Quotes about Church

The Church has always had a conservative head and a liberal heart, and the world has never understood her, just as it never understood Christ.

When you feel threatened by the Church, listen to the One who speaks from beneath those humble, human appearances: "It is I; be not afraid.

When we use the prayers of the Church, we use the greatest prayers ever written, the words and sentiments of great saints and hymn writers and liturgists. We do this rightly, because God deserves the best, and these prayers are the best. They were composed by other people, but we make them our own when we pray them, like a lover reciting a sonnet by Shakespeare to his beloved. It is Shakespeare's gift: Shakespeare gave it to him, and now he gives it to his beloved.

Christ, the new Moses, liberates His people, the Church, the new Israel, from the spiritual slavery of sin and from the power of the world (symbolized by Egypt), which is under the dominion of Satan (symbolized by Pharaoh), through the sea (death) and the wilderness (Purgatory) to the promised land (Heaven).

It's out of liberal-hearted love and compassion for people that the Church has always been so hardheadedly conservative about doctrine.

The Exodus also = salvation; Egypt = sin; Pharoah = Satan; Moses = Christ; the Jews = the Church; the Red Sea = death; the wilderness = Purgatory; the Old Law = the New Law; the gospel; the old Mount (Sinai) = the new mount from which Jesus preached His "sermon on the mount" (Mt 5-7); and the Promised Land = Heaven. The "=" is not mathematical but symbolic.

We are not helpless, and our world is not hopeless. Even as the world collapses, the Lord is building His church. We can say something, do something, pray something, preach something, and live by the convictions of Christ.

The Pew Research Center reports that Christianity is declining sharply in America. In 2014 about seventy percent of American adults identified as Christians.1 But this figure is misleading. According to a study by sociologists C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler published in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, less than twenty percent of Americans regularly attend church on a weekly basis.2 This statistic gives us a better indication of actual Christian commitment.

When the church is raptured, the restraining work of the Holy Spirit, who is now holding back the man of sin and keeping the world from utter lawlessness, will be removed, and the earth will be subject to the full effects of sin. After the falling away and the Rapture, it will be time for the Antichrist to be revealed.

Some churches grow vast congregations, increase the variety and number of their programs, and build larger and larger buildings to accomplish their purposes—which they mistake for those of Christ. In reality, He may be pushed outside and left knocking at the door. How sad to think of Him returning to His Church at the end of the age and finding Himself persona non grata!

You talk of being a believer, but you can't seem to trust anyone, not even God. You cling to your wealth as your security and carry the baggage of being unworthy, even though God loves you and has forgiven you. You should have listened a little closer to that sermon in church a couple of weeks back.

Rather than experiencing the richness of a dynamic, intimate relationship with the righteous One, you put God in a little box that you can check off your to-do list each week. By settling for rules and religion and feeling pretty good about how much you're doing for the church and those less fortunate, you become blinded to legalism and self-righteousness.