such good women singing in the choir, teaching in the Sunday School, attending Bible conferences, giving money to the poor. No, no! Our sins and hindered prayer are primarily home-sins. The sins of Christians which hinder their prayers and stop Heaven, and shut the ears of God and grieve Him till He turns His dear face away from His own born-again children, are not most often the sins of the tavern, nor of the dance floor, nor of the theatre. They are not the public sins so much as the private sins. They are not the sins in the church so much as in the homes!
JOHN R. RICE, Hindrances to Prayer
A Christian might drink only ginger ale at the tavern bar, but there he is already on the way to drinking beer and whiskey. The girl who attends a ball but never dances a step, will soon surrender her body to the lustful embrace of every casual male acquaintance as other dancers do.
JOHN R. RICE, The Ruin of a Christian
Christian, that sin which first came between you and God is bad, but that is not the last step in the progress of sin. The most guilty part in this quadruple sin is to hide it, deny it, ignore it, refust to confess it, refuse to repent of it!
JOHN R. RICE, The Ruin of a Christian
Dear lost sinner, if you are a wicked sinner, yet you do not have to die and go to Hell forever. If you are a criminal or a harlot, a blasphemer, a drunkard, a convict, or a dope fiend, God does not want you to go to Hell. People do not go to Hell simply because they are sinners. Rather they go because they will not repent of their sins! If you today will confess your sins to God, and in your poor, helpless heart, will, as far as you know how, turn away from your sin, God will have mercy and will forgive and save.
JOHN R. RICE, The Ruin of a Christian
Let no preacher in a little church think that he has no audience for his message. An unseen audience of multitudes compass him about! Let no Christian who sins in the dark think that he is unobserved. He is compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses! Assuredly in Heaven they know what goes on on earth.
JOHN R. RICE, Tears in Heaven
But do you suppose that anybody was ever burned at the stake who was just a casual, ordinary Christian, like must of us are? Certainly not! Christians who never win a soul, who never fight some great iniquity, who never oppose false doctrines, who never risk all in an attack on the forces of evil--such Christians of course will never die for Jesus. If you do not give Satan any trouble, then of course Satan will not worry much about you. They never piled any fagots nor set any fires burning around ordinary Christians who lived like the rest of the world and simply went to church occasionally! The only people who were ever worthy to be martyred were those who set out to die, if need be, in order to carry out the plan of Christ and to save souls.
JOHN R. RICE, What It Costs to Be a Good Christian
The Christian who drinks cannot win his drinking companions to Christ. The girl who dances will never win her dancing boyfriend! You may think to gain favor and influence with the unsaved by joining with them in the lodge, or attending with them the movies, or by smoking or drinking or playing bridge with them, but you cannot! Worldliness means powerlessness! And that means that every Christian who sells out is guilty of the murder of the poor lost souls that go to Hell because he lost his influence.
JOHN R. RICE, The Ruin of a Christian
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