John Charles Pollock Quotes

For a slave to be taught that he should no longer lie and cheat with revolutionary; more astonishing still was the slave's discovery that he did not want to lie or cheat and that he now loved the owner whom he had once resented and feared.

In Paul's view a church should not merely survive in its unfriendly pagan environment, but advance. Christians should have nothing to do with a sad acceptance of harsh surroundings, bearing heavy crosses with uncomplaining gloom, cultivating an oppressive sense of sin. They were to be positive, doing good to one another and to unbelieving Jews and pagans regardless of abuse or injury. "Rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks." No matter how adverse the circumstances, their way of life should be a rebuke to foulness and a spur to their neighbors to seek for themselves this new, extraordinary existence; Christians must outlove, outjoy, outthink, and always welcome those who opposed them.

His joy was a release of Paul's conversion, not the heavy backslapping practical-joking humor of the Victorians, nor the cynical satire or the flippancy of the twenty first century mass media, just the gift of not taking himself or his adversaries too seriously.

providing the element of slight distraction to keep the mind from wandering. Each

In his late forties, an age when men settle to comforts and seek a firm base, Paul began his roughest travels.

A biographer has to decide between slowing to a halt in a bog of conflicting possibilities or striding boldly across by a causeway of conjecture. I choose the second course and, without stepping aside to discuss all the alternatives, tell the story as I see it. Paul's next eighteen months unfolded somewhat as follows, though the tone of assurance in my narrative must not disguise that some of its conclusions are tentative and disputable. The

A colleague like Barnabas could comfort him (Paul) in illness and keep him from overstrain when fit.

I can do all things in Him who strengthens me" (or, "I am ready for anything through the strength of the One who lives within me").

The morality taught by Paul and demonstrated by his converts was in stark contrast to the old, permissive morality of the ancient world. It was unconventional: It showed a love of man irrespective of his race, showed forgiveness instead of resentment for wrong, joy instead of grim endurance of adversity or oppression.

At length he told the Lord he would leave it in His hands. Peace flowed back. No voice or light disclosed the next move,

Faith in Christ leaped from person to person like some divine epidemic, not of disease but of spiritual health.

New converts displayed a most un-Roman concern for the sick man.

Turning consciously from evil to faith did not always bring immediate awareness of how to please God