Allison: heresy's victims

Monday, April 13, 2026
Meditation:
    If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
    —1 Corinthians 13:2 (NIV)
Quotation:
    What happens to someone who follows heretical teachings? It became quickly and readily apparent how cruel heretical teachings are and how prevalent the heresies are in contemporary times. Victims of these teachings have been encouraged to either to escape the world and their basic humanity into some form of flight and death or to use religion to undergird and isolate further their own self-centered self from the need to be loved and to love...
    The conviction that heresy is cruel has given me a growing awe of and respect for orthodoxy.
    ... C. FitzSimons Allison (b. 1927), The Cruelty of Heresy, Harrisburg, Pa.: Morehead Publishing, 1994, p. 17 (see the book)
    See also 1 Cor. 13:2; 1 Tim. 1:9-10; 6:3-4; 2 Tim. 1:13; 4:3; Tit. 1:9; 2:1; 2 Pet. 2:18-19; Rev. 2:14-16
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may your grace and mercy be extended to those who are trapped in heresy. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Tillotson: God's judgments

Sunday, April 12, 2026
Meditation:
The Lord is at your right hand;
    he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.
He will execute judgment among the nations,
    filling them with corpses;
he will shatter chiefs
    over the wide earth.
    —Psalm 110:5-6 (ESV)
Quotation:
    If, when God sends judgments upon others, we do not take warning and example by them; if instead of reflecting upon ourselves, and [questioning] our ways, we fall [to] censuring others; if we will pervert the meaning of God’s providences, and will not understand the design and intention of them; then we leave God no other way to awaken us ... to a consideration of our evil ways but by pouring down his wrath upon our heads, so that he may convince us that we are sinners by the same argument from whence we have concluded others to be so.
    ... John Tillotson (1630-1694), Works of Dr. John Tillotson, v. X, London: J. F. Dove, for R. Priestley, 1820, Sermon CCLIII, p. 154-155 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 110:5-6; Mic. 6:9; Luke 13:5; Rom. 11:33
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have my attention. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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MacDonald: his Saviour still

Saturday, April 11, 2026
    Commemoration of George Augustus Selwyn, first Bishop of New Zealand, 1878
Meditation:
    For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
    —Romans 5:17 (NIV)
Quotation:
    But must we believe that Judas, who repented even to agony, who repented so that his high-prized life, self, soul, became worthless in his eyes and met with no mercy at his own hand,—must we believe he could find no mercy in such a God? I think when Judas fled from his hanged and fallen body, he fled to the tender help of Jesus, and found it—I say not how. He was in a more hopeful condition now than during any moment of his past life, for he had never repented before. But I believe that Jesus loved Judas even when he was kissing Him with the traitor’s kiss; and I believe that He was his Saviour still.
    ... George MacDonald (1824-1905), “It Shall Not Be Forgiven”, in Unspoken Sermons [First Series], London: A. Strahan, 1867, p. 94-95 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 51:17; Matt. 27:3-5; Luke 22:47-48; John 1:16; Acts 1:16-20; Rom. 5:17
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your forgiveness is abundant. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Law: reform or rebirth?

Friday, April 10, 2026
    Feast of William Law, Priest, Mystic, 1761
    Commemoration of William of Ockham, Franciscan Friar, Philosopher, Teacher, 1347
    Commemoration of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Priest, Scientist, Visionary, 1955
Meditation:
    For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.
    —Romans 6:5-7 (ESV)
Quotation:
    Christianity does not consist in any partial amendment of our lives, any particular moral virtues, but in an entire change of our natural temper, a life wholly devoted to God.
    ... William Law (1686-1761), Christian Perfection [1726], London: W. Baynes, 1807, p. 34 (see the book)
    See also Rom. 6:4-7; Isa. 26:13; John 8:34-36; Rom. 8:3-4; 12:1-2; Col. 2:11-12
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have given me freedom. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Bonhoeffer: Scripture and understanding

Thursday, April 9, 2026
    Feast of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teacher, Martyr, 1945
Meditation:
    And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
    —2 Peter 1:19-21 (ESV)
Quotation:
    Not only the young Christian but also the adult Christian will complain that the Scripture reading is often too long for him, and that much therein he does not understand. To this it must be said that, for the mature Christian, every Scripture reading will be “too long,” even the shortest one, [for] the Scripture is a whole, and every word, every sentence, possesses such multiple relationships with the whole that it is impossible always to keep the whole in view when listening to details. It becomes apparent, therefore, that the whole of Scripture, and hence every passage in it as well, far surpasses our understanding. It is good for us to be daily reminded of this fact.
    ... Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Life Together [1954], tr. Daniel W. Bloesch & James H. Burtness, Fortress Press, 2004, p. 61 (see the book)
    See also 2 Pet. 1:19-21; Ps. 1:2-3; 19:7-9; 119:97; Luke 16:29-31; 24:44; John 5:39-40; Acts 17:11; 2 Tim. 3:14-17; 1 Pet. 1:10-12; 2 Pet. 3:16
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, send Your Spirit to open the Scriptures to me. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Glover: the testament of suffering

Wednesday, April 8, 2026
    Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877
Meditation:
    Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel...
    —2 Timothy 1:8-10 (ESV)
Quotation:
    [Continued from yesterday]
    Belief in immortality for us does not depend on a story, however well attested, in an ancient book... No, here was a sequence of great character and emancipated spirit, all attached to and explained by such a personality as the world never saw; and the central doctrine of the risen Christ squared with the rationality and the goodness of God... The wise said that God and the godlike could have no contact with suffering, but Jesus was no phantom feigning to be crucified; he truly suffered on the cross, he truly rose. Suffering is a language all can understand, and none can quite exhaust; and the suffering Christ, victorious over pain and death, meant for all who grasped his significance a new faith in God, a new freedom of mind in God.
    ... T. R. Glover (1869-1943), The Influence of Christ in the Ancient World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929, p. 99 (see the book)
    See also 2 Tim. 1:8-10; Col. 2:8,18-22; 1 Tim. 4:7; 6:20-21; 2 Tim. 3:12-13; 2 Pet. 1:16
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have paid a far higher price for my liberty than I ever shall. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Glover: the living testament

Tuesday, April 7, 2026
Meditation:
    “No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards declared.
    —John 7:46 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The real conviction of the living Christ was not carried to the world by a book nor by a story. Men might allege that they had seen the risen Lord; that was nothing till they themselves were known. The witness of the resurrection was not the word of Paul (as we see at Athens) nor of the Eleven; it was the new power in life and death that the world saw in changed men...
    The legend of a reputed resurrection of some unknown person in Palestine nobody needed to consider; but what were you to do with the people who died in the arena, the re-born slaves with their newness of life in your own house? And when you “looked into the story,” it was no mere somebody or other of whom they told it. The conviction of the people you knew, amazing in its power of transforming character and winning first the goodwill and the trust and then the conversion of others, was supported and confirmed by the nature and personality of the Man of whom they spoke, of whom you read in their books. “Never man spake like this man,” you read, nor thought like this man, nor like this man believed in God. I can not but think that the factors that make a man Christian to-day were those that won the world then. Our age and that age, in culture, in hopes and fears, in loss of nerve, are not unlike. [Continued tomorrow]
    ... T. R. Glover (1869-1943), The Influence of Christ in the Ancient World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929, p. 96,98-99 (see the book)
    See also John 7:46; 5:21; Acts 17:18,32; 1 Cor. 2:4-5; 2 Cor. 10:5; Eph. 4:14; 1 Tim. 1:3-4
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I was dead, and You raised me to life. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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