Iain H. Murray > Quotes

“The words 'believe' and 'repent' are now largely replaced by other terms such as "Give your life to Christ', 'Open your heart to Christ', 'Do it now', 'Surrender completely', 'Decide for Christ', etc., and in similar language those who profess conversion are sometimes represented as having 'given in'.”
― Iain H. Murray, The Invitation System

“To teach men that they possess the ability to turn from sin when they choose to do so is to hide the true extent of their need.”
― Iain H. Murray, The Life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones - 1899-1981

“Thus his belief was that in a service where feeling could be restrained it ought to be restrained. The power of God was more likely to be known in a solemn stillness than amid noise and excitement. Silence and an expectant seriousness, born of a realisation of the nearness of God, were striking characteristics of the services at Sandfields.”
― Iain H. Murray, The Life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones - 1899-1981

“Furthermore, unlike so many of his evangelical contemporaries he did not hold the view that the various inter-denominational youth movements represented the most hopeful field of labour; indeed his doctrine of the church left him with little sympathy for that attitude.”
― Iain H. Murray, The Life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones - 1899-1981

“Evangelism, instead of being a normal part of careful and regular expository preaching, with the twin effect on the consciences of the unconverted and on the growth in grace of Christians, becomes a special, dramatic activity. This leads to an orientation of church life away from Scripture, and as scriptural and non-scriptural duties become confused, the main duties which God requires of Christians and ministers are overshadowed.”
― Iain H. Murray, The Invitation System

“The expository preacher is not one who 'shares his studies' with others, he is an ambassador and a messenger authoritatively delivering the Word of God to men.”
― Iain H. Murray, The Life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones - 1899-1981

“Last Victorian and Edwardian Britain saw a mega-change in reading habits. For the first time fiction took the primary place in book publishing, and the medium was taken up by briliant and entertaining authors with an agenda for 'a brave new world'. Such men as Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were the opinion-makers for coming generations. 'With the next phase of Victorian fiction', wrote G. K. Chesterton, 'we enter a new world; the later, more revolutionary, more continental, freer but in some ways weker world in which we live today.'
Chesterton did not live to see the full consequences of the change but W. R. Inge predicted what was coming when he wrote:
No God. No country. No family. Refusal to serve in war. Free love. More play. Less work. No punishments. Go as you please. It is difficult to imagine any programme which, if carried out, would be more utterly ruinous to a country situated as Great Britain is today.”
― Iain H. Murray, The Undercover Revolution: How Fiction Changed Britain

“From the experience of these years Dr. Lloyd-Jones was immovably confirmed in a truth which he had first seen in the New Testament. It was that evangelism is pre-eminently dependent upon the quality of the Christian life which is known and enjoyed in the church.”
― Iain H. Murray, The Life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones - 1899-1981

“Some who were not yet ready to venture into the chapel on Sundays might well put in their first appearance on a Saturday night to see what Y dyn bach ('the little man') had got to say. (The Welsh term has an element of affection in it not obvious in the English)”
― Iain H. Murray, The Life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones - 1899-1981

“Wherever there is ‘faith’ without regeneration it has to be that the uncured enmity of the natural man to spiritual things remains.”
― Iain H. Murray, Evangelical Holiness: And Other Addresses

“Lastly, Spurgeon reminds us that piety and devotion to Christ are not preferable alternatives to controversy, but rather that they should - when circumstances demand it - lead to the latter. He was careful to maintain that order. The minister who makes controversy his starting point will soon have a blighted ministry and spirituality will wither away. But controversy which is entered into out of love for God and reverence for His Name, will wrap a man's spirit in peace and joy even when he is fighting in the thickest of battle. The piety which Spurgeon admired was not that of a cloistered pacifism but the spirit of men like William Tyndale and Samuel Rutherford who, while contending for Christ, could rise heavenwards, jeopardizing 'their lives unto the death in the high places of the field'. At the height of his controversies Spurgeon preached some of the most fragrant of all his sermons.”
― Iain H. Murray