J I Packer on a Needed Revival of Puritanism

"Churches and Christians today are sadly Laodicean; complacent, somnolent, shallow, stuffy. We need reviving. What to do? Opening the windows of our souls to let in a breath of fresh air from the seventeenth century would, I suggest be the wisest possible course".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p106).

J I Packer on Puritan Writing

"Puritan analytical method accounts for the length of Puritan expositions - Joseph Caryl's 6000 pages on Job; 2000 plus in folio on Hebrews from John Owen, Hildersham's 152 sermons on Psalm 51:7, over 800 pages of small print in William Gurnall's treatment of Ephesians 6:10-20 ... What led the Puritans into such long-windedness was their passion for throughness in extracting all doctrines and developing all applications.

Clearly once they started drawing out implications and applications they found it hard to stop. Yet their variety of matter is great, repetition is minimal, the sense that they begin in the middle rather than at the beginning is soon overcome and interest once gained does not fade".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p95).

J I Packer on Defining a Spiritual Gift

"A spiritual gift is an ability, divinely bestowed and sustained to grasp and express the realities of the spiritual world and the knowledge of God in Christ for the edifying of both others and oneself".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p296).

J I Packer on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit

"Gifts of the Spirit are Christ's sole weapons for setting up, extending and maintaining His Kingdom".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p294).

J I Packer on John Owen and the Gifts of the Spirit

"It is clear that were Owen with us today he would be urging us to seek a recovery of 'every member ministry' through a renewed quest for the best gifts of the Holy Spirit".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p293).

J I Packer on the Puritans and Communion with God

"In private they talked freely of their experiences of God, for they had deep experiences to talk about it".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p283).

J I Packer on the Puritans and Communion with God

"We cannot but conclude that whereas to the Puritans communion with Godwas a great thing, to evangelicals today it is a comparatively small thing. The Puritans were concerned about communion with God in a way that we are not ... when Christians meet, they talk to each other ... but rarely of their daily experience of God".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p282).

J I Packer on John Owen and the Song of Solomon

"Owen here aligns himself with those many Puritans who follow in the footsteps of Bernard and other medievals in expounding Song of Solomon as a parable of the mutual love of Christ and His spiritual bride the church and sometimes the Christian".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p274).

J I Packer on the Gospel

"That is the reality of communion".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p265).

J I Packer on Prayer and Mortification

"The activity by which the Christian directly secures the mortification of his sins is prayer".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p263).

J I Packer on John Owen

"Owen did not write for superficial readers. He wrote rather for those who, once they take up a subject cannot rest until they see to the bottom of it and who find exhaustiveness not exhausting but satisfying and refreshing".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p253).

J I Packer on the Reception of the Spirit

"The reception of the Spirit after believing certainly had experimental repercussions for some New Testament Christians as Acts and Galatians 3:2 makes plain; it produced not merely charismatic action (prophecy, tongues, miracles) but also great joy, boldness and vigour in Christian life and service".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p246).

J I Packer on Assurance of Salvation

"He may think and hope and with reason that he is a child of God. But he cannot say, in the unqualified sense of John's First Epistle that he knows his sonship till the Spirit sets this certainity home on his heart".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p239).

J I Packer on Assurance of Salvation

"Assurance is the concious fruit of a supernatural enlightenment and cannot exist till it pleases God to give it".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p239).

J I Packer on Assurance of Salvation

"Assurance is not normally enjoyed except by those who have first laboured for it and sought it and served God faithfully and patiently for some time without it".

J I Packer - "Among God's Giants" - Kingsway (1993) - (p238).

J I Packer on God Speaking Today

"It is true that since the apostolic age God has said nothing new to man for He has in fact no more to say to us than He said then. But it is also true that God has not ceased to say to man all that He said then".

J I Packer - "God's Word's - Studies of Key Bible Themes" - (1998) - pp24-25.