“Fervent in Spirit, Serving the Lord”

^{Note: This article is reprinted with permission from As I See It, a monthly electronic magazine compiled and edited by Doug Kutilek. AISI is sent free to all who request it by writing to the editor at dkutilek@juno.com.}

Quotes from Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s The Greatest Fight in the World

Compiled by Doug Kutilek

“On his knees, the believer is invincible.”
The Greatest Fight in the World, p. 5.

“Churches without prayer meetings are grievously common… . Believe me, if a church does not pray, it is dead. Instead of putting united prayer last, put it first. Everything will hinge upon the power of prayer in the church.”
Ibid., p. 43

“We ought to have our churches all busy for God. What is the use of a church that simply assembles to hear sermons, even as a family gathers to eat its meals? What, I say, is the profit, if it does not work? Are not many professors sadly indolent in the Lord’s work, though diligent enough in their own? Because of Christian idleness we hear of the necessity of amusements [entertainments], and all sorts of nonsense. If they were at work for the Lord Jesus we should not hear of this… .

Much needs to be done by a Christian church within its own bounds, and for the neighborhood, and for the poor and the fallen, and for the heathen world, and so forth; and if it is well attended to, minds and hearts and hands and tongues will be occupied, and diversions will not be asked for. Let idleness come in, and that spirit which rules lazy people, and there will arise a desire to be amused. What amusements they are, too! If religion is not a farce with some congregations, at any rate they turn out better to see a farce than to unite in prayer. I cannot understand it.

The man who is all aglow with love to Jesus finds little need for amusement. He has no time for trifling. He is in dead earnest to save souls, and establish the truth, and enlarge the kingdom of his Lord. There has always been some pressing claim for the cause of God upon me; and, that settled, there has been another, and another, and another, and the scramble has been to find opportunity to do the work that must be done, and hence I have not had the time for gadding abroad after frivolities.

Oh, to get a working church! The German [Baptist] churches, when our dear friend Mr. [Johann Gerhard] Oncken [1800-1884] was alive always carried out the rule of asking every member, ‘What are you going to do for Christ?’ and they put the answer down in a book. The one thing that was required of every member was that he should continue doing something for the Saviour. If he ceased to do anything it was a matter for church discipline, for he was an idle professor, and could not be allowed to remain in the church like a drone in a hive of working bees. He must do or go.

Oh for a vineyard without a barren fig tree to cumber the ground! At present the most of our sacred warfare is carried on by a small body of intensely living, earnest people, and the rest are either in hospital, or are mere camp followers. We are thankful for the consecrated few; but we pine to see the altar fire consuming all that is professedly laid upon the altar.”
Ibid., pp. 43, 44-45; italics in original

We want a church of a missionary character, which will go forth to gather out a people unto God from all parts of the world. A church is a soul-saving company, or it is nothing.”
Ibid., p. 46; bold-face added.

“We must not be content with holding our own; we must invade the territories of the prince of darkness.”
Ibid., p. 48

“Certain men might have been something if they had not thought themselves so.”
Ibid., p. 48

“A lazy minister is a creature despised by men, and abhorred of God… . Our people may justly expect of us, at the very least, that we should be among the most self-denying, the most laborious, and the most earnest in the church, and somewhat more.
Ibid., p. 49; italics in original

“Never call the Holy Spirit ‘it’; nor speak of him as if he were a doctrine, or an influence, or an orthodox myth. Reverence him, love him, and trust him with familiar yet reverent confidence. He is God; let him be God to you.”
Ibid., p. 57

“We ought to prepare the sermon as if all depended upon us, and then we are to trust the Spirit of God knowing that all depends on Him.”
Ibid., p. 62

Doug’s Note: It was the regular practice of Charles Spurgeon to address the attendees at the annual Pastors’ College Conference, held at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. These messages, aimed directly at preachers, serve in essence as companions to Spurgeon’s famous volume, Lectures to My Students, which is assuredly essential reading for every preacher of the Gospel. A full dozen of these addresses, spanning 1872 to 1890, were compiled and published as An All-Round Ministry, a book beyond praise. The last of Spurgeon’s conference addresses, delivered in 1891 (less than a year before his death), was published separately as The Greatest Fight in the World: Spurgeon’s Final Manifesto, from which the above quotations were taken. All three of the these titles—Lectures to My Students, An All-Round Ministry, and The Greatest Fight in the World—have been reissued in facsimile reprint form by Pilgrim Publications, PO Box 66, Pasadena, Texas 77501. Their web address is www.pilgrimpublications.com, and their e-mail address is pilgrimpub@aol.com. If you do not own all three of these or if you know a young preacher who needs a blessing, by all means secure copies of these most valuable books.

Doug Kutilek is editor of www.kjvonly.org, a website dedicated to exposing and refuting the many errors of KJVOism, and has been researching and writing about Bible texts and versions for more than 35 years. He has a B.A. in Bible from Baptist Bible College (Springfield, MO), an M.A. in Hebrew Bible from Hebrew Union College (Cincinnati), and a Th.M. in Bible exposition from Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). A professor in several Bible institutes, college, graduate schools, and seminaries, he edits a monthly cyber-journal, As I See It. The father of four grown children and four granddaughters, he and his wife, Naomi, live near Wichita, Kansas.