Sinai Quotes

“The assassination of Allende quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Bohemia, the bloody massacre in Bangladesh caused Allende to be forgotten, the din of war in the Sinai Desert drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the massacres in Cambodia caused the Sinai to be forgotten, and so on, and on and on, until everyone has completely forgotten everything.”

“The priest's work, the priest's service, was understood as an act of worship. This was God's desire at Sinai - that everybody would understand their roles as priests. Thst everybody would worship God by serving each other.”

“The priest's work, the priest's service, was understoon as an act of worship. Theis was God"s desire at Sinai - thst everybody would understand their roles as priests. Thst everybody would worship God by serving each other.”

“The main thing to tell a person when you explain how to become righteous is to announce to him for free grace of God, concealing nothing, saying none other than what God says in the Gospel. Build a fence around Mount Sinai, but not around Golgotha ,because at Golgotha all God's wrath was appeased.”

“A hypocritical businessman, whose fortune had been the misfortune of many others, told Mark Twain piously, “Before I die I intend to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I want to climb to the top of Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud.” “I have a better idea,” suggested Twain. “Why don’t you stay right at home in Boston and keep them?”

“We have local churches where we meet together as believers. We no longer go to Mount Sinai to meet God. Why not? Because the place of the tabernacle and the temple is now replaced by the body—your body and mine—in which God meets with us and God dwells with us, and where we have communion with Him. When we come to the church now, we don’t come to the sanctuary; we bring our sanctuaries with us. This individual entity is the locus of appointment between God and me. There He meets. There He dwells. Will the God who went to such pains to physically decorate the tabernacle and the temple not also take great care in physically designing the human body?”

“Some modern theologians have, quite rightly, protested against an excessively moralistic interpretation of Christianity. The Holiness of God is something more and other than moral perfection: His claim upon us is something more and other than the claims of moral duty. I do not deny it: But this conception, like that of corporate guilt, is very easily used as an evasion of the real issue. God may be more than moral goodness: He is not less. The road to the promised land runs past Sinai. The moral law may exist to be transcended, but there is no transcending it for those who have not first admitted its claims upon them, and then tried with all their strength to meet that claim, and fairly and squarely face the fact of their failure.”

“You know that your church has always taken a view on these matters very different from ours, from the day that the first printing press was assembled. Your church did not want your holy scriptures in the hands of ordinary people. We felt differently. To us, printing was an avokat ha kodesh, a holy work. Some rabbis even likened the press to an altar. We call it 'writing with many pens' and saw it as furthering the spread of the word that began with Moses on Mount Sinai. So, my good father, you go and write the order to burn that book, as your church requires of you. And I will say nothing to the printing house, as my conscience requires of me. Censura praevia or censura repressiva, the effect is the same. Either way, a book is destroyed. Better you do it than have us so intellectually enslaved that we do it for you.”

“O guide my judgment and my taste,Sweet Spirit, author of the bookOf wonders, told in language chasteAnd plainness, not to be mistook. O let me muse, and yet at sightThe page admire, the page believe;"Let there be light, and there was light,Let there be Paradise and Eve!"Who his soul's rapture can refrain?At Joseph's ever pleasing taleOf marvels, the prodigious train,To Sinai's hill from Goshen's vale.The psalmist and proverbial seer,And all the prophets sons of song,Make all things precious, all things dear,And bear the brilliant word along. O take the book from off the shelf,And con it meekly on thy knees;Best panegyric on itself,And self-avouch'd to teach and please.Respect, adore it heart and mind.How greatly sweet, how sweetly grand,Who reads the most, is most refind'd,And polish'd by the Master's hand.”