Josh McDowell Quotes

If Jesus Christ was who He claimed to be, and He did die on a cross at a point of time in history, then, for all history past and all history future it is relevant because that is the very focal point for forgiveness and redemption.

I am not a Christian because God changed my life; I am a Christian because of my convictions about who Jesus Christ is.

After I set out to refute Christianity intellectually and couldn't, I came to the conclusion the Bible was true and Jesus Christ was God's Son.

After more than 700 hours of studying this subject, and thoroughly investigating its foundation, I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted upon the minds of men, or it is the most fantastic fact of history

What you are as a single person, you will be as a married person, only to a greater degree. Any negative character trait will be intensified in a marriage relationship, because you will feel free to let your guard down -- that person has committed himself to you and you no longer have to worry about scaring him off.

True love is spelled G-I-V-E. It is not based on what you can get, but rooted in what you can give to the other person.

Prayer is talking with God. God knows your heart and is not so concerned with your words as He is with the attitude of your heart.

One who claimed what Jesus claimed about himself couldn't be a good moral man or a prophet. That option isn't open to us, and Jesus never intended it to be.

You can laugh at Christianity; you can mock and ridicule it. But it works. It changes lives. If you trust Christ, start watching your attitudes and actions, because Jesus Christ is in the business of changing lives.

When it comes to my salvation, all I need is Jesus; after my salvation, everything is Jesus plus the church... When people preach that all you need is Jesus, they cut you and I off from one of the greatest sources of healing, which is the body of Christ. Dont go it alone - you wont make it.

We no longer live in a post-Christian society, we live in an anti-Christian society, one in which the Christian faith is dismissed or ridiculed and Christians are considered suspect and their motives and behavior berated.

Forgiveness is the oil of relationships.

I always tried to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that my brains would fall out. As G. K. Chesterton says, "The purpose of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to close it again on something solid." I opened my mind, and I finally closed it on the most solid reality I had ever experienced. On December 19, 1959, at 8:30PM, during my second year at the university, I became a Christian.

Knowing that God is faithful, it really helps me to not be captivated by worry. But knowing that He will do what He has said, He will cause it to happen, whatever He has promised, and then it causes me to be less involved in worrying about a situation.

No matter how devastating our struggles, disappointments, and troubles are, they are only temporary.

The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have... whether you like it or not.

My joy in life is not because I have not had any problems. I have joy because I have learned there is nothing too great for Gods power to deal with, nor anything too small or insignificant for His love to be concerned about.

The Christian faith is faith in Christ. Its value or worth is not in the one believing but in the One believed - not in the one trusting, but in the One trusted.

My father's life was changed right before my eyes [when he trusted Christ]. It was like someone reached down and switched on a light inside him. He touched alcohol only once after that. He got the drink only as far as his lips and that was it-after forty years of drinking! He didn't need it any more. Fourteen months later, he died form complications of his alcoholism. But in that fourteen-month period over a hundred people in the area around my tiny hometown committed their lives to Jesus Christ because of the change they saw in the town drunk, my dad.

Truth is objective because God exists outside ourselves; it is universal because God is above all; it is constant because God is eternal. Absolute truth is absolute because it originates from the original.

Anyone with sincere religious beliefs cannot say that all religions are true. That is so illogical it is pathetic. All religion cannot be true because some of them are so diametrically opposed to each other.

Paul the apostle recounted that Jesus appeared to more than 500 of His followers at one time, the majority of whom were still alive and who could confirm what Paul wrote.

A lot of people say, well how can a loving God send anyone to hell? First of all God doesn't send anyone to hell. If we go to hell, it's by our own choice. But when somebody says to me, how can a loving God allow anyone to go to hell, I'll turn around and say, "Well how can a holy, just, righteous God allow sin into His presence?"

Having convictions can be defined as being so thoroughly convinced that Christ and His Word are both objectively true and relationally meaningful that you act on your beliefs regardless of the consequences.

Whenever you do judge, the only basis of judgment is not your own perspective or anything else, it's the very character and nature of God and that's why we are to allow Him to exercise His justice, where I personally want to take it upon myself.

This is an important distinction, because most of the modern philosophies that deny that we can know reality, and ultimately truth, make the mistake of constructing epistemological systems to explain how we know reality without first acknowledging the fact that we do know reality. After they begin within the mind and find they can't construct a bridge to reality, they then declare that we can't know reality. It is like drawing a faulty road map before looking at the roads, then declaring that we can't know how to get from Chicago to New York!

Most Christians are not convinced of their own faith. I would say 90 percent of Christians do not have a worldview, in other words a view of the world, based on the Scripture and a relationship with God. And so they cannot discern between the truth and falsehood.

For centuries many of the world's distinguished philosophers have assaulted Christianity as being irrational, superstitious and absurd.

Love can wait to give; it is lust that can't wait to get.

No matter how devastating our struggles, disappointments, and troubles are, they are only temporary. No matter what happens to you, no matter the depth of tragedy or pain you face, no matter how death stalks you and your loved ones, the Resurrection promises you a future of immeasurable good.

Rules without relationship leads to rebellion.

Christ can be trusted to keep His Word that He will exchange our drab existence for joyous living, abundant life! And while true love, total acceptance, and complete security are rare in our frantic world, the biblical evidence that our desires in these areas will be fulfilled in Christ is abundant.

Yet each of us also carries another portrait with us, a picture far more important than any in our wallet. Psychologists have a name for it. They call that mental picture of ourselves, our self-image. ... there's always the person whose self-image is bent all out of shape, like a photo carried too long in a wallet.The good news of the tremendous worth we have in God's eyes can light up our inner self-portrait.

We do not develop habits of genuine love automatically. We learn by watching effective role models - most specifically by observing how our parents express love for each other day in and day out.

The fact that God accepts us should be our motivation for accepting ourselves. If we cannot accept ourselves the way we are, with our limitations and assets, weaknesses as well as strengths, shortcomings as well as abilities; then we cannot trust anyone else to accept us the way we are. We will always be putting on a front, building a facade around ourselves, never letting people know what we are really like deep down inside.

The first thing that stuck in the minds of the disciples was not the empty tomb, but rather the empty grave clothes - undisturbed in form and position.

Because the New Testament provides the primary historical source for information on the resurrection, many critics during the 19th century attacked the reliability of these biblical documents.

How do you spell love?... when you reach the point where the happiness, security and development of another person is as much of a driving force to you as your own happiness, security, and development, then you have a mature love. True love is spelled G-I-V-E. It is not based on what you can get, but rooted in what you can give to the other person.

Leaders of the world's religions said, 'What do you think about what I teach?' Jesus said, 'Who do you say I am?'(Luke 9:20)

While the resurrection promises us a new and perfect life in the future, God loves us too much to leave us alone to contend with the pain, guilt and loneliness of our present life.

If they had connived a scheme, and Christ had not been raised from the dead, where would have been the hardest place on the face of the earth to convince anyone? In Jerusalem.

Here's the simplest answer: Within weeks, the disciples proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that He had been bodily raised from the dead and appeared to them.

Many people entertain the idea that Christianity,like almost any other religion,is basically a system of beliefs-you know, a set of doctrines or a code of behavior, a philosophy, an ideology. But that's a myth. Christianity is not at all like Buddhism or Islam or Confucianism. The founders of those religions said (in effect), 'Here is what I teach. Believe my teachings. Follow my philosophy.' Jesus said, 'Follow me'(Matthew 9:9). Leaders of the world's religions said, 'What do you think about what I teach?' Jesus said, 'Who do you say I am?'(Luke 9:20)

Belief is knowing what you believe. Conviction is knowing why you believe it.

I once had a lot of hatred, mainly toward my father, an alcoholic.

Why don't the names of Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius offend people? The reason is that these others didn't claim to be God, but Jesus did.

Every kid needs to say, 'I want what my mom and dad have.’

I would say 90 percent of Christians do not have a worldview, in other words a view of the world, based on the Scripture and a relationship with God.

God created us, He created us for His glory, and He created us to have a relationship with Him, and He created us to be all that He desires us to be and He's jealous of that because He does not want to share that with others.

Now, whenever you read any historical document, you always evaluate it in light of the historical context.