Charles Spurgeon Quotes

The more a church flourishes, the more, I believe, do hypocrites get in, just as you see many a noxious creeping thing come and get in a garden after a shower of rain. The very things that make glad the flowers bring out these noxious things. And so hypocrites get in and steal much of the church's sap away.

We have churches full of people who profess all kinds of stuff that they don't believe. They think that by professing it they're doing something good. Really, they're just deluding themselves.

Most of what I have seen, the churches that are growing are the best are those that are nondenominational. But I don't think it's because they are nondenominational. I think that there's a certain method by which they go about reaching out to people that are not as traditional as your mainland churches generally do.

Because the church has moved away from the gospel anytime you move away from the gospel, you at the same time move toward pretense, you move toward image-keeping, you move toward the need to pretend.

We need to stop giving people excuses not to believe in God. You've probably heard the expression 'I believe in God, just not organized religion'. I don't think people would say that if the church truly lived like we are called to live.

Don't be a half-Christian. There are too many of such in the world. The world has a profound respect for people who are sincere in their faith.

I remind you that there are churches so completely out of the hands of God that if the Holy Spirit withdrew from them, they wouldn't find it out for many months

It's funny - people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and THEY go to CHURCH.

People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

Nothing exposes religion more to the reproach of its enemies than the worldliness and half-heartedness of the professors of it.

There are a still lot of people in today's church who can easily identify the idolatry outside the church and are pretty proud of the fact that they are not like them. And yet, we are far too slow to recognize the idolatry inside the church and more painfully, the idolatry inside our hearts.

Reverend Ted Haggard's followers still think he's not gay. I'm not kidding. In their world, there are no gay people. There are just straight people who are sinning. They don't want to do it, but the Devil makes them! He targets people like Reverend Ted. That's how it happened. The Devil got hold of Reverend Ted, and Ted said, 'Get thee behind me, Satan! And put it in, gently'.

The only way a church is going to be relevant is to get out of its comfort zone and connect with unchurched people.

People have their morals, but morals aren't concrete. People think because I'm a Muslim that I pray five times a day, but you're never going to see that on a day-to-day basis. People fluctuate. To me, that was the most specific way to put it, the best way to be like, "I listen to this music, but it's the most violent music on the planet." But I like it, and to make up for it, I don't say the cuss words. That's how I get away with it.

Many people think that the Bible is the authentic word of God and they worship the Bible, making it an idol.

There is nothing more irreligious than self-absorbed religion.

Some of the most unkind,judgmental people I've ever known go to church every Sunday and read the Bible. I don't know how some people are able to disassociate their own cruelty and shortcomings from their religious obligations and convictions, but many are able to do that.

I think that if one's role doesn't correspond to what one says, if one's life doesn't correspond to what one preaches, if one is not true to one's people, someone else will come as a substitute.

I don't think it's possible to c-call yourself a C-Christian and... and j-just leave out the awkward bits.' -Wilfred Owen

How many people would like to be good, if only they might be good without taking trouble about it! They do not like goodness well enough to hunger and thirst after it, or to sell all that they have that they may buy it; they will not batter at the gate of the kingdom of heaven; but they look with pleasure on this or that aerial castle of righteousness, and think it would be rather nice to live in it.

As a comedian, I think we all look for those areas where the truth diverts from what people are saying. That's why politics is such a rich area for us, because politicians make promises, and they don't keep them, and when we point out the difference, we get the laugh.

Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquility of soul. Hence it may be observed that those who set up piety as an end and object are mostly hypocrites.

I think we must fully face the fact that when Christianity does not make a man very much better, it makes him very much worse... Conversion may make of one who was, if no better, no worse than an animal, something like a devil.

Some make a conscience of spitting in the Church, yet robbe the Altar.

All these fine Christian-type people that seem to think they know what God wants for all of us, that's certainly more of a sin then anything they would claim about us. To judge people is one of the greatest sins.