“According to the Left Behind website, between 1995 and 2008 the series sold sixty million copies. On February 4, 2002, its authors appeared on CBS popular program 60 Minutes and on July 1 of the same year the Left Behind series appeared on the cover of Time magazine as a cultural phenomenon” (Kenneth L. Gentry, He Shall Have Dominion (3rd. ed), 39).

“The central doctrine of pentecostalism, according to one of the movement’s best known leaders, is ‘the abiding possibility and importance of the supernatural element . . . particularly as contained in the manifestation of the Spirit'” (David Edwin Harrell, Jr., All Things Are Possible: The Healings and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America, 11).

“Reformer, scholar, teacher, pastor, husband, father, composer, prayer warrior–all these labels depict Martin Luther. Yet Luther was also a preacher–and a prolific one at that. . . . Generally, he averaged three sermons per week throughout his adult life, but often preached four or more. Luther was, to state it mildly, a homiletical force” (Eds. Keith Willhite and Scott M. Gibson, The Big Idea of Biblical Preaching, 31).

“The roots of American pentecostalism reach deep into the history of ecstatic Christianity. Pentecostal leaders trace their origins through George Fox and the Quakers, John Wesley and early Methodism, the Plymouth Brethren, William Booth and the Salvation Army, and other similar men and movements. More recently, American pentecostalism grew out of a deepening of spiritual life associated with the holiness movement at the end of the nineteenth century. Participants in this nebulous movement, both in America and abroad, looked beyond the conversion experience to continual personal encounters with God for the Christian” (David Edwin Harrell, Jr., All Things Are Possible: The Healings and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America, 11).

“Having been trained in the art of rhetoric, Augustine knew well all the strategies of communication. Yet what made him such an outstanding preacher was his emphasis on communicating God’s truth in familiar and ordinary ways. The aim of the sermon, he stressed, should be to instruct, to please, and to move the will to action” (Eds. Keith Willhite and Scott M. Gibson, The Big Idea of Biblical Preaching, 29-30).

“[T]he biblical text is what truly governs our seeing of the world. If all the world is a text to be interpreted, then for the church the narrative of the Scriptures is what should govern our very perception of the world. We should see the world through the Word” (James K.A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, 55).

“Revelation informs our horizon. However, even the (objective) provision of a revelatory interpretation does not guarantee that everyone will read the event in this way. One must (subjectively) accept this revelatory interpretation, which requires faith–and such faith requires the regenerating working of the Holy Spirit. . . . the objective provision of revelation in the Scriptures is ineffectual as revelation (i.e., to communicate) without the regeneration of the heart and mind in order to dispel blindness” (James K.A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, 48).

“Thus [Derrida] is not a linguistic idealist who denies the material existence of cups and tables; rather, in the line of Martin Heidegger (of Being and Time), he is what we might call–for lack of a better term–a comprehensive hermeneuticist who asserts the ubiquity of interpretation: all our experience is always already an interpretation” (James K.A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, 39).

“But I want to follow Francis Schaeffer’s footsteps by taking philosophy very seriously precisely because it does impact everyday life. ‘Ideas have legs,’ and even in a culture of amusement, there is thought that shapes it” (James K.A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, 20).

“If preaching is to be transformational, it must address the needs, hurts, temptations, and trials of listeners” (Eds. Keith Willhite and Scott M. Gibson, The Big Idea of Biblical Preaching, 26).