Francis Chan Quotes

The Bible for me is holy writ. It's a very straightforward thing, although I am not a literalist.

To say that everything in the bible is to be believed , simply because it is found in that volume, is equally absurd and pernicious... To discard a portion of scripture is not necessarily to reject the truth, but may be the highest evidence that one can give of his love of truth.

So long as the New Testament served to decipher the Old, it was taken as an absolute norm.

Sincere Christians can disagree about the details of Scripture and theology - absolutely.

Give me any two pages of the Bible and I'll give you a picture.

All Scripture is equally inspired, but not all Scripture is equally applicable or relevant to every stage of life.

More people are troubled by what is plain in Scripture than by what is obscure.

Leave the matter of religion to the family alter, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and the State for ever separate.

What role should religion play in the American public school classroom? My own knee-jerk response would be, 'none whatsoever,' but the Constitution isn't quite so direct on the subject.

If we once get above our Bibles and cease making the written Word of God our sole rule both as to faith and practice, we shall soon lie open to all manner of delusion and be in great danger of making shipwreck of faith and a good conscience.

The Bible is not interested in precisionism unless the context indicates that precision is particularly important.

In truth you cannot read too much in Scripture; and what you read you cannot read too carefully, and what you read carefully you cannot understand too well, and what you understand well you cannot teach too well, and what you teach well you cannot live too well.

You can think too highly of your interpretations of Scripture, but you cannot think too highly of Scriptures interpretation of itself. You can exaggerate your authority in handling the Scriptures, but you cannot exaggerate the Scriptures authority to handle you. You can use the word of God to come to wrong conclusions, but you cannot find any wrong conclusions in the word of God.

We do not wish to abolish teaching and to make every man his own master, but if the curates will not teach the gospel, the layman must have the Scripture, and read it for himself, taking God for his teacher.

The fact is, we sometimes read Scripture, thinking of what it ought to say, rather than what it does say.

All of Scripture is for us but not all of Scripture is to us.

In terms of applicability to today's world, many people are trying to domesticate Scripture so as to get the PC answer, the politically correct answer on a wide range of subjects, whether it's homosexual marriage, or a certain view of government, or a certain view of eschatology or whatever. At the end of the day we want also to encourage the kind of reverent handling of Scripture that wants to be corrected by Scripture, that is more eager to be mastered by Scripture then to master it.

Missionary work is but home teaching to those who are not now members of the Church, and home teaching is nothing more or less than missionary work to Church members

It is indeed better (as no one ever could deny) that men should be led to worship God by teaching, than that they should be driven to it by fear of punishment or pain; but it does not follow that because the former course produces the better men, therefore those who do not yield to it should be neglected. For many have found advantage (as we have proved, and are daily proving by actual experiment), in being first compelled by fear or pain, so that they might afterwards be influenced by teaching, or might follow out in act what they had already learned in word.

I try to practice my religion in a very devout way and follow the teachings of my church in my own personal life, but I don't believe in America, a first amendment nation, where we don't raise any religion over the other, and we allow people to worship they please, that the doctrines of any religion should be mandated for everyone.

Christ said "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" and when asked "who is thy neighbour? went on to the parable of the Good Samaritan. If you wish to understand this parable as it was understood by his hearers, you should substitute "Germans and Japanese" for Samaritan. I fear my modern day Christians would resent such a substitution, because it would compel them to realize how far they have departed from the teachings of the founder of their religion.

If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, 'The author of this book is mistaken'; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood.

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns in to universal, rather than religion-specific, values... it requires that their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason. Now I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, to take one example, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

I accept the teachings of my own church in terms of how I live, how my wife and I live, what we teach our kids. But I don't think the teachings of my church are such that I should legislate that for everybody else.

Remove Christ from the Scriptures and there is nothing left.