“El mundo es como un gran fuego, si alguno con frio no se acerca demasiado, le calienta y le consuela; mas si entra en su medio, le quema. Los que se sujetan casualmente del mundo, y se alejan a la distancia apropiada, son beneficiados por la misma; pero los que se arrojan en su medio, son consumidos, y perdidos para siempre.”
-Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661)
“The world is like a great fire, if a cold man stands at a reasonable distance, it warms and comforts him; but if he go into the midst of it, it burns him. Men who have an indifferent hold of the world, and stand at a proper distance from it, are benefited thereby; but those who cast themselves into the midst of it, are thereby swallowed up, and for ever lost.”
-Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661)
The following quote will strike our death-insulated, secular, consumerist age as morbid if not cruel. But as death is inescapable, we would do well to learn from a wiser generation – and all the more because their eyes were better trained to behold the great beyond. They realized that death was but the gateway into realms of everlasting happiness for the blessed and of misery for the damned. We could use a good ice-water dousing; and frankly, so could our over-stimulated children.
“Children, ’tis your Dawning time. It may be your Dying time…Go unto the Burying-places; There you will see many a Grave shorter than yourselves…Yea, you may be at play one hour; dead, dead the next.”
Cotton Mather (1663 – 1728)
Exo 32:1, “And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we [know] not what is become of him.”
“Hence we may understand that hypocrites so fear God as that religion vanishes from their hearts, unless there be some task-master (exactor) standing by them to keep them in the path of duty.”
-John Calvin
“Jesus Christ is like the white of an egg, tasteless in the world’s mouth.”
-Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661)
Un sermón del Pastor Luis Morales sobre el Salmo 2:1.
Rom. 6:17 Pero gracias a Dios que, aunque antes eran esclavos del pecado, ya se han sometido de corazón a la enseñanza que les fue transmitida.
Los fundamentos son extremadamente importantes. Una casa sin fundamento seguramente se derrumbará al suelo. Un árbol sin raíces no se mantendrá derecho en una tormenta. Así que nos empeñamos en establecer los fundamentos de la fe cristiana. ¡Edifique su vida sobre estas verdades fundamentales, y su vida estará de pie a través del tiempo y hasta la gloria eterna! Entonces sigamos estudiando las verdades básicas, esenciales de la fe cristiana, para que usted entienda, para que crea, y para que viva feliz para siempre.
Ya que hemos considerado el propósito del hombre, la Biblia, Dios—su naturaleza, su unidad y sus tres personas—su plan básico, además de la creación y la providencia, ahora hemos de enfocarnos en la segunda área de la verdad cristiana fundamental. Esto es lo que llamamos la Caída.
The [Apostles’] Creed next mentions, that he “was dead and buried”. Here again it is necessary to consider how he substituted himself in order to pay the price of our redemption. Death held us under its yoke, but he in our place delivered himself into its power, that he might exempt us from it. This the Apostle means when he says, “that he tasted death for every man,” (Heb 2:9). By dying he prevented us from dying; or (which is the same thing) he by his death purchased life for us. But in this he differed from us, that in permitting himself to be overcome of death, it was not so as to be engulfed in its abyss, but rather to annihilate it, as it must otherwise have annihilated us; he did not allow himself to be so subdued by it as to be crushed by its power; he rather laid it prostrate, when it was impending over us, and exulting over us as already overcome. In fine, his object was, “that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage,” (Heb 2:14-15).
-John Calvin
“La virulencia del pecado solo se revela por completo cuando llega en contacto con la ley. Entonces la ley extrae todo tipo de deseo y suelta su furia completa contra el poder que procura dominarla. Lo que se dice en 1 Corintios 15:56 tambien aplica aqui: ‘el poder del pecado es la ley.’ Sin la ley el pecado no hubiera podido incitar en el hombre tanta resistencia y rebeldia. Por tanto se puede decir que el pecado enga ̴a al hombre. Presentando a la ley como el punto final de toda libertad, de la vida misma, el pecado trae al hombre bajo su poder embrujante. Le promete las mismas cosas que la ley le aparece negar y asi lo guia a la muerte.”
-Herman Ridderbos (1909-2007)
The Reformed Parish 