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God's purpose is explicit: "God hath sent His Son into the world, that the world through Him might be saved." Yet formidable obstacles obscure this gracious design.
He does not stand above his audience as one who possesses the message of salvation and dispenses it downward.
The accumulation of light things becomes overwhelmingly ponderous.
This is no mere coincidence of timing, but the visible sign of a profound spiritual principle: unbelief seals the mouth; faith unlocks it.
Little sins are peculiarly offensive to God precisely because they are little—we risk offending Him for what we ourselves care very little about and expect insignificant return from.
Yet understand: there is no opposition between Christ and His people requiring conquest.
These unnamed men, bearing no vision, no command from Jerusalem, no precedent to guide them—only truth in their minds and the impulses of Christ's love in their hearts—solved the question that had vexed the apostles: whether salvation belonged to Gentiles.
The Victorian expositor understood this command as operating on five essential dimensions.
First, as an intellectual gift, the Scriptures answer mankind's deepest inquiries about the origin and history of the world in ways that satisfy the reasoning mind.
In The Impossible, the Belon family is separated by the 2004 tsunami. Maria and Lucas are swept miles away; Henry searches with the younger boys. Against all odds, they reunite. What survived the wave? Not their possessions—family, love, determination to find each other.
The margin reads, "Set your heart to her bulwarks." This is no passing glance or negligent inspection; it demands wholehearted attention and deliberate investigation.
The Church is compared to a dove through ten striking parallels.
He means it with deliberate, reiterated assurance to that handful of poor, ignorant fishermen who knew Him so dimly.
Matthew 10:7 presents five critical dimensions of apostolic proclamation, restored from Joseph S. Exell's Victorian exposition: First, *Who* preaches? The disciples Christ commissioned. Second, *What* do they announce? "The kingdom of heaven"—speak of the King in His threefold majesty: King...
The ground of the mistake lies in misinterpreting the word "remaineth": taken to point to rest after the sorrows of this life are finished.
All contingencies rest under the direction of God's providence.
Similarly, when a musician strikes an out-of-tune instrument, he produces sound but the instrument's broken strings produce the jarring discord.
Basil observed that these saints possessed such extraordinary courage and confidence amid their sufferings that watching heathens witnessed their heroic zeal and constancy—and turned to Christ themselves.
Yet he 'obeyed at once,' unburdened by ignorance of his destination.
This vivid metaphor describes how God's people must guard and maintain the truths contained in Scripture through deliberate action.
Our relation to Christ determines our relation to the entire universe.
This outburst reveals the nature of evil's opposition to Christ.
Yet his greatest difficulty arose from a faction calling themselves Christ's party—a group whose very name masked dangerous sectarianism.
Its acquisition presents such difficulties that it is seldom truly found in our age.