Dwight Lyman Moody

“ I used to say when I was President of the Young Men’s Christian Association in Chicago, “What we want is faith; if we only have faith, we can turn Chicago upside down”—or rather, right side up. I thought that some day faith was going to come down, and strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, “Now faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” I had closed my Bible, and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible, and began to study, and faith has been growing ever since. ”

“ When that thought flashed through Martin Luther’s mind as he was ascending the Scala Santa on his knees (although some people deny the truth of this statement) , he rose and went forth to be a power among the nations of the earth. Justification puts a man before God as if he had never sinned; he stands before God like Jesus Christ. Thank God, in Jesus Christ we can be perfect, but there is no perfection out of Him. God looks in His ledger, and says, “Moody, your debts have all been paid by Another; there is nothing against you.” ”

“ If God did not wish us to understand the book of Revelation, He would not have given it to us at all. A good many say it is so dark and mysterious that common readers cannot understand it. Let us only keep digging away at it, and it will unfold itself by and by. Some one says it is the only book in the Bible that tells about the devil being chained; and as the devil knows that, he goes up and down Christendom and says, “It is no use your reading Revelation, you can not understand the book; it is too hard for you.” The fact is, he does not want you to understand about his own defeat. ”

“ What we want is to know what the Bible says. Why not go to the Bible and study it up for yourself; it will be worth more to you than anything you get from anyone else. Then Separation. I believe that a Christian man should lead a separated life. The line between the church and the world is almost obliterated to-day. I have no sympathy with the idea that you must hunt up an old musty church record in order to find out whether a man is a member of the church or not. A man ought to live so that everybody will know he is a Christian. The Bible tells us to lead a separate life. ”

“ Then he went on speaking: “The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer.” He said God’s people are like the ants. “Well,” I thought, “I have seen a good many of them, but I never saw one like me.” “They are like the ants,” he said, “because they are laying up treasure in heaven, and preparing for the future; but the world rushes madly on, and forgets all about God’s command to lay up for ourselves incorruptible treasures.”
“The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make these their houses in the rocks.” ”

“ I never saw a fruit-bearing Christian who was not a student of the Bible. If a man neglects his Bible, he may pray and ask God to use him in His work; but God cannot make use of him, for there is not much for the Holy Ghost to work upon. We must have the Word itself, which is sharper than any two-edged sword.
We have a great many prayer meetings, but there is something just as important as prayer, and that is that we read our Bibles, that we have Bible study and Bible lectures and Bible classes, so that we may get hold of the Word of God. ”

“ How many there are who sit helpless and listless, with open mouths, hungry for spiritual things, and the minister has to try to feed them, while the Bible is a feast prepared, into which they never venture.
There are many who have been Christians for twenty years who have still to be fed with an ecclesiastical spoon. If they happen to have a minister who feeds them, they get on pretty well; but if they have not, they are not fed at all. This is the test as to your being a true child of God—whether you love and feed upon the Word of God. ”

“ It is a most absurd statement for a man to say he will have nothing to do with the supernatural, will not believe the supernatural. If you are going to throw off the supernatural, you might as well burn your Bibles at once. You take the supernatural out of that Book and you have taken Jesus Christ out of it, you have taken out the best part of the Book. There is no part of the Bible that does not teach supernatural things. In Genesis it says that Abraham fell on his face and God talked with him. ”

“ She was amazed that there was so much in the Bible about heaven.
When you are away from home, how you look for news! You skip everything in the daily paper until your eye catches the name of your own town or country. Now the Christian’s home is in heaven. The Scriptures contain our title-deeds to everything we shall be worth when we die. If a will has your name in it, it is no longer a dry document. Why, then, do not Christians take more interest in the Bible?
Then, again, people say thy don’t believe in revivals. There’s not a denomination in the world that didn’t spring from a revival. ”

“ I have little words marked in the margin, and they are a sermon to me. Whether I speak about Faith, Hope, Charity, Assurance, or any subject whatever, it all comes back to me; and however unexpectedly I am called upon to preach, I am always ready. Every child of God ought to be like a soldier, and always hold himself in readiness. If the Queen of England’s army were ordered to India to-morrow, the soldier is ready for the journey. But we can not be ready if we do not study the Bible. ”

“ Now, you will notice that where ever there is a Bible-taught Christian, one who has his Bible well marked, and who daily feeds upon the Word with prayerful meditation, he will not be easily offended.
Such are the people who are growing and working all the while. But it is the people who never open their Bibles, who never study the Scriptures, who become offended, and are wondering why they are having such a hard time. They are the persons who tell you that Christianity is not what it has been recommended to them; that they have found it is not all that we claim it to be. ”

“ SUNDAY SCHOOL QUARTERLIES AND THE BIBLE.
I think Sunday school teachers are making a woeful mistake if they don’t take the whole Bible into their Sunday school classes. I don’t care how young children are, let them understand it is one book, that there are not two books—the Old Testament and the New are all one. Don’t let them think that the Old Testament doesn’t come to us with the same authority as the New. It is a great thing for a boy or girl to know how to handle the Bible. ”

“ Many so-called Christians are living on the world’s sawdust, instead of being nourished by the Bread that cometh down from heaven. Nothing can satisfy the longings of the soul but the Word of the living God. ”

“ That is the kind of teaching that is worthless, and brings no result. Now, don’t say that I condemn helps. I believe in availing yourself of all the light you can get. What I want you to do, when you come into your classes, is to come prepared to explain the lesson without the use of a concordance. Bring the word of God with you; bring the old Book.
You will often find families where there is a family Bible, but the mother is so afraid that the children will tear it that she keeps it in the spare room, and once in a great while the children are allowed to look at it. ”

“ There is no more beautiful type of Christ in the Bible than Joseph. He was hated of his brethren; he was stripped of his coat; he was sold; he was imprisoned; he gained favor; he had a gold chain about his neck; every knee bowed before him. A comparison of the lives of Joseph and Jesus shows a startling similarity in their experience.
The disease of leprosy is a type of sin. It is incurable by man; it works baneful results; it is insidious in its nature, and from a small beginning works complete ruin; it separates its victims from their fellow-men, just as sin separates a man from God ”

“ THE GUIDEBOOK TO THE CHRISTIAN’S HOME.
If a man is traveling and does not know where he is going to, or how he is going to get there, you know he has a good deal of trouble, and does not enjoy the trip as much as if he has a guidebook at hand. It is not safe traveling, and he does not know how to make through connections. Now, the Bible is a guidebook in the journey of life, and the only one that points the way to Heaven. ”

“ Sometimes I am amazed to see how little it takes to drive all peace and comfort from some people. A slandering tongue will readily blast it. But if we have the peace of God, the world cannot take that from us. ”

“ If you are filled with the Word of God, there will not be any doubts. A lady said to me once, “Don’t you have any doubts?” No, I don’t have time—too much work to be done. Some people live on doubt. It is their stock in trade. I believe the reason there are so many Christians who are without the full evidence of the relationship, with whom you only see the Christian graces cropping out every now and then, is that the Bible is not taken for doctrine, reproof and instruction. ”

“ One day He speaks to the leper and he is made whole; one day He speaks to the sea and it obeys Him. When He died the sun refused to look upon the scene; this old world recognized Him and reeled and rocked like a drunken man. And when He burst asunder the bands of death and came out of Joseph’s sepulchre, that was supernatural. Christmas Evans, the great Welsh preacher, says: “Many reformations die with the reformer, but this reformer ever lives to carry on His reformation.” Thank God we do not worship a dead Jew. ”

“ And so with every Christian: when is he off duty?
To be ready with a promise for the dying, a word of hope for the bereaved and afflicted, of encouragement for the downhearted, of advice for the anxious, is a great accomplishment. The opportunities to be useful in these ways are numerous. Not only in inquiry-meetings and church work, but in our everyday contact with others the opening constantly occurs. A word, a look, a hand-clasp, a prayer, may have an unending influence for good. ”

“ We take good care of this body that we inhabit for a day, and then leave; we feed it three times a day, and we clothe it, and deck it, and by and by it is going into the grave to rot; but the inner man, that is to live on and on forever, is lean and starved. “Man shall not Live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” ”

“ The duration of heaven is the eternity of Jesus.
BIBLE MARKING: ITS NECESSITY.
An old writer said that some books are to be tasted, some to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested. The Bible is one that you can never exhaust. It is like a bottomless well: you can always find fresh truths gushing forth from its pages.
Hence the great fascination of constant and earnest Bible study. Hence also the necessity of marking your Bible. Unless you have an uncommon memory, you cannot retain the good things you hear. If you trust to your ear alone, they will escape you in a day or two ”

“ The Bible was about the first book ever printed, and to-day New Testaments are printed in three hundred and fifty-three different languages, and are going to the very corners of the earth. Wherever the Bible has not been translated, the people have no literature. It will not be long before the words of Jesus Christ will penetrate the darkest parts of the earth, and the darkest islands of the sea. When Christ said, “The Scriptures can not be broken,” He meant every word He said. Devil and man and hell have been in league for centuries to try to break the Word of God, but they can not do it. ”

“ So few grow, because so few study. I would advise all young converts to keep as much as they can in the company of more experienced Christians. I like to keep in the society of those who know more than I do; and I never lose a chance of getting all the good I can out of them. Study the Bible carefully and prayerfully; ask of others what this passage means and what that passage means, and when you have become practically acquainted with the great truths it contains, you will have less to fear from the world, the flesh, and the devil. You will not be disappointed in your Christian life. ”

“ ANOTHER way of studying is to take five great divisions—History, Type, Prophecy, Miracle, Parable.
It is a very interesting thing to study the types of the Bible. Get a good book on the subject and you will be surprised to find out how interested you will become. The Bible is full of patterns and types of ourselves. That is a popular objection against the Bible—that it tells about the failings of men. We should, however, remember that the object of the Bible is not to tell how good men are, but how bad men can become good. But more especially the Bible is full of types of Christ. ”