Reuben A. Torrey > Quotes

“Many who read their Bibles make the great mistake of confining all their reading to certain portions of the Bible which they enjoy. In this way they get no knowledge of the Bible as a whole. They miss altogether many of the most important phases of Bible truth.”
― R.A. Torrey, How to Succeed in the Christian Life

“We sometimes fear to bring our troubles to God, because they must seem small to Him who sitteth on the circle of the earth. But if they are large enough to vex and endanger our welfare, they are large enough to touch His heart of love.”
― R.A. Torrey

“The one who expects God to do as he asks Him must on his part do whatever God bids him.”
― R.A. Torrey, How to Pray

“What are the distinctive characteristics, or marks, of personality? Knowledge, feeling or emotion, and will. Any entity that thinks and feels and wills is a person.”
― R. A. (Reuben Archer) Torrey, The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit

“If we are to have real faith, we must study the Word of God and discover what is promised. Then, we must simply believe the promises of God. Trying to believe something that you want to believe is not faith. Believing what God says in His Word is faith.”
― R.A Torrey

“Faith gets the most; love works the most; but humility keeps the most.”
― R.A. Torrey, The Works of R. A. Torrey: Person & Work of the Holy Spirit, How to Obtain Fullness of Power, How To Pray, Why God Used D L Moody, How to Study the ... Anecdotes, Volume 1

“The best book in the world to put into the hands of one who desires to know about Jesus and to be saved is the Gospel of John.”
― R.A. Torrey, The Works of R. A. Torrey: Person & Work of the Holy Spirit, How to Obtain Fullness of Power, How To Pray, Why God Used D L Moody, How to Study the ... Anecdotes, Volume 1

“Prayer that is born of meditation upon the Word of God is the prayer that soars upward most easily to God's listening ears.
Topics: Prayer, Meditation

I am ready to meet God face to face tonight and look into those eyes of infinite holiness, for all my sins are covered by the atoning blood.
Topics: Salvation, Atonement

When the devil sees a man or woman who really believes in prayer, who knows how to pray, and who really does pray, and, above all, when he sees a whole church on its face before God in prayer, he trembles as much as he ever did, for he knows that his day in that church or community is at an end.
Topics: Satan, Prayer

God's Word is pure and sure, in spite of the devil, in spite of your fear, in spite of everything.
Topics: Scripture

Do not study commentaries, lesson helps or other books about the Bible: study the Bible itself. Do not study about the Bible, study the Bible. The Bible is the Word of God, and only the Bible is the Word of God.
Topics: The Bible

All that God is, and all that God has, is at the disposal of prayer. Prayer can do anything that God can do, and as God can do everything, prayer is omnipotent.”
― R.A. Torrey

“If we think of the Holy Spirit as so many do as merely a power or influence, our constant thought will be, “How can I get more of the Holy Spirit,” but if we think of Him in the Biblical way as a Divine Person, our thought will rather be, “How can the Holy Spirit have more of me?”
― R.A. Torrey, The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit

“It is of the highest importance from the standpoint of experience that we know the Holy Spirit as a person.”
― R. A. (Reuben Archer) Torrey, The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit

“There are at least four distinct lines of proof in the Bible that the Holy Spirit is a person.”
― R. A. (Reuben Archer) Torrey, The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit

“If I am to have faith when I pray, I must find some promise in the Word of God to rest my faith on”
― R.A Torrey

“I. All the distinctive characteristics of personality are ascribed to the Holy Spirit in the Bible.”
― R. A. (Reuben Archer) Torrey, The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit

“The heart of obedience is in the will, the essence of obedience is the surrender of the will to God. It is going to God our heavenly Father and saying, “Heavenly Father, here I am. I am Thy property. Thou hast bought me with a price. I acknowledge Thine ownership, and surrender myself and all that I am absolutely to Thee. Send me where Thou wilt; do with me what Thou wilt; use me as Thou wilt.”
― R.A. Torrey, The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit

“We feel the breath of the wind upon our cheeks, we see the dust and the leaves blowing before the wind, we see the vessels at sea driven swiftly towards their ports; but the wind itself remains invisible. Just so with the Spirit; we feel His breath upon our souls, we see the mighty things He does, but Himself we do not see. He is invisible, but He is real and perceptible.”
― R.A. Torrey, The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit

“There must be, in any complete revelation of God's mind and will and character and being, things hard for the beginner to understand; and the wisest and best of us are but beginners.”
― R.A. Torrey

“There are many things that men and women ought to think about, and must think about, in private, that they would not for a moment discuss in public. There are books on the proper conduct of women in certain most sacred relations of life, relations of life which are as holy as any, and which can be entered into in the presence of a holy God with no question of His approval, but which do not permit of public mention. . . .

That the Bible is a pure book is evidenced by the fact that it is not a favourite book in dens of infamy. But on the other hand, books that try to make out that the Bible is an obscene book, and that endeavour to keep people from reading it, are favourite books in dens of infamy. The unclean classes, both men and women, were devoted admirers of the most brilliant man this country ever produced who attacked what he called the "obscenity of the Bible." These unclean classes do not frequent Bible classes. They do frequent infidel lectures.

These infidel objectors to the book as an "obscene book" constantly betray their insincerity and hypocrisy. Colonel Ingersoll . . . objected to the Bible for telling these vile deeds "without a touch of humour." In other words, he did not object to telling stories of vice, if only a joke was made of the sin. Thank God, that is exactly what the Bible does not do--make a joke of sin. It makes sin hideous, so men who are obscene in their own hearts object to the Bible as being an obscene book. . . .

To sum up, there are in the Bible descriptions of sins that cannot wisely be read in every public assembly, but these descriptions of sin are morally most wholesome in the places where God, the Author of the Book, manifestly intends them to be read. The child who is brought up to read the Bible as a whole, from Genesis to Revelation, will come to know in the very best way possible what a child ought to know very early in life if he is to be safeguarded against the perils that surround our modern life on every hand. A child who is brought up upon a constant, thorough, continuous reading of the whole Bible is more likely than any other child to be free from the vices that are undermining the mental, moral, and physical strength of our boys and girls, and young men and young women. But the child who is brought up on infidel literature and conversation is the easiest prey there is for the seducer and procuress. The next easiest is the one who, through neglect of the Bible, is left in ignorance of the awful pitfalls of life.”
― R.A. Torrey

“It is at this point that we often make a mistake. We tell people, "Believe, believe, believe," but do not show them how, do not give them anything definite to believe. The biblical way and the intelligent way is, when you tell a man to believe, to give him something to believe. Give him, for example, Isaiah 53:6, and thus hold up Christ crucified; or, give him 1 Peter 2:24. Here he has something for his faith to rest upon. Faith must have a foundation. Faith cannot float in thin air. It is pitiable to see men told to believe, to believe, to believe- and then give nothing for their faith to rest upon.”
― R.A. Torrey, The Works of R. A. Torrey: Person & Work of the Holy Spirit, How to Obtain Fullness of Power, How To Pray, Why God Used D L Moody, How to Study the ... Anecdotes, Volume 1

“If we would spend more nights before God on our faces in prayer, there would be more days of power when we faced our people!”
― R.A. Torrey, The Power of Prayer: And the Prayer of Power

“For without faith no one can explain the Holy Scriptures, and without scholarship no one can investigate historic origins.”
― R.A. Torrey, THE FUNDAMENTALS - A Testimony to the Truth

“Many a church is praying for a revival that does not really desire a revival. They think they do, for to their minds a revival means an increase of membership, an increase of income, an increase of reputation among the churches, but if they knew what a real revival meant, what a searching of hearts on the part of professed Christians would be involved, what a radical transformation of individual, domestic and social life would be brought about, and many other things that would come to pass if the Spirit of God was poured out in reality and power; if all this were known, the real cry of the church would be: “O God, keep us from having a revival.” Many”
― R.A. Torrey, How to Pray

“The secret of all true and effective praying is knowing the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of grace and of supplication.”
― R.A. Torrey, The Works of R. A. Torrey: Person & Work of the Holy Spirit, How to Obtain Fullness of Power, How To Pray, Why God Used D L Moody, How to Study the ... Anecdotes, Volume 1

“There remains, therefore, only this alternative: either the world produced itself, or it was created.”
― R. a. Torrey, THE FUNDAMENTALS - A Testimony to the Truth

“The Wind of God took possession of Charles G. Finney, an obscure country lawyer, and sent him through New York State, then through New England, then through England, mowing down strong men by his resistless, Spirit-given logic. One night in Rochester, scores of lawyers, led by the justice of the Court of Appeals, filed out of the pews and bowed in the aisles and yielded their lives to God.”
― R.A. Torrey, The Works of R. A. Torrey: Person & Work of the Holy Spirit, How to Obtain Fullness of Power, How To Pray, Why God Used D L Moody, How to Study the ... Anecdotes, Volume 1

“For example, many a woman is praying for the conversion of her husband. That certainly is a most proper thing to ask; but many a woman's motive in asking for the conversion of her husband is entirely improper, it is selfish. She desires that her husband may be converted because it would be so much more pleasant for her to have a husband who sympathized with her; or it is so painful to think that her husband might die and be lost forever. For some such selfish reason as this she desires to have her husband converted. The prayer is purely selfish. Why should a woman desire the conversion of her husband? First of all and above all, that God may be glorified; because she cannot bear the thought that God the Father should be dishonored by her husband trampling underfoot the Son of God.”
― R.A. Torrey, How To Pray

“If we would continuously know the power of God we should go often alone with Him, at the close of each day at least, and ask Him to show us if any sin, anything displeasing in His sight, has crept in that day, and if He shows us that there has, we should confess it and put it away then and there.”
― R.A. Torrey, The Baptism with the Holy Spirit

“Herein lies the whole secret of a real Christian life, a life of liberty and joy and power and fullness. To have as one's ever-present Friend, and to be conscious that one has as his ever-present Friend, the Holy Spirit and to surrender one's life in all its departments entirely to His control, this is true Christian living. The”
― R.A. Torrey, The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit

“God is deeply grieved by the thanklessness and ingratitude of which so many of us are guilty. When Jesus healed the ten lepers and only one came back to give Him thanks, in wonderment and pain He exclaimed, "Were not the ten cleansed? but where are the nine?" (Luke 17:17, R.V.)
How often must He look down upon us in sadness at our forgetfulness of His repeated blessings, and His frequent answer to our prayers.”
― R.A. Torrey, How To Pray

“the baptism with the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God coming upon a believer, taking possession of their faculties, and imparting to them gifts not naturally their own,”
― R.A. Torrey, Baptism of the Holy Spirit [Updated, Annotated]: How to Receive This Promised Gift

“How solemn, how almost overwhelming, is the thought that the Holy Spirit has no way of getting at the unsaved with His saving power except through the instrumentality of us who are already Christians. If we realized that, would we not be more careful to offer to the Holy Spirit a more free and unobstructed channel for His all-important work? The Holy Spirit needs human lips to speak through. He needs yours, and He needs lives so clean and so utterly surrendered to Him that He can work through them.”
― R.A. Torrey, The Works of R. A. Torrey: Person & Work of the Holy Spirit, How to Obtain Fullness of Power, How To Pray, Why God Used D L Moody, How to Study the ... Anecdotes, Volume 1