 A church has no right to make anything a condition of membership which Christ has not made a condition of salvation. Author: A.A. Hodge
Topics: Church, Salvation |
| If professing Christians are unfaithful to the authority of their Lord in their capacity as citizens of the State, they cannot expect to be blessed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in their capacity as members of the Church. Author: A.A. Hodge
Topics: Holy Spirit |
| The Christian that is bound by his own horizon, the church that lives simply for itself, is bound to die a spiritual death and sink into stagnancy and corruption. We never can thank God enough for giving us not only a whole Gospel to believe, but a whole world to give it to. Author: A.B. Simpson
Topics: Church, The Gospel |
| One of the special marks of the Holy Ghost in the Apostolic Church was the spirit of boldness. Author: A.B. Simpson
Topics: Holy Spirit |
| The chief danger of the Church today is that it is trying to get on the same side as the world, instead of turning the world upside down. Our Master expects us to accomplish results, even if they bring opposition and conflict. Anything is better than compromise, apathy, and paralysis. God, give to us an intense cry for the old-time power of the Gospel and the Holy Ghost! Author: A.B. Simpson
Topics: Church, Holy Spirit, Compromise |
| We must pass by the good, moral man, and seek the outcast. We must pass by those who, we think, would make the best members of the Church, and go with our invitation to the very refuse of Society. Sad to say, we must. sometimes pass by our very children while we go out after others not related to us by fleshly ties. Author: A.C. Dixon
Topics: Evangelism |
| A basic trouble is that most Churches limit themselves unnecessarily by addressing their message almost exclusively to those who are open to religious impression through the intellect, whereas ... there are at least four other gateways -- the emotions, the imagination, the aesthetic feeling, and the will -- through which they can be reached. Author: A.J. Gossip
Topics: Church, Evangelism |
| A century or so since, they spoke of sharing our Lord with the heathen, and the world rocked with laughter at so crazy a scheme, with the Church joining loudly in the merriment. Yet today, who laughs now? We ought to be the gladdest and the most exultant people in the world; for we have found the key to our difficulties, and it turns; have come on a solution of life's problems, and it works. Author: A.J. Gossip
Topics: Christianity |
| Christ holds that prayer is a tremendous power which achieves what, without it, was a sheer impossibility. And this amazing thing you can set into operation. And the fact that you are not so using it, and simply don't believe in it and its efficiency and efficacy as our fathers did, and that so many nowadays agree with you, is certainly a major reason why the churches are so cold, and the promises seem so tardy of fulfillment. Author: A.J. Gossip
Topics: Prayer, Church |
| To a true child of God, the invisible bond that unites all believers to Christ is far more tender, and lasting, and precious; and, as we come to recognize and realize that we are all dwelling in one sphere of life in Him, we learn to look on every believer as our brother, in a sense that is infinitely higher than all human relationships. This is the one and only way to bring disciples permanently together. All other plans for promoting the unity of the Church have failed. Author: A.T. Pierson
Topics: Unity |
| The church that is not jealously protected by mighty intercession and sacrificial labors will before long become the abode of every evil bird and the hiding place for unsuspected corruption. The creeping wilderness will soon take over that church that trusts in its own strength and forgets to watch and pray. Author: A.W. Tozer
Topics: Church, Prayer, Intercession |
| One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organizations do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always. Author: A.W. Tozer
Topics: Life, Church, Unity |
| Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them. Author: A.W. Tozer
Topics: Christians, Church |
| I wonder if there was ever a time when true spiritual worship was at a lower ebb. To great sections of the church, the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the "program." This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the public service which now passes for worship among us. Author: A.W. Tozer
Topics: Worship |
| If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference Author: A.W. Tozer
Topics: Holy Spirit |
| The basic trouble with the church today is her unworthy concept of God... Our religion is weak because our God is weak... Christianity at any given time is strong or weak depending on her concept of God. Author: A.W. Tozer
Source: The Attributes of God: a Journey into the Father's Heart.
Topics: Christianity |
| The most critical need of the church at this moment is men, bold men, free men. The church must seek, in prayer and much humility, the coming again of men made of the stuff of which prophets and martyrs are made. Author: A.W. Tozer
Topics: Men, Humility |
| The true Church has never sounded out public expectations before launching her mission. Her leaders heard from God, they knew their Lord's will and did it. Their people followed them - sometimes to triumph, oftener to insults and public persecution - and their sufficient reward was the satisfaction of being right in a wrong world! Author: A.W. Tozer
Topics: Obedience, Rewards |
| We must face the fact that many today are notoriously careless in their living. This attitude finds its way into the church. We have liberty, we have money, we live in comparative luxury. As a result, discipline practically has disappeared. What would a violin solo sound like if the strings on the musician's instrument were all hanging loose, not stretched tight, not "disciplined"? Author: A.W. Tozer
Source: Christianity Today, November 20, 1987.
Topics: Discipline, Liberty |
| We can exert power for good, therefore, only if we are prepared to drum it into our heads that the church of Christ can never exert influence on civil society directly, only indirectly. Author: Abraham Kuyper
Topics: Examples, Government |
| The seminaries must be like the churches' poor relations, prolonging their existence with austerity. Author: Abraham Kuyper
Topics: Education |
| God built into the creation a variety of cultural spheres, such as the family, economics, politics, art, and intellectual inquiry. Each of these spheres has its own proper "business" and needs its own unique pattern of authority. When we confuse spheres, by violating the proper boundaries of church and state, for instance, or reducing the academic life to a business enterprise, we trangress the patterns that God has set. Author: Abraham Kuyper
Topics: Creation, Authority |
| If once the heathen come into God's inheritance, no wonder the church complains that she is "become a reproach to her neighbours, a shame and derision to all round about her." Author: Abraham Wright
Topics: Heresy |
| I believe that a great number of people are going to die and go to hell because they're counting on their religiosity in the church instead of their relationship with Jesus to get them to heaven. They give lip service to repentance and faith, but they've never been born again. Author: Adrian Rogers
Topics: Hell, Religion, Self-righteousness |
| The church is not the way to heaven; the church is the sign that points to heaven. Author: Adrian Rogers
Topics: Church, Heaven |
| We need, men so possessed by the Spirit of God that God can think His thoughts through our minds, that He can plan His will through our actions, that He can direct His strategy of world evangelization through His Church. Author: Alan Redpath
Topics: Holy Spirit, Evangelism, Men |
| In our manner of speech, our plans of living, our dealings with others, our conduct and walk in the church and out of it--all should be done as becomes the gospel (Phil. 1:27). Author: Albert Barnes
Topics: Character |
| It has become a settled principle that nothing which is good and true can be destroyed by persecution, but that the effect ultimately is to establish more firmly, and to spread more widely, that which it was designed to overthrow. It has long since passed into a proverb that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." Author: Albert Barnes
Topics: Persecution |
| Many a barren church owes its present sad estate to its inconsistent behaviour, and many a barren Christian has come into this mournful condition by a careless, unsanctified walk before the Lord. Let not saints who are now useful run the risk of enduring the loss of their mercies, but let them be watchful that all things may go well with them. Author: Albert Barnes
Topics: Church |
| The apostolic church thought more about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ than about death and heaven. The early Christians were looking, not for a cleft in the ground called a grave but for a cleavage in the sky called Glory. Author: Alexander MacLaren
Topics: Heaven |
| The apostolic church thought more about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ than about death and heaven. The early Christians were looking, not for a cleft in the ground called a grave but for a cleavage in the sky called Glory. Author: Alexander MacLaren
Topics: Heaven |
| A good church is a Bible-centered church. Nothing is as important as this--not a large congregation, a witty pastor, or tangible experiences of the Holy Spirit. Author: Alistair Begg
Topics: Church |
| Revivals begin with God's own people; the Holy Spirit touches their heart anew, and gives them new fervor and compassion, and zeal, new light and life, and when He has thus come to you, He next goes forth to the valley of dry bones... Oh, what responsibility this lays on the Church of God! If you grieve Him away from yourselves, or hinder His visit, then the poor perishing world suffers sorely! Author: Andrew Bonar
Topics: Revival, Zeal |
| We have not been men of prayer. The spirit of prayer has slumbered among us. The closet has been too little frequented and delighted in. We have allowed business, study or active labor to interfere with our closet-hours. And the feverish atmosphere in which both the church and the nation are enveloped has found its way into our prayer closets... Author: Andrew Bonar
Topics: Prayer |
| God has no more precious gift to a church or an age than a man who lives as an embodiment of his will, and inspires those around him with the faith of what grace can do. Author: Andrew Murray
Topics: Obedience |
| Men ought to seek with their whole hearts to be filled with the Spirit of God. Without being filled with the Spirit, it is utterly impossible that an individual Christian or a church can ever live or work as God desires. Author: Andrew Murray
Topics: Holy Spirit |
| The man who mobilizes the Christian church to pray will make the greatest contribution to world evangelization in history. Author: Andrew Murray
Topics: Prayer, Evangelism |
| There is need of a great revival of spiritual life, of truly fervent devotion to our Lord Jesus, of entire consecration to His service. It is only in a church in which this spirit of revival has at least begun, that there is any hope of radical change in the relation of the majority of our Christian people to mission work. Author: Andrew Murray
Topics: Revival, Consecration |
| Christianity fuels everything I write. Being a Christian means that I am called upon to do battle against lies, injustice, cruelty, hypocrisy--you know, all the virtues in the church of liberalism. As St. Paul said, if Christ is not risen from the dead, then eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Author: Ann Coulter
Topics: Christianity, Responsibility |
How little chance the Holy Ghost has nowadays. The churches and missionary societies have so bound Him in red tape that they practically ask Him to sit in a corner while they do the work themselves.
- C.T. Studd Author: Assorted Authors
Topics: Apathy, Missions, Holy Spirit |
Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.
- C.T. Studd Author: Assorted Authors
Topics: Evangelism |
I spent twenty years of my life trying to recruit people out of local churches and into missions structures so that they could be involved in fulfilling God's global mission. Now I have another idea. Let's take God's global mission and put it right in the middle of the local church!
- George Miley Author: Assorted Authors
Topics: Church, Missions |
God hath divers ways into divers men. Into some he comes at noon, in the sunshine of prosperity; to some in the dark and heavy clouds of adversity. Some he affects with the music of the church; some, with some particular collect or prayer; some, with some passage of a sermon, which takes no hold of him that stands next to him. Watch the way of the Spirit of God into thee.
- John Donne Author: Assorted Authors
Topics: Holy Spirit, Music, Prosperity |
In order to the existence of such a ministry in the Church, there is requisite an authority received from God, and consequently power and knowledge imparted from God for the exercise of such ministry; and where a man possesses these, although the bishop has not laid hands upon him according to his traditions, God has Himself appointed him.
- John Wycliffe Author: Assorted Authors
Topics: Service, Authority, Power |
The empyrean heaven saved not the angels who in that heaven committed sin. The terrestrial Paradise saved not Adam, who in that paradise committed sin. And dost thou presume to hope in the Church for impunity of those evils which in the Church you perpetrate?
- Paolo Segneri Author: Assorted Authors
Topics: Angels, Sin |
The church is in Christ as Eve was in Adam.
- Richard Hooker Author: Assorted Authors
Topics: Church |
| Trying to run a church without revivals can be done when you can run a gasoline engine on buttermilk. Author: Billy Sunday
Topics: Revival, Church |
| Enthusiasm is as good a thing in the Church as fire is in a cook stove. Author: Billy Sunday
Topics: Church |
| A revival does two things. First, it returns the Church from her backsliding and second, it causes the conversion of men and women; and it always includes the conviction of sin on the part of the Church. What a spell the devil seems to cast over the Church today! Author: Billy Sunday
Topics: Revival, Conviction, Backsliding |
| Christianity means a lot more than church membership. Author: Billy Sunday
Topics: Christianity, Church |
| God Almighty never intended that the devil should triumph over the Church. He never intended that the saloons should walk rough-shod over Christianity. Author: Billy Sunday
Topics: Drunkenness, Satan |
| Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile. Author: Billy Sunday
Topics: Church |
| I believe there is no doctrine more dangerous to the Church today than to convey the impression that a revival is something peculiar in itself and cannot be judged by the same rules of causes and effect as other things. Author: Billy Sunday
Topics: Revival, Doctrine |
| I challenge you to show me where the saloon has ever helped business, education, church, morals or anything we hold dear. Author: Billy Sunday
Topics: Drunkenness, Business |
| Unless you have made a complete surrender and are doing his will it will avail you nothing if you've reformed a thousand times and have your name on fifty church records. Author: Billy Sunday
Topics: Repentance, Conversion, Surrender |
| Churches don't need new members half so much as they need the old bunch made over. Author: Billy Sunday
Topics: Church, Renewal |
| There wouldn't be so many non-church goers if there were not so many non-going churches. Author: Billy Sunday
Topics: Church |
| Too many churches are little more than four walls and a roof. Author: Billy Sunday
Topics: Church |
| It won't save your soul if your wife is a Christian. You have got to be something more than a brother-in-law to the Church. Author: Billy Sunday
Topics: Salvation |
| Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it's to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist. Author: Bono
Topics: Church |
| The promise to the Church is a promise of persecution, if faithful in this world, but a promise of a great inheritance and reward hereafter. In the meantime, she is to be a pilgrim body, passing through this scene, but abiding above. Author: C.I. Scofield
Topics: Persecution, Rewards |
| The Church, saved by faith in the Messiah who came from the Jews; having in her hand the Bible which was written by the Jews; receiving her teaching solely and only through Jewish sources, became, for one thousand years, the bitter, relentless, bloody persecutor of Judaism. With that came worldliness and priestly assumption, and the Dark Ages. Author: C.I. Scofield
Topics: Ignorance, Hypocrisy, Persecution |
| Christians, let us leave the government of the world till the King comes; let us leave the civilizing of the world to be the incidental effect of the presence there of the Gospel of Christ, and let us give our time, our strength, our money, our days to the mission distinctively committed to the Church, namely, to make the Lord Jesus Christ known "to every creature"! Author: C.I. Scofield
Topics: Government, Evangelism |
| I believe there are too many practitioners in the church who are not believers. Author: C.S. Lewis
Topics: Hypocrisy |
| The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. Author: C.S. Lewis
Topics: Church |
| When the church finds its members falling into gross and scandalous sins, then it is time for the church to awake and cry to God for a Revival of Religion. Author: Charles Finney
Topics: Revival |
| When sinners are careless and stupid, and sinking into hell unconcerned, it is time the church should bestir themselves. It is as much the duty of the church to awake, as it is for the firemen to awake when a fire breaks out in the night in a great city. Author: Charles Finney
Topics: Revival, Hell, Apathy |
| When there is a spirit of controversy in the church or in the land, a revival is needful. The spirit of religion is not the spirit of controversy. There can be no prosperity in religion, where the spirit of controversy prevails. Author: Charles Finney
Topics: Revival |
| The unity of Christendom is not a luxury, but a necessity. The World will go limping until Christ's prayer that all may be one is answered. We must have unity, not at all costs, but at all risks. A unified Church is the only offering we dare present to the coming Christ, for in it alone will He find room to dwell. Author: Charles H. Brent
Topics: Christianity, Unity |
| All Church power arises from the indwelling of the Spirit; therefore those in whom the Spirit dwells are the seat of Church power. But the Spirit dwells in the whole Church, and therefore the whole Church is the seat of Church power. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Power, Holy Spirit |
| All the reasons which require the subjection of a believer to the brethren of a particular church, require his subjection to all his brethren in the Lord. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Church |
| As the Church is the aggregate of believers, there is an intimate analogy between the experience of the individual believer, and of the Church as a whole. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Church |
| Christ has not only ordained that there shall be such officers in his Church - he has not only specified their duties and prerogatives - but he gives the requisite qualifications, and calls those thus qualified, and by that call gives them their official authority. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Authority |
| If all Church power vests in the clergy, then the people are practically bound to passive obedience in all matters of faith and practice; for all right of private judgment is then denied. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Power |
| If the Church is a living body united to the same head, governed by the same laws, and pervaded by the same Spirit, it is impossible that one part should be independent of all the rest. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Unity |
| It is a thoroughly anti-christian doctrine that the Spirit of God, and therefore the life and governing power of the Church, resides in the ministry, to the exclusion of the people. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Doctrine |
| All Church power is, therefore, properly ministerial and administrative. Everything is to be done in the name of Christ, and in accordance with his directions. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Power |
| Romanists tell us that the Pope is the vicar of Christ; that he is his successor as the universal head and ruler of the Church on earth. If this is so, he must be a Christ. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Heresy |
| The Church is everywhere represented as one. It is one body, one family, one fold, one kingdom. It is one because pervaded by one Spirit. We are all baptized into one Spirit so as to become, says the apostle, on body. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Unity |
| The Church, during the apostolic age, did not consist of isolated, independent congregations, but was one body, of which the separate churches were constituent members, each subject to all the rest, or to an authority which extended over all. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Unity |
| The Church, however, is a self-governing society, distinct from the State, having its officers and laws, and, therefore, an administrative government of its own. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Church, Government |
| The Independent or Congregational theory includes two principles; first, that the governing and executive power in the Church is in the brotherhood; and secondly, that the Church organization is complete in each worshipping assembly, which is independent of every other. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Church |
| The Reformers, therefore, as instruments in the hands of God, in delivering the Church from bondage to prelates, did not make it a tumultuous multitude, in which every man was a law to himself, free to believe, and free to do what he pleased. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Freedom |
| The right of the people to a substantive part in the government of the Church is recognized and sanctioned by the apostles in almost every conceivable way. Author: Charles Hodge
Topics: Church |
| Shall I give you yet another reason why you should pray? I have preached my very heart out. I could not say any more than I have said. Will not your prayers accomplish that which my preaching fails to do? Is it not likely that the Church has been putting forth its preaching hand but not its praying hand? Oh dear friends! Let us agonize in prayer. Author: Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Prayer, Preaching |
| A church in the land without the Spirit is rather a curse than a blessing. If you have not the Spirit of God, Christian worker, remember that you stand in somebody else's way; you are a fruitless tree standing where a fruitful tree might grow. Author: Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Church, Holy Spirit |
| It is a remarkable fact that all the heresies which have arisen in the Christian Church have had a decided tendency to 'dishonor God and to flatter man.' Author: Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Heresy |
| You may speak but a word to a child, and in that child there may be slumbering a noble heart which shall stir the Christian Church in years to come. Author: Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Children, Examples |
| A church that does not exist to reclaim heathenism, to fight evil, to destroy error, to put down falsehood, a church that does not exist to take the side of the poor, to denounce injustice and to hold up righteousness, is a church that has no right to be. Not for yourself, O church, do you exist, any more than Christ existed for Himself. Author: Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Church |
| A prayerless church member is a hindrance. He is in the body like a rotting bone or a decayed tooth. Before long, since he does not contribute to the benefit of his brethren, he will become a danger and a sorrow to them. Neglect of private prayer is the locust which devours the strength of the church. Author: Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Prayer, Apathy |
| Alas! Much has been done of late to promote the production of dwarfish Christians. Poor, sickly believers turn the church into an hospital, rather than an army. Oh, to have a church built up with the deep godliness of people who know the Lord in their very hearts, and will seek to follow the Lamb wherever he goes! Author: Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Church, Godliness |
| Any church which puts in the place of justification by faith in Christ another method of salvation is a harlot church. Author: Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Justification, Heresy |
| Do not desire to be the principal man in the church. Be lowly. Be humble. The best man in the church is the man who is willing to be a doormat for all to wipe their boots on, the brother who does not mind what happens to him at all, so long as God is glorified. Author: Charles Spurgeon
Source: Micah's Message for Today.
Topics: Humility |
| God gave me this great book to preach from, and if He has put anything in it you think is not fit, go and complain to Him, not to me. I am simply his servant, and if His errand that I am to tell is objectionable, I cannot help it. Let me tell you, the reason why many of our churches are declining is just because this doctrine has not been preached. Author: Charles Spurgeon
Source: Sermons, 4.340.
Topics: The Bible, Doctrine |
| I believe that one reason why the church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the church. Author: Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Compromise |
| I do not think the devil cares how many churches you build, if only you have lukewarm preachers and people in them. Author: Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Church, Satan |
| I think beloved, it will not be hard for you to learn. The angels of heaven rejoice over Sinners that repent: saints of God, will not you and I do the same? I do not think the church rejoices enough. We all grumble enough and groan enough: but very few of us rejoice enough. When we take a large number into the church it is spoken of as a great mercy; but is the greatness of that mercy appreciated? Author: Charles Spurgeon
Source: The Sympathy of the Two Worlds, Sermon, Luke 15:10.
Topics: Joy |
| I well remember how I joined the church after my conversion. I forced myself into it by telling the pastor, who was lax and slow, after I had called four or five times and could not see him, that I had done my duty, and if he did not see me and interview me for church membership, I would call a church meeting myself and tell them I believed in Christ and ask them if they would have me. Author: Charles Spurgeon
Source: Charles Spurgeon at His Best
Topics: Church |
| If there be any one point in which the Christian church ought to keep its fervor at a white heat, it is concerning missions. If there be anything about which we cannot tolerate lukewarmness, it is in the matter of sending the gospel to a dying world. Author: Charles Spurgeon
Topics: Missions |
| In proportion as a church is holy, in that proportion will its testimony for Christ be powerful. Author: Charles Spurgeon
Source: 1000 Devotional Thoughts, Baker, 1976, n. 408, p. 205.
Topics: Church, Holiness, Power |
