Talkin' 'Bout Jesus, God & Stuff

Here is a collection of random quotes from various famous and not-so-famous poets, historians, artists, coaches, theologians, seekers, doubters, celebrities and wanna-be's, teachers, musicians, philosophers, leaders, believers and not-yet believers alike who are talking...may their thoughts draw you into the conversation also:

"I am an historian, I am not a believer,

but I must confess as a historian that

this penniless preacher from Nazareth

is irrevocably the very center of history.

Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history."

-H.G. Wells

"Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self."
-St. Francis of Assisi

"A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act."
-Mahatma Gandhi

"A heroic figure...

not wholly to blame for the religion that's been foisted on him."
-Ezra Pound

"I'm not doubting. I don't doubt God. I have firm faith absolutely in God. It's religion I'm doubting."

-Bono

"Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded an empire upon love;

and at this hour millions of men would die for Him."
-Napoleon Bonaparte

"By a Carpenter mankind was made,

and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade."
-Desiderius Erasmus

"I am pretty sure that we err in treating these sayings as paradoxes.

It would be nearer the truth to say

that it is life itself which is paradoxical

and that the sayings of Jesus are simply a recognition of that fact."
-Thomas Taylor

"I believe in person to person.

Every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus,

that person is the one person in the world at that moment."
-Mother Teresa

"Jesus Christ turns life right-side-up, and heaven outside-in."
-Carl F. H. Henry

"Jesus promised His disciples three things: that they would be entirely fearless, absurdly happy, and that they would get into trouble."
-W. Russell Maltby

"Jesus was the first socialist,

the first to seek a better life for mankind."
-Mikhail Gorbachev

"None speak of the bravery, the might, or the intellect of Jesus; but the devil is always imagined as a being of acute intellect, political cunning, and the fiercest courage. These universal and instinctive tendencies of the human mind reveal much."
-Lydia M. Child

"The Lord has turned all our sunsets into sunrise."
-Clement of Alexandria

"The word ''Christianity'' is already a misunderstanding -- in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

"Two thousand years ago there was One here on this earth

who lived the grandest life that ever has been lived yet--

a life that every thinking man,

with deeper or shallower meaning, has agreed to call divine."
-Frederick W. Robertson

"Socrates taught for 40 years, Plato for 50, Aristotle for 40,

and Jesus for only 3. Yet the influence of

Christ's 3-year ministry infinitely transcends

the impact left by the combined 130 years of teaching

from these men who were among

the greatest philosophers of all antiquity."

–Unknown

"I love the bit when Christ asked for his greatest hits and he says, 'OK, love God, and love your neighbours as yourself.' Christianity is not complicated, that's what it is."

-Bono

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"As the centuries pass, the evidence is accumulating that,

measured by His effect on history,

Jesus is the most influential life ever lived on this planet."
-Historian Kenneth Scott Latourette

"Ability may get you to the top,

but it takes character to keep you here."

-John Wooden

.
"I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise

and very beautiful; but I never read in either of them:

"Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden."

-Augustine

.
"I am a friend to God, a sworn enemy of the saccharine

and a believer in grace over karma."

-Bono

"As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene....No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word.

No myth is filled with such life."

-Albert Einstein

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice.

Either this man was, and is, the Son of God;

or else a madman or something worse.

You can shut Him up for a fool,

you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon;

or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.

But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense

about His being a great human teacher.

He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

-C.S. Lewis

.

"Jesus is God spelling Himself out

in language that men can understand."

-S.D. Gordon

"It was this same Jesus, the Christ who, among many other remarkable things, said and repeated something which, proceeding from any other being would have condemned him at once as either a bloated egotist or a dangerously unbalanced person...

when He said He himself would rise again from the dead,

the third day after He was crucified,

He said something that only a fool would dare say,

if he expected longer the devotion of any disciples—

unless He was sure He was going to rise.

No founder of any world religion known to men

ever dared say a thing like that!"

-Wilbur Smith

.
"You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—

every action is met by an equal or an opposite one.

It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe.

I'm absolutely sure of it.

And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that "as you reap, so you will sow" stuff. Grace defies reason and logic.

Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions,

which in my case is very good news indeed,

because I've done a lot of stupid stuff."

-Bono

.

“Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy.

But being a Christian, that's a tough call. That's rebellion.”

-Alice Cooper

"I accept the resurrection of Easter Sunday not as an invention of the community of disciples, but as a historical event. If the resurrection of Jesus from the dead on that Easter Sunday were a public event which had been made known...

not only to the 530 Jewish witnesses but to the entire population,

all Jews would have become followers of Jesus."

-Pinchas Lapide, Orthodox Jewish scholar, Germany (born 1922)

.
"What can I give back to God

for the blessings he's poured out on me?

I'll lift high the cup of salvation - a toast to God!"

-Bono

"Despite our efforts to keep him out, God intrudes.

The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities:

"a virgin's womb and an empty tomb".

Jesus entered our world through a door marked,

"No Entrance" and left through a door marked "No Exit."

-Peter Larson

"I would like to ask Him if He was indeed virgin born,

because the answer to that question would define history."

–Larry King

"But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament,

it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship.

The New Testament, on the other hand,

we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal.

The combination is what makes the Cross."

-Bono

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"The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead

is the crowning proof of Christianity.

If the resurrection did not take place,

then Christianity is a false religion.

If it did take place, then Christ is God and

the Christian faith is absolute truth."

-Henry Morris

"If I might comprehend Jesus Christ, I could not believe on Him.

He would be no greater than myself.

Such is my consciousness of sin and

inability that I must have a superhuman Saviour."

-Daniel Webster

“Failure is not fatal but failure to change might be.”

-John Wooden

"Our problem is this: we usually discover him within some denominational or Christian ghetto. We meet him in a province and, having caught some little view,

we paint him in smaller strokes.

The Lion of Judah is reduced to something kittenish

because our understanding cannot, at first, write larger definitions."
-Calvin Miller

"There was no identity crisis in the life of Jesus Christ.

He knew who He was.

He knew where He had come from, and why he was here.

And he knew where He was going.

And when you are that liberated, then you can serve."

-Howard Hendricks

"All the best songs are co-written by God, y'know!"

-Bono

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“Talent is God given; be humble. Fame is man given; be thankful.

Conceit is self given; be careful.”

-John Wooden

"Whenever the method of worship becomes more important than the Person of worship, we have already prostituted our worship. There are entire congregations who worship praise and praise worship but who have not yet learned to praise and worship God in Jesus Christ."

-Judson Cornwall

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"But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge.

I'd be in deep s---.

It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace."

-Bono

"Christianity is not a doctrine, not truth as truth,

but the knowledge of a Person; it is knowing the Lord Jesus.

You cannot be educated into being a Christian."

-T. Austin-Sparks

"Jesus is God spelling Himself out

in language that men can understand."

-S.D. Gordon

"But the one thing we can all agree, all faiths, all ideologies,

is that God is with the vulnerable and the poor.

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes

where the poor play house...

God is in the silence of a mother who has

infected her child with a virus that

will end both their lives...

God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war...

God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives,

and God is with us if we are with them."

-Bono

"I think God is a mystery.

I do not think Jesus' priorities are a mystery."

-Catherine Keller

be God's!

Brian O

Lead Pastor dude, ECHO