John R. Rice Quotes

The Christian who drinks cannot win his drinking companions to Christ. The girl who dances will never win her dancing boyfriend! You may think to gain favor and influence with the unsaved by joining with them in the lodge, or attending with them the movies, or by smoking or drinking or playing bridge with them, but you cannot! Worldliness means powerlessness! And that means that every Christian who sells out is guilty of the murder of the poor lost souls that go to Hell because he lost his influence.

What a compelling motive we have for prayer, for preaching, for soul winning when we learn that every responsible human being who leaves this world without a definite change in heart immediately lifts his eyes in Hell, tormented in flame!

God's people should be baptized because God commanded it, not because some church requires it.

This world loses its appeal when the steps become tottering, when the hearing becomes dim, when the faded eyes cannot see as they once did. When loved ones are nearly all gone on ahead, then all the riches or fame or pleasures of this world are baubles and trash.

No one can be a good Christian who does not with holy zeal set out to know, delight in, and live by the Word of God!

After one is right with God and pleases God, the next most important thing in all the world is to be right with one's own father and mother.

Christian, that sin which first came between you and God is bad, but that is not the last step in the progress of sin. The most guilty part in this quadruple sin is to hide it, deny it, ignore it, refust to confess it, refuse to repent of it!

It is far best for the Christian never to see some things, so he will never want them. The old-fashioned Christian who will not have playing cards in his house will never learn to gamble with them. One who never sees, in movies and night clubs or elsewhere, half-clothed girls, drinking, smoking, gambling, petting, making love to many men, is likely to miss being led into that kind of life by these sirens of sin. It is the Devil's game to make people think it necessary for people to "know the ways of the world.

A Christian might drink only ginger ale at the tavern bar, but there he is already on the way to drinking beer and whiskey. The girl who attends a ball but never dances a step, will soon surrender her body to the lustful embrace of every casual male acquaintance as other dancers do.

When you get saved, you get saved not because you deserve it, but because you simply let God save you and because you confess your own poor sinful state and your inability to save yourself.

Sex appeal alone is the poorest basis in the world for a happy marriage.

Salvation is a free gift.

The moment we're born they try to make us cry, and sometimes it seems as though they never stop. Most of us go to our grave with our music still inside of us. Never borrow sorrow from tomorrow! No matter what a man's past may have been, his future is spotless.

Those who go to Heaven ride on a pass and enter into blessings that they never earned, but all who go to hell pay their own way.

Do you think that your sin is hidden away? Do you think that men will never know it? Well, you should remember that God knows it already. And you should remember, second, that sin continued in will inevitably come to light. Usually it will be exposed in this life. Certainly it will be exposed when you stand before God and God's record books are opened. That which is whispered in a corner shall be shouted from a housetop. God will bring every secret thing to judgment, we are told. What warning to our hearts!

When boiled down to its essence, unforgiveness is hatred.

You can't win everybody to the Lord, but you can always win somebody.

What kind of Christian are you? Did you ever lose a job, or lose a night's sleep, or lose a friend for God? If your Christianity never costs you a dollar, never cost you a friend, never cost any tears or broken heart, then can you really say that you love the Lord very much? To be a really good Christian is going to cost you.

Prayer is asking; the answer to prayer is receiving.

And then the dear Lord will take us to the new earth, surrounded by the new Heaven, and the holy New Jerusalem will come down from God out of Heaven. Then we will have an end of pain and sorrow and crying and death. All these, thank God, will be forever done! And then God Himself will wipe away our tears.

If you were enough like God, some one wouldn't like you.

Multitudes of people who expect to go to Heaven will go to a Hell of torment. Thousands of "good" people, "moral" people, church members, even church workers - yes, and, alas, even prophets, priests and preachers - will find themselves lost when they expected to be saved, condemned when they expected approval, cast out of Heaven when they expected to be received into eternal bliss. That is the explicit meaning of the words of our Lord... (see: Matt 7:21-23.]

Any pleasure that would keep you from Christ is a sinful pleasure that will doubtless cause you anguish, heartache, tears and remorse.

Any time a Christian is conscious of his sin, judges the sin and takes sides against it with a penitent heart, then he has a perfect right to trust the Lord for instant, complete forgiveness and for perfect cleansing.

I want no Christmas without a burden for lost souls, a message for sinners, a heart to bring in the lost sheep so dear to the Shepherd, the sinning souls for whom Christ died.

No matter what a man's past may have been, his future is spotless.

Present-Day Wickedness, Apostasy and Modern Civilization Cannot Prevent Revival.

Dear lost sinner, if you are a wicked sinner, yet you do not have to die and go to Hell forever. If you are a criminal or a harlot, a blasphemer, a drunkard, a convict, or a dope fiend, God does not want you to go to Hell. People do not go to Hell simply because they are sinners. Rather they go because they will not repent of their sins! If you today will confess your sins to God, and in your poor, helpless heart, will, as far as you know how, turn away from your sin, God will have mercy and will forgive and save.

The best way to get rid of criminals is to stop raising them.

The world never burned a casual Christian at the stake.

Let no preacher in a little church think that he has no audience for his message. An unseen audience of multitudes compass him about! Let no Christian who sins in the dark think that he is unobserved. He is compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses! Assuredly in Heaven they know what goes on on earth.

To keep the faith, run with the right crowd.

People go wrong in their fellowships before they go wrong in their doctrine.

If you surrender yourself, and do not rush, but meditate on the Word of God, you will find prayer forming in your heart. It is a prayer inspired by the Holy Spirit, a prayer that God will be pleased to hear.

According to the Bible, a genuine answer to prayer is getting what you ask for.

It is a sad and shocking fact that many religious people are in Hell.

The Saviour said He was going to prepare us a place. How wonderful it will be is beyond human computation. Remember that in six days Christ made the heavens and earth and all that in them is.... If He made so many wonders in six days, then what beauties and marvels He has surely prepared during these 1900 years in which He has been preparing our mansions in the Father's House!

I tell you, Heaven is a real, literal, physical place, a city as material, as physical, as literal as Chicago or London or New York or Tokyo.