Dwight Lyman Moody was born February 5, 1837, in East Northfield, Massachusetts. Probably one of the first American evangelists, Moody became a fundamentalist evangelical in 1854, and in 1855, his Sunday School teacher at the time, Edward Kimball, sought him out and explained the love of Christ to him, and Moody was changed. Though he found great success in shoe sales after moving to Chicago, he left it four years later to focus on missionary work. Working closely with the YMCA, he became president of the Chicago branch. During the same time frame, he founded the Moody Church and brought Christ to the slums of Chicago.
Moody saw many revivals during his life, and in his later life, he founded a seminary for girls (1879) and the Moody Bible Institute (then called the Chicago Bible Institute, 1889).
Quotes
The Bible will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible.
We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining – they just shine.
Character is what a man is in the dark.
A good example is far better than a good precept.
God doesn’t seek for golden vessels, and He does not ask for silver ones, but He must have clean ones.
We can stand affliction better than we can prosperity, for in prosperity we forget God.
There is no better book with which to defend the Bible than the Bible itself.
No man can resolve himself into Heaven.
The voice of sin is loud, but the voice of forgiveness is louder.
Real true faith is man’s weakness leaning on God’s strength.
The Lord gives His people perpetual joy when they walk in obedience to Him.
The world does not understand theology or dogma, but it understands love and sympathy.
Man is born with his face turned away from God. When he truly repents, he is turned right round toward God; he leaves his old life.
Salvation is worth working for. It is worth a man’s going round the world on his hands and knees, climbing its mountains, crossing its valleys, swimming its rivers, going through all manner of hardship in order to attain it. But we do not get it in that way. It is to him who believes.
God has nothing to say to the self-righteous.
The law tells me how crooked I am. Grace comes along and straightens me out.
The Spirit of God first imparts love; he next inspires hope, and then gives liberty; and that is about the last thing we have in many of our churches.
There are many of us that are willing to do great things for the Lord, but few of us are willing to do little things.
Grace means undeserved kindness. It is the gift of God to man the moment he sees he is unworthy of God’s favor.
Let God have your life; He can do more with it than you can.
We ought to see the face of God every morning before we see the face of man.
When I read the life of such a man as Paul, how I blush to think how sickly and dwarfed Christianity is at the present time, and how many hundreds there are who never think of working for the Son of God and honoring Christ.
I never saw a useful Christian who was not a student of the Bible. If a man neglects his Bible, he may pray and ask God to use him in His work; but God cannot make much use of him, for there is not much for the Holy Ghost to work upon.
Christians should live in the world, but not be filled with it. A ship lives in the water; but if the water gets into the ship, she goes to the bottom. So Christians may live in the world; but if the world gets into them, they sink.
God doesn’t expect the impossible from us. He wants us to expect the impossible from Him!
When I first became a Christian I thought I would be glad when I got farther on, and got established. I thought I would be so strong and there would not be any danger; but the longer I live, the more danger I see there is. The only hope of any Christian… is to keep hold of Christ.
Those who say they will forgive but can’t forget, simply bury the hatchet but leave the handle out for immediate use.
There is no greater honour than to be the instrument in God’s hands of leading one person out of the kingdom of Satan into the glorious light of Heaven.
The difference between listening to a radio sermon and going to church…is almost like the difference between calling your girl on the phone and spending an evening with her.
Happiness is caused by things that happen around me, and circumstances will mar it; but joy flows right on through trouble; joy flows in the night as well as in the day; joy flows through persecution and opposition. It is an unceasing fountain bubbling up in the heart; a secret spring the world can’t see and doesn’t know anything about.
I have noticed this, that when a man is full of the Holy Ghost he is the very last man to be complaining of other people.
God likes His people to believe that there is nothing too hard for Him…We are all the time limiting God’s power by our own ideas. Let us get our eyes off one another and fix them upon God. There is nothing too hard for Him.
The measure of a man is not how many servants he has but how many men he serves.
Someday you will read in the papers that Moody is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. I was born of the flesh in 1837, I was born of the spirit in 1855. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the spirit shall live forever.