The Crafting of God

John Charles Ryle (1816-1900) enjoyed a stellar education at first Eton, and then Oxford University.

This eldest son of private banker John Ryle fully intended to enter parliament on leaving university, until his father fell bankrupt. He then chose the Anglican priesthood.

God mightily used John Ryle senior's bankruptcy for the creation of a far more enduring and valuable wealth.

A noted author and clever man of deep Christian convictions, John Ryle junior became the first Anglican Bishop of Liverpool, England.

Ryle would prophetically warn, nearly two centuries ago, of today as much as he spoke into yesterday.

Ryle wrote:

Beware of manufacturing a God of your own:

  • a God who is all mercy, but not just;
  • a God who is all love, but not holy;
  • a God who has a heaven for everybody, but a hell for none;
  • a God who can allow good and bad to be side by side in time, but will make no distinction between good and bad in eternity.

Such a God is an idol of your own, as truly an idol as any snake or crocodile in an Egyptian temple.

The hands of your own fancy and sentimentality have made him. He is not the God of the Bible, and beside the God of the Bible there is no God at all.

Mankind can ever only fashion God in his own image, unless He first sees God the Father through Jesus the Son.

No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made Him known. (John 1:18)

Today's Soul Snippet:

"I have to be confronted with righteousness before I can understand death to sin."

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