Anecdotes & Illustrations – Dwight Lyman Moody
-Christ never preached any funeral sermons.
-His is a loving, tender hand, full of sympathy and compassion.
-Take your stand on the Rock of Ages. Let death, let the judgment come: the victory is Christ’s and yours through Him.
-The only man who ever suffered before Christ was that servant who had his ear cut off. But most likely in a moment afterward he had it on, and very likely it was a better ear than ever, because whatever the Lord does He does it well. No mm ever lost his life with Him.
– A great many people wonder why it was that Christ did not come at once to Martha and Mary, whom He loved, whenever He heard of their affliction. It was to try them, and it is the same with His dealings toward us. If He seems not to come to us in our affliction, it is only to test us.
– -When the Spirit came to Moses, the plagues came upon Egypt, and he had power to destroy men’s lives; when the Spirit came upon Elijah, fire came down from heaven; when the Spirit came upon Gideon, no man could stand before him; and when it came upon Joshua, he moved around the city of Jericho and the whole city fell into his hands; but when the Spirit came upon the Son of Man, He gave His life; He healed the broken-hearted.
-No matter how low down you are; no matter what your disposition has been; you may be low in your thoughts, words, and actions; you may be selfish; your heart may be overflowing with corruption and wickedness; yet Jesus will have compassion upon you. He will speak comforting words to you; not treat you coldly or spurn you, as perhaps those of earth would, but will speak tender words, and words of love and affection and kindness. Just come at once. He is a faithful friend – a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
-There cannot be any peace where there is uncertainty.
-There is no, knowledge like that of a man who knows he is saved, who can look up and see his “title clear to mansions in the skies.”
-I believe hundreds of Christian people are being deceived by Satan now on this point, that they have not got the assurance of salvation just because they are not willing to take God at His word.
-“But,” a man said to me, “no one has come back, and we don’t know what is in the future. It is all dark, and how can we be sure?” Thank God! Christ came down from heaven, and I would rather have Him, coming as he does right from the bosom of the Father, than any one else. We can rely on what Christ says, and He says, “He that believeth on Me shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” Not that we are going to have it when we die, but right here to-day.
-Now, I find a great many people who want some evidence that they have accepted the Son of God. My friends, if you want any evidence, take God’s word for it. You can’t find better evidence than that. You know that when the Angel Gabriel came down and told Zachariah he should have a son he wanted a further token than the angel’s word. He asked Gabriel for it and he answered, “I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of the Lord.” He had never been doubted, and he thundered out this to Zachariah. But he wanted a further token, and Gabriel said, “You shall have a token: you shall be dumb till your son shall be given you.”
-When we know our Bible: then his that God can use us.
-When we find a man meditating on the words of God, my friends, that man is full of boldness and is successful.
-When a man is filled with the Word of God you cannot keep him still, If a man has got the Word, he must speak or die.
-Let us have one day exclusively to study and read the Word of God. If we can’t take time during the week, we will have Sunday uninterrupted.
-Now, as old Dr. Bonner, of Glasgow, said, Lord didn’t sell Joshua how to use the sword, but He told him how he should meditate on the Lord day and night, and then he would have good success.”
-One thing I have noticed in studying the Word of God, and that is, when a man is filled with the Spirit he deals largely with the Word of God, whereas the man who is filled with his own Ideas refers rarely to the Word of God. He gets along without it, and you seldom see it mentioned in his discourses.
-Now I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but one thing I can predict; that every one of our new converts that goes to studying his Bible, and loves this book above every other book, is sure to hold out. The world will have no charm for him; he will get the world under his feet, because in this book he will find something better than the world can give him.
-What can botanists tell you of the lily of the valley? You must study this book for that. What can geologists tell you of the Rock of Ages, or mere astronomers about the Bright Morning Star? In those pages we find all knowledge unto salvation; here we read of the ruin of man by nature, redemption by the blood, and regeneration by the Holy Ghost These three things run all through and through them.
-The most solemn truth in the gospel is that the only thing Christ left down here is His blood.
-A man who covers up the cross though he may be an intellectual man, and draw large crowds will have no ilk there, and his church will be but a gilded sepulcher.
-There is either of two things we must do. One is to send back the message to heaven that we don’t want the blood 9t Christ to cleanse us of our sin, or else accept it.
-Into every house where the blood was not sprinkled, the destroying angel came. But wherever the blood was on doorpost and lintel, whether they had worked much, or whether they had worked none, God passed them over.
-A man who has not realized what the blood has done for him has not the token of salvation. It is told of Julian, the apostate, that while he was fighting he received an arrow in his side. He pulled it out, and, taking a handful of blood threw it into the air and cried, “Galilean, Galilean, thou hast conquered.”
-Look at that Roman soldier as he pushed his spear into the very heart of the God-man. What a hellish deed! But what was the next thing that took place? Blood covered the spear! Oh! thank God, the blood covers sin. There was the blood covering that spear-the very point of it. The very crowning act of sin brought out the crowning act of love; the crowning act of wickedness was the crowning act of grace.
-It is said that old Dr. Alexander, of Princeton College, when a young student used to start out to preach, always gave them a piece of advice. The old man would stand with his gray locks and his venerable face and say: “Young man, make much of the blood in your ministry? Now, I have traveled considerable during the past few years, and never met a minister who made much of the blood and much of the atonement but God had blessed his ministry, and souls were born into the light by it.
-There was never a sermon which you have listened to but in it Christ was seeking for you. I contend that a man cannot but find in every page of this book that Jesus Christ is seeking him through His blessed Word. This is what the Bible is for to seek out the lost.
-No man in the world should be so happy as a man of God. It is one continual source of gladness. He can l3ok up and say, “God is my Father, Christ is my Saviour, and the Church is my mother.”
-It is the greatest pleasure of living to win souls to Christ.
-I believe in what John Wesley used to say, “All at it, and always at it,” and that is what the Church wants to-day.
-If we were all of us doing the work that God has got for us to do, don’t you see how the work of the Lord would advance?
-There is no man living that can do the work that God has got for me to do. No one can do it but myself. And if the work ain’t done we will have to answer for it when we stand before God’s bar.
-What makes the Dead Sea dead? Because it is all the time receiving, never giving out anything. Why is it that many Christians are cold? Because they are all the time receiving, never giving out anything.
-If Christ comes into our hearts we are not ashamed.
-I wish we had a few more women like the woman of Samaria, willing to confess what the Lord Jesus Christ had done for their souls.
-Believing and confessing go together; and you cannot be be saved without you take them both. “With the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” If you ever see the kingdom of heaven you have to ‘take this way.
-Satan puts straws across our path and magnifies it and makes us believe it is a mountain, but all the devil’s mountains are mountains of smoke; when you come up to them they are not there.
-I do not know anything that would wake up Chicago better than for every man and woman here who loves Him to begin to talk about Him to theft friends, and just to tell them what He has done for you. You have got a circle of friends. Go and tell them of Him.
-I can’t help thinking of the old woman who started out when the war commenced with a poker in her hand. When asked what! she was going to do with it she said: “I can’t do much with it, but I can show what side I’m on.” My friends, even if you can’t do much, show to which side you belong.
-I may say with truth that there is only about one in ten who professes Christianity who will turn round and glorify God with a loud voice. Nine out of ten are still born Christians. You never hear of them. If you press them hard with the question whether they are Christians they might say, “Well, I hope so.” We never see it in their actions; we never see it in their lives. They might belong to the church you go to, but you never see them at the prayer-meetings or taking any interest in the church affairs. They don’t profess it among their fellows or in their business, and the result is that there are hundreds going on with a half hope, not sure whether their religion will stand them or not
-It is our privilege to know that we are saved.
-We shall draw the world to Christ when we are filled with religion.
-He that overcometh shall inherit all things. God has no poor children.
-I hold to the doctrine of sudden conversion as I do to my life, and I would as quickly give up my life as give up this doctrine, unless it can be proved that it is not according to the word of God. Now, I will admit that light is one thing and birth is another. A soul must be born before it can see light A child must be born before it can be taught; it must be born before it can walk; it must be born before it can be educated.
-If you receive Him it will be well; if you reject Him and are lost it will be terrible.
-Thanks be to God, there is hope to-day; this very hour you can choose Him and serve Him.
-Now just think a moment and answer the question, “What shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?”
-I believe in my soul that there are more at this day being lost for want of decision than for any other thing.
-One of two things you must do; you must either receive Him or reject Him. You receive Him here and He will receive you there; you reject Him here and He will reject you there.
-The mightiest man that ever lived could not deliver himself from his sins. If a man could have saved himself, Christ would never have come into the world.
-He came to deliver us from our sinful dispositions, and create in us pure hearts, and when we have Him with us it will not be hard for us. Then the service of Christ will be delightful.
-If you are under the power of evil, and you want to get under the power of God, cry to Him to bring you over to His service; cry to Him to take you into His army. He will hear you; He will come to you, and, if need be, He will send a legion of angels to help you to fight your way up to heaven. God will take you by the right hand and lead you through this wilderness, over death, and take you right into His kingdom. That’s what the Son of Man came to do. He has never deceived us; just say here; “Christ is ray deliverer.
-God will honor our faith.
-There is nothing on this earth that pleases Christ so much as faith.
-Faith is the foundation of all society. We have only to look around and see this.
-I believe there is no man in the world so constituted but he can believe in God’s word. He simply tells you to believe in Him, and He will save you.
-When I was converted twenty years ago I felt a faith in God; but five years after I had a hundred times more faith, and five years ago I had more than eve; because I became better acquainted with Him. I have read up the Word, and I see that the Lord has done so and so, and then I have turned to where He has promised to perform it, and when I see this I have reason to believe in Him.
-All you have got to do is to prove that you are a sinner, and I will prove that you have got a Saviour.
-Do you believe the Lord will call a poor sinner, and then cast him out? No! his word stands forever, “Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.”
-If God put Adam out of this earthly Eden on account of one sin, do you think He will let us into the Paradise above with our tens of thousands sins upon us.
-The only charge they could bring against Christ down here was, that He was receiving bad men. They are the very kind of men He is willing to receive.
-“Lord, you don’t really mean that we shall preach the Gospel to those men that murdered you, to those men that took your life?” “Yes,” says the Lord, “go and preach the Gospel to those Jerusalem sinners.” I can imagine Him saying: “Go and hunt up that man that put the cruel crown of thorns upon My brow, and preach the Gospel to him. Tell him he shall have a crown in My kingdom without a thorn in it”
-We must not limit the mighty grace of God.
-Grace means undeserved kindness. It is the gift of God to man the moment he sees he is unworthy of God’s favor.
-A man does not get grace till he comes down to the ground, till he sees he needs grace. When a man stoops to the dust and acknowledges that he needs mercy, then it is that the Lord will give him grace.
-If you are ready to partake of grace you have not to atone for your sins-you have merely to accept of the atonement. All that you want to do is to cry, “God have mercy upon me,” and you will receive the blessing.
-“The grace of God hath power to bring salvation to all men,” and if a man is unsaved it is because he wants to work it out; he wants to receive salvation in some other way than God’s way; but we are told that “he that climbeth up another way, the same is a thief and a robber.”
-When we get full of this grace we want to see every one blessed-we want to see all the churches blessed, not only all the churches here, but in the whole country. That was the trouble with Christ’s disciples. He had hard work to make them understand that His gospel was for every one, that it was a stream to flow out to all nations of the earth. They wanted to confine it to the Jews, and He had to convince them that it was for every living being.
-If you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ you are free
-There is no sin in the whole catalogue of sins you can name but Christ will deliver you from it perfectly.
-We are led on by an unseen power that we have not got strength to resist, or else we are led on by the loving Son of God.
-The trouble is, people do not know that Christ is a Deliverer. They forget that the Son of God came to keep them from sin as as well as to forgive it.
-You say “I am afraid I cannot hold out.’ Well, Christ will hold out for you. There is no mountain that He will not climb with you if you will; He will deliver you from your besetting sin.
-Satan rules all men that are in his kingdom Some he rules through lust. Some he rules through covetousness. Some he rules through appetite. Some he rules by their temper, but he rules them. And none will ever seek to be delivered until they get their eyes open and see that they have been taken captive.
-‘When Christ was on the earth there was a woman in the temple who was bowed almost to the ground with sin. Satan had – bound her for eighteen years; but after all these years of bondage Christ delivered her. He spoke one word and she was free. She got up and walked home. How astonished those at home must have been to see her walking in.
-Praise is not only speaking to the Lord on our own account, but it is praising Him for what He has done for others.
-If we have a praise church we will have people convened.
I don’t care where it is, what part of the world it’s in, if we have a praise church we’ll have successful christianity.
-Every good gift that we have had from the cradle up has come from God. If a man just stops to think what he has to praise God for, he will find there is enough to keep him singing praises for a week.
-We have in our churches a great deal of prayer, but I think it would be a good thing if we had a praise meeting occasionally. If we could only get people to praise God for what He has done, it would be a good deal better than asking Him continually for something.
-All should work and ask God’s guidance.
-The world knows little of the works wrought by prayer.
-Let us pray, and as we pray, let us make room for Jesus in our hearts.
-Unless the Spirit of God is with us, we cannot expect that our prayers will be answered.
-David was the last one we would have chosen to fight the giant, but he was chosen of God.
-Every one of our children will be brought into the ark, if we pray and work earnestly for them.
-The impression that a praying mother leaves upon her children is life-long. Perhaps when you are dead and gone your prayer will be answered.
-I would rather go into the kingdom of heaven through the poor house than go down to hell in a golden chariot.
-I believe there are more young men who come to Boston who are lost because they cannot say no, than for any other reason.
-It ain’t necessary to leave the things of this life when you follow Him. It is not necessary to give up your business, if it’s a legitimate one, in order to accept Christ. But you musn’t set your heart on the old nets by a good deal.
-A great many people want to bring theft faith, theft works, their good deeds to Him for salvation. Bring your sins, and He will bear them away into the wilderness of forgetfulness, and you will never see them again.
-Do you believe that He would send those men out to preach the gospel to every creature unless he wanted every creature to be saved? Do you believe He would tell them to preach it to people without giving people the power to accept it? Do you believe the God of heaven is mocking men by offering them his gospel and not giving them the power to take hold of it? Do you believe He will not give men power to accept this salvation as a gift? Man might do that, but God never mocks men. And when he says “Preach the gospel to every creature,” every creature can be saved if he will.
-Lift your eyes from off these puny Christians-from off these human ministers, and look to Christ. He is the Saviour of the world. He came from the throne to this earth: He came from the very bosom of the Father. God gave Him up freely for us, and all we have to do is to accept him as our Saviour. Look at Him at Gethsemane, sweating as it were great drops of blood; look at Him on the cross, crucified between two thieves; hear that piercing cry, “Father, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” And as you look into that face, as you look into those wounds on His feet or His hands, will you say He has not the power to save you? Will you say He has not the power so redeem you?