The man whose little sermon is “repent” sets himself against his age, and will for the time being be battered mercilessly by the age whose moral tone he challenges. There is but one end for such a man—”off with his head!” You had better not try to preach repentance until you have pledged your head to heaven.
– Joseph Parker –
The first step towards the evangelizing of the world is the christianizing of the church.
– Vance Havner –
Religion is hanging around the cross; Christianity is getting on the cross.
– Steve Hill –
If Jesus had preached the same message that ministers preach today, He would never have been crucified.
– Leonard Ravenhill –
We’re suffering from a believism that never has believed and a receivism that never has received and it leads to deceivism.
– Vance Havner –
I’m not about to put up a silly skit and preach a 15-minute message on “how to cope” to a multitude of people who are dying and going to hell. I tremble at the thought.
– David Wilkerson –
Not how many meetings you go to.
Not how many gifts you have.
Not how many sermons you preach.
Not how many records you’ve made.
Tell me what time you spend alone with God …
and I’ll tell you how spiritual you are.
– Leonard Ravenhill –
I must honestly declare my conviction that, since the days of the Reformation, there never has been so much profession of religion without practice, so much talking about God without walking with Him, so much hearing God’s words without doing them, as there is in England at this present date. Never were there so many empty tubs and tinkling cymbals! Never was there so much formality and so little reality. The whole tone of men’s minds on what constitutes practical Christianity seems lowered. The old golden standard of the behaviour which becomes a Christian man or woman appears debased and degenerated. You may see scores of religious people (so-called) continually doing things which in days gone by would have been thought utterly inconsistent with vital religion. … The ancient tenderness of conscience about such things seems dying away and becoming extinct, like the dodo; and when you venture to remonstrate with young communicants who indulge in them, they only stare at you as an old-fashioned, narrow-minded, fossilized person, and say, “Where is the harm?” In short, laxity of ideas amoung young men, and “fastness” and levity among young women, are only too common characteristics of the rising generation of Christian professors.
– JC Ryle –
1816-1900 AD
We religious leaders need to look very much more deeply. We can so easily have talks with people, and they can say we have helped, write us grateful letters, even stand steady for a time till the juice we have put into them runs out; but, we may have brought them no hunger for God—because that hunger is no ache in our own heart—nor brought them anywhere near to the end of self.
– Florence Allshorn –