Best 4545 quotes in «christianity quotes» category

Peruse all the sermons of Jesus and you will be sure to find parables, and sometimes allegory. What you will always find, however, is something of keeping our hearts in order.

Philosophy is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat. Metaphysics is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there. Theology is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there, and shouting "I found it!" Science is like being in a dark room looking for a black cat while using a flashlight.

Peter Brown, that great historian of early Christianity, has given the most cogent explanation for the arising of the cult of the saints in the late Roman world. He explains that the emphasis of early Christian preaching on judgment, on the human need for redemption from sin, brought to the minds of common people — among whom Christianity was early successful — their social and political condition. Having strictly limited powers to remedy any injustice they might suffer, or to clear themselves of any charges of wrongdoing, they turned, when they could, to their social betters in hope of aid. If a local patrician could befriend them — could be, at least for a time, their patron — then they had a chance, at least, of receiving justice or at least escaping punishment. “It is this hope of amnesty,” Brown writes, “that pushed the saint to the foreground as patronus. For patronage and friendship derived their appeal from a proven ability to render malleable seemingly inexorable processes, and to bridge with the warm breath of personal acquaintance the great distances of the late-Roman social world. In a world so sternly organized around sin and justice, patrocimium [patronage] and amicitia [friendship] provided a much-needed language of amnesty.” As this cult became more and more deeply entrenched in the Christian life, it made sense for there to be, not just feast days for individual saints, but a day on which everyone’s indebtedness to the whole company of saints — gathered around the throne of God, pleading on our behalf — could be properly acknowledged. After all, we do not know who all the saints are: no doubt men and women of great holiness escaped the notice of their peers, but are known to God. They deserve our thanks, even if we cannot thank them by name. So the logic went: and a general celebration of the saints seems to have begun as early as the fourth century, though it would only be four hundred years later that Pope Gregory III would designate the first day of November as the Feast of All Saints.

Peter's destiny lay along a different path from John's. And your calling is unlike anyone else's. But the call remains the same: "Follow Me!

Physical brains are subject to the laws of physics; mental states are subject to the laws of logic. Those who think mental states are entirely physical hold a logically contradictory position. In order to think rationally about their thoughts , they must have the freedom to do so, but this freedom is unavailable if the laws of physics and chemistry are controlling their thoughts.

Peter stands by the gate, And Michael by the throne. 'Peter, I would pass the gate And come before the throne.' 'Whose spirit prayed never at the gate In life nor at the throne, In death he may not pass the gate To come before the throne:' Peter said from the gate; Said Michael from the throne.

Pilgrimage was a centrally important part of Christian life in the early twelfth century, and had been for nearly one thousand years. People traveled incredible distances to visit saints' shrines and the sites of famous Christian deeds. did it for the good of their souls: sometimes to seek divine relief from illness, sometimes as penance to atone for their sins. Some thought that praying at a certain shrine would ensure the protection of that saint in their passage through the afterlife. All believed that God looked kindly on pilgrims and that a man or woman who ventured humbly and faithfully to the center of the world would improve his or her standing in the eyes of God.

Plato's proposals in this matter are abhorrent to all true Christians. His intentions were, of course, excellent, for he desired the greatest possible improvement of the human race; but his good intentions led him to the proposal of measures which are necessarily unacceptable and repugnant to all those who adhere to Christian principles concerning the value of the human personality and the sanctity of human life. Moreover, it by no means follows that what has been found successful in the breeding of animals, will also prove successful when applied to the human race, for man has a rational soul which is not intrinsically dependent on matter but is directly created by Almighty God. Does a beautiful soul always go with a beautiful body or a good character with a strong body? Again, if such measures were successful — and what does "successful" mean in this connection? — in the case of the human race, it does not follow that the Government has the right to apply such measures. Those who to-day follow, or would like to follow, in the footsteps of Plato, advocating, e.g. compulsory sterilisation of the unfit, have not, be it remembered, Plato's excuse, that he lied at a period anterior to the presentation of the Christian ideals and principles. — 230

Please keep in mind that there is no "once-size-fits-all" prescription for conveying support to every family walking through a special needs diagnosis.

[Politics] is always a means of conquering others and exercising power over them.

Poverty I am too beautiful to be like you. Sickness from the crown of my head to the sole of my feet, I belong to God.

Postmodern people have been rejecting Christianity for years, thinking that it was indistinguishable from moralism.

Practice mercy and forgiveness throughout as a lesson that symbolizes the love shown through his crucifixion.

Prayer is a perfect harmony with God.

Prayer is your attempt to bring your will and desires in line with God’s will.

Prayer and Meditation Matthew 14 AND HE WENT UP INTO THE MOUNTAIN APART TO PRAY This was always the practice of Jesus when he would move into the masses, the crowd, afterwards he would go alone into deep prayer and meditation. Why did he do this? If you have been meditating, you will understand. You will understand that once you start meditating, a very fragile and delicate quality of consciousness is born in you. A flower of the unknown, of the beyond, starts opening, which is delicate. And whenever you move into the crowd, you lose something. Whenever you come back from the crowd, you come back lesser than you had gone. Something has been lost, some contact has been lost. The crowd pulls you down, it has a gravitation of it's own. You may not feel it if you live on the same plane of consciousness. Then there is no problem, then you have nothing to lose. In fact, when you live in the crowd, on the same plane, alone you feel very uneasy. When you are with people, you feel good and happy. But alone, you feel sad, your aloneness is not aloneness. It is loneliness, you miss the other. You do not find yourself in the aloneness, you simply miss the other. When you are alone, you are not alone, beacuse you are not there. Only the desire to be with others is there - that is what loneliness is. Always remember the distinction between aloneness and loneliness. Aloneness is a peak experience - loneliness is a valley. Aloneness has light in it, loneliness is dark. Loneliness is when you desire others; aloneness is when you enjoy yourself. When Jesus would move into the masses, into the crowd, he would tell his disciples to got to the other shore of the lake, and he would move into total aloneness. Not even the disciples were allowed to be with him. This was a constant practice with him. Whenever you go into the crowd, you are infected by it. You need a higher altitude to purify yourself, you need to be alone so that you can become fresh again. You need to be alone with yourself, so that you become together again. You need to be alone, so that you become centered and rooted in yourself again. Whenever you move with others, they push you off centre. AND WHEN THE EVENING WAS COME, HE WAS THERE ALONE Nothing is said about his prayer in the Bible, just the word "prayer". Before God or before existence, you simply need to be vulnerable - that is prayer. You are no to say something. So when you go into prayer, don't start saying something. It will all be desires, demands and deep complaints to God. And prayer with complaints is no prayer, a prayer with deep gratitude is prayer. There is no need to say something, you can just be silent. Hence nothing is said about what Jesus did in his aloneness. It simply says "apart to pray". He went apart, he became alone. That is what prayer is, to be alone, where the other is not felt, where the other is not standing between you and existence. When God's breeze can pass througn you, unhindered. It is a cleansing experience. It revejunates your spirit. To be with God simply means to be alone. You can miss the point, if you start thinking about God, then you are not alone. If you start talking to God, then in imagination you have created the other. And then you God is a projection, it will be a projection of your father. A prayer is not to say something. It is to be silent, open, available. And there is no need to believe in God, because that too is a projection. The only need is to be alone, to be capable of being alone - and immediately you are with God. Whenever you are alone, you are with God.

Prayer is a sacred-utterance to God.

Praise be to God that hope is much more than how we feel on a given day. It exists outside of us; it is an entity in itself.

Prayer ain't weakened by distance.

Prayer is a heart exercise. It’s an act of communicating with God about what’s most important and pressing in your life.

Prayer is like breathing....how long can you hold your breath?

Prayer means keeping company with God who is already present.

Prayer, then, begins by an intellectual adjustment.

Pray for the courage to cope, for understanding, and for acceptance of God’s plan. Pray for strength for the family and loved ones. Pray that the medical team will have the knowledge and compassion to do the best job that they can. Pray for peace and calmness and healing for the emotions, the spirit, and the body. Give thanks.

Pray for your needs, not your greed.

Praying is pure philosophy.

Preach Christ ! Preach the gospel Preach Christ; preach His message! A soul is dying; a spirit is slumbering Many are yearning for caring All they need is the gospel of salvation Preach Christ; act like Christ Preach Christ! Preach the gospel Preach Christ! Preach His message Alluring message I envisage The flocks yearn to see action for salvage The real gospel of Christ ’s becoming an adage Who will lead the wandering from his bondage? Preach Christ; act like Christ Preach Christ! Preach the gospel. Preach Christ ! Preach His coming! The master of harvest is coming Jesus Christ is coming For they that thought of His coming And took steps to prepare for His coming Preach Christ; act like Christ Preach Christ ! Preach His coming! Preach Christ ! Preach His redemption Prompt someone’s attention to His redemption They ponder and wander in want Call they that wander and tell them the real matter Show them the Master who can deliver Preach Christ; act like Christ Preach Christ ! Preach His redemption

Predestination therefore, as it regards the thing itself, is the Decree of the good pleasure of God in Christ, by which He resolved within Himself from all eternity, to justify, adopt, and endow with everlasting life, to the praise of His own glorious grace, believers on whom He had decreed to bestow faith.

praying without having faith in and believing in what you pray for is just a simple act of soliloquizing

Pride becomes the blanket transgression that conceals the rest of our sins, allowing us to remain blind to them.

Press them continually with memory and dream and have them waste their Present there.

Pride, willfulness, and rebellion against what “is written” are the causes of the Bible being hard to understand. The hard part, then, is not understanding with the mind, but being willing to obey what he does not want to obey. If a person could not understand the truth, he could not reject it.

Probably one of the most surprising discoveries I've made while studying the Bible is that God does not condone religion. It's a consistent theme throughout scripture. Religion is man's external effort to please God. But God doesn't care about all my efforts to get it right. He wants more, something far greater.

Private prayers are the catalyst for public miracles.

Properly understood, Imagination and Prayer are directly proportional —the more they pray beyond their bounds, they expand their vision beyond their resources, their experiences, their expectations.

Protestantism developed its sense of identity primarily in response to external threats and criticisms rather than as a result of shared beliefs. In one sense, the idea of "Protestantism" can be seen as the creation of its opponents rather than of its supporters.

Protestants at one time were confident that their free form of confession was a vast improvement upon Catholic private confession to a priest because it is voluntary, demystified, and not routinized. But amid the acids of modernity it has volunteered itself right out of existence. Demystification has dwindled into desacralization. The escape from routinization has become a convenient cover for the demise of repentance. The postmodern pastor is trying to learn anew to listen to the deeper range of feelings of others, without forgetfulness of the Word of God.

Prophecy is a possibility.

Providence then - and this is what is most important to grasp - is not the same thing as a universal teleology. To believe in divine and unfailing providence is not to burden one's conscience with the need to see every event in this world not only as an occasion for God's grace, but as a positive determination of God's will whereby he brings to pass a comprehensive design that, in the absence of any single one of these events, would not have been possible. It may seem that this is to draw only the finest of logical distinction, one so fine indeed as to amount to little more than a sophistry. Some theologians - Calvin, for instance - have denied that the distinction between what God wills and what he permits has any meaning at all. And certainly there is no unanimity in the history of Christian exegesis on this matter. Certain classic Western interpretations of Paul's treatment of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart and of the hardened heart of Israel in Romans 9 have taken it as a clear statement of God's immediate determination of his creatures' wills. But in the Eastern Christian tradition, and in the thought of many of the greatest Western theologians, the same argument has often been understood to assert no more than that God in either case allowed a prior corruption of the will to run its course, or even - like a mire in the light of the sun - to harden the outpouring of God's fiery mercy, and always for the sake of a greater good that will perhaps redound even to the benefit of the sinner. One might read Christ's answer to his disciples' question regarding why a man had been born blind - 'that the works of God should be made manifest in him' (John 9:3) - either as a refutation or as a confirmation of the distinction between divine will and permission. When all is said and done, however, not only is the distinction neither illogical nor slight; it is an absolute necessity if - setting aside, as we should, all other judgments as superstitious, stochastic, and secondary - we are to be guided by the full character of what is revealed of God in Christ. For, after all, if it is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil, and death, it would seem that he provides us little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity: sin he forgives, suffering he heals, evil he casts out, and death he conquers. And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are part of the eternal work or purposes of God.

Proxy religion involves too great a risk: you had better see to your soul's matters yourself, and leave them in no man's hands.

Psalm 136 is called the "Great Hallel" which may signal a great year of praise in 2036.

Purpose is not that far my child--- it's just a journey's walk. It is the One at the end of the journey, it is the end of the journey, and it is the journey itself. And when you thirst, do you not drink? And when you are cool, do you not warm yourself? and when you are weary, do you not rest? And if you need meaning, should you not reach out? I said out! My child, out! In all simplicity those in need reach out and receive beyond themselves. He's at the end of the quench, and the relief of the warmth, the satisfaction of a rest, and the salvage of a soul.

Put it this way: if your idea of God, if your idea of the salvation offered in Christ, is vague or remote, your idea of worship will be fuzzy and ill-formed. The closer you get to the truth, the clearer becomes the beauty, and the more you will find worship welling up within you. That's why theology and worship belong together. The one isn't just a headtrip; the other isn't just emotion.

Pytałem przed chwilą co to jest ojciec i zawołałem, że to słowo wielkie, miano drogocenne. Ale słowa trzeba, panowie, używać uczciwie (...) „ojcowie, nie rozgoryczajcie dzieci waszych”! Albowiem wypełnijmy najpierw sami wolę Chrystusową, a wtedy dopiero stawiajmy wymagania dzieciom naszym. Inaczej nie ojcami, ale wrogami dzieci naszych jesteśmy, one zaś nie dziećmi naszymi, ale wrogami, których samiśmy sobie uczynili! „Jaką miarką mierzycie, taką będzie wam odmierzone” – już nie ja to mówię, lecz Ewangelia – jakże więc obwiniać dzieci, że nam naszą miarką odmierzają? (...) ten, co zrodził, nie jest jeszcze ojcem – ojcem bowiem jest ten, co i zrodził, i zasłużył sobie na miano ojca.

Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: Put second things first and we lose both first things and second things.

Quanto ai cristiani, sarebbe stato proprio lo scossone della sconfitta nel referendum sul divorzio a costituire il principio del loro risveglio; più tardi Iddio avrebbe fatto alla sua chiesa l'immenso dono del papa polacco: un papa di nuovo 'pietra' e 'roccia' finalmente

Quotes By Transcendologist Kurt Kawohl 1941 - If the medieval practices and the medieval beliefs of Christianity, Judaism and Islam that are based on superstitions were eliminated, then we could start building a rational and logical belief system that is based on truth and an understanding of spirituality. This is the value of truthfulness and rationality. The goals of ALL religions are the same; a deserved, appropriate, just finale. God is the rational Purity that does not require servitude, ritualistic prayers or a forced slavery in order for the soul to be a part of that Purity for eternity. God is spiritual, the progressive and accumulative spiritual intelligence of all the righteous souls who have passed into the spiritual realm. God does not and never has meddled in the tangible universe. It is of no importance during our physical life whether God exists or not if one so chooses. Whether or not one believes in a spirit or God really makes no difference to God. Righteous living will determine the continuance and destiny of our spirit/soul. Abraham, Moses, Noah, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Krishna, Bahá'u'lláh, Zoroaster, Ahmad, Nanak and many others of various faiths are believed to have achieved spiritual enlightenment by mastering the art of spiritual transcendence. Everything in the universe follows the universal laws which separate the physical and the spiritual existence. Energy is power, vigor, liveliness, intensity. It is a measurable quantity, without reference to its nature or source. Energy, or life is a fundamental attribute and function of the universe. Our bodies build up and harness a minute amount of spiritual energy that is transferred into the spiritual dimension upon our death. Then this spiritual energy is limitless because it lacks resistance and this energy can assimilate as a unity or be separate and individual. It is this spiritual energy that is God. It is a composition of the spiritual intellect of the universe, of every soul that has passed from the physical universe into the spiritual universe. It can create a spiritual existence of beauty that is beyond the imagination…my spirit has experienced it.

Quit Believing in Lies and Always Search For the Truth!

Rabbi, the great Teacher, Jesus Christ.

Rabbi, the Sacred Teacher, Jesus Christ.