Top 90 Quotes & Sayings by Josh McDowell

No matter how devastating our struggles, disappointments, and troubles are, they are only temporary.

When it comes to my salvation, all I need is Jesus; after my salvation, everything is Jesus plus the church... When people preach that all you need is Jesus, they cut you and I off from one of the greatest sources of healing, which is the body of Christ. Don't go it alone - you won't make it.

I would say 90 percent of Christians do not have a worldview, in other words a view of the world, based on the Scripture and a relationship with God.

I once had a lot of hatred, mainly toward my father, an alcoholic.

The downfall of the church will not come from a lack of apologetic teaching; it will come from disintegration of the families in the church.

After I set out to refute Christianity intellectually and couldn't, I came to the conclusion the Bible was true and Jesus Christ was God's Son.

Both Jewish and Roman sources and traditions admit an empty tomb.

You better arm yourselves to answer your children's and grandchildren's questions... no matter what the question is... without being judgmental.

My joy in life is not because I have not had any problems. I have joy because I have learned there is nothing too great for God's power to deal with, nor anything too small or insignificant for His love to be concerned about.

Every kid needs to say, 'I want what my mom and dad have.'

While the resurrection promises us a new and perfect life in the future, God loves us too much to leave us alone to contend with the pain, guilt and loneliness of our present life.

Every pastor, youth pastor, and every parent is in competition with the Internet and the information it is spreading. Most young people don't get their news from CNN or CBS; they get it from bloggers.

My greatest platform is not with all my degrees, everything else, it's not all my books, everything. It's that I'm known as a man who loves his wife and spends time with his children. That opens more; I speak as a daddy.

If there were more than one path to salvation then it would totally negate Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, his life, his teachings.

We've had a major shift in what truth is and where it comes from. We've gone from being God-centered to self-centered, from being objective to being subjective, and from being internal to external.

Anyone with sincere religious beliefs cannot say that all religions are true. That is so illogical it is pathetic. All religion cannot be true because some of them are so diametrically opposed to each other.

Why don't the names of Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius offend people? The reason is that these others didn't claim to be God, but Jesus did.

If Jesus Christ was who He claimed to be, and He did die on a cross at a point of time in history, then, for all history past and all history future it is relevant because that is the very focal point for forgiveness and redemption.

If they had connived a scheme, and Christ had not been raised from the dead, where would have been the hardest place on the face of the earth to convince anyone? In Jerusalem.

My greatest asset now is my focus.

For centuries many of the world's distinguished philosophers have assaulted Christianity as being irrational, superstitious and absurd.

I've never had anyone define purity. You probably can't define purity. Purity is to live according to original design.

I am not a Christian because God changed my life; I am a Christian because of my convictions about who Jesus Christ is.

The first thing that stuck in the minds of the disciples was not the empty tomb, but rather the empty grave clothes - undisturbed in form and position.

Jesus claimed He had the power to raise himself from the dead and His followers would be raised from the dead. That's a unique claim in the literature of religion.

On that Sunday morning the first thing that impressed the people who approached the tomb was the unusual position of the one and a half to two ton stone that had been lodged in front of the doorway.

The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have... whether you like it or not.

I thought Christians were walking idiots.

Paul the apostle recounted that Jesus appeared to more than 500 of His followers at one time, the majority of whom were still alive and who could confirm what Paul wrote.

Because the New Testament provides the primary historical source for information on the resurrection, many critics during the 19th century attacked the reliability of these biblical documents.

Prayer is talking with God. God knows your heart and is not so concerned with your words as He is with the attitude of your heart.

Where I once constantly lost my temper, I found myself arriving at a crisis and experiencing peace.

Christ appeared alive on several occasions after the cataclysmic events of that first Easter.

Few people seem to realize that the resurrection of Jesus is the cornerstone to a worldview that provides the perspective to all of life.

The New Testament witnesses were fully aware of the background against which the resurrection took place.

Here's the simplest answer: Within weeks, the disciples proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that He had been bodily raised from the dead and appeared to them.

No matter how devastating our struggles, disappointments, and troubles are, they are only temporary. No matter what happens to you, no matter the depth of tragedy or pain you face, no matter how death stalks you and your loved ones, the Resurrection promises you a future of immeasurable good.

When I was a crusade director in British Columbia, all of our meetings were at 9:03. Somebody said 'That's ridiculous. Why did you do that?' It's because you remember it. You've never been to another 9:03 meeting.

Where I once believed people were there to be used, I started thinking of other people first.

As a reward for their efforts, however, those early Christians were beaten, stoned to death, thrown to the lions, tortured and crucified. Every conceivable method was used to stop them from talking.

Now, whenever you read any historical document, you always evaluate it in light of the historical context.

True love is spelled G-I-V-E. It is not based on what you can get, but rooted in what you can give to the other person.

When it comes to my salvation, all I need is Jesus; after my salvation, everything is Jesus plus the church... When people preach that all you need is Jesus, they cut you and I off from one of the greatest sources of healing, which is the body of Christ. Dont go it alone - you wont make it.

Love can wait to give; it is lust that can't wait to get.

Truth is objective because God exists outside ourselves; it is universal because God is above all; it is constant because God is eternal. Absolute truth is absolute because it originates from the original.

After more than 700 hours of studying this subject, and thoroughly investigating its foundation, I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted upon the minds of men, or it is the most fantastic fact of history

I always tried to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that my brains would fall out. As G. K. Chesterton says, "The purpose of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to close it again on something solid." I opened my mind, and I finally closed it on the most solid reality I had ever experienced. On December 19, 1959, at 8:30PM, during my second year at the university, I became a Christian.

Knowing that God is faithful, it really helps me to not be captivated by worry. But knowing that He will do what He has said, He will cause it to happen, whatever He has promised, and then it causes me to be less involved in worrying about a situation.

My joy in life is not because I have not had any problems. I have joy because I have learned there is nothing too great for Gods power to deal with, nor anything too small or insignificant for His love to be concerned about.

The Old Testament records the preparation for the coming of the Messiah. The Gospels record the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ our Lord. The book of Acts records the propagation of the gospel (the good news) concerning Jesus Christ. The Epistles (letters) explain the gospel and its implications for our lives. The book of Revelation anticipates and describes the second coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of His eternal kingdom. From beginning to end, the Bible glorifies Jesus Christ and centers on Him. Its Christ-centeredness is one of its wonderful features.

A lot of people say, well how can a loving God send anyone to hell? First of all God doesn't send anyone to hell. If we go to hell, it's by our own choice. But when somebody says to me, how can a loving God allow anyone to go to hell, I'll turn around and say, "Well how can a holy, just, righteous God allow sin into His presence?"

Most Christians are not convinced of their own faith. I would say 90 percent of Christians do not have a worldview, in other words a view of the world, based on the Scripture and a relationship with God. And so they cannot discern between the truth and falsehood.

It is more rewarding to resolve a conflict than to dissolve a relationship.

The Christian faith is faith in Christ. Its value or worth is not in the one believing but in the One believed - not in the one trusting, but in the One trusted.

Forgiveness is the oil of relationships.

My father's life was changed right before my eyes [when he trusted Christ]. It was like someone reached down and switched on a light inside him. He touched alcohol only once after that. He got the drink only as far as his lips and that was it-after forty years of drinking! He didn't need it any more. Fourteen months later, he died form complications of his alcoholism. But in that fourteen-month period over a hundred people in the area around my tiny hometown committed their lives to Jesus Christ because of the change they saw in the town drunk, my dad.

Leaders of the world's religions said, 'What do you think about what I teach?' Jesus said, 'Who do you say I am?'(Luke 9:20)

You can laugh at Christianity; you can mock and ridicule it. But it works. It changes lives. If you trust Christ, start watching your attitudes and actions, because Jesus Christ is in the business of changing lives.

We no longer live in a post-Christian society, we live in an anti-Christian society, one in which the Christian faith is dismissed or ridiculed and Christians are considered suspect and their motives and behavior berated.

We may very well wake up in the not-too-distant future in a culture that is not only unreceptive but openly hostile to the church and the gospel of Jesus Christ, a culture in which those who proclaim the gospel will be labeled as bigots and fanatics, a culture in which persecution of Christians will be not only allowed but applauded.