Every gift requires two freedoms: the giver's and the receiver's.

No sane person wants hell to exist. No sane person wants evil to exist. But hell is just evil eternalized. If there is evil and if there is eternity, there can be hell. If it is intellectually dishonest to disbelieve in evil just because it is shocking and uncomfortable, it is the same with hell. Reality has hard corners, surprises, and terrible dangers in it. We desperately need a true road map, not nice feelings, if we are to get home. It is true, as people often say, that "hell just feels unreal, impossible." Yes. So does Auschwitz. So does Calvary.

The civilization you sit in ... is now obvious in crisis, perhaps death pangs, twisting grotesquely like a dying animal, swirling down the garbage drain-this civilization was founded on God's road map.

God is not pre or post anything. He is present to everything. ... There is not predestination but destination, not predestiny but destiny. This follows from divine omniscience and eternity.

Sin has made us stupid, so that we can only learn the hard way.

Being a Christian is more like having your soul possessed by a spirit than having your mind clothed with new beliefs... It is like being haunted by the Holy Ghost.

If you want to get wet, go out to where it is raining; If you want to be a saint, find one and hang out with him.