spiritual downfall Quotes

Satan does not care whether he drags you down to hell as a Calvinist or as an Arminian, so long as he can get you there.

Unsaintly saints are the tragedy of Christianity.

The descent to hell is easy and those who begin by worshipping power, soon worship evil.

Theologians consider that it was the sin of pride, the sinful thought conceived in an instant: non serviam: I will not serve. That instant was his [Lucifer's] ruin.

When the ego dominates in organizations, even spiritual organizations, there is usually a big drama or upheaval of some kind, and self-destruction begins.

The fall of man stands a lie before Beethoven, a truth before Hitler.

If angels stoop from visions of more than earthly beauty to spells of less than earthly worth, they are but fallen angels, mingling divine utterances with the babblings of madness, and the madness is not the divineness.

Consider that it is not failing in this or that attempt to come to Christ, but a giving-over of your endeavors, that will be your ruin.

Temptation can be defined as an inducement to do evil. Three powerful forces work together to ruin a believer's character and witness: Satan, the world system, and our own lustful "flesh" tendencies.

...the fall of man in paradise has always been followed by his expulsion.

Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering.

Oh, this base heart of ours! Hath it not enough tinder in it to set on fire the course of nature? If a spark do but fall into it, any one of our members left to itself would dishonour Christ, deny the Lord that bought us, and turn back into perdition.

The world allured me & in an unguarded moment I listened to her siren voice. From that moment I seemed to lose interest in heavenly things. Friends reasoned with me & told me of the danger I was in. I felt my danger & was alarmed, but I had rambled too far to return & ever since my heart has been growing harder.

In the Great Deluge in the days of Noah, nearly all mankind perished, eight persons alone being saved in the Ark. In our days a deluge, not of water but of sins, continually inundates the earth, and out of this deluge very few escape. Scarcely anyone is saved.

'What is the Unpardonable Sin' asked the lime-burner 'It is a sin that grew within my own breast', replied Ethan Brand 'The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God'.

Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell >From heaven; for ev'n in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoy'd In vision beatific.

And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.

When they [the Church] have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the Candlestick, etc., and made His Garden a wilderness as it is this day. And that therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and Paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world, and all that be saved out of the world are to be transplanted out of the wilderness of the World.

When Christ comes with regenerating grace, he finds no man sitting still, but all posting to eternal ruin, and making haste toward hell; till, by conviction, he first brings them to a stand, and then, by conversion, turn first their hearts, and then their lives, sincerely to himself.

I want to say something to you men. You cannot destroy the appointment of a prophet of God, but you can cut the thread that binds you to the prophet of God, and sink yourselves to hell.

I once heard a spiritual man say that he was not so much astonished at the things done by a soul in mortal sin as at the things not done by it. May God, in his mercy, deliver us from such great evil, for there is nothing in the whole of our lives that so thoroughly deserves to be called evil as this, since it brings endless and eternal evils in its train.

What to one man is the virtue which he has sunk below the possibility of aspiring to, is to another the backsliding by which he forfeits his spiritual crown.

Hallelujah" "Your faith was strong but you needed proof. You saw her bathing on the roof. Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you. She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne, and she cut your hair. And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.

I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.

Sexual intercourse is a momentary affair, terminating in exhaustion and disgust. If it begins in the spirit, it soon ends in the flesh; i. e., the amative, which is spiritual, is drowned in the propagative, which is sensual. The exhaustion which follows naturally breeds self-reproach and shame, and this leads to dislike and concealment of the sexual organs, which contract disagreeable associations from the fact that they are the instruments of pernicious excess. This undoubtedly is the philosophy of the origin of shame after the fall. Adam and Eve first sunk the spiritual in the sensual, in eating the forbidden fruit; and then, having lost the true balance of their natures, they sunk the spiritual in the sensual in their intercourse with each other, by pushing prematurely beyond the amative to the propagative, and so became ashamed, and began to look with an evil eye on the instruments of their folly.