This is a wonderful video, less than four minutes:
Stunning Graphics
Please Share
Immanuel, God With Us
1 Reply
Tag Archives: Charles Spurgeon
Note to Followers of Spurgeon on War
Please Look for ways to Share this Blog*
“The thought of slain bodies and of murdered men must always harrow up the soul…if we should see at our doors the marks of carnage and bloodshed; then should we more thoroughly appreciate what war means.”–C. H. Spurgeon
*You who follow do not receive many notices as this is more of a resource page of key quotes from Spurgeon on War And Christians, rather than a blog of regular postings. Farming makes it hard for me to look for opportunities to share this blog during the summer and fall. For those who care about this topic, your help is needed in keeping this alive.
Thank you to all who are able to help. Blessings in our Lord Jesus Christ.
*[For opportunities to share: search key words on facebook and twitter, such as #Spurgeon, #Christiansoldiers #evangelicals #pacifism #war #Gospel …and then look for posts where this bears on the conversation, or, in the case of Spurgeon fans, directs them to these little known quotes. On facebook, many Christian organizations are open for comments. ]
A Spurgeon Thought for Veterans Day
Stanley Weintraub wrote a whole book about November 11th, A Stillness Heard Round the World. (You can find cheap, used copies at bookfinder.com) Most folks today have no remembrance that 11 November was Armistice Day, the celebration of the end of bloodshed in WWI.
Why does a peaceful nation bluster and threaten for a few months, and even commence fighting, when in a short time it sighs for peace, and illuminates its streets as soon as peace is proclaimed? The immediate causes differ, but the abiding reason is the same — man is fallen, and belongs to a race of which infallible revelation declares “their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known.”
[1914-2014: Centennial of the WWI Christmas truce]
Great Summary on War a la Spurgeon
“We are up to the hilt advocates for peace, and we earnestly war against war. I wish that Christian men would insist more and more on the unrighteousness of war, believing that Christianity means no sword, no cannon, no bloodshed, and that, if a nation is driven to fight in its own defence, Christianity stands by to weep and to intervene as soon as possible, and not to join in the cruel shouts which celebrate an enemy’s slaughter. . . . Today, then, my brethren, I beg you to join with me in seeking renewal.”
From An All-Round Ministry, (Charles Spurgeon’s Annual Conference Addresses at the Pastors College), “A New Departure.” [SIXTEENTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE, Spring 1880]
“Mr. Spurgeon always regarded the Conference week as one of the most important of the whole year; and he devoted much time, and thought, and care, and prayer to the preparation of his Addresses to the hundreds of ministers and students…”
Few have seen these ‘Lost Quotes’ of Charles Spurgeon. Please Share!
[Apologies for the “Lost” hype. Not actually Lost, but Censored by Spurgeon’s Overlords, following in the footsteps of Twitter Jack and Zuckerberg]
SCROLL DOWN for more Key Quotes from Spurgeon
* * *
[A new, ‘stand alone’ web page has been put up for my book on Christian Pacifism (link), the journey of a twenty-something Christian and Marine.]
Top Twitter comment:
@textsincontext Wow-this is REALLY cool. I had never read Spurgeon on war!? I actually DO wish this would break the internet :)
C. H. Spurgeon: “…nothing can be more abhorrent to the Christian man than wholesale slaughter.”
Hiroshima After the Bomb, 1945; 75th Anniversary, August 6, 2020
I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.—Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower (to Sec. of War before the dropping of the bomb)
The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.
— Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.
— Major General Curtis LeMay
The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment … It was a mistake to ever drop it … [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it …
— Fleet Admiral William Halsey, Jr
Spurgeon on True Christian Soldiers
Sermon
A Good Soldier Of Jesus Christ
Before I proceed fully to open up this metaphor, let me say that though we shall use military terms this morning, and stirring speech, it should ever be remembered that we have no war against persons, and that the weapons which we use are not such as are forged for the deadly conflicts of mankind. The wars of a Christian are against principles, against sins, against the miseries of mankind, against that Evil One who has led man astray from his Maker. Our wars are against the iniquity which keeps man an enemy to himself. The weapons that we use are holy arguments and consecrated lives, devotion and prayer to God, teaching and example among the sons of men.
Ours is battling for the peace, and fighting for rest. We disturb the world to make it quiet, and turn it upside down to set it right….We have no sympathy with any other war, but count it an evil of the direst sort, let it be disguised as it may. Now with that caution, whatever I shall seem to say will not sound as though I loved or excused ordinary warfare—for nothing can be more abhorrent to the Christian man than wholesale slaughter.
[A lesson I learned the hard way; My Story]
A Call to Holy Living, Spurgeon
The Foundation of Spurgeon’s quotes is clear. Read his sermon, A Call to Holy Living, if you wish to understand.
A Sermon
[No. 1029]
Lord’s Day Morning, January 14th, 1872
Text: Matthew 5
A Call to Holy Living
…We are justified by faith, and not by the works of the law. The merit by which a soul enters heaven is not its own; it is the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ….At the same time, it is a dangerous state of things if doctrine is made to drive out precept,** and faith is held up as making holiness a superfluity. Sanctification must not be forgotten or overlaid by justification. We must teach plainly that the faith which saves the soul is not a dead faith, but a faith which operates with purifying effect upon our entire nature, and produces in us fruits of righteousness to the praise and glory of God….
However severely pure that law may seem to be which we have read just now from this fifth chapter of Matthew, our hearts agree with it, and we ask that we may be so renewed that our lives may be conformed to it. The regenerate never rebel against any precept, saying, “This, is too pure;” on the contrary, our new-born nature is enamoured of its holiness, and we cry, “Thy word is very pure, therefore thy servant loveth it. O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes.”
**This is the great error of many evangelicals of our day and in the past. [Spurgeon utters this same warning in Morning and Evening for Sept. 5th:
“. . . The doctrines of grace should have the same weight with us as the precepts of the word, no more and no less; but it is to be feared that with many one scale or the other is unfairly weighted. It is a grand matter to give just measure in truth. Christian, be careful here.”]
Christians, Truth, and War’s Fruit
“..the truth as to war must be more and more insisted on: the loss of time, labour, treasure, and life must be shown, and the satanic crimes to which it leads must be laid bare. It is the sum of all villainies, and ought to be stripped of its flaunting colours, and to have its bloody horrors revealed; its music should be hushed, that men may hear the moans and groans, the cries and shrieks of dying men and ravished women….”
.
More from Spurgeon on War
The thought of slain bodies and of murdered men must always harrow up the soul; but because we hear of these things in the distance, there are few Englishmen who can truly enter into their horrors. If we should hear the booming of cannon on the deep which girdles this island; if we should see at our doors the marks of carnage and bloodshed; then should we more thoroughly appreciate what war means.
If our country has been fairly depicted by the advocates for war, its condition is disappointing to the believer in progress, and alarming to the patriot who gazes into the future. We are still pugnacious, still believers in brute force, still ready to shed blood, still able to contemplate ravaged lands and murdered thousands without horror, still eager to test our ability to kill our fellow men.
What pride flushes the patriot’s cheek when he remembers that his nation can murder faster than any other people. Ah, foolish generation, ye are groping in the flames of hell to find your heaven, raking amid blood and bones for the foul thing which ye call glory.
Charles Spurgeon: Quotes
If there is anyone who should be opposed to strife and bloodshed it is the man that names the name of Christ. Spurgeon considered the spirit of war to be absolutely foreign to the spirit of Christianity….
Modern conservative, fundamentalist, and evangelical Christians, all of whom might claim him as one of their own, have much to learn from Spurgeon, not only for his example of an uncompromising and successful Christian minister, but also for his consistent opposition to war and Christian war fever.--Laurence M. Vance [extended quotes and citations]
Spurgeon Speaks to Today’s Christian:
1) The Lord’s battles, what are they? Not the garment rolled in blood, not the noise, and smoke, and din of human slaughter. These may be the devil’s battles, if you please, but not the Lord’s. They may be days of God’s vengeance but in their strife the servant of Jesus may not mingle. (“War! War! War!” May 1, 1859)
2) Long have I held that war is an enormous crime; long have I regarded all battles as but murder on a large scale. [“India’s Ills and England’s Sorrows,” September 6, 1857]
3) Christ’s church hath been also miserably befooled; for this I will assert, and prove too, that the progress of the arms of a Christian nation is not the progress of Christianity,
4) Why does a peaceful nation bluster and threaten for a few months, and even commence fighting, when in a short time it sighs for peace, and illuminates its streets as soon as peace is proclaimed? The immediate causes differ, but the abiding reason is the same — man is fallen, and belongs to a race of which infallible revelation declares “their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known.”
5) The Christian soldier hath no gun and no sword, for he fighteth not with men. It is with “spiritual wickedness in high places” that he fights, and with other principalities and powers than with those that sit on thrones and hold sceptres in their hands.
6) The church, we affirm, can neither be preserved nor can its interests be promoted by human armies. We have all thought otherwise in our time, and have foolishly said when a fresh territory was annexed to our empire, “Ah! what a providence that England has annexed Oude,” — or taken to itself some other territory — “Now a door is opened for the Gospel” (“Independence of Christianity,” August 31, 1857) [This was also said by some American evangelical leaders** who endorsed the invasion of Iraq. Quotes Now, linked here and here ]
7) Our kingdom is not of this world; else would God’s servants fight with sword and spear. Ours is a spiritual kingdom, and the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual, and mighty through God, to the pulling down of strongholds
8) A war against falsehood, a war against sin, is God’s war; it is a war which commends itself to every Christian man, seeing he is quite certain that he has the seal of God’s approval when he goes to wage war against God’s enemies. Beloved, we have no doubt whatever, when we lift up our voices like a trumpet against sin, that our warfare is justified by the eternal laws of justice.
[** In the Baptist Press ‘…a missionary wrote that “American foreign policy and military might have opened an opportunity for the Gospel in the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob….
‘…, both Franklin Graham, . . . and Marvin Olasky, the editor of the conservative World magazine and a former advisor to President Bush on faith-based policy, echoed these sentiments,’
The end result is that one of the oldest Christian populations in the world has been decimated. ]
Charles Spurgeon: On War and Christians 