QUOTES ON EVANGELISM AND MISSIONS
"I care not where I go, or how I live, or what I endure so that I may save souls. When I sleep I dream of them; when I awake they are first in my thoughts…no amount of scholastic attainment, of able and profound exposition of brilliant and stirring eloquence can atone for the absence of a deep impassioned sympathetic love for human souls." David Brainerd
"We shall have all eternity in which to celebrate our victories, but we have only one swift hour before the sunset in which to win them." - Robert Moffat
"Evangelism is not a professional job for a few trained men, but is instead the unrelenting responsibility of every person who belongs to the company of Jesus." Elton Trueblood
"You have nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work. And go not only to those that need you, but to those that need you most…It is not your business to preach so many times, and to take care of this or that society; but to save as many souls as you can; to bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance.” John Wesley
"It was a common saying among the Puritans, 'Brown bread and the Gospel is good fare.'" Matthew Henry
"The Gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness." John Wesley
"'Not called!' did you say? 'Not heard the call,' I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters, and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world.” William Booth
“Perhaps if there were more of that intense distress for souls that leads to tears, we should more frequently see the results we desire. Sometimes it may be that while we are complaining of the hardness of the hearts of those we are seeking to benefit, the hardness of our own hearts and our feeble apprehension of the solemn reality of eternal things may be the true cause of our want of success.” Hudson Taylor
"I'd rather have people hate me with the knowledge that I tried to save them." Keith Green
"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
"The world is my parish." John Wesley
"The history of missions is the history of answered prayer. From Pentecost to the Haystack meeting in New England and from the days when Robert Morrison landed in China to the martyrdom of John and Betty Stam, prayer has been the source of power and the secret of spiritual triumph." Sameul M. Zwemer
"No sort of defense is needed for preaching outdoors, but it would take a very strong argument to prove that a man who has never preached beyond the walls of his meetinghouse has done his duty. A defense is required for services within buildings rather than for worship outside of them.” William Booth
"Preach abroad. It is the cooping yourselves up in rooms that has dampened the work of God, which never was and never will be carried out to any purpose without going into the highways and hedges and compelling men and women to come in."Jonathan Edwards
“I believe I never was more acceptable to my Master than when I was standing to teach those hearers in the open fields. I now preach to ten times more people than I would if I had been confined to the churches.” George Whitefield
“I am well assured that I did far more good to my Lincolnshire parishioners by preaching three days on my father's tomb than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit.” John Wesley
"Lord, make me a crisis man. Let me not be a mile-post on a single road, but make me a fork that men must turn one way or another in facing Christ in me."Jim Elliot
"It is always a mark of short-sightedness and weakness to be impatient of results." Samuel Smiles
"To teach in order to lead others to faith is the task of every preacher and of each believer." Thomas Aquinas
"Go for souls. Go for souls, and go for the worst." William Booth
"Christ beats His drum, but He does not press men; Christ is served with volunteers." John Donne
"Jesus Christ did not say, 'Go into the world and tell the world that it is quite right.'" C.S. Lewis
"There is no better evangelist in the world than the Holy Spirit." D.L. Moody
"I exhort you, press on in your course, and exhort all men that they may be saved." Polycarp
"Could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry? Could a doctor sit in comfort and just let his patients die? Could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give no hand? Can you sit at ease in Zion with the world around you damned?" Leonard Ravenhill
"I would sooner pluck one single brand from the burning than explain all mysteries." Charles Spurgeon
"Any method of evangelism will work if God is in it."Leonard Ravenhill
"As soon as a man has found Christ, he begins to find others." Charles Spurgeon
"I will not believe that thou hast tasted of the honey of the gospel if thou can eat it all to thyself." Charles Spurgeon
"When Andrew went to find his brother, he little imagined how eminent Simon would become....You may be very deficient in talent yourself, and yet you may be the means of drawing to Christ one who shall become eminent in grace and service." Charles Spurgeon
"Ah! dear friend, you little know the possibilities which are in you." Charles Spurgeon
"If you truly feel the sweetness of the Cross of Christ, you will be constrained to confess Christ before men." Robert Murray McCheyne
"Let thy religion begin at home." Charles Spurgeon
"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
"You must GO forward on your knees." Hudson Taylor
"You wonder why people choose fields away from the States when young people at home are drifting because no one wants to take time to listen to their problems. I'll tell you why I left. Because those stateside young people have every opportunity to study, hear, and understand the Word of God in their own language, and these Indians have no opportunity whatsoever. I have had to make a cross of two logs, and lie down on it, to show the Indians what it means to crucify a man. When there is that much ignorance over here and so much knowledge and opportunity over there, I have no question in my mind why God sent me here. Those whimpering stateside young people will wake up on the Day of Judgment condemned to worse fates than these demon-fearing Indians, because, having a Bible, they were bored with it---while these never heard of such a thing as writing." Jim Elliot
"I have seen, at different times, the smoke of a thousand villages - villages whose people are without Christ, without God, and without hope in the world." Robert Moffat
"My teaching is not of doing nor of leaving undone, but of being. It is not new works done, but a new man to do them; not another life only, but another birth." Martin Luther
"And people who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives... and when the bubble has burst they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted."Nate Saint
"Had I cared for the comments of people, I should never have been a missionary." C.T. Studd
"The branch of the vine does not worry, and toil, and rush here to seek for sunshine, and there to find rain. No; it rests in union and communion with the vine; and at the right time, and in the right way, is the right fruit found on it. Let us so abide in the Lord Jesus.” Hudson Taylor
"God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supplies." Hudson Taylor
"I have but one passion - it is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ." Count Zinzindorf
"Keep us little and unknown, prized and loved by God alone." Charles Wesley
"Some people think God does not like to be troubled with our constant coming and asking. The way to trouble God is not to come at all." D.L. Moody
"The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner." William Townsend
"I feel now, that Arabia could easily be evangelized within the next thirty years if it were not for the wicked selfishness of Christians." Sameul M. Zwemer
"We need a baptism of clear seeing. We desperately need seers who can see through the mist--Christian leaders with prophetic vision. Unless they come soon it will be too late for this generation. And if they do come we will no doubt crucify a few of them in the name of our worldly orthodoxy." A.W. Tozer
"We are not built for ourselves, but for God. Not for service for God, but for God." Oswald Chambers
"Today Christians spend more money on dog food than missions." Leonard Ravenhill
"It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the gospel to every creature, you need rather to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home." Hudson Taylor
"Oh, this is a reality, not a fable, that the Lord Jesus Christ is our friend. And we should not be satisfied till we are brought to this." George Mueller
"God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." John Piper
"If every Christian is already considered a missionary, then all can stay put where they are, and nobody needs to get up and go anywhere to preach the gospel. But if our only concern is to witness where we are, how will people in unevangelized areas ever hear the gospel? The present uneven distribution of Christians and opportunities to hear the gospel of Christ will continue on unchanged." Gordon Olson
"Answering a student's question, 'Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?' thus, 'It is more a question with me whether we, who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved." Charles Spurgeon
"The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a sunhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it." C.S. Lewis
"As long as I see any thing to be done for God, life is worth having; but O how vain and unworthy it is to live for any lower end!" David Brainerd
"If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him." C.T. Studd
"All my friends are but one, but He is all sufficient." William Carey
"I will go down, if you will hold the ropes." [his missions philosophy] William Carey
"God had an only Son, and He was a missionary and a physician." David Livingstone
"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world". C.S. Lewis
"What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God. We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on account of the position and work, but on account of the word and faith from which the obedience and the work flow." Martin Luther
"There are three indispensable requirements for a missionary: 1. Patience 2. Patience 3. Patience." Hudson Taylor
"Go not to those who want you, but to those who want you most." John Wesley
"There is no work better than to please God; to pour water, to wash dishes, to be a cobbler, or an apostle, all are one; to wash dishes and to preach are all one, as touching the deed, to please God." William Tyndale
"The idea that the service to God should have only to do with a church altar, singing, reading, sacrifice, and the like is without doubt but the worst trick of the devil. How could the devil have led us more effectively astray than by the narrow conception that service to God takes place only in a church and by the works done therein...The whole world could abound with the services to the Lord, Gottesdienste - not only in churches but also in the home, kitchen, workshop, field." Martin Luther
"Find preacher's of David Brainerd's spirit, and nothing can stand before them...Let us be followers of him, as he was of Christ, in absolute self-devotion, in total deadness to the world, and in fervent love to God and man." [his biography of David Brainerd, who died of tuberculosis at 29] Jonathan Edwards
"I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it." Thomas Aquinas
"Therefore the Christian heart, since it has been thoroughly persuaded that all things happen by God's plan, and that nothing takes place by chance, will ever look to him as the principal causes of things, yet will give attention to the secondary causes in their proper place." John Calvin
"People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa....It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege." David Livingstone
"You can take nothing greater to the heathen world than the impress and the reflection of the love of God upon your character. That is the universal language." Henry Drummond
"God cannot be comprehended by us, except as far as he accommodates himself to our standard." John Calvin
“Was it not great blindness that God Almighty, who created us, has so often made known to us that he is our Father, and finally even gave his Son for us; and he himself stands there and calls us poor sinners, saying ‘Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.’ And we went and turned to the creature, and thought God to be so rough and cruel that we dare not come to him." Ulrich Zwingli
"I have come across black men and women who remembered the only white man they ever saw before----David Livingstone; and as you cross his footsteps in that dark continent, men's faces light up as they speak of the kind Doctor who passed there years ago. They could not understand him; but they felt the Love that beat in his heart." Henry Drummond
"I have found my destiny. I must take the gospel to the people of the East End." William Booth
"The first thing I ask is that people should not make use of my name, and should not call themselves Lutherans but Christians. What is Luther? The teaching is not mine. Nor was I crucified for anyone...How did I, poor stinking bag of maggots that I am, come to the point where people call the children of Christ by my evil name?" Martin Luther
"How we have prayed for a Revival - we did not care whether it was old-fashioned or not - what we asked for was that it should be such that would cleanse and revive His children and set them on fire to win others." Mary Booth
"Wherever the fear of God rules in the heart, it will appear both in works of charity and piety, and neither will excuse us from the other." Matthew Henry
"The right manner of growth is to grow less in one's own eyes." Thomas Watson
"Yes, it is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams, the most abundant and most marvelous liquor that has ever flowed to relieve the thirst of men! Through it , God will spread His Word. A spring of truth shall flow from it: like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light heretofore unknown to shine amongst men." Johannes Gutenberg
"We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met Him. He produced mainly three results---Hatred---Terror---Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild admiration." C.S. Lewis
"God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him, He brings me into a relationship with Himself where I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love to Him... When people say they have had a call to foreign service, or to any particular sphere of work, they mean that their relationship to God has enabled them to realize what they can do for God." Oswald Chambers
"This Man (Jesus) suddenly remarks one day, 'No one need fast while I am here.' Who is this Man who remarks that His mere presence suspends all normal rules?" C.S. Lewis
"The preaching that this world needs most is the sermons in shoes that are walking with Jesus Christ." D.L. Moody
“Calamity clarifies and comfort confuses; persecution purifies and prosperity pollutes!” Kevin Turner
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." Jim Elliot
"My dear Jesus, my Savior, is so deeply written in my heart, that I feel confident, that if my heart were to be cut open and chopped to pieces, the name of Jesus would be found written on every piece." St. Ignatius of Antioch
"I have held many things in my hands, and have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess." Martin Luther
"If you read history you will find out that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next." C.S. Lewis
"In Jesus and for Him, enemies and friends alike are to be loved." Thomas A` Kempis
"The seed once sown grows...of itself, from its own impulse and power of life....The self-inherent power of growth of the kingdom of God." Rudolph Stier
"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." G.K. Chesterton
"The best of it is, God is with us." John Wesley
"I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the kingdom of Christ." David Livingstone
"I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." C.S. Lewis
"A Christian mother does not give birth to a Christian child; it is not natural birth, but a second, spiritual birth which makes a Christian." Tertullian of Carthage
"Salvation is God's way of making us real people." Augustine
"Since no man is excluded from calling upon God the gate of salvation is open to all. There is nothing else to hinder us from entering, but our own unbelief." John Calvin
"A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world---and might be even more difficult to save." C.S. Lewis
"Is it not wonderful news to believe that salvation lies outside ourselves?" Martin Luther
"Salvation comes through a cross and a crucified Christ." Andrew Murray
"Salvation is from our side a choice; from the divine side it is a seizing upon, an apprehending, a conquest by the Most High God. Our accepting and willing are reactions rather than actions." A.W. Tozer
"O God, save me by Thy righteousness, that is to say, in Thy Son, who alone among men was found without sin." Girolamo Savonarola
"I feel that I am not to be mended, but transformed." Seneca
"Wise leaders should have known that the human heart cannot exist in a vacuum. If Christians are forbidden to enjoy the wine of the Spirit they will turn to the wine of the flesh....Christ died for our hearts and the Holy Spirit wants to come and satisfy them." A.W. Tozer
"A revival is nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God." Charles Finney
"God's whole employment is to lift up the humble and cast down the proud” Author Unknown
"The greatest fault is to be conscious of none." Thomas Carlyle
"...If ever a monk could get to heaven through monastic discipline, I was that monk....And yet my conscience would not give me certainty, but I always doubted and said, 'You didn't do that right. You weren't contrite enough. You left that out of your confession.' The more I tried to remedy an uncertain, weak, and troubled conscience with human traditions, the more I daily found it more uncertain, weaker, and more troubled." Martin Luther