Yesterday I got to spend another afternoon with Paul Ellis talking about all sorts. I just want to thank him for everything he has taught me and will continue to teach me! You rock and I will miss you a lot when I leave for Hong Kong! So, to say thank you I thought I would make a Top 10 quotes list for the man who loves making Top 10 quotes lists! If Paul has impacted your life in any way, share this list because sharing is caring!

1. Much of what is sold as “the gospel” is an inferior substitute for the real thing. Don’t be fooled by cheap knock-offs! There is an easy way to distinguish the authentic from the counterfeit. The true gospel is 100% good news. There’s no bad news in the good news. If the gospel you’ve bought into makes you feel insecure, anxious, guilty, and condemned, then it’s no good. Discard it before it kills you!

2. The entire Bible is good for you, but you won’t get much out of it unless you know Jesus Christ.

3. People waste years studying different religions trying to figure out which one is best. But when you strip away all the packaging it’s actually a fairly simple choice: it’s either your works or his blood.

4. I’d like to think that if I’d been Adam, the first thing I would’ve built was a fence around that tree. Then I would’ve put warning signs all over that fence. It’s too late for that now, but it’s not too late to put warning signs all around the law.

5. Is your name written in the Lamb’s Book of Life? If so, are you worried that Jesus may blot out your name? It seems that many Christians are. They are afraid that they might do something that will cause Jesus to blot out their names from His Book of Life. It’s like Jesus is sitting in heaven with a pen in one hand and a bottle of correction fluid in the other. Get saved, name goes in. Fail a test, name goes out. Re-commit your life to God, name goes back in. Phew! With all the re-commitments going on, you’d think Jesus was in danger of repetitive stress injury!

6. Walking after the flesh is when you attempt to get your needs met independently of God. It’s trusting in yourself (your abilities, your understanding) and living solely from the basis of your earthly experience (what you see, hear, touch, etc.). Now here’s the important bit: You can walk after the flesh in the pursuit of both good things and bad things.

7. The gospel is simple and it takes theologians to complicate it.

8. If you were the devil and you wanted to keep Christians barren, sick and ineffective, there is one simple thing that you could do: you would hide or distort the revelation that we have been totally and eternally forgiven.

9. Did Jesus sneak out of heaven against His Father’s wishes to come and die for our sins? Did He distract the Holy Spirit then slip away on His own initiative to shed His blood for our forgiveness? Of course not! Yet judging by some of the comments I get on this site, it’s clear that some think that God the Son and God the Father are playing a good cop-bad cop routine with humanity. God the Father is angry with us on account of our sin, but Jesus stands between us protecting us from His Father’s wrath. What’s wrong with this picture? Everything! It suggests that God the Son and God the Father have different natures, that One loves us unconditionally, but the other can’t see past our sin. Even if you don’t know your Bible you can probably see how ridiculous this is.

10. There’s a teaching going around that says that God has only half-forgiven us. If it sounds wacky, that’s because it is.

For more great nuggets of wisdom like these visit Paul’s website, escapetoreality.org!

Grace & Peace!

Cornel