Do you realize this? That if you were to somehow purpose to, from this day on, perfectly please God and succeed in doing it, that that perfect obedience, from this moment, would not acquire in the remainder of your life, enough merit to atone for one past sin, because God exacts and God demands perfect obedience and there’s no merit for giving him the minimal requirement.
– Paris Reidhead –
If missions languish, it is because the whole life of godliness is feeble. The command to go everywhere and preach to everybody is not obeyed, until the will is lost by self-surrender in the will of God. There is little right giving because there is little right living, and because of the lack of sympathetic contact with God in holiness of heart, there is a lack of effectual contact with him at the Throne of Grace. Living, praying, giving and going will always be found together, and a low standard in one means a general debility in the whole spiritual being.
– Arthur T. Pierson –
The nature of Christ’s salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day evangelist. He announces a Savior from Hell rather than a Savior from sin. And that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness.
– AW Pink –
The Christian life is an impossible one and it isn’t for everyone. You must enter through the narrow [gate] where you must leave everything behind and be stripped naked of yourself. You must get rid of your pride. Many so-called Christians are on the wide road leading to destruction. they may have all the outward signs of being a Christian (go to church, serve, read their bible, pray, etc.) but there is no inward change of repentance.
– Unknown –
God never saved any man for being a preacher, nor because he was an able preacher; but because he was a justified, sanctified man, and consequently faithful in his Masters work. Take heed, therefore, to ourselves first, that you he that which you persuade your hearers to be, and believe that which you persuade them to believe, and heartily entertain that Savior whom you offer to them. He that bade you love your neighbors as yourselves, did imply that you should love yourselves, and not hate and destroy yourselves and them.
– Richard Baxter –
But from where shall I fetch my arguments? With what shall win them? O that I could tell! I would write to them in tears, I would weep out every argument, I would empty my veins for ink, I would petition them on my knees. O thankful should I be if they would be prevailed with to repent and turn.
– Joseph Alleine –
If they had a social gospel in the days of the prodigal son, somebody would have given him a bed and a sandwich and he never would have gone home.
– Vance Havner –
The last words of Jesus to the church (in Revelation) were “Repent!”
– Leonard Ravenhill –
If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation, it must be by other means than any now being used. If the Church in the second half of this century is to recover from the injuries she suffered in the first half, there must appear a new type of leader. The proper, ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly type of man who carries out his duties, takes his pay and asks no questions, nor the smooth-talking pastoral type who knows how to make the Christian religion acceptable to everyone. All these have been tried and found wanting. Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He must be of the old prophet type, a man who has seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the Throne. When he comes (and I pray God there will be not one but many), he will stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking, smooth civilization holds dear.
– AW Tozer –