Quotes

Abortion

• "For the fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, and it is a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light." ~ John Calvin
• "You shall not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shall you destroy it after it is born." ~ Barnabas, "Epistle of Barnabas," 19:5.

American Evangelicalism

• "If [following Jesus Christ] doesn't cost you anything, it's because you've bought into 'American Christianity.'" ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Dating, Courtship, and Marriage."
• "If you are going to walk with Jesus Christ, you are going to be opposed by everything in the world and by the great majority of evangelicals. You're going to be opposed." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Dating, Courtship, and Marriage."
• "In our days, to be a true Christian is really to become a scandal." ~ John Wesley
• "All you have to do is get in a closer walk with God and you'll find your enemies are in your own church." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "Seemingly everybody seems to be 'born again'; but where are the fruits of the new birth? … Where is the Christ-like life? …those to whom the Lord Jesus Christ is precious and a living reality?" ~ L.R. Shelton, "The True Gospel vs. the False Gospel," p. 62.
• "I believe alot of churches in America are not churches." ~ Paul Washer
• "The early Church was married to poverty, prisons and persecutions. Today, the church is married to prosperity, personality, and popularity." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "[The 4 spiritual laws and sinner's prayer] is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that methodology and envangelism has done more to hurt this country than every heresy introduced by every cult combined. Millions of people in this country whose lives have never been changed believed themselves born again because we have so reduced the gospel of Jesus Christ that it means now nothing more than simple decision that will only take five minutes of your time." ~ Paul Washer
• "The majority of what calls itself Christianity today is a circus. You've got a bunch of people chasing health, wealth, prosperity; chasing a good time, chasing the social club, chasing where the action's happening, chasing the good music and the good times. But few people are out there chasing God, and truly going hard after Him, and truly making the sacrifices in their life and cleaning their hands in such a way and working to have a pure heart that they might actually ascend that hill of the Lord and they might actually commune with God in a way that few people do and few people know about." ~ Tim Conway, sermon, "Who Ascends the Hill of God," 00:09:00.
• "We have too many preacherettes preaching too many sermonettes to too many Christianettes smoking cigarettes." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "The church is in trouble—that's what they say anyways. The problem is most of what they call the church is not the church, and the church is not quite as in trouble as everybody thinks. As a matter of fact, the church today is absolutely beautiful—she's glorious, she's humble, she's broken, and she's confessing her sin. The problem is what everybody's calling the church today isn't the church. Basically, by and large, what's called the church today is nothing more than a bunch of unconverted church people with unconverted pastors." ~ Paul Washer
• "There's a mindset in other countries that if you're an American, you're a Christian. Well, those people are sadly misled; they don't know our country. Our country is wicked, and the Christians are few. Just like they're few in other countries, they're few here. There may be many churches and there may be church buildings on every street corner and every corner in our cities across this country, but the true Christians are few." ~ Tim Conway, sermon, "Submission to the Government."
• "Most Christians in our culture live like everyone else. There is little distinction between our lives and the lives of the pagans down the street. We wear the same clothes, watch the same movies, read the same books, send our children to the same schools, and sign the same divorce decrees as everyone else." ~ Voddie Baucham
• "Tens of thousands, perhaps millions, have come into some kind of religious experience by accepting Christ, and they have not been saved." ~ A.W. Tozer
• "Sunday morning in America is the greatest hour of idolatry in the whole week. Why? Because most people who are even worshiping God, are worshiping a God they don't know. They're worshiping a god that looks more like Santa Claus than the God of Scripture. They're worshiping a god that is a figment of their own imagination. They created a god in their own likeness and they worship the god they've made." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "The Great Privilege."
• "Sunday morning is the greatest hour of idolatry in the entire week in America, because people are not worshiping the one true God…but are worshiping a god formed out of their own heart by their own flesh, satanic devices, and worldly intelligence. They've made a god just like themselves and he looks more like Santa Claus than he does Yahweh." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church."
• "Most people today in our churches are lost, and they demonstrate that they are lost because their entire Christianity is nothing more than, 'They made a decision.'" ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "The Great Privilege."
• "We as Americans are the wealthiest Christians who ever walked on the face of the earth. We are the most protected Christians that ever walked on the face of the earth, and yet we are the emptiest Christians who ever walked on the face of the earth." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "The Great Privilege."
• "The truth is this: I am a Southern Baptist, and the great majority of Southern Baptists are lost." ~ Paul Washer
• "The best title of the [professing] church of God today, in my judgment, is 'Unbelieving Believers.'" ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "You know, we're the most undisciplined generation the world has ever known…how many of you are disciplined? How many go to bed at the same time every night, get up every morning at the same time? How do you discipline your appetites, how do you discipline your tongue? We're the most weak, effeminate Christianity the world has ever had—no wonder nobody wants it. It has no strength, it has no character…" ~ Leonard Ravenhill, sermon, "Hell has No Exits."
• "Easy believism is a modern form of the ancient heresy of antinomianism. It asserts that once a person makes a decision for Christ or prays to receive Jesus as Savior, it is not necessary to embrace Him as Lord. There are no requirements of law that bind the Christian." ~ R.C. Sproul, "Essential Truths of the Christian Faith," p. xiii.
• "Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy. The more joy you have in the Lord the less entertainment you need…when you can say, 'Thou, O Christ, art all I want.' But listen, be careful: it may strip you of everything else you have; you may lose some of your best friends who think you're fanatical; they don't mind you being kind or good, but you become holy and zealous…" ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "I think that the church in America today is so obsessed with being practical, relevant, helpful, successful, and perhaps well-liked that it nearly mirrors the world itself. Aside from the packaging, there is nothing that cannot be found in most churches today that could not be satisfied by any number of secular programs and self-help groups." ~ Michael Horton, "Christless Christianity," pp. 16-17.
• "As this new gospel becomes more obviously American than Christian, we all have to take a step back and ask ourselves whether evangelicalism is increasingly a cultural and political movement with a sentimental attachment to the image of Jesus more than a witness to 'Jesus Christ and him crucified' (1 Cor. 2:2)." ~ Michael Horton, "Christless Christianity," pp. 19-20.
• "…evangelicalism is becoming…theologically vacuous." ~ Michael Horton, "Christless Christianity," p. 23.
• "In the decade of the 1980s, a massive and comprehensive study of religion in American life was undertaken by the Gallup organization. … The results of the study were as terrifying as they were revealing. … Americans, even evangelical Americans, are woefully ignorant of the content of Scripture and even more ignorant of the history of Christianity and classical Christian theology." ~ R.C. Sproul, "Essential Truths of the Christian Faith," p. ix.
• "This is evangelicalism today: sensual, carnal, unconverted people that have just enough deceptive religion to drive them straight into Hell! Are you that kind of person? Or do you have new affections?" ~ Paul Washer
• "Many of the pulpiteers of the past fifty years acted as though the first and last object of their calling was the salvation of souls, everything being made to bend to that aim. In consequence, the feeding of the sheep, the maintaining of a Scriptural discipline in the church, and the inculcation of practical piety, was crowded out; and only too often all sorts of worldly devices and fleshly methods were employed under the plea that the end justified the means; and thus the churches were filled with unregenerate members. In reality, such men defeated their own aim. The hard heart must be ploughed and harrowed before it can be receptive to the gospel seed. Doctrinal instruction must be given on the character of God, the requirements of His Law, the nature and heinousness of sin, if a foundation is to be laid for true evangelism. It is useless to preach Christ unto souls until they see and feel their desperate need of Him." ~ A.W. Pink
• "You would be better off to spend an evening in a bar or a saloon then an evening in a church or an institution propagating false religion." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Separating From Unbelievers," Part 3.

Apostasy

• "I have great assurance when I study my own conversion, when I discuss it with other men, when I look over the 25 years of my pilgrimmage with Christ; I have great assurance of having come to know Him. But even now, if I were to depart from the faith and walk away and keep going in that direction into heresy and worldiness, it could be the greatest of proofs that I never knew Him, that the whole thing was a work of the flesh." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church."
• "Do ye also pray for me, who have need of your love, along with the mercy of God, that I may be worthy of the lot for which I am destined, and that I may not be found reprobate." ~ Ignatius of Antioch, "Letter to the Trallians," 12:3.
• "If you have made the good profession, if you claimed to have passed through the gate, if you have received baptism in a public declaration of your faith, and you begin to walk—it doesn't matter how long it appears you're walking in that path—if you step off that path and there's no discipline and you continue on that path, you can have no assurance whatsoever of your salvation. And it is not that you lost your salvation, it's that you're showing now that you never had it. If we would only preach these truths…" ~ Paul Washer

Assurance of Salvation

• "If you have made the good profession, if you claimed to have passed through the gate, if you have received baptism in a public declaration of your faith, and you begin to walk—it doesn't matter how long it appears you're walking in that path—if you step off that path and there's no discipline and you continue on that path, you can have no assurance whatsoever of your salvation. And it is not that you lost your salvation, it's that you're showing now that you never had it. If we would only preach these truths…" ~ Paul Washer

Atonement

• "God, in sovereign grace, transforms by His Spirit those that He has chosen out of the mass of sinful humankind and given to His Son, who bore their sins on the cross." ~ R. Bruce Steward, "The Doctrines of Grace in the Gospel of John," p. 19.

Bible Study

• "Let us read our Bibles in private more, and with more pains and diligence. Ignorance of Scripture is the root of all error, and makes a person helpless in the hand of the devil. There is less private Bible reading, I suspect, than there was fifty years ago. I never can believe that so many men and women would have been 'tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine,' some falling into skepticism, some rushing into the wildest and narrowest fanaticism, and some going over to Rome, if there had not grown up a habit of lazy, superficial, careless, perfunctory reading of God’s Word. 'You do err not knowing the Scriptures' (Matt. 22:29). The Bible in the pulpit must never supersede the Bible at home." ~ J.C. Ryle

Body of Christ

• "Jesus, our head, is already in heaven; and if the head be above water, the body cannot drown." ~ John Flavel
• "Whoever isolates himself from the church, i.e., from Christianity as a whole, from the history of dogma in its entirety, loses the truth of the Christian faith. That person becomes a branch that is torn from the tree and shrivels, an organ that is separated from the body and therefore doomed to die. Only within the communion of the saints can the length and the breadth, the depth and the height, of the love of Christ be comprehended." ~ Herman Bavinck

Christian Fellowship

• "The true Christian regards all Christ's friends as his friends, members of the same body, children of the same family, soldiers in the same army, travelers to the same home. When he meets them, he feels as if he had long known them. He is more at home with them in a few minutes, than he is with many worldly people after an acquaintance of several years. And what is the secret of all this? It is simply affection to the same Savior and love to the same Lord." ~ J.C. Ryle
• "If you're going to choose your friends, you better choose them well, because when you look at your friends, you're looking at a mirror reflection. You're looking at you; you are looking at you." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Godly Fellowship," 00:10:47.
• "Whoever isolates himself from the church, i.e., from Christianity as a whole, from the history of dogma in its entirety, loses the truth of the Christian faith. That person becomes a branch that is torn from the tree and shrivels, an organ that is separated from the body and therefore doomed to die. Only within the communion of the saints can the length and the breadth, the depth and the height, of the love of Christ be comprehended." ~ Herman Bavinck

Church Attendance

• "He, therefore, that does not assemble with the church, has even by this manifested his pride, and condemned himself. For it is written, 'God resisteth the proud.' Let us be careful, then, not to set ourselves in opposition to the [pastor], in order that we may be subject to God." ~ Ignatius of Antioch, "Letter to the Ephesians," 5:3.
• "If you do not love the bride, you do not love the church; then you don't love the Groom, you don't love Jesus." ~ Todd Friel
• "Whoever isolates himself from the church, i.e., from Christianity as a whole, from the history of dogma in its entirety, loses the truth of the Christian faith. That person becomes a branch that is torn from the tree and shrivels, an organ that is separated from the body and therefore doomed to die. Only within the communion of the saints can the length and the breadth, the depth and the height, of the love of Christ be comprehended." ~ Herman Bavinck

Church Discipline

• "The purpose of church discipline is the spiritual restoration of fallen members and the consequent strengthening of the church and glorifying of the Lord." ~ John MacArthur

Cost of Christianity

• "If [following Jesus Christ] doesn't cost you anything, it's because you've bought into 'American Christianity.'" ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Dating, Courtship, and Marriage."
• "The way He talked, the way He walked, led men to kill Him. … If you look like Christ and talk like Christ and act like Christ, they'll crucify you too. ~ Tim Conway" ~ Tim Conway
• "There are no crown-wearers in Heaven who were not cross-bearers here below." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "If following Christ has never cost you anything, you're not following Him." ~ Tim Conway
• "If you are going to walk with Jesus Christ, you are going to be opposed by everything in the world and by the great majority of evangelicals. You're going to be opposed." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Dating, Courtship, and Marriage."
• "A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing." ~ Martin Luther
• "In our days, to be a true Christian is really to become a scandal." ~ John Wesley
• "If you're going to be a true Christian, I'll tell you one thing amongst others: it'll be a lonely life. It's a narrow way and it becomes narrower and narrower and narrower." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "All you have to do is get in a closer walk with God and you'll find your enemies are in your own church." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "If a Christian is not having tribulation in the world, there's something wrong!" ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "Why in God's name do you expect to be accepted everywhere? How is it the world couldn't get on with the holiest man that ever lived, and it can get on with you and me?" ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "The early Church was married to poverty, prisons and persecutions. Today, the church is married to prosperity, personality, and popularity." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "Do not expect, my friend, that the whole world will rejoice if you become Christian. You will probably receive enmity and hatred and persecution from certain people. It happened in the case of our Lord, and His followers must always be ready to meet it." ~ Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Dating and Courtship

• "Modern American dating is no more than glorified divorce practice. Young people are learning how to give themselves away in exclusive, romantic, highly committed (at times sexual) relationships, only to break up and do it all over again." ~ Voddie Baucham
• "There is no such thing as biblical dating. If you're dating, I don't care who you're dating, you're out of God's will. If you're a young man and you're dating, you're out of God's will. Period. You can come talk to me about it later, you can be mad if you want. But that's just the truth. There's no such thing as recreational dating. There is biblical courtship, there is no recreational dating." ~ Paul Washer

Degrees of Punishment in Hell

• "There are people who think that if you're religious you'll receive less condemnation… I think Hell will be the hottest for religious people, especially religious false teachers, agents of Satan who, sons of Hell themselves, produce more sons of Hell. They will receive a greater condemnation, not a lesser condemnation." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and Its Victims."

Deity of Christ

• "You mark my words: Whenever a cult attacks Christianity, the first place they're going to go is they're going to attack the deity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; is that not true? They are going to attack His deity. Throughout 2000 years of Christian history, we have had to build walls to keep them out. We have had to fight, we have had to amass arms, we have had to do apologetics, we have had to do it all. It is our purpose and our responsibility to proclaim that Jesus Christ is God." ~ Paul Washer
• "Depend on it, my hearer, you never will go to Heaven unless you are prepared to worship Jesus Christ as God." ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Demonic Possession

• "‎Never in the New Testament epistles are believers warned about the possibility of being inhabited by demons. Neither do we see anyone rebuking, binding, or casting demons out of a true believer. The epistles never instruct believers to cast out demons, whether from a believer or unbeliever. Christ and the apostles were the only ones who cast out demons, and in every instance the demon-possessed people were unbelievers." ~ John MacArthur, article, "Can Christians Be Demon-Possessed?"

Depravity of Man

• "One of the reasons that God makes human babies small is so they won't kill their parents in their sleep. They're evil. Yes, this is true of children. 'None is righteous; no, not one.'…Yes, that little, precious one—you better believe it. If you don't, you miss the big picture and you don't realize your desperate need to get the gospel to your child again and again and again and again." ~ Voddie Baucham, sermon, "The Doctrine of Total Depravity."
• "When you refuse to teach on the radical depravity of men, it is an impossibility that you bring glory to God, His Christ, and His cross, because the cross of Jesus Christ and the glory thereof is most magnified when it's placed in front of the backdrop of our depravity!" ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church."
• "We declare on scriptural authority that the human will is so desperately set on mischief, so depraved, so inclined to everything that is evil, and so disinclined to everything that is good, that without the powerful, supernatural, irresistible influence of the Holy Spirit, no one will ever be constrained toward Christ." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood works, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself." ~ John Calvin
• "Natural man is a fallen creature, he is morally corrupt, and he is Hell-bent on autonomy or self-government. He hates God because God is righteous, and he hates God's laws because they censor him and restrict his evil. He hates the truth because it exposes him for what he is and troubles what is left of his conscience. Therefore fallen man seeks to push the truth—especially the truth about God—as far from him as he can possibly remove it. He will go to any extent to suppress the truth, even to the point of pretending that there is no such thing as truth, or that if it does exist, it cannot be known or have any bearing on our lives." ~ Paul Washer
• "Sin enslaves those who practice it. … None can free himself or escape from sin's bondage. Sin 'reigns' over the sinner and rides on his back like a tyrant until it eventually brings him down to the pit of destruction and death. … You may be able to quit one sin, but another sin will immediately take its place—often the sin of pride or self-righteousness for what you imagine you have accomplished in reforming yourself. Sin is enslaving." ~ Charles Leiter, "Justification and Regeneration," p. 19.
• "Sin is a cruel tyrant. It is the most devastating and degenerating power ever to afflict the human race, such that the entire creation 'groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now' (Rom. 8:22). It corrupts the entire person—infecting the soul, polluting the mind, defiling the conscience, contaminating the affections, and poisoning the will. It is the life-destroying, soul-condemning cancer that festers and grows in every unredeemed human heart like an incurable gangrene." ~ John MacArthur, "Slave," p. 121.
• "Every human being, until the moment of redemption, is under the domain of darkness and the dominion of sin. The unbeliever is wholly corrupted by the bondage of his fallen condition and utterly unable to free himself from it. Not surprisingly, the very notion of such absolute enslavement (a doctrine commonly known as 'total depravity' or 'total inability') is repugnant to the fallen human heart. In fact, no doctrine is more hated by unbelievers than this one, and even some Christians find it so offensive that they zealously attack it." ~ John MacArthur, "Slave," p. 121.
• "We are not free to fly because we do not have the nature of a bird. A sheep will not eat garbage like a hog. Why? Not because the sheep does not have a mouth and teeth but because of its nature. A hog will not eat grass like a sheep for the same reason: not because it is not free, but because it is free only to act according to its nature. So it is with the freedom of the will in the state of depravity—men are only free to act according to their nature." ~ Ernest Reisinger, "God's Will, Man's Will, and Free Will," p. 19.
• "‎It is important to recognize that man makes his decisions freely—but on the basis of his interest (sin, self, and Satan) and his affections, which are opposed to God, His Christ, and His word. His decisions, then, though freely arrived at, can only be wrong." ~ R. Bruce Steward, "The Doctrines of Grace in the Gospel of John," p. 6.
• "There is nothing in, about, or for man that is lovable. He is not only totally corrupt and displeasing in God's sight, he is also totally incapable of doing anything to alter his condition or character before Him." ~ R. Bruce Steward, "The Doctrines of Grace in the Gospel of John," p. 10.
• "Man with all his shrewdness is as stupid about understanding by himself the mysteries of God, as [a donkey] is incapable of understanding musical harmony." ~ John Calvin
• "Left to himself, man is half beast and half devil." ~ George Whitefield

Discernment

• "The biggest problem in the church is its inability and unwillingness to distinguish true Christians from false. It's…it's literally killing the church." ~ John MacArthur
• "The tree is made manifest by its fruit; so those that profess themselves to be Christians shall be recognised by their conduct. For there is not now a demand for mere profession, but that a man be found continuing in the power of faith to the end." ~ Ignatius of Antioch, "Letter to the Ephesians," 14:2.
• "Discernment is not a matter of simply telling the difference between right and wrong; rather, it is telling the difference between right and almost right." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "At the point of divergence the difference between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood, is not a chasm but a razor's edge." ~ John Murray, "The Sanctity of Truth."

Easy-Believism

• "Easy believism is a modern form of the ancient heresy of antinomianism. It asserts that once a person makes a decision for Christ or prays to receive Jesus as Savior, it is not necessary to embrace Him as Lord. There are no requirements of law that bind the Christian." ~ R.C. Sproul, "Essential Truths of the Christian Faith," p. xiii.

Election

• "God, in sovereign grace, transforms by His Spirit those that He has chosen out of the mass of sinful humankind and given to His Son, who bore their sins on the cross." ~ R. Bruce Steward, "The Doctrines of Grace in the Gospel of John," p. 19.

Entertainment

• "The king in America…you say there isn't one. Yes there is, his name is King Sport and his wife is Queen Entertainment." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "You love to listen to the very same things that nailed your supposed Savior to the tree?" ~ Paul Washer
• "You love to listen to the very things that nailed your supposed Master to the tree?! Come off of it, man! Become a hellion, give yourself to demons, run wild; but don't come in here saying you're a believer and playing that game! You want to dance with the devil, then dance all night long! But don't come in here dancing with Christ for a moment, and then go back out there and share your love." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Examine Yourself."
• "Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy. The more joy you have in the Lord the less entertainment you need…when you can say, 'Thou, O Christ, art all I want.' But listen, be careful: it may strip you of everything else you have; you may lose some of your best friends who think you're fanatical; they don't mind you being kind or good, but you become holy and zealous…" ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "You know more about your magazines and novels than what God has written; many of you will read a novel from the beginning to the end, and what have you got? A mouthful of foam when you are done. But you cannot read the Bible; that solid, lasting, substantial, and satisfying food goes uneaten, locked up in the cupboard of neglect; while anything that a man writes, a best seller of the day, is greedily devoured." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "It is impossible for any Christian who spends the bulk of his evenings, month after month, week upon week, day in and day out watching the major TV networks or contemporary videos to have a Christian mind. This is always true of all Christians in every situation! A Biblical mental program cannot coexist with worldly programming." ~ Kent Hughes, "Disciplines of a Godly Man," p. 75.
• "Statistics show that the average child living at home in America watches at least twenty-eight hours of television each week. (For some kids, the total is much higher.) Programming that targets young people is often the very worst at deliberately glamorizing sin. By the time most young people graduate from high school, they have been overexposed to the grossest kinds of evil through 'entertainment' media in mind-numbing ways—so that nothing seems particularly appalling anymore. After all, drug use, immorality, violence, and profanity are standard fare on television. When a whole generation has been raised on a steady diet of that stuff, it's no wonder that sin no longer seems exceedingly sinful to them." ~ John MacArthur, "The Fulfilled Family," p. 89.
• "As you sit down to watch TV, count the minutes. How long until you hear the first swear word, how long before the first sexual joke, how long until a violent act takes place, or how long until a child shows clear disrespect to a parent? Probably not too long! Start watching for these things, and you will be amazed. Analyze the humor in a show. Often it centers on foul language, sexuality, or disrespect or rebellion, and the limit is always being pushed." ~ Karl Graustein, "Growing Up Christian," p. 71.
• "Humor can be a means by which the world subtly influences us. When we laugh at something, we tend to accept it and think it is okay, good, or appropriate. Slowly, over time, we begin to accept things that we rejected earlier. We begin to ignore our moral beliefs, we compromise with the world, and we sin—first in thought and later in word and deed. The next time you watch a sitcom, analyze what you're really laughing at. You probably won't laugh as much anymore—you'll probably turn the TV off." ~ Karl Graustein, "Growing Up Christian," p. 71.
• "The TV is my shepherd, my spiritual life shall want, It makes me to sit down and do nothing for the cause of Christ. It demandeth my spare time. It restoreth my desire for the things of the world. It keepeth me from studying the truth of God’s Word. It leadeth me in the path of failure to attend God’s house. Yea, though I live to be a hundred, I will fear no rental; My 'Telly' is with me, its sound and vision comfort me. It prepareth a program for me, even in the presence of visitors. Its volume shall be full. Surely comedy and commercials shall follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in spiritual poverty forever." ~ Unknown

Evangelism

• "To tell the Christ-rejecter that God loves him is to cauterize his conscience as well as to afford him a sense of security in his sins. The fact is, the love of God is a truth for the saints only, and to present it to the enemies of God is to take the children's bread and to cast it to the dogs." ~ A.W. Pink
• "[The 4 spiritual laws and sinner's prayer] is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that methodology and envangelism has done more to hurt this country than every heresy introduced by every cult combined. Millions of people in this country whose lives have never been changed believed themselves born again because we have so reduced the gospel of Jesus Christ that it means now nothing more than simple decision that will only take five minutes of your time." ~ Paul Washer
• "Most people today in our churches are lost, and they demonstrate that they are lost because their entire Christianity is nothing more than, 'They made a decision.'" ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "The Great Privilege."
• "Easy believism is a modern form of the ancient heresy of antinomianism. It asserts that once a person makes a decision for Christ or prays to receive Jesus as Savior, it is not necessary to embrace Him as Lord. There are no requirements of law that bind the Christian." ~ R.C. Sproul, "Essential Truths of the Christian Faith," p. xiii.
• "I do not believe that any man can preach the gospel who does not preach the law. The law is the needle, and you cannot draw the silken thread of the gospel through a man's heart unless you first send the needle of the law to make way for it. If men do not understand the law, they will not feel that they are sinners. And if they are not consciously sinners, they will never value the sin offering. There is no healing a man till the law has wounded him, no making him alive till the law has slain him." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "Christ is never fully valued, until sin is clearly seen. We must know the depth and malignity of our disease, in order to appreciate the great Physician." ~ J.C. Ryle
• "Many of the pulpiteers of the past fifty years acted as though the first and last object of their calling was the salvation of souls, everything being made to bend to that aim. In consequence, the feeding of the sheep, the maintaining of a Scriptural discipline in the church, and the inculcation of practical piety, was crowded out; and only too often all sorts of worldly devices and fleshly methods were employed under the plea that the end justified the means; and thus the churches were filled with unregenerate members. In reality, such men defeated their own aim. The hard heart must be ploughed and harrowed before it can be receptive to the gospel seed. Doctrinal instruction must be given on the character of God, the requirements of His Law, the nature and heinousness of sin, if a foundation is to be laid for true evangelism. It is useless to preach Christ unto souls until they see and feel their desperate need of Him." ~ A.W. Pink
• "I do not believe that any man can preach the gospel who does not preach the Law. … Lower the Law, and you dim the light by which man perceives his guilt. This is a very serious loss to the sinner, rather than a gain; for it lessens the likelihood of his conviction and conversion. … I say you have deprived the gospel of its ablest auxiliary [most powerful weapon] when you have set aside the Law. You have taken away from it the schoolmaster that is to bring men to Christ…they will never accept grace till they tremble before a just and holy Law. Therefore the Law serves a most necessary and blessed purpose and it must not be removed from its place. When the sinner sees the awful consequences of breaking the Law of God—that he cannot escape the certainty of judgment—he will see his need to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. When we preach future punishment by the Law, the sinner comes to Christ solely to flee from 'the wrath to come.'" ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "We do not regard it as our first business to convert sinners, nor to edify saints; but to glorify God." ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Exclusivity of the Gospel

• "There is only one way, the true gospel, and every other way is a false way and a damning way, part of the broad way that leads to Hell." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and Its Victims."

Faith

• "Unless our faith makes us pine after holiness and pant after conformity to God, it is no better than the faith of devils, and perhaps it is not even so good as that." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "Faith which refuses to obey the commands of the Saviour is a mere pretense and will never save the soul." ~ C.H. Spurgeon, "All of Grace."
• "The modern definition of faith eliminates repentance, erases the moral significance of believing, obviates the work of God in the sinner's heart, and makes an ongoing trust in the Lord optional." ~ John MacArthur
• "True faith will no more fail to produce [good works] than the sun can cease to give light." ~ Martin Luther
• "The total complete surrender of your life to Christ—that's what saving faith is. It is coming to the end of yourself and completely and entirely entrusting all that you are and all that you have to all that He is." ~ Steven Lawson, sermon, "It Will Cost You Everything."

False Religion

• "Any form of religion other than the truth is a demonic operation … any form of pseudo-Christianity … Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Science, you name it, Roman Catholicism. That's demonic operation. That's a demonic system because it's either from the Spirit of God, or demons. There's no middle ground." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "A Call to Discernment."

False Teachers

• "There is a zero tolerance policy with Jesus for false teachers. If someone denies the true meaning of Scripture, denies the true identity of Christ, and denies the true gospel, that is not a tolerable person. We do not get together with those kind of people to find out what we hold in common… Our Lord indicates here that rather than welcome these people, we ought to flee from them because, as Jude put it, if you get too close to them, your garments will be singed. You need to be rescued from them… When we engage people who teach lies, it is to make war, not peace." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and its Victims."
• "There are people who think that if you're religious you'll receive less condemnation… I think Hell will be the hottest for religious people, especially religious false teachers, agents of Satan who, sons of Hell themselves, produce more sons of Hell. They will receive a greater condemnation, not a lesser condemnation." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and Its Victims."
• "If Jesus had preached the same message that ministers preach today, He would never have been crucified." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "The greatest act of judgment that God can pour out on a people is being poured out on America, and it is this: He's taken away the knowledge of God, and He's closed the mouth of those who are supposed to be speaking for Him. So that little boys lead us with their silly little ideas and we like it that way, because we really do want our best life now." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "The Great Privilege."
• "What's the condition of America like, spiritually, tonight? Zero. Why? Because we've got blind men coming out of seminaries. Men there don't teach them; they don't hear a word about Hell. They're blind themselves, and as blind men, they lead the blind and they go to Hell." ~ Leonard Ravenhill, sermon, "Hell has No Exits."
• "When Jesus Christ comes back, it is not the liberal politicians who ought to be trembling, it's the pastors…because so many men have built their 'ministries' on the dry dead bones of unconverted church members. ~ Paul Washer" ~ Paul Washer
• "The work of God in salvation is a supernatural work, but in the United States of America and among Baptists it's been reduced down to a few evangelical hoops that if we can get someone to jump through, we declare them popishly to be saved…it has been the pulpit that's sending more people to Hell than any liberal organization on the face of the earth…not a liberal Methodist, not a liberal Episcopalian, but a Baptist who claims to know God's word and yet does not understand the gospel of Jesus Christ." ~ Paul Washer
• "How dare we, all these stupid evangelists walking around telling men after they've made some little prayer that they need to write their name in the back of their Bible, and put the date and if the devil ever comes to them, they need to show him that. That is Roman superstition, it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. You see, we've turned the gospel into a flu-shot." ~ Paul Washer
• "I can remember one time a guy told me, a guy that preached, he claimed to be a preacher, he claimed to be called of God—I asked him about his prayer life one day. He said, 'Yeah, I pray; I pray when I'm brushing my teeth.' I knew immediately that man was not called of God to stand in a pulpit. Every church he's tried to plant has been a failure. He is not a God-called man." ~ Tim Conway, sermon, "Who Ascends the Hill of God," 00:11:53.
• "There have always been and always will be false teachers, lying prophets, religious deceivers, and corrupt preachers who claim to represent God but actually represent Satan, who claim to bring the way of Heaven and actually paved the way to Hell, who claim to speak divine truth and actually speak satanic lies, doctrines of demons." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and its Victims."
• "All false teachers, all purveyors of false religion, are the enemies of Christ, and the enemies of truth, and the enemies of the gospel, and the enemies of souls." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and its Victims."
• "When you have to beware of your protectors, you're in trouble. When you can't trust the people who are supposed to show you the truth, and show you what is right, and show you what God wants, you are really in trouble… Protect yourself against your protectors. Protect yourself against your shepherd. Protect yourself against your pastor." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and its Victims."
• "Why are [false teachers] such a threat? Because they are hypocrites; they're not what they appear to be. They are sons of Hell and they make sons of Hell." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and its Victims."
• "Anybody who has a corrupted view of Christ and the gospel needs to be exposed in the way Jesus exposed these men; and…that's a merciful act, because these are wolves in sheep's clothing. The Lord pulls no punches and the main element is that they are spiritual frauds." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and its Victims."
• "If, then, those who do this as respects the flesh have suffered death, how much more shall this be the case with any one who corrupts by wicked doctrine the faith of God, for which Jesus Christ was crucified! Such an one becoming defiled [in this way], shall go away into everlasting fire, and so shall every one that hearkens unto him." ~ Ignatius of Antioch, "Letter to the Ephesians," 16:2.
• "Beware of the false shepherds, the false teachers who take the last coins out of the widows' purse to fill their coffers on the pretense that that kind of giving is the path to blessing. That's the prosperity gospel." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and its Victims."
• "Mark it, when you see people telling you that if you send them your money, God will bless you, that's the heartbeat of a false teacher. Always false leaders are moved by greed." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and its Victims."
• "Any system of religion that misrepresents God and abuses widows is coming down. All the robbers, all the thieves, all the fakes, all the phony teachers and preachers, all the prosperity preachers who get rich on the gifts of desperate people looking for wealth and health, you will be judged." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and its Victims."
• "A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "The church is in trouble—that's what they say anyways. The problem is most of what they call the church is not the church, and the church is not quite as in trouble as everybody thinks. As a matter of fact, the church today is absolutely beautiful—she's glorious, she's humble, she's broken, and she's confessing her sin. The problem is what everybody's calling the church today isn't the church. Basically, by and large, what's called the church today is nothing more than a bunch of unconverted church people with unconverted pastors." ~ Paul Washer
• "We have a biblical-teaching crisis. We have a heresy problem. It's time for us to throw these false teachers out and not tolerate them anymore." ~ Chris Rosebrough

Forgiveness

• "You are not forgiven if you cannot forgive." ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Free Will

• "We are not free to fly because we do not have the nature of a bird. A sheep will not eat garbage like a hog. Why? Not because the sheep does not have a mouth and teeth but because of its nature. A hog will not eat grass like a sheep for the same reason: not because it is not free, but because it is free only to act according to its nature. So it is with the freedom of the will in the state of depravity—men are only free to act according to their nature." ~ Ernest Reisinger, "God's Will, Man's Will, and Free Will," p. 19.
• "‎It is important to recognize that man makes his decisions freely—but on the basis of his interest (sin, self, and Satan) and his affections, which are opposed to God, His Christ, and His word. His decisions, then, though freely arrived at, can only be wrong." ~ R. Bruce Steward, "The Doctrines of Grace in the Gospel of John," p. 6.

God-Loves-Everybody

• "There is no 'love of God' for you unless you have repented or unless you do repent. Make no mistake about this. Do not rely or bank on God's love. It is only for the penitent; there is no entry into the kingdom of God except by repentance." ~ Martyn Lloyd-Jones
• "To tell the Christ-rejecter that God loves him is to cauterize his conscience as well as to afford him a sense of security in his sins. The fact is, the love of God is a truth for the saints only, and to present it to the enemies of God is to take the children's bread and to cast it to the dogs." ~ A.W. Pink
• "Let our praise be in God, and not of ourselves; for God hates those that commend themselves." ~ Clement of Rome, "First Letter to the Corinthians," 30:6.
• "A study of the concordance will show that there are more references in Scripture to the anger, fury, and wrath of God, than there are to His love and tenderness. Because God is holy, He hates all sin; and because He hates all sin, His anger burns against the sinner (Psa. 7:11)." ~ A.W. Pink, "Attributes of God," p. 96.

Hell

• "There are people who think that if you're religious you'll receive less condemnation… I think Hell will be the hottest for religious people, especially religious false teachers, agents of Satan who, sons of Hell themselves, produce more sons of Hell. They will receive a greater condemnation, not a lesser condemnation." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and Its Victims."
• "He cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.' You know what? That man is going to be chewing his own tongue for a million years [in Hell] and he'll see people sitting at the marriage supper of the Lamb drinking the wine of the ages." ~ Leonard Ravenhill, sermon, "Hell has No Exits."
• "After innumerable millions of years the wrath of God is far from ending as it was at the beginning. If all the earth and sea were sand, and every thousand years a bird should come and take away a grain, it would be a long while [before] that vast heap of sand were emptied; but if, after all that time, the damned might come out of Hell, there would be some hope; but this word 'Ever' breaks the heart." ~ Thomas Watson, "The Ten Commandments," p. 196.
• "See what a great evil sin is, which exposes a person to God's wrath for ever. You may know the lion by his paw; and you may know what an evil sin is by the wrath and curse it brings. When you see a man drawn upon a hurdle to execution, you conclude he is guilty of some capital crime that brings such a punishment; so when a man lies under the torrid zone of God's wrath, and roars out in flames, you must say, 'How horrid an evil sin is!'" ~ Thomas Watson, "The Ten Commandments," p. 197.
• "The doctrine of Hell is given to us as an inducement to see the greatness of God and our need for a Savior." ~ Denny Burk

Heretical Cults

• "You mark my words: Whenever a cult attacks Christianity, the first place they're going to go is they're going to attack the deity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; is that not true? They are going to attack His deity. Throughout 2000 years of Christian history, we have had to build walls to keep them out. We have had to fight, we have had to amass arms, we have had to do apologetics, we have had to do it all. It is our purpose and our responsibility to proclaim that Jesus Christ is God." ~ Paul Washer
• "Roman Catholics, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses all claim to believe the Bible, but they all employ twisted interpretations, exegetical gymnastics, and extrabiblical authorities to overstress one point of truth at the expense of others. There is no more deadly means of spiritual deception than mingling some unbalanced aspect of truth with a system of false doctrine." ~ John MacArthur, GTY Letter, 6/14/11.
• "Believers have always been told whether it's in Leviticus by Moses, whether it's in Isaiah by Isaiah, whether it's in 2 Corinthians by Paul, believers of all ages have been told to separate completely from any pagan religious environment, anything that is not the truth of God. Today we would say liberalism, neoorthodoxy, Romanism, cults, heretics, false teachers, and they abound everywhere. We must separate ourselves from them." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Separating From Unbelievers," Part 3.
• "Any form of religion other than the truth is a demonic operation … any form of pseudo-Christianity … Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Science, you name it, Roman Catholicism. That's demonic operation. That's a demonic system because it's either from the Spirit of God, or demons. There's no middle ground." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "A Call to Discernment."

Holiness

• "Holiness is not merely a feeling, state of mind, or good intention. It involves practical separation from sin and real separation unto God." ~ Paul Washer
• "Let me ask…are you holy? Listen to the question I put to you this day. Do you know anything of holiness? I do not ask whether you attend church regularly, whether you are baptized, receive the Lord's Supper, or whether you have the name of 'Christian.' I ask something more than all this: are you holy, or are you not? …are you yourself holy this very day, or are you not?" ~ J.C. Ryle
• "Holiness is not a luxury, it's a necessity. If you're not holy, you'll never make it to Heaven [Heb. 12:14]." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "Without holiness, no one shall see the Lord. Jesus didn't die to save us from Hell. That's a fringe benefit! He died to get total occupation of us. To be holy in speech…in actions…in everything. We want to give God our lousy sins. What do you think He does with them? He wants your will…He wants that career of yours…He wants that selfish heart not to live in selfishness." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "They're called in the Scripture the Beatitudes. You know why they're called the Beatitudes without being prestigious? Because they should be the attitudes of every believer. That's the normal Christian life, not the abnormal Christian life. The normal Christian life is holiness." ~ Leonard Ravenhill, sermon, "Hell has No Exits."
• "Imputed righteousness is the foundation of personal righteousness, and where there is imputed righteousness, there will be personal righteousness. An unholy Christian is no Christian at all." ~ David King
• "If you show me a man deliberately living an unholy and licentious life, and yet boasting that his sins are forgiven, I answer, 'He is under a ruinous delusion, and is not forgiven at all.' I would not believe he is forgiven if an angel from heaven affirmed it, and I charge you not to believe it too. Pardon of sin and love of sin are like oil and water…they will never go together. All who are washed in the blood of Christ, are also sanctified by the Spirit of Christ." ~ J.C. Ryle
• "Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy. The more joy you have in the Lord the less entertainment you need…when you can say, 'Thou, O Christ, art all I want.' But listen, be careful: it may strip you of everything else you have; you may lose some of your best friends who think you're fanatical; they don't mind you being kind or good, but you become holy and zealous…" ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "Doctrine is useless if it is not accompanied by a holy life. It is worse than useless; it does positive harm. Something of 'the image of Christ' must be seen and observed by others in our private life, and habits, and character, and doings." ~ J.C. Ryle
• "If you don't delight in the fact that your Father is holy, holy, holy, then you are spiritually dead. You may be in a church. You may go to a Christian school. But if there is no delight in your soul for the holiness of God, you don't know God. You don't love God. You're out of touch with God. You're asleep to His character." ~ R.C. Sproul
• "Let your Christianity be so unmistakable, your eye so single, your heart so whole, your walk so straightforward, that all who see you may have no doubt whose you are, and whom you serve." ~ J.C. Ryle

Holiness of God

• "If you don't delight in the fact that your Father is holy, holy, holy, then you are spiritually dead. You may be in a church. You may go to a Christian school. But if there is no delight in your soul for the holiness of God, you don't know God. You don't love God. You're out of touch with God. You're asleep to His character." ~ R.C. Sproul

Jehovah Witnesses

• "You mark my words: Whenever a cult attacks Christianity, the first place they're going to go is they're going to attack the deity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; is that not true? They are going to attack His deity. Throughout 2000 years of Christian history, we have had to build walls to keep them out. We have had to fight, we have had to amass arms, we have had to do apologetics, we have had to do it all. It is our purpose and our responsibility to proclaim that Jesus Christ is God." ~ Paul Washer
• "Roman Catholics, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses all claim to believe the Bible, but they all employ twisted interpretations, exegetical gymnastics, and extrabiblical authorities to overstress one point of truth at the expense of others. There is no more deadly means of spiritual deception than mingling some unbalanced aspect of truth with a system of false doctrine." ~ John MacArthur, GTY Letter, 6/14/11.
• "Believers have always been told whether it's in Leviticus by Moses, whether it's in Isaiah by Isaiah, whether it's in 2 Corinthians by Paul, believers of all ages have been told to separate completely from any pagan religious environment, anything that is not the truth of God. Today we would say liberalism, neoorthodoxy, Romanism, cults, heretics, false teachers, and they abound everywhere. We must separate ourselves from them." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Separating From Unbelievers," Part 3.
• "Any form of religion other than the truth is a demonic operation … any form of pseudo-Christianity … Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Science, you name it, Roman Catholicism. That's demonic operation. That's a demonic system because it's either from the Spirit of God, or demons. There's no middle ground." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "A Call to Discernment."

Judaism

• "In the time of our Lord in Israel, the agents of Hell were in charge of the religion of Judaism. It was an apostate form of Judaism as any form of Judaism is today, and that apostate form of Judaism was under the control of Satan, and in the hands of hypocrites who were the pawns of Satan and the human representatives of demonic powers." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and Its Victims."

Judging

• "The same Jesus who said 'do not judge' in Matt. 7:1 calls His opponents dogs and pigs in Matt. 7:6." ~ Kevin DeYoung

Marriage

• "It is absolutely inexcusable for a man who follows Christ to stop loving his wife." ~ Voddie Baucham
• "Choose your spouse carefully. Do not first love and then consider. First consider, and then love. Let their soul be your main concern, not their looks or money. Why espouse a perpetual cross for some passing profit or delight? Marry only a Christian, the more godly the better. Consider also their personality. Speak honestly to one another about your faults and liabilities before marrying. If someone sold you a sick animal as a healthy one, you would feel cheated. How much worse is it when someone pretends to be better than they really are to secure marriage to one they profess to love!" ~ Richard Steele
• "I have made no secret of the fact that I believe the American school system is inferior in terms of academics, bankrupt in terms of morality, and corrosive in terms of spirituality and religion. In short, the government education system is no place for the children of people who claim allegiance to the King of Kings." ~ Voddie Baucham
• "Let the wife make her husband glad to come home and let him make her sorry to see him leave." ~ Martin Luther
• "The purpose of marriage is not to have pleasure and to be idle but to procreate and bring up children, to support a household. Those who have no love for children are swine, stocks, and logs unworthy of being called men or women; for they despise the blessings of God, the Creator and Author of marriage." ~ Martin Luther

Mere Theological Knowledge

• "The ultimate test of my understanding of the scriptural teaching is the amount of time I spend in prayer. As theology is ultimately the knowledge of God, the more theology I know, the more it should drive me to seek to know God. Not to know about Him but to know Him! The whole object of salvation is to bring me to knowledge of God. If all my knowledge does not lead me to prayer there is something wrong somewhere." ~ Martyn Lloyd-Jones
• "For us to be champions of doctrine with no application or obedience to Christ's commands is vomit-worthy; it's knowledge without zeal, it puffs up, and pride is the greatest sin." ~ Anthony Mathenia, sermon on Rev. 3:14-22.
• "Your doctrine can be as straight as a gun barrel…and just as empty!" ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "Doctrine is useless if it is not accompanied by a holy life. It is worse than useless; it does positive harm. Something of 'the image of Christ' must be seen and observed by others in our private life, and habits, and character, and doings." ~ J.C. Ryle

Modesty

• "[Ladies] …any man that lusts after you will answer to God for his mental adultery…but you will answer to God if you provoked him by the manner in which you are dressed." ~ Albert Martin, sermon, "Do You Cause Men to Lust?"

Mormonism

• "You mark my words: Whenever a cult attacks Christianity, the first place they're going to go is they're going to attack the deity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; is that not true? They are going to attack His deity. Throughout 2000 years of Christian history, we have had to build walls to keep them out. We have had to fight, we have had to amass arms, we have had to do apologetics, we have had to do it all. It is our purpose and our responsibility to proclaim that Jesus Christ is God." ~ Paul Washer
• "Roman Catholics, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses all claim to believe the Bible, but they all employ twisted interpretations, exegetical gymnastics, and extrabiblical authorities to overstress one point of truth at the expense of others. There is no more deadly means of spiritual deception than mingling some unbalanced aspect of truth with a system of false doctrine." ~ John MacArthur, GTY Letter, 6/14/11.
• "Believers have always been told whether it's in Leviticus by Moses, whether it's in Isaiah by Isaiah, whether it's in 2 Corinthians by Paul, believers of all ages have been told to separate completely from any pagan religious environment, anything that is not the truth of God. Today we would say liberalism, neoorthodoxy, Romanism, cults, heretics, false teachers, and they abound everywhere. We must separate ourselves from them." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Separating From Unbelievers," Part 3.
• "Any form of religion other than the truth is a demonic operation … any form of pseudo-Christianity … Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Science, you name it, Roman Catholicism. That's demonic operation. That's a demonic system because it's either from the Spirit of God, or demons. There's no middle ground." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "A Call to Discernment."

Mortifying Sin

• "Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you." ~ John Owen

Persecution and Suffering

• "The early Church was married to poverty, prisons and persecutions. Today, the church is married to prosperity, personality, and popularity." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "Do not expect, my friend, that the whole world will rejoice if you become Christian. You will probably receive enmity and hatred and persecution from certain people. It happened in the case of our Lord, and His followers must always be ready to meet it." ~ Martyn Lloyd-Jones
• "As sure as God puts His children in the furnace of affliction, He will be with them in it." ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Perseverance of the Saints

• "The tree is made manifest by its fruit; so those that profess themselves to be Christians shall be recognised by their conduct. For there is not now a demand for mere profession, but that a man be found continuing in the power of faith to the end." ~ Ignatius of Antioch, "Letter to the Ephesians," 14:2.

Prayer

• "To be prayerless is to be without God, without Christ, without grace, without hope, and without Heaven. It is to be on the road to Hell." ~ J.C. Ryle
• "Real prayer is communion with God, so that there will be common thoughts between His mind and ours. What is needed is for Him to fill our hearts with His thoughts, and then His desires will become our desires flowing back to Him." ~ A.W. Pink
• "Where I am ignorant, Lord, teach me. Where I am wrong, Lord, correct me. Where I am right, Lord, confirm me." ~ Albert Martin
• "If weak in prayer, we are weak everywhere." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "A sinning man stops praying; a praying man stops sinning." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "If you tell me this, I'll tell you how spiritual you are: will you tell me how much you pray. Brother, I'm not interested if you're booked up ten years; I'm not concerned about how many books you've read, how many doctorates you have or how large your church is, tell me how much you pray!" ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "The ultimate test of my understanding of the scriptural teaching is the amount of time I spend in prayer. As theology is ultimately the knowledge of God, the more theology I know, the more it should drive me to seek to know God. Not to know about Him but to know Him! The whole object of salvation is to bring me to knowledge of God. If all my knowledge does not lead me to prayer there is something wrong somewhere." ~ Martyn Lloyd-Jones
• "If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation. Let this be one aspect of our daily intercession: 'God, preserve my soul, and keep my heart and all its ways so that I will not be entangled.' When this is true in our lives, a passing temptation will not overcome us. We will remain free while others lie in bondage." ~ John Owen
• "He who runs from God in the morning will scarcely find Him the rest of the day." ~ John Bunyan
• "There is enough sin in my best prayer to send the whole world to Hell." ~ John Bunyan
• "Only a life of prayer and meditation will render a vessel ready for the Master's use." ~ George Müller
• "[The 4 spiritual laws and sinner's prayer] is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that methodology and envangelism has done more to hurt this country than every heresy introduced by every cult combined. Millions of people in this country whose lives have never been changed believed themselves born again because we have so reduced the gospel of Jesus Christ that it means now nothing more than simple decision that will only take five minutes of your time." ~ Paul Washer
• "The sinner's prayer has sent more people to Hell than all the bars in America." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "You might as reasonably expect to find a living man without breath, as a true Christian without the spirit of prayer and supplication." ~ George Whitefield
• "The true believer can no more live without prayer, than without food day by day." ~ George Whitefield
• "None of God's children, as one observes, comes into the world stillborn; prayer is the very breath of the new creature: and therefore, if we are prayer-less, we are Christ-less." ~ George Whitefield
• "If your faith does not make you pray, have nothing to do with it; get rid of it, and God help thee to begin again." ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Preaching

• "When you refuse to teach on the radical depravity of men, it is an impossibility that you bring glory to God, His Christ, and His cross, because the cross of Jesus Christ and the glory thereof is most magnified when it's placed in front of the backdrop of our depravity!" ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church."
• "Always preach in such a way that if the people listening do not come to hate their sin, they will instead hate you." ~ Martin Luther
• "Christ is not that great of a Savior if you're not that big of a sinner. … You'll never get to the glories of victory of Christ if you're not helped to understand the depths of your sin." ~ Jeff Noblit, sermon, "Lifting Up the Fallen One."
• "The motto of all true servants of God must be, 'We preach Christ; and him crucified.' A sermon without Christ in it is like a loaf of bread without any flour in it. No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home, and never preach again until you have something worth preaching." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "The sermon which does not lead to Christ, or of which Jesus Christ is not the top and the bottom, is a sort of sermon that will make the devils in hell laugh, but make the angels of God weep." ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Problematic Evangelical Pastors

• "We have too many preacherettes preaching too many sermonettes to too many Christianettes smoking cigarettes." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "The church is in trouble—that's what they say anyways. The problem is most of what they call the church is not the church, and the church is not quite as in trouble as everybody thinks. As a matter of fact, the church today is absolutely beautiful—she's glorious, she's humble, she's broken, and she's confessing her sin. The problem is what everybody's calling the church today isn't the church. Basically, by and large, what's called the church today is nothing more than a bunch of unconverted church people with unconverted pastors." ~ Paul Washer
• "Many of the pulpiteers of the past fifty years acted as though the first and last object of their calling was the salvation of souls, everything being made to bend to that aim. In consequence, the feeding of the sheep, the maintaining of a Scriptural discipline in the church, and the inculcation of practical piety, was crowded out; and only too often all sorts of worldly devices and fleshly methods were employed under the plea that the end justified the means; and thus the churches were filled with unregenerate members. In reality, such men defeated their own aim. The hard heart must be ploughed and harrowed before it can be receptive to the gospel seed. Doctrinal instruction must be given on the character of God, the requirements of His Law, the nature and heinousness of sin, if a foundation is to be laid for true evangelism. It is useless to preach Christ unto souls until they see and feel their desperate need of Him." ~ A.W. Pink

Profanity

• "Everywhere we turn today there is lying, swearing, and filthy language spoken even by so-called Christians! This fact reveals the true state of many hearts? Yes it does, for 'out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh'! (Matt. 12:34). In salvation, the Holy Spirit cleanses your heart, thus delivering you from being a foul-mouthed individual." ~ L.R. Shelton, "The True Gospel vs. the False Gospel," p. 35.

Prosperity Gospel

• "Beware of the false shepherds, the false teachers who take the last coins out of the widows' purse to fill their coffers on the pretense that that kind of giving is the path to blessing. That's the prosperity gospel." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and its Victims."
• "Mark it, when you see people telling you that if you send them your money, God will bless you, that's the heartbeat of a false teacher. Always false leaders are moved by greed." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and its Victims."
• "Any system of religion that misrepresents God and abuses widows is coming down. All the robbers, all the thieves, all the fakes, all the phony teachers and preachers, all the prosperity preachers who get rich on the gifts of desperate people looking for wealth and health, you will be judged." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and its Victims."

Public School

• "I am much afraid the school will prove to be the great gate of Hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advice no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not unceasingly occupied with the word of God must become corrupt." ~ Martin Luther
• "It is impossible to separate one's view of God, man, truth, knowledge, and ethics from the educational process. Every day that our children sit behind a desk, they are either being taught to know, love, and obey God or they are being taught to love and obey someone or something that has usurped God's proper role." ~ Voddie Baucham
• "Keep your children as much as may be from ill company, especially of ungodly playfellows. It is one of the greatest dangers for the undoing of children in the world; especially when they are sent to common schools: for there is scarce any of those schools so good, but hath many rude and ungodly ill-taught children in it." ~ Richard Baxter
• "Your children will go to public school … and they will be trained for somewhere around 15,000 hours in ungodly secular thought. And then they'll go to Sunday school and they'll color a picture of Noah's ark. And you think that's going to stand against the lies that they are being told?" ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "The Christian Life," part 1.

Raising Children

• "Keep your children as much as may be from ill company, especially of ungodly playfellows. It is one of the greatest dangers for the undoing of children in the world; especially when they are sent to common schools: for there is scarce any of those schools so good, but hath many rude and ungodly ill-taught children in it." ~ Richard Baxter
• "I like to tell how she bade us sing 'There is a fountain filled with blood' and of how when she came to the chorus she used to say, 'Dear boys of mine, I have no reason to suppose that you are yet trusting Christ: you will, I hope, in answer to our constant prayers, but till you definitely do you must not say or sing 'I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus died for me.' It is just as wrong to sing a lie as to tell one.' Then she used to sing it by herself." ~ Thomas Spurgeon, son of C.H. Spurgeon, recollecting how his mother would not allow her sons to make such claims before being converted.
• "I would not send my child to a vacation Bible school in 99.9% of the Baptist churches in America. Have some teacher that doesn't even understand anything about the gospel of Jesus Christ, ask those little children, 'How many of you want to go to Heaven?' and damn most of them! Harden their heart to the gospel with some silly profession of faith because it was a silly proclamation of the gospel! It brought no genuine repentance, it brought no faith; it's no different than the Roman church that baptizes every infant that is born." ~ Paul Washer
• "If parents have raised their children to be great doctors, lawyers, athletes, or musicians, but have not trained them to honor them and obey God, they have failed." ~ Voddie Baucham
• "I make no apology for saying: No child or young person is saved or will ever be saved, unless he has learned obedience to his parents. In salvation, God breaks our wills, breaks our hearts, and gives us a hatred for rebellion and a love of obedience. Yes, I believe God's Word is very plain that obedience is one of the truest marks of a saved soul." ~ L.R. Shelton, "The True Gospel vs. the False Gospel," p. 46.
• "One of the reasons that God makes human babies small is so they won't kill their parents in their sleep. They're evil. Yes, this is true of children. 'None is righteous; no, not one.'…Yes, that little, precious one—you better believe it. If you don't, you miss the big picture and you don't realize your desperate need to get the gospel to your child again and again and again and again." ~ Voddie Baucham, sermon, "The Doctrine of Total Depravity."
• "Men, your primary responsibility in your home, after your wife, is you to disciple your own children. And if you don't do it, you're in sin; you are in sin. And if you turn it over to a Sunday school teacher, you are in sin. And you are to be teaching these children more than just stories about animals that went into Noah's ark. You're to be teaching them about God, about radical depravity, about blood atonement, about propitiation, expiation, justification, sanctification; you are to teach your children!" ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "The Christian Life," part 1.
• "Your children will go to public school … and they will be trained for somewhere around 15,000 hours in ungodly secular thought. And then they'll go to Sunday school and they'll color a picture of Noah's ark. And you think that's going to stand against the lies that they are being told?" ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "The Christian Life," part 1.
• "The purpose of marriage is not to have pleasure and to be idle but to procreate and bring up children, to support a household. Those who have no love for children are swine, stocks, and logs unworthy of being called men or women; for they despise the blessings of God, the Creator and Author of marriage." ~ Martin Luther

Rapture

• "The rapture will not be secret but open and manifest. Its purpose will not be to whisk the elect away from the earth for a while until Christ returns for a 'second' Second Coming. The purpose of the rapture is to allow the saints to meet Jesus in the air as He returns and be included in His entourage during His triumphal descent from Heaven. His coming in this manner will be attended by the general resurrection, the final judgment, and the end of the world." ~ R.C. Sproul, "Essential Truths of the Christian Faith," p. 275.

Regeneration

• "[Alot of people] think that Christianity is you doing all the righteous things you hate and avoiding all the wicked things you love in order to go to Heaven. No, that's a lost man with religion. A Christian is a person whose heart has been changed; they have new affections." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Dating, Courtship, and Marriage."
• "Those who are really converted show it practically. That conversion which does not convert or turn the life is no conversion at all." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "In modern day evangelism, this precious doctrine [of regeneration] has been reduced to nothing more than a human decision to raise one's hand, walk an aisle, or pray a 'sinner's prayer.' As a result, the majority of Americans believe that they've been 'born again' even though their thoughts, words, and deeds are a continual contradiction to the nature and will of God." ~ Paul Washer
• "The change which our Lord here declares needful to salvation is evidently no slight or superficial one. It is not merely reformation, or amendment, or moral change, or outward alteration of life. It is a thorough change of heart, will, and character. It is a resurrection. It is a new creation. It is a passing from death to life. It is the implanting in our dead hearts of a new principle from above. It is the calling into existence of a new creature, with a new nature, new habits of life, new tastes, new desires, new appetites, new judgments, new opinions, new hopes, and new fears. All this, and nothing less than this is implied, when our Lord declares that we all need a 'new birth.'" ~ J.C. Ryle
• "The first epistle of John is merely an exposition of the new birth." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "If salvation is truly a work of God, it cannot be defective. It cannot fail to impact an individual's behaviour. It cannot leave his desires unchanged or his conduct unaltered. It cannot result in a fruitless life." ~ John MacArthur, "The Gospel According to Jesus," p. 74.
• "There is marked demonstration in the life of a person as to whether or not they have in fact been delivered. And such deliverance, listen, is the common experience for all believers in Christ. There is a dramatic change in their personal life. We're not talking again about forensic things, we're talking about actual transformation. There is a dramatic change in their personal life, their personal nature, and this is the work of the Holy Spirit. They are new creations and they have been delivered from some very specific dangers into some very specific new patterns of behavior." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Deliverance: The Neglected Doctrine."
• "Seemingly everybody seems to be 'born again'; but where are the fruits of the new birth? … Where is the Christ-like life?—those to whom the Lord Jesus Christ is precious and a living reality?" ~ L.R. Shelton, "The True Gospel vs. the False Gospel," p. 62.
• "Seemingly everybody seems to be 'born again'; but where are the fruits of the new birth? … Where is the Christ-like life? …those to whom the Lord Jesus Christ is precious and a living reality?" ~ L.R. Shelton, "The True Gospel vs. the False Gospel," p. 62.
• "God does not save a man in his sins, but from his sins, giving him a hatred for them. If he yet loves them and stays in them, rest assured that he is deceived!" ~ L.R. Shelton, "The True Gospel vs. the False Gospel," pp. 69-70.
• "Justification and regeneration are forever bound together in the New Covenant [Jer. 31:33-34]. All those who would use their supposed justification as an occasion to continue in sin only prove that they are not partakers of the New Covenant." ~ Charles Leiter, "Justification and Regeneration," p. 66.
• "You cannot be regenerated by God the Holy Spirit and not be a changed person." ~ R.C. Sproul
• "Jesus stressed the importance of the new birth to 'see' and to 'enter the kingdom of God.' This new birth is wrought by the Spirit of God. It is in consequence of this that men will look believingly on the 'lifted up' Son of man and see there that God in His love gave His only begotten Son to give them everlasting life." ~ R. Bruce Steward, "The Doctrines of Grace in the Gospel of John," p. 19.

Repentance

• "You must be divorced from your sin, or you cannot be married to Christ." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "True repentance is a turning of the heart, as well as of the life; it is the giving up of the whole soul to God, to be His forever and ever; it is a renunciation of the sins of the heart, as well as the corruptions of life. All sin must be given up, or else you will never have Christ: all evil must be renounced, or else the gates of Heaven must be locked to keep you out forever. Let us remember then, that for repentance to be sincere, it must be total repentance." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "Repentance is simply giving up to stop fighting against God and to stop attempting to gain your own salvation through your own works; to literally give up and fall upon Christ. That is salvation." ~ Paul Washer
• "No one really comes to salvation who hasn't become ashamed of himself. That's what true repentance is all about." ~ John MacArthur
• "There is no 'love of God' for you unless you have repented or unless you do repent. Make no mistake about this. Do not rely or bank on God's love. It is only for the penitent; there is no entry into the kingdom of God except by repentance." ~ Martyn Lloyd-Jones
• "Sin and Hell are married unless repentance proclaims the divorce." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "When the Lord Jesus Christ gives a man remission of sins, He also gives him repentance." ~ J.C. Ryle
• "Remember that the man who truly repents is never satisfied with his own repentance." ~ C.H. Spurgeon, "All of Grace."
• "The evidence that you truly repented long ago when you said you did is because you're still repenting now and even to a greater degree. The evidence that you believed a long time ago is that you're still believing now and ever more believing in greater and greater degrees." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "I am Not Ashamed of the Scandal."
• "A true Christian will be sensitive to the sin in their life and it will lead them to brokenness and genuine confession, but the person who says they are a Christian and are not sensitive to sin, it does not lead them to confession, a person who is that way is not a Christian." ~ Paul Washer
• "If your attachment to Christ is not begun on the bass note reverberating through your breast that you are a vile, filthy, helpless, Hell-deserving, wretched son or daughter of Adam, you know nothing of true repentance and therefore of true and saving faith." ~ Albert Martin, sermon, "Warning to Professing Christians."
• "To say that we are sorry for our sins is mere hypocrisy, unless we show that we are really sorry for them, by giving them up. Doing is the very life of repentance." ~ J.C. Ryle
• "The difference between true and false repentance lies in this: the man who truly repents cries out against his heart; but the other, as Eve, against the serpent, or something else." ~ John Bunyan
• "If you can sin and not weep over it, you are an heir of Hell. If you can go into sin, and afterwards feel satisfied to have done so, you are on the road to destruction. If there are no prickings of conscience, no inward torments, no bleeding wounds; if you have no throbs and heavings of a bosom that cannot rest; if your soul never feels filled with wormwood and gall when you know you have done evil, you are no child of God." ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Responding to Reproof

• "How do you respond when someone comes to you and tells you that you have sinned? When some friend or some person you barely know comes to you with the Word to convict you of something you've done wrong? Do you buckle against that? Do you stand up and fight that? Do you immediately say, 'No way! You're judging, you're this, you're that!'? Or do you ponder their words as if they could be true? Do you think about it for a while? Are you sensitive? Or are you hard-hearted, and proud? You say, 'If God wants to show me my sin, He can do it.' Yes He can; sometimes He uses individuals to do it. How will you respond to a messenger from God? Because that will tell me alot about how you will respond to God." ~ Paul Washer

Roman Catholicism

• "Roman Catholics, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses all claim to believe the Bible, but they all employ twisted interpretations, exegetical gymnastics, and extrabiblical authorities to overstress one point of truth at the expense of others. There is no more deadly means of spiritual deception than mingling some unbalanced aspect of truth with a system of false doctrine." ~ John MacArthur, GTY Letter, 6/14/11.
• "Believers have always been told whether it's in Leviticus by Moses, whether it's in Isaiah by Isaiah, whether it's in 2 Corinthians by Paul, believers of all ages have been told to separate completely from any pagan religious environment, anything that is not the truth of God. Today we would say liberalism, neoorthodoxy, Romanism, cults, heretics, false teachers, and they abound everywhere. We must separate ourselves from them." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Separating From Unbelievers," Part 3.
• "Any form of religion other than the truth is a demonic operation … any form of pseudo-Christianity … Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Science, you name it, Roman Catholicism. That's demonic operation. That's a demonic system because it's either from the Spirit of God, or demons. There's no middle ground." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "A Call to Discernment."

Self-Evaluation

• "All the decisions you make…how many of those decisions are based on you doing simply what's right in your own eyes, and how many times specifically have you gone to Scripture looking for the answer, with regard to anything?" ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Dating, Courtship, and Marriage."
• "How many of you are guiding your life based on principles, commands, and laws, and statements of wisdom that Jesus has given? How many Christians do you actually know that are living that way? 'Depart from Me, those of you who said, 'Lord Lord,' and considered yourselves to be My disciples, but you lived as though I never gave you a law to obey.' [Matt. 7:23]" ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Dating, Courtship, and Marriage."
• "Why do you do what you do? Why do you dress the way you dress?…Why do you do what you do with your time? Why do you watch what you watch on TV or at the movies or on the computer? … Do you have God-glorifying reasons for all of it?" ~ Tim Conway, sermon, "The Battle With Sin: Passion for the World."
• "Jesus Christ has done more than die for you on a tree; He told you how you're supposed to live and you have no right to live any other way. I'm sorry, that's discipleship…this Lord, He's Lord of absolutely everything… How much of your life is defined by what the word of God says, by what Jesus says, and how much of it is defined by culture? Just think about that. How many Christians do you know could open up a Bible and go down biblically, verse by verse, and show you why they do what they do in their relationship with the opposite sex…and tell you this is why I dress this way, this is why I talk this way, this is why I'm in college? Almost no one." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Dating, Courtship, and Marriage."
• "Entering in the narrow gate is allowing Him to define your life, and not in general terms. See, there's your problem. 'Oh, Jesus is everything to me, and Jesus is Lord.' Okay, specifically though, explain to me what that means: what has it cost you, how have you changed your life from the course the rest of the world is walking in?" ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Dating, Courtship, and Marriage."
• "You won't become a saint by studying your Bible; you'll become a saint by living it." ~ Leonard Ravenhill, sermon, "Hell has No Exits."
• "Are the things you are living for worth Christ dying for?" ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "The evidence that you truly repented long ago when you said you did is because you're still repenting now and even to a greater degree. The evidence that you believed a long time ago is that you're still believing now and ever more believing in greater and greater degrees." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "I am Not Ashamed of the Scandal."
• "If Jesus Christ isn't strong enough to motivate you to live biblically, you don't know Him at all." ~ Paul Washer
• "The cross is going to judge everything in your life: your eating, your drinking, your sleeping, your spending, your talking. Everything is cross-examined!" ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you." ~ John Owen
• "This is evangelicalism today: sensual, carnal, unconverted people that have just enough deceptive religion to drive them straight into Hell! Are you that kind of person? Or do you have new affections?" ~ Paul Washer
• "If you can sin and not weep over it, you are an heir of Hell. If you can go into sin, and afterwards feel satisfied to have done so, you are on the road to destruction. If there are no prickings of conscience, no inward torments, no bleeding wounds; if you have no throbs and heavings of a bosom that cannot rest; if your soul never feels filled with wormwood and gall when you know you have done evil, you are no child of God." ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Separation from the Wicked

• "Keep your children as much as may be from ill company, especially of ungodly playfellows. It is one of the greatest dangers for the undoing of children in the world; especially when they are sent to common schools: for there is scarce any of those schools so good, but hath many rude and ungodly ill-taught children in it." ~ Richard Baxter
• "Our closest friends must be those who are pursuing holiness because they will have an enormous effect upon our lives. … You tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you exactly who you are or who you're about to become. Run with the righteous." ~ Steven Lawson, sermon, "Blessed Purity."
• "If you're going to choose your friends, you better choose them well, because when you look at your friends, you're looking at a mirror reflection. You're looking at you; you are looking at you." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Godly Fellowship," 00:10:47.
• "There is a zero tolerance policy with Jesus for false teachers. If someone denies the true meaning of Scripture, denies the true identity of Christ, and denies the true gospel, that is not a tolerable person. We do not get together with those kind of people to find out what we hold in common… Our Lord indicates here that rather than welcome these people, we ought to flee from them because, as Jude put it, if you get too close to them, your garments will be singed. You need to be rescued from them… When we engage people who teach lies, it is to make war, not peace." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Religion and its Victims."
• "Most Christians in our culture live like everyone else. There is little distinction between our lives and the lives of the pagans down the street. We wear the same clothes, watch the same movies, read the same books, send our children to the same schools, and sign the same divorce decrees as everyone else." ~ Voddie Baucham
• "Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy. The more joy you have in the Lord the less entertainment you need…when you can say, 'Thou, O Christ, art all I want.' But listen, be careful: it may strip you of everything else you have; you may lose some of your best friends who think you're fanatical; they don't mind you being kind or good, but you become holy and zealous…" ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "If ye find your pleasure with the world, you shall meet your condemnation with the world; if with the world you live, with the world you shall die, and with the world you shall live again for ever, lost." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "The people of God cannot form intimate relationships with those who don't belong to God. All relationships like that are superficial. You cannot make a meaningful relationship with an enemy of the gospel. They live in a different world with a different and completely hostile and antagonistic leader." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Separating From Unbelievers," Part 1.
• "You can't join with unbelievers in worship, you can't join with unbelievers in ministry, you can't join with unbelievers in any enterprise that involves God's name. That's blasphemy, that's sacrilegious." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Separating From Unbelievers."
• "Believers have always been told whether it's in Leviticus by Moses, whether it's in Isaiah by Isaiah, whether it's in 2 Corinthians by Paul, believers of all ages have been told to separate completely from any pagan religious environment, anything that is not the truth of God. Today we would say liberalism, neoorthodoxy, Romanism, cults, heretics, false teachers, and they abound everywhere. We must separate ourselves from them." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Separating From Unbelievers," Part 3.
• "‎Paul says that we have a task and the task we have, according to verse 4, is to destroy fortresses, to destroy satanic fortresses. He calls them in verse 5 'speculations or ideologies and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.' Proud intellectualism, false religion, human ideologies, all those false systems are the very fortresses we destroy…and verse 5, 'We take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.' We don't partner with them, we assault them. People say, 'Well, you shouldn't speak against these groups.' Yes we need to speak against them, they are the fortresses, they are the satanic speculations, they are the demonic ideologies, they are the proud intellectualism of man lifted up against the truth of God and we must attack them with the Word, that is our spiritual weapon." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Separating From Unbelievers," Part 3.
• "Eventually it got costly and Daniel ended up in a lion's den and Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael ended up in a fiery furnace. Satan will always try to pollute the true religion by sucking God's people into unholy alliances with false religion. We must completely separate from all forms of false religion." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Separating From Unbelievers," Part 4.

Sinfulness of Sin

• "See what a great evil sin is, which exposes a person to God's wrath for ever. You may know the lion by his paw; and you may know what an evil sin is by the wrath and curse it brings. When you see a man drawn upon a hurdle to execution, you conclude he is guilty of some capital crime that brings such a punishment; so when a man lies under the torrid zone of God's wrath, and roars out in flames, you must say, 'How horrid an evil sin is!'" ~ Thomas Watson, "The Ten Commandments," p. 197.
• "Sin is the dare of God's justice, the rape of His mercy, the jeer of His patience, and the contempt of His love." ~ John Bunyan
• "[Sin] is so natural, it is rarely recognized for the evil that it is. ~ A.W. Tozer" ~ A.W. Tozer, "The Pursuit of God."
• "Sin enslaves those who practice it. … None can free himself or escape from sin's bondage. Sin 'reigns' over the sinner and rides on his back like a tyrant until it eventually brings him down to the pit of destruction and death. … You may be able to quit one sin, but another sin will immediately take its place—often the sin of pride or self-righteousness for what you imagine you have accomplished in reforming yourself. Sin is enslaving." ~ Charles Leiter, "Justification and Regeneration," p. 19.
• "Sin is a cruel tyrant. It is the most devastating and degenerating power ever to afflict the human race, such that the entire creation 'groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now' (Rom. 8:22). It corrupts the entire person—infecting the soul, polluting the mind, defiling the conscience, contaminating the affections, and poisoning the will. It is the life-destroying, soul-condemning cancer that festers and grows in every unredeemed human heart like an incurable gangrene." ~ John MacArthur, "Slave," p. 121.
• "Many of the pulpiteers of the past fifty years acted as though the first and last object of their calling was the salvation of souls, everything being made to bend to that aim. In consequence, the feeding of the sheep, the maintaining of a Scriptural discipline in the church, and the inculcation of practical piety, was crowded out; and only too often all sorts of worldly devices and fleshly methods were employed under the plea that the end justified the means; and thus the churches were filled with unregenerate members. In reality, such men defeated their own aim. The hard heart must be ploughed and harrowed before it can be receptive to the gospel seed. Doctrinal instruction must be given on the character of God, the requirements of His Law, the nature and heinousness of sin, if a foundation is to be laid for true evangelism. It is useless to preach Christ unto souls until they see and feel their desperate need of Him." ~ A.W. Pink

Sinner's Prayer

• "[The 4 spiritual laws and sinner's prayer] is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that methodology and envangelism has done more to hurt this country than every heresy introduced by every cult combined. Millions of people in this country whose lives have never been changed believed themselves born again because we have so reduced the gospel of Jesus Christ that it means now nothing more than simple decision that will only take five minutes of your time." ~ Paul Washer
• "The sinner's prayer has sent more people to Hell than all the bars in America." ~ Leonard Ravenhill

Tolerance

• "Toleration is the grave of reformation. By toleration, we adopt other men's sins and make them our own." ~ Thomas Watson
• "If anybody comes along espousing some message and asking for tolerance, you can be sure it's error because error demands tolerance, whereas truth demands scrutiny." ~ John MacArthur
• "Never let us be guilty of sacrificing any portion of truth on the altar of peace." ~ J.C. Ryle
• "Staunch intolerance of error is built into the very fabric of Scripture." ~ John MacArthur
• "We live in a culture that has lowered the tolerance for phony gentleness. 'Let's just agree to disagree.' The refusal to fight for truth has done much damage. Let's agree to argue until one of us refutes the others and we come to the correct conclusion." ~ Phil Johnson

True and False Christians

• "A true Christian is marked by a fundamental submission to biblical counsel; without this, you are mere hypocrites." ~ Richard Steele
• "If that person shows by a continuous, ongoing lifestyle that they're in love with the world, they do not love God; they are those adulteresses and adulterers that James is dealing with [James 4:4], and they're at enmity with God! Lay it down, hands down, folks." ~ Tim Conway
• "People who come along all the time and they ask, 'What's wrong with this?' In other words, they're always wondering how close to the edge they can get…and still be a Christian. Listen, if any of you are like that, just go back to the world. Stop testing the edges. If it's the world you want, go back to it! And if you want to love Christ, then love Christ, and love Him with all your heart, and follow Him, and stop playing this idiotic game where you want to see how close to the edge you can live." ~ Tim Conway
• "The person who demonstrates no desire for the things of God and has no inclination to avoid sin or passion to please God is not indwelt by the Holy Spirit and thus does not belong to Christ." ~ John MacArthur
• "Those who are really converted show it practically. That conversion which does not convert or turn the life is no conversion at all." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "Seemingly everybody seems to be 'born again'; but where are the fruits of the new birth? … Where is the Christ-like life? …those to whom the Lord Jesus Christ is precious and a living reality?" ~ L.R. Shelton, "The True Gospel vs. the False Gospel," p. 62.
• "It is not the absence of sin but the grieving over it which distinguishes the child of God from empty professors." ~ A.W. Pink
• "God does not save a man in his sins, but from his sins, giving him a hatred for them. If he yet loves them and stays in them, rest assured that he is deceived!" ~ L.R. Shelton, "The True Gospel vs. the False Gospel," pp. 69-70.
• "Imputed righteousness is the foundation of personal righteousness, and where there is imputed righteousness, there will be personal righteousness. An unholy Christian is no Christian at all." ~ David King
• "A true Christian will be sensitive to the sin in their life and it will lead them to brokenness and genuine confession, but the person who says they are a Christian and are not sensitive to sin, it does not lead them to confession, a person who is that way is not a Christian." ~ Paul Washer
• "The majority of what calls itself Christianity today is a circus. You've got a bunch of people chasing health, wealth, prosperity; chasing a good time, chasing the social club, chasing where the action's happening, chasing the good music and the good times. But few people are out there chasing God, and truly going hard after Him, and truly making the sacrifices in their life and cleaning their hands in such a way and working to have a pure heart that they might actually ascend that hill of the Lord and they might actually commune with God in a way that few people do and few people know about." ~ Tim Conway, sermon, "Who Ascends the Hill of God," 00:09:00.
• "Justification and regeneration are forever bound together in the New Covenant [Jer. 31:33-34]. All those who would use their supposed justification as an occasion to continue in sin only prove that they are not partakers of the New Covenant." ~ Charles Leiter, "Justification and Regeneration," p. 66.
• "A biblical Christian is a person who manifests in his life that his claims to repentance and faith are real." ~ Albert Martin, "What is a Biblical Christian?"
• "If you're not happy with biblical teaching, fine! Go out and find your own religion. Leave the Christian church, go into the Unitarians or the New Age; stop cluttering up the pews. We who remain will be in revival the moment you hit the door, because the greatest hindrance to revival and reformation are the deadbeat, unregenerate humanists who clutter up the churches." ~ Robert Morey
• "We have too many preacherettes preaching too many sermonettes to too many Christianettes smoking cigarettes." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "The cross does not give us a minor shift or two with regard to a few of our ethical and moral and religious values. The cross radically disrupts the very center and citadel of your life from self to Christ. And if the cross has not done that, you're not a Christian!" ~ Albert Martin, sermon, "Warning to Professing Christians."
• "The church is in trouble—that's what they say anyways. The problem is most of what they call the church is not the church, and the church is not quite as in trouble as everybody thinks. As a matter of fact, the church today is absolutely beautiful—she's glorious, she's humble, she's broken, and she's confessing her sin. The problem is what everybody's calling the church today isn't the church. Basically, by and large, what's called the church today is nothing more than a bunch of unconverted church people with unconverted pastors." ~ Paul Washer
• "If the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares that he knows the Lord's will, but does not mean to attend to it, you are not to pamper his presumptions, but it is your duty to assure him that he is not saved." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "The biggest problem in the church is its inability and unwillingness to distinguish true Christians from false. It's…it's literally killing the church." ~ John MacArthur
• "There are many people who call themselves Christians who could not give a biblical explanation of the gospel. Now how can you be a Christian if you don't know the gospel? How can you be in Christ if you don't know what the Bible says about how to be in Christ?" ~ John MacArthur
• "There's a mindset in other countries that if you're an American, you're a Christian. Well, those people are sadly misled; they don't know our country. Our country is wicked, and the Christians are few. Just like they're few in other countries, they're few here. There may be many churches and there may be church buildings on every street corner and every corner in our cities across this country, but the true Christians are few." ~ Tim Conway, sermon, "Submission to the Government."
• "Tens of thousands, perhaps millions, have come into some kind of religious experience by accepting Christ, and they have not been saved." ~ A.W. Tozer
• "When the fruits of the Holy Spirit are lacking, it is profane to talk of a person having the Spirit of God." ~ J.C. Ryle
• "Sunday morning in America is the greatest hour of idolatry in the whole week. Why? Because most people who are even worshiping God, are worshiping a God they don't know. They're worshiping a god that looks more like Santa Claus than the God of Scripture. They're worshiping a god that is a figment of their own imagination. They created a god in their own likeness and they worship the god they've made." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "The Great Privilege."
• "Sunday morning is the greatest hour of idolatry in the entire week in America, because people are not worshiping the one true God…but are worshiping a god formed out of their own heart by their own flesh, satanic devices, and worldly intelligence. They've made a god just like themselves and he looks more like Santa Claus than he does Yahweh." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church."
• "Most people today in our churches are lost, and they demonstrate that they are lost because their entire Christianity is nothing more than, 'They made a decision.'" ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "The Great Privilege."
• "If you show me a man deliberately living an unholy and licentious life, and yet boasting that his sins are forgiven, I answer, 'He is under a ruinous delusion, and is not forgiven at all.' I would not believe he is forgiven if an angel from heaven affirmed it, and I charge you not to believe it too. Pardon of sin and love of sin are like oil and water…they will never go together. All who are washed in the blood of Christ, are also sanctified by the Spirit of Christ." ~ J.C. Ryle
• "The tree is made manifest by its fruit; so those that profess themselves to be Christians shall be recognised by their conduct. For there is not now a demand for mere profession, but that a man be found continuing in the power of faith to the end." ~ Ignatius of Antioch, "Letter to the Ephesians," 14:2.
• "The truth is this: I am a Southern Baptist, and the great majority of Southern Baptists are lost." ~ Paul Washer
• "The best title of the [professing] church of God today, in my judgment, is 'Unbelieving Believers.'" ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "If you have made the good profession, if you claimed to have passed through the gate, if you have received baptism in a public declaration of your faith, and you begin to walk—it doesn't matter how long it appears you're walking in that path—if you step off that path and there's no discipline and you continue on that path, you can have no assurance whatsoever of your salvation. And it is not that you lost your salvation, it's that you're showing now that you never had it. If we would only preach these truths…" ~ Paul Washer
• "You love to listen to the very things that nailed your supposed Master to the tree?! Come off of it, man! Become a hellion, give yourself to demons, run wild; but don't come in here saying you're a believer and playing that game! You want to dance with the devil, then dance all night long! But don't come in here dancing with Christ for a moment, and then go back out there and share your love." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "Examine Yourself."
• "This is evangelicalism today: sensual, carnal, unconverted people that have just enough deceptive religion to drive them straight into Hell! Are you that kind of person? Or do you have new affections?" ~ Paul Washer
• "Let your Christianity be so unmistakable, your eye so single, your heart so whole, your walk so straightforward, that all who see you may have no doubt whose you are, and whom you serve." ~ J.C. Ryle
• "If you can sin and not weep over it, you are an heir of Hell. If you can go into sin, and afterwards feel satisfied to have done so, you are on the road to destruction. If there are no prickings of conscience, no inward torments, no bleeding wounds; if you have no throbs and heavings of a bosom that cannot rest; if your soul never feels filled with wormwood and gall when you know you have done evil, you are no child of God." ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Uncategorized

• "I reckon prosperity, O men, to consist in nothing else than in living according to truth." ~ Justin Martyr
• "The evidence that you truly repented long ago when you said you did is because you're still repenting now and even to a greater degree. The evidence that you believed a long time ago is that you're still believing now and ever more believing in greater and greater degrees." ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "I am Not Ashamed of the Scandal."
• "There are no crown-wearers in Heaven who were not cross-bearers here below." ~ C.H. Spurgeon
• "If you're going to be a true Christian, I'll tell you one thing amongst others: it'll be a lonely life. It's a narrow way and it becomes narrower and narrower and narrower." ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "Great eagles fly alone; great lions hunt alone; great souls walk alone—alone with God. Such loneliness is hard to endure, and impossible to enjoy unless God accompanied. Prophets are lone men; they walk alone, pray alone and God makes them alone." ~ Leonard Ravenhill, sermon, "Why Revival Tarries."
• "Why in God's name do you expect to be accepted everywhere? How is it the world couldn't get on with the holiest man that ever lived, and it can get on with you and me?" ~ Leonard Ravenhill
• "To confess Christ is to choose His ways and to own them. To profess Christ is to plead for His ways and yet live beside them. … To profess Christ is to own Him when none deny Him; to confess Christ is to plead for Him and suffer for Him when others oppose Him. … Profession is swimming down the stream. Confession is a swimming against the stream." ~ Matthew Mead, "The Almost Christian," p. 28.
• "Christ is not that great of a Savior if you're not that big of a sinner. … You'll never get to the glories of victory of Christ if you're not helped to understand the depths of your sin." ~ Jeff Noblit, sermon, "Lifting Up the Fallen One."
• "If He's not saving you, then He's not your Savior." ~ Sinclair Ferguson
• "If you want to follow Jesus because He'll fix your marriage, if you want to follow Jesus because He'll give you a better life, that's idolatry. Follow Christ for the sake of Christ; He is worthy!" ~ Paul Washer, sermon, "The Christian Life," part 1.
• "Do you understand that there are just these two possibilities in the world? You're either a part of the temple of God or you're in the demonic system. All false religion is demon-worship. … All who are in religion that is not the true religion are demon worshipers." ~ John MacArthur, sermon, "Separating From Unbelievers."
• "A ministry which is weak and flabby on the subject of sin is a useless ministry. A preaching ministry that does not result in conviction of sin is useless. If it does not wound, how can it heal? The good news is only for sinners." ~ Erroll Hulse
• "We shall not injure God by remaining ignorant of Him, but shall deprive ourselves of His friendship." ~ Justin Martyr
• "'The Lord told me' is no substitute for 'the Bible says.'" ~ Voddie Baucham

Wrath of God

• "A study of the concordance will show that there are more references in Scripture to the anger, fury, and wrath of God, than there are to His love and tenderness. Because God is holy, He hates all sin; and because He hates all sin, His anger burns against the sinner (Psa. 7:11)." ~ A.W. Pink, "Attributes of God," p. 96.
• "The wrath of God is His eternal detestation of all unrighteousness. It is the displeasure and indignation of divine equity against evil. It is the holiness of God stirred into activity against sin." ~ A.W. Pink, "Attributes of God," p. 96.
• "The wrath of God is as terrible as Hs grace is lovely." ~ Johann Peter Lange