A Quote by George Whitefield
Congregations are lifeless because dead men preach to them.
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The reason why congregations have been so dead is, because they had dead men preaching to them. O that the Lord may quicken and revive them! How can dead men beget living children?
For I am verily persuaded the generality of preachers talk of an unknown and unfelt Christ; and the reason why congregations have been so dead is, because they have had dead men preaching to them.
If men come among you who do NOT preach all the counsel of God, who do NOT preach of Christ, sin, holiness, of ruin, redemption, and regeneration, and do NOT preach of these things in a Scriptural way, you ought to cease to hear them.
Those of us who preach the Scriptures, along with being nourished by it ourselves, have to figure out along with our congregations how we can incarnate the gospel in our community, or we will preach to a religious ghetto.
I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas.
It will startle you to see what slaves we are to by-gone times-to Death, if we give the matter the right word! ... We read in Dead Men's books! We laugh at Dead Men's jokes, and cry at Dead Men's pathos! . . . Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a Dead Man's icy hand obstructs us!
Sinners in their natural state lie dead, lifeless, and moveless; they can no more believe in Christ, nor repent, than a dead man can speak or walk: but, in virtue of the promise, the Spirit of life from Christ Jesus, at the time appointed, enters into the dead soul, and quickens it; so that it is no more morally dead, but alive, having new spiritual powers put into it, that were lost by Adam's fall.
We have lost faith in ourselves. Therefore to preach the Advaita aspect of the Vedanta is necessary to rouse up the hearts of men, to show them the glory of their souls. It is therefore that I preach this Advaita, and I do so not as a sectarian, but upon universal and widely acceptable grounds.
Yet soil is miraculous. It is where the dead are brought back to life. Here, in the thin earthy boundary between inanimate rock and the planet's green carpet, lifeless minerals are weathered from stones or decomposed from organic debris. Plants and microscopic animals eat these dead particles and recast them as living matter. In the soil, matter recrosses the boundary between living and dead; and, as we have seen, boundaries-edges-are where the most interesting and important events occur.
Someone asked me, 'Do you pray for the dead?' I said, 'No, I preach to them! I think every pew in every church is death row. Think about that! They're dead! They sing about God; they talk about God, but they're dead! They have no living relationship (with God).
We complain today that ministers do not know how to preach; but is it not equally true that our congregations do not know how to hear?
Jesus our Lord is Prophet, Priest, and King. The concept is not new, yet many preachers never preach it, and many congregations never hear it.
To kill sin is the work of living men; where men are dead (as all unbelievers, the best of them, are dead), sin is alive, and will live.
Cold prayers shall never have any warm answers. God will suit His returns to our requests. Lifeless, services shall have lifeless answers. When men are dull, God will be dumb.
It's not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that walks in us. It's all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them.
The first time I did a men's game, it was strictly because of an emergency. I went down with no preparation, but I was a fan and knew the teams. And I knocked them dead, so the next year, I had a package of men's games.
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