Regeneration - Monergistic 2

"We are not to be complacent about salvation, but we must recognise that only God can regenerate."

From my book What the Bible teaches about being born again, p 22

Shakespeare and the Bible

My dad was not given to quoting the Bible or Shakespeare. He would occasionally say, if a joke fell flat,

"Some fell on stony ground". See Mark 4:5.

More rarely we would get

"There's method in my madness" based on a line in Hamlet - 'Though this be madness yet there is method in it'.

Regeneration - Monergistic

"Certain aspects of becoming a Christian involve our co-operation but being born again is something God does alone"

From my book What the Bible teaches about being born again, p 20

Regeneration - True of all Christians

"Being a Christian is more then merely saying you are one."
"The phrase 'born again Christian' is really tautology ...."
"To be a Christian in the New Testament sense, there has to be a real change of heart within, a new birth."
 

From my book What the Bible teaches about being born again, p 20

Regeneration - Importance

"We dare not think of regeneration as a mere preliminary to the Christian faith, something that need not long detain our attention."

From my book What the Bible teaches about being born again, p 18

Was Marconi mad?

My mother used sometimes to say

"They said Marconi was mad".

Guglielmo Marconi is often thought of as the inventor of radio and shared the 1903 Nobel prize for physics due to his work in this area. The point of the saying is that general opinion is not always right.

I'm not sure how common a saying it was or is but the phrase did feature in a Marx brothers skit.

 

Groucho: "They said Edison was mad! They said Einstein was mad! They said Marconi was mad! They said my uncle Herbert was mad!-"
Chico: "Your uncle Herbert? Nobody ever hoid of your Uncle Herbert!"
Groucho: "That's because he was mad!"

The term applies especially to Marconi as after inventing his wireless telegraph he wrote to the ministry of Post and Telegraphs, which at the time was under the direction of the honorable Pietro Lacava, explaining how the machine worked and asking for funding. He never received a response to his letter which was eventually dismissed by the minister who wrote "to the Longara" on the document, referring to the insane asylum on via della Lungara in Rome.

Preaching

Don't assume that anyone who hears you preach
Will get the opportunity again

Thinking and doing

To think a thing may take a moment
To do it a lot longer than that.

In the time it takes to let a thing go round your mind a few times
You could already have it done.