Great sermons lead the people to praise the preacher. Good preaching leads the people to praise the Savior.
When the church finds its members falling into gross and scandalous sins, then it is time for the church to awake and cry to God for a Revival of Religion.
A revival of religion presupposes a declension.
When there is a spirit of controversy in the church or in the land, a revival is needful. The spirit of religion is not the spirit of controversy. There can be no prosperity in religion, where the spirit of controversy prevails.
No man can possibly be benevolent or religious, to the full extent of his obligations, without concerning himself, to a greater or less extent, with the affairs of human government.
The reason why wicked men and devils hate God is, because they see Him in relation to themselves. Their hearts rise up in rebellion, because they see Him opposed to their selfishness.
Why will God’s creatures sin against his throne? Can there be such madness in beings gifted with reason’s light?
Revival comes from heaven when heroic souls enter the conflict determined to win or die – or if need be, to win and die! The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.
There is a fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom, which is founded in love. There is also a slavish fear, which is a mere dread of evil, and is purely selfish.
Understand now what lying is. Any species of designed deception. If the deception is not designed it is not lying. But if you design to make an impression contrary to the naked truth, you lie.
In nearly all cases, if the people complain of the length of our sermons it is because we fail to interest them personally in what we have to say.
It was very common to find Christians, whenever they met in any place, instead of engaging in conversation, to fall on their knees in prayer.
I felt like rebuking them with all my heart and yet with a compassion which they could not mistake. I never knew that they accused me of severity, although I think I never spoke with more severity in my life.
The will is, in a sense, enslaved by the carnal and worldly desires. Hence it is necessary to awaken men to a sense of guilt and danger, and thus produce an excitement of counter feeling and desire which will break the power of carnal and worldly desire and leave the will free to obey God.
But now after receiving these baptisms of the Spirit I was quite willing to preach the Gospel. Nay, I found that I was unwilling to do anything else.
I laid great stress upon prayer as an indispensable condition of promoting the revival.
So if an elder or private member of the church finds his brethren cold towards him, there is but one way to remedy it. It is by being revived himself, and pouring out from his eyes and from his life the splendor of the image of Christ. This spirit will catch and spread in the church, and confidence will be renewed, and brotherly love prevail again.
There must be a waking up of energy, on the part of Christians, and an outpouring of God’s Spirit, or the world will laugh at the church.
Whenever sinners are not being saved and believers sanctified, there is a lack of Holy Spirit power. When will our theological professors and our ministers learn the all-important lesson so illustrated in the Acts of the Apostles and so verified by all the ages, that the chief factor in ministerial success is the Pentecostal experience, the baptism with the Holy Ghost, the being “filled with the Spirit?
By precept and example, on every proper occasion, by their lips, but mainly by their lives. Christians have no right to be silent with their lips; they should rebuke, exhort, and entreat with all long-suffering and doctrine. But their main influence as witnesses is by their example.