"They asked him, 'Lord, shall we strike with the sword?' [Luke 22:39-53] Is it time to fight, Lord? ... This is, in essence, a prayer." - SBC Voices
"we have absolute certainty that the Holy Spirit has spoken and is speaking in the Bible, whereas we don’t have the same level of certainty in the other ways in which the Spirit does move, act, and guide" - Ligonier
"I have seen people make unwise and even catastrophic decisions who told me they prayed and felt good about it." - Randy Alcorn
"The real issue is twofold: what we should expect from God in this regard and what we should do with any invading impressions that come our way." - Packer
"John Kay and Mervyn King seek to resurrect for day-to-day decision-making the significance of distinguishing between risk and uncertainty in Radical Uncertainty. They press the relevance and significance of the older distinction between decision-making under risk and decision-making under uncertainty." - Law & Liberty
There are legitimate questions for Christians to ask as they study their Bibles and become active in a church. Some questions are worth pursuing endlessly (questions about the character of Christ, for instance). Others have their limits, particularly when little or nothing is directly said in the Bible about them. As the discussion becomes long and drawn out, it also becomes, well, odd. We become either speculative or dogmatic without substance, since there is little in Scripture that substantiates our arguments. Whether Christians should vote, or did vote in the New Testament times is one of those types of questions. It is legitimate to ask, but limited in its worth. There is only one time in the Bible that Christians are directly said to have voted, where a proper Greek word for “vote” is used (2 Cor. 8:18-19).
Do not take me to mean that church order is unimportant. If you would look in my library at how many books I have on the subject, Church/Church Order, you would immediately understand that I do not take it lightly. There are several themes in the subject of Church Order which I am convinced are worthy of lengthy pursuit. One, for instance is church discipline. Another, the one I want to talk about, is group decision-making among Christians. Taking votes is one way of making a group decision. There are others. From a biblical perspective, the significant idea for churches is not vote-taking, but group decisions.
"In these moments, we would do well to remember the words of James 1:19 when he calls Christians to 'Be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness.'" - F&T
On deciding when to begin meeting again for corporate worship: "I think it is likely that 80 percent of the members in your church understand that there is no clear-cut answer to this question.
