Wisdom from the Past to the Present

For everything in the world--the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does--comes not from the Father but from the world.  The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. I John 2:16-17

The three great spiritual enemies of man are the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is hard to say which does most harm to the soul. The last day alone will settle that point. But I venture boldly to say, that at no former period has "the world" been so dangerous, and so successful in injuring Christ's Church, as it is just now. Every age is said to have its own peculiar epidemic disease. I suspect that "worldliness" is the peculiar plague of Christendom in our own era. That same love of the world's good things and good opinion - that same dread of the world's opposition and blame - which proved so fatal to Judas Iscariot, and Demas, and many more in the beginning of the gospel era - each is just as powerful in the nineteenth century as it was in the first, and a hundred times more.

~ J.C. Ryle



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