From Lectures to my Students.
"More and more am I jealous lest any views upon prophecy,
church government, politics, or even systematic theology, should withdraw one of us from
glorying in the cross of Christ. Salvation is a theme for which I would fain enlist every holy
tongue. I am greedy after witnesses for the glorious gospel of the blessed God. O that Christ
crucified were the universal burden of men of God. Your guess at the number of the beast, your
Napoleonic speculations, your conjectures concerning a personal Antichrist — forgive me, I
count them but mere bones for dogs, while men are dying, and hell is filling, it seems to me the
veriest drivel to be muttering about an Armageddon at Sebastopol or Sadowa or Sedan, and
peeping between the folded leaves of destiny to discover the fate of Germany. Blessed are they
who read and hear the words of the prophecy of the Revelation, but the like blessing has
evidently not fallen on those who pretend to expound it; for generation after generation of them
have been proved to be in error by the mere lapse of time, and the present race will follow to the same inglorious sepulcher. I would sooner pluck one single brand from the burning than explain
all mysteries. To win a soul from going down into the pit is a more glorious achievement than to
be crowned in the arena of theological controversy as Doctor Sufficientissimus; to have
faithfully unveiled the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ will be in the final judgment
accounted worthier service than to have solved the problems of the religious Sphinx, or to have
cut the Gordian knot of apocalyptic difficulty. Blessed is that ministry of which CHRIST IS ALL. "
"More and more am I jealous lest any views upon prophecy,
church government, politics, or even systematic theology, should withdraw one of us from
glorying in the cross of Christ. Salvation is a theme for which I would fain enlist every holy
tongue. I am greedy after witnesses for the glorious gospel of the blessed God. O that Christ
crucified were the universal burden of men of God. Your guess at the number of the beast, your
Napoleonic speculations, your conjectures concerning a personal Antichrist — forgive me, I
count them but mere bones for dogs, while men are dying, and hell is filling, it seems to me the
veriest drivel to be muttering about an Armageddon at Sebastopol or Sadowa or Sedan, and
peeping between the folded leaves of destiny to discover the fate of Germany. Blessed are they
who read and hear the words of the prophecy of the Revelation, but the like blessing has
evidently not fallen on those who pretend to expound it; for generation after generation of them
have been proved to be in error by the mere lapse of time, and the present race will follow to the same inglorious sepulcher. I would sooner pluck one single brand from the burning than explain
all mysteries. To win a soul from going down into the pit is a more glorious achievement than to
be crowned in the arena of theological controversy as Doctor Sufficientissimus; to have
faithfully unveiled the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ will be in the final judgment
accounted worthier service than to have solved the problems of the religious Sphinx, or to have
cut the Gordian knot of apocalyptic difficulty. Blessed is that ministry of which CHRIST IS ALL. "