Columbus Day; Quotes

Each year the USA observes the holiday, Columbus Day.  It is not, however, as popular as years past.  Was Christopher Columbus (AD 1451-1506) perfect?  Of course not.  Did he have the political correctness of our times?  No.  At points I would disagree with him in practice and theology.  But was he a great leader?  Of course he was.  May we enjoy Columbus Day, celebrate his successes, learn from his faults.  After all, he discovered America in 1492 (yes, I know the American Indians already knew about America) and opened up the New World to European exploration (both good and bad).  It is obvious he had faith in God. Columbus is pivotal in the history of North and South America.  A few of his quotes: 

“I should not proceed by land to the East, as is customary, but by a Westerly route, in which direction we have hitherto no certain evidence that any one has gone.”  -Christopher Columbus  

“It was the Lord who put into my mind that fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies.  All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me.  There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because He comforted me with rays of marvelous inspiration from the Holy Scriptures.”  -Christopher Columbus  

“I am a most noteworthy sinner, but I have cried out to the Lord for grace and mercy, and they have covered me completely. I have found the sweetest consolation since I made it my whole purpose to enjoy His marvelous Presence.” -Christopher Columbus

“No one should fear to undertake any task in the name of our Saviour, if it is just and if the intention is purely for His holy service.”  -Christopher Columbus

“There are trees of a thousand sorts, and all have their several fruits; and I feel the most unhappy man in the world not to know them, for I am well assured that they are all valuable. I bring home specimens of them, and also of the land.”  -Christopher Columbus

“I believe that there are many herbs and many trees that are worth much in Europe for dyes and for medicines; but I do not know, and this causes me great sorrow. Arriving at this cape, I found the smell of the trees and flowers so delicious that it seemed the pleasantest thing in the world.”  -Christopher Columbus

“Riches don’t make a man rich, they only make him busier.”  -Christopher Columbus

“And I say that Your Highnesses ought not to consent that any foreigner does business or sets foot here, except Christian Catholics since this was the end and the beginning of the enterprise, that it should be for the enhancement and glory of the Christian religion, nor should anyone who is not a good Christian come to these parts.  Here may be found the first suggestion of the exclusive colonial policy that Spain and other nations followed.”  -Christopher Columbus

(Thank God for our American Religious Liberty, a liberty Baptists have championed.) 

“It is easy to discover what another has discovered before.”  -Christopher Columbus

Nothing that results in human progress is achieved with unanimous consent.  Those that are enlightened before the others are condemned to pursue that light in spite of the others.”  -Christopher Columbus

Happy Columbus Day! 

-David R. Brumbelow, gulfcoastpastor.blogspot.com, October 11, AD 2021. 

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Quotes by Thomas Sowell

The Doctrine Of The Trinity

Other Articles in lower right margin (web version). 

Quotes by Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell is a conservative professor, author, columnist.  He also happens to be black and grew up in North Carolina and New York.  He was born in AD 1930 and proudly considers himself a relic of the past. 

Sowell has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago, taught at UCLA and is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.  Senator Ted Cruz called  him a “brilliant thinker and writer.”  Sowell recently retired at age 86. 

I like quotes.  Even though I may not always agree with the author.  Even though I may not even agree with every nuance of the quote.  

Here are a few thoughts to ponder from Dr. Thomas Sowell. 

1. People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

2. If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago, and a racist today.

3. Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them.

4. No community is better off for having large numbers of idle young males, hanging around with nothing to do except getting into trouble.

5. Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

6. The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.

7. The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

8. The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up.

9. The real minimum wage is zero.

10. What 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

11. Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.

12. The word ‘racism’ is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything - and demanding evidence makes you a ‘racist.’ 

13. I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

14. The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state. 

15.  Chief among those who generate this poisonous atmosphere are career race hustlers like Al Sharpton and racist institutions like the "Black Lives Matter" movement. All such demagogues need is a situation where there has been a confrontation where someone was white and someone else was black. The facts don't matter to them. 

16. We have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain. 

-Thomas Sowell (tsowell.com) 

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.  
-Proverbs 25:11

-David R. Brumbelow, Gulf Coast Pastor, December 28, AD 2016. 

More articles in lower right margin.  

B. H. Carroll on Inspiration of Bible

Following are quotes from B. H. Carroll on biblical inspiration from his book, Inspiration of the Bible, Southwestern Library of Centennial Classics, 1930, 2008.

“It has always been a matter of profound surprise to me that anybody should ever question the verbal inspiration of the Bible."

"The whole thing had to be written in words. Words are signs of ideas, and if the words are not inspired, then there is no way of getting at anything in connection with inspiration. If I am free to pick up the Bible and read something and say, ‘That is not inspired,’ and someone else does not agree with me as to which is and which is not inspired, it leaves the whole thing unsettled as to whether any of it is inspired."

"What is the object of inspiration? It is to put accurately, in human words, ideas from God. If the words are not inspired, how am I to know how much to reject, and how to find out whether anything is from God? When you hear the silly talk that the Bible ‘contains’ the word of God and is not the word of God, you hear a fool’s talk. I don’t care if he is a Doctor of Divinity, a President of a University covered with medals from universities of Europe and the United States, it is fool-talk. There can be no inspiration of the book without the inspiration of the words of the book.”

“The inspired word is irrefragable, infallible; that all the powers of the world cannot break one ‘thus saith the Lord.’”

“Let me say further that only the original text of the books of the Bible is inspired, not the copy or the translation.”

“The inspiration means that the record of what is said and done is correct. It does not mean that everything that God did and said is recorded. It does not mean that everything recorded is of equal importance, but every part of it is necessary to the purpose of the record, and no part is unimportant. One part is no more inspired than any other part.”

“It is perfectly foolish to talk about degrees of inspiration. What Jesus said in the flesh, as we find it in the four Gospels, is no more His word than what the inspired prophet or apostle said.”

“What Jesus said after He ascended to heaven, through Paul or any other apostle, is just as much Jesus’ word as anything He said in the flesh.”

“Here are some objections: First, ‘only the originals are inspired, and we have only copies.’ The answer to that is that God would not inspire a book and take no care of the book. His providence has preserved the Bible in a way that no other book has been preserved.”

“We do not find that verbal inspiration stereotypes the style, even in the case of a single man. It is nothing mechanical like that, nor does it in the least destroy the individuality of the inspired man. When Paul writes, he writes in Paul’s style; when Peter writes, he writes in Peter’s style.”

“The Holy Spirit inspires the penman and not the pen, and we must not be disturbed when we find Paul’s style, when he is writing spiritual things in spiritual words, or Peter’s style in his writings. We should accept that fact as we go along.”  -B. H. Carroll, Inspiration of the Bible, Southwestern Library of Centennial Classics, 1930, 2008.

 "The modern cry: 'Less creed and more liberty,' is a degeneration from the vertebrate to the jellyfish, and means less unity and less morality, and it means more heresy. Definitive truth does not create heresy - it only exposes and corrects. Shut off the creed and the Christian world would fill up with heresy unsuspected and uncorrected, but none the less deadly."

-B. H. Carroll, An Interpretation of the English Bible, Ephesians 4.   


Benajah Harvey Carroll (AD 1843-1914) was born in Mississippi, a veteran of the Civil War, and was pastor of First Baptist Church, Waco, Texas.

B. H. Carroll was founder and first president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas. His book, Inspiration of the Bible, has been influential among Baptists. It was reprinted and promoted during the SBC Conservative Resurgence and was reprinted again in 2008 in a set of books commemorating the Centennial of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Note: Plenary Verbal Inspiration means every word of all 66 books of the Bible is inspired by God and is therefore the inerrant, living, authoritative, sufficient Word of God.
Plenary - all
Verbal - every word
Inspiration - God breathed. Divinely inspired in such a way that no other book is inspired by God.

-David R. Brumbelow, Gulf Coast Pastor, July 12, AD 2011.

Related Articles:
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B. H. Carroll on Hyper-Calvinism

B. H. Carroll on Pastors and Alcohol

Alcohol Condemned in the Bible

See other articles in lower right margin. 

B. H. Carroll on Hyper-Calvinism

In 1900 B. H. Carroll preached a sermon on Baptists 100 Years Ago. It was a historical message telling of Baptist leaders and work in the era around 1800. Carroll (AD 1843-1914), was founder and first president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Following are a couple of his comments about some Calvinists of those days who went to the extreme.

“It was a time of strong doctrine, and many Baptists were hyper-Calvinists in their view. But Leland himself tells us how, one day while preaching, ‘his soul got into the gospel trade-winds,’ which so filled his spiritual sails that he forgot about election and reprobation and so preached Christ to sinners that many accepted him as their Saviour and Lord. And oh, I would to God that the preachers of this generation, like old John Leland of long ago, would now get into the gospel trade-winds and bear away with flaming canvas the everlasting gospel to earth's remotest bounds!”
-B. H. Carroll, Baptists 100 Years Ago.

“And here is another lad who will stir up things mightily later on. He will come from the frontiers of Georgia, without education, small in person, slovenly in dress, unprepossessing in appearance, with shriveled features and small piercing eyes. So J. M. Peck describes him.

He is an Antinomian of Antinomians, assuming to speak from immediate inspiration. He will uproot the tender missionary gardens like a wild boar. He will oppose missions, education, Bible and temperance societies, prayer meetings, Sunday-schools and all other evangelizing agencies with indescribable fury.

He will take advantage of the prejudices of ignorance and the prevalent hyper- Calvinism and push his war into all the Southwest until in many associations of Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee the late-blossoming gardens of missionary work shall be as if a cold, chilling frost of death had been breathed upon them. Who is this man? His name is Daniel Parker.

In 1826-7 he will publish his notorious ‘two seed’ pamphlets, that will become his winding sheet and cause his memory to rot.”
-B. H. Carroll, Baptists 100 Years Ago.

-David R. Brumbelow, Gulf Coast Pastor, May 16, AD 2011.

See related articles under Gulf Coast Pastor Articles (Labels) in lower right hand margin. 

Christmas Quotes

“Last month was our giving thanks holiday, and Christmas is God’s way of saying, ‘You’re welcome.’” -Dennis the Menace to his friend Joey

“My nomination for history’s most profound event is the incarnation of God in Christ.” -Ralph Bailey

“Our main job is not to cry, ‘Look what the world has come to,’ but, ‘Look Who has come to the world.’” - Kermit L. Long

“God walked down the stairs of Heaven with a Baby in His arms.” -Paul Scherer

"Christ was born in the first century, yet He belongs to all centuries. He was born a Jew, yet He belongs to all races. He was born in Bethlehem, yet He belongs to all countries.” -George W. Truett

“In BC we know God is. In AD we know who God is.” -author unknown *

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law. To redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. -Galatians 4:4-5

* Note: BC means “Before Christ.” AD is an abbreviation of a Latin term meaning, “In The Year Of Our Lord.”

Merry Christmas!
-David R. Brumbelow, Gulf Coast Pastor, December 12, AD 2010.