Matthew Simpson Quotes

My father has been faithful to the calling that God gave him: that is, to preach the Gospel... He has presented Christ to every person that God has put before him.

From my youngest days, I always felt certain affinities with the idea of being a preacher.

He that can toy with his ministry and count it to be like a trade, or like any other profession, was never called of God. But he that has a charge pressing on his heart, and a woe ringing in his ear, and preaches as though he heard the cried of hell behind him, and saw his God looking down on him-oh, how that man entreats the Lord that his hearers may not hear in vain!

Some people come to me and say, "Mr. Moody, don't you feel a great responsibility when you come before an audience like this - don't you feel a great weight upon your shoulders?" "Well." I say, "no; I cannot convert men; I can only proclaim the Gospel.

If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell.

I am a preacher. I'm involved in many other things, but, mainly, I preach. And I love it!

I'm not only a Christian, but I'm a pastor of a church.

Eighteen years ago, the Holy Spirit led me to establish a church in the heart of Times Square.

The highest service that men may attain to on earth is to preach the word of God. This service falls peculiarly to priests, and therefore, God more directly demands it of them.

How indifferent are men to this carpenter or that fisherman, who has no word to speak of adventure or of wealth, but has only the word of God to proclaim, and has no credentials but that he comes in the name of the Lord.

The true minister is in his pulpit not because he has chosen that profession as an easy means of livelihood, but because he could not help it, because he has obeyed an imperious summons that will not be denied.

I would rather be a preacher in a pulpit than a prince on a throne

Whether young or old, rich or poor, learned or unlearned, should presume to dispense the mysteries of Christ without the strongest of all possible reasons for doing so - the imperative, invincible call of God. No one is to show cause why he ought not to be a Minister: he is to show cause why he should be a Minister. His call to the sacred profession is not the absence of a call to any other pursuit; it is direct, immediate, powerful, to this very department of labour. He is not here because he can be nowhere else, but he is nowhere else because he must be here.

Pastoral ministry is a sacrificial call with unique challenges. We are called to take the Gospel to those with hard hearts and blind eyes.

The Lord called me to plant a church.

In this age of the electronic media and the mass distribution of the printed word, God will hold us accountable if we do not now move the Book of Mormon in a monumental way.

New York is definitely ready for the word of God.

When the congregation becomes the norm by which sermons are measured, a minister has put a mortgage on his soul.

I never realized what a great privilege it is to be able to use the voice for Christ until I was deprived of it.

Do not suffer any man to baptize or minister unto you, unless God has spoken unto him by the voice of his servants, and authorized him to minister in his name.

I am responsible only to God and history.

If there's anyone in my lifetime who deserves honor it is Billy Graham. I think he is the most significant figure since the apostles.

Oral Roberts was a man of God and a great friend in ministry. I loved him as a brother.

I have to go on being a priest and bishop, that is, to celebrate God and what God has done in Jesus, and to offer in God's name whatever I can discern of God's perspective on the world around - something which involves both challenge and comfort.

Only God has rights. People have duties.