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Quotes About History

We may conclude that a moderate futurist interpretation understands the seven letters to be addressed to seven historical churches that are representative of the entire church. The seals represent the forces in history, however long it lasts, by which God works out his redemptive and judicial purposes in history leading up to the end. The events beginning with chapter 7 lie in the future and will attend the final disposition of the divine will for human history.
~ George Eldon Ladd
Justification is an eschatological fact that has occurred in history. It means acquittal from the guilt of sin by a favorable decision of the Judge. This decision has already been rendered for believers on the ground of the death of Christ (Rom. 3:21-26). Because of present justification, we shall be saved from wrath on the day of judgment (Rom. 5:9).
~ George Eldon Ladd
read a passage from the Mishnah is a different experience from reading the Sermon on the Mount. The unique element in Jesus' teaching is that in his person the Kingdom of God has invaded human history, and people are not only placed under the ethical demand of the reign of God, but by virtue of this very experience of God's reign are also enabled to realize a new measure of righteousness.
~ George Eldon Ladd
John wishes to emphasize that it was God himself in the Word who entered human history, not as a phantom, but as a real man of flesh. The word translated "to dwell" (esk?n?sen), or "to tabernacle," is a biblical metaphor for God's presence. This statement "implies that God himself was present in the flesh, in abasement."11
~ George Eldon Ladd
Biblical theology must be done from a starting point that is biblical-historical in orientation. Only this approach can deal adequately with the reality of God and his inbreaking into history. This is the methodology employed by the present writer in the study of New Testament theology.
~ George Eldon Ladd
Therefore, when Paul proclaimed the eschatological meaning of Jesus' death, resurrection, and exaltation, he was proclaiming all that Jesus' life, deeds, and words had meant, and far more. His relative silence about Jesus reflects neither historical nor theological disinterest in Jesus, but only the actual situation in the unfolding of redemptive history. All that Jesus in history had meant was included, and enlarged, in the preaching of the exalted one.
~ George Eldon Ladd
Here we find an extension of the theology of discipleship, that it will be the mission of the church to witness to the gospel of the Kingdom in the world. Israel is no longer the witness to God's Kingdom; the church has taken her place. Therefore K. E. Skydsgaard has said that the history of the Kingdom of God has become the history of Christian missions.
~ George Eldon Ladd
Biblical theology is theology: it is primarily a story about God and his concern for human beings. It exists only because of the divine initiative realizing itself in a series of divine acts whose objective is human redemption. Biblical theology therefore is not exclusively, or even primarily, a system of abstract theological truths. It is basically the description and interpretation of the divine activity within the scene of human history that seeks humanity's redemption.
~ George Eldon Ladd
The "things that are above" represent the realm of God that has already invaded human history in the person and mission of Jesus and brought to human beings43 the new realm of life.
~ George Eldon Ladd
The whole history of New Testament thought is to be understood as the invasion of God's world into the realm of history to secure humanity's redemption.
~ George Eldon Ladd
However, the day is long past when we may think of the Synoptics as "bare" history. Their authors had become convinced by the resurrection that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God (Mk. 1:1) and wrote "good news" in the light of that faith. The Synoptic Gospels are theology as well as history.
~ George Eldon Ladd
History has been called "an abyss in which Christianity has been swallowed up quite against its will." How
~ George Eldon Ladd
History always tries to understand the meaning of the events it reports; and the fact that a person has a viewpoint does not mean that person is a poor historian and distorts facts to support his or her interpretation.
~ George Eldon Ladd
Theology and history are intellectual pursuits; faith is commitment of the whole person.
~ George Eldon Ladd
Our central thesis is that the Kingdom of God is the redemptive reign of God dynamically active to establish his rule among human beings, and that this Kingdom, which will appear as an apocalyptic act at the end of the age, has already come into human history in the person and mission of Jesus to overcome evil, to deliver people from its power, and to bring them into the blessings of God's reign.
~ George Eldon Ladd
The Kingdom of God involves two great moments: fulfillment within history, and consummation at the end of history. It is precisely this background which provides the setting for the parables of the Kingdom.
~ George Eldon Ladd
The tabernacle with its priests was a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary. The real has come to people in the historical life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. History has become the medium of the eternal. There is nothing ephemeral or transitory about Jesus' life and work. The Christ-event was history with an eternal significance. What Jesus did, he did once for all (ephapax, 7:27; 9:12; 10:10).
~ George Eldon Ladd
The events of the eschatological consummation are not merely detached events lying in the future about which Paul speculates. They are rather redemptive events that have already begun to unfold within history.
~ George Eldon Ladd
You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.
~ George Eliot
Rome - the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.
~ George Eliot
Whatever right the Second Amendment protects is not as important as it was 200 years ago... The government should deconstitutionalize the subject by repealing the embarrassing Amendment.
~ George F. Will
Frank Fukuyama did what had hitherto seemed almost impossible: he made Washington think. His subject was, and in this far more sweeping book is, the place of America, and the American idea, in the stream of history. His conclusion is at once exhilarating and sobering. We have won the struggle for the heart of humanity. However, that will not necessarily be good for humanity's soul.
~ George F. Will
There is nothing quite like a dose of unvarnished history for inoculating people against the tendency to indict the present for failing to measure up to a sentimental notion of the past.
~ George F. Will
Behavior was better when cinemas were opulent.
~ George F. Will