William Barclay Quotes

       William Barclay
       1907-1978
      
       William Barclay was an author, radio and television presenter, Church of Scotland minister and Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow.
      
       While professor, he decided to dedicate his life to "making the best biblical scholarship available to the average reader". The eventual result was the Daily Study Bible, a set of 17 commentaries on the New Testament, published by Saint Andrew Press, the Church of Scotland's publishing house.
      
       The 17 volumes of the set were all best-sellers and continue to be so to this day. Barclay wrote many other popular books, always drawing on scholarship but written in a highly accessible style.

There is a time when to avoid trouble is to store up trouble, and when to seek for a lazy and a cowardly peace is to court a still greater danger.     Topics: Apathy When we believe that God is Father, we also believe that such a father's hand will never cause his child a needless tear. We may not understand life any better, but we will not resent life any longer.     Topics: Believing So often we have a kind of vague, wistful longing that the promises of Jesus should be true. The only way really to enter into them is to believe them with the clutching intensity of a drowning man.     Topics: Believing The Christian is a [person] of joy... A gloomy Christian is a contradiction of terms, and nothing in all religious history has done Christianity more harm than its connection with black clothes and long faces.     Topics: Christians If a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can never reach.     Topics: Doubt Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.     Topics: Endurance Covetousness is therefore, a sin with a very wide range. If it is the desire for money, it leads to theft. If it is the desire for prestige, it leads to evil ambition. If it is the desire for power, it leads to sadistic tyranny. If it is the desire for a person, it leads to sexual sin.     Topics: Envy The awful importance of this life is that it determines eternity.     Topics: Eternity But the best definition of it is to say that heaven is that state where we will always be with Jesus, and where nothing will separate us from Him any more.     Topics: Heaven For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like. It is enough to know that we will be for ever with Him.     Topics: Heaven Jesus' coming is the final and unanswerable proof that God cares.     Topics: Jesus There is no virtue in the Christian life which is not made radiant with joy; there is no circumstance and no occasion which is not illuminated with joy. A joyless life is not a Christian life, for joy is one constant recipe for Christian living.     Topics: Joy     Source: Flesh and Spirit