The manner of God’s revealing His will to men is (also) very different. Some have had special, personal, and peculiar discoveries of it made to them. So had Samuel about the choice of the person whom he should anoint king… But now, all are tied up to the ordinary standing rule of the written Word, and must not expect any such extraordinary revelations from God. The way we now have to know the will of God concerning us in difficult cases, is to search and study the Scriptures, and where we find no particular rule to guide us in this or that particular case, there we are to apply general rules.

John Flavel (1627–1691), Puritanischer Prediger

Topics: The Bible & the Word of God, Guidance & God's Will

Occasions: For Reflection

John Flavel

John Flavel war ein englischer puritanischer Geistlicher und Autor des 17. Jahrhunderts, der nach dem Verlust seiner Pfarrstelle durch die Uniformitätsakte von 1662 vor allem verdeckt in Dartmouth wirkte. Er wurde durch theologische Schriften über die göttliche Vorsehung, innere Herzensprüfung und seelsorgerlichen Trost in Krisenzeiten bekannt. Heutigen Bibellesern vermittelt sein Werk einen Einblick in die Verbindung von reformierter Glaubenslehre mit praxisnaher Seelsorge und Alltagsfrömmigkeit.

All quotes by John Flavel (30)

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I read the Bible the way I harvest my apple tree: I shake it, and what falls down and is ripe, I take. The rest I leave hanging for now.

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The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid.

Martin Luther

The law is divine and holy. Let the law have its glory, but yet no law, be it never so divine and holy, ought to teach me that I am justified, and shall live through it. I grant it may teach me that I ought to love God and my neighbor; also to live in love, soberness, patience, etc., but it ought not to show me how I should be delivered from sin, the devil, death, and hell. Here I must take counsel of the gospel. I must hearken to the gospel, which teaches me, not what I ought to do but what Jesus Christ the Son of God hath done for me: that He suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel wills me to receive this, and to believe it. And this is the truth of the gospel. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.

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Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories.

Madeleine L'Engle

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