Sermon Central
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On ...
Contributed by Sermon Central on Jul 23, 2008 (message contributor)
ON BACKSLIDING
A. M. Hills (From Backsliders and Worldly Christians) -- "It is doubtful if a moral fall is ever precipitous. People decline in religion and backslide gradually. Like descending a stairway, they go down step by step."
Herman Melville -- "We warn you against little concessions, little acquiescences, little indulgences, little conformities. Each may only destroy the millionth part of the velocity; but this little destruction of a millionth has only to be perpetually repeated, and the planet’s march is arrested, and its luster is quenched. If vital religion be driven out of the soul, it will be as the Canaanites were to be driven before the Israelites, ’by little and little.’"
William Gurnall -- "Many are soon engaged in holy duties, easily persuaded to take up a profession of religion--and as easily persuaded to lay it down: like the new moon which shines a little in the first part of the night, but is down before half the night be gone; lightsome professors in their youth, whose old age is wrapped up in thick darkness of sin and wickedness."
W. P. Lockhart -- "In a petrifying spring articles are often placed under the dropping water, and as it trickles down upon them they are gradually hardened until they become like the very stone. So it is with sin. Gently and slowly it seeks its way into the heart, and hardens it day by day, even while the possessor of that heart may be more or less unconscious of the change that is going on. This is backsliding. Sin permitted, the heart gradually hardened, unbelief taking his place on the throne, and then, departure from the living God."
Thomas Watson -- "The world eats the heart out of godliness, as the ivy eats the heart out of the oak. The world kills with her silver darts."
(SOURCE: Philip Harrelson, "The Profile of a Spiritual Defector" 6/30/08 SermonCentral.com)
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