Heroes in the Faith
May their stories not be forgotten
Aged bishop of Smyrna
"He who grants me to endure the fire will enable me also to remain on the pyre unmoved, without the security you desire from nails."
Bible translator whose version lasted a millennium.
"Make knowledge of the Scripture your love … Live with them, meditate on them, make them the sole object of your knowledge and inquiries."
Champion of the serious, devout, and holy life
"He therefore is a devout man who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life parts of piety by doing everything in the name of God."
Passionate reformer
"At last meditating day and night, by the mercy of God, I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith. Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and had entered paradise itself through the gates that had been flung open."
Missionary-explorer of Africa
"[I am] serving Christ when shooting a buffalo for my men or taking an observation, [even if some] will consider it not sufficiently or even at all missionary."
Architect of the Middle Ages
"Mankind is divided into two sorts: such as live according to man, and such as live according to God. These we call the two cities… The Heavenly City outshines Rome. There, instead of victory, is truth"
Courageous theologian
"Faith is awe in the presence of the divine incognito; it is the love of God that is aware of the qualitative difference between God and man and God and the world."
The brilliant "dumb ox"
"In order that men might have knowledge of God, free of doubt and uncertainty, it was necessary for divine truth to be delivered to them by way of faith, being told to them as it were, by God himself who cannot lie."
Revivalist who moved with the times
"Sin is black, grace abounds, the will is free."—one biographer's summary of Lyman Beecher's Theology
Five-time exile for fighting “orthodoxy”
"Those who maintain 'There was a time when the Son was not' rob God of his Word, like plunderers."
Author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
"[Uncle Tom's Cabin is] perhaps the most influential novel ever published, a verbal earthquake, an ink-and-paper tidal wave." —one of Harriet Beecher Stowe's critics
Murdered archbishop of Canterbury
"For the name of Jesus and the protection of the church I am ready to embrace death."
Mystery writer and apologist
"Man is never truly himself except when he is actively creating something."
Father and maker of church history
"I feel inadequate to do [church history] justice as the first to venture on such an undertaking, a traveler on a lonely and untrodden path."
Salty evangelist
"Nowadays we think we are too smart to believe in the Virgin birth of Jesus and too well educated to believe in the Resurrection. That's why people are going to the devil in multitudes."
Spanish mystic of the soul’s dark night
"Turn not to the easiest, but to the most difficult … not to the more, but to the less; not towards what is high and precious, but to what is low and despised; not towards desiring anything, but to desiring nothing."
Russian novelist of spiritual depth
"If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth."
“Enormous” Essayist, poet, writer
"What can one be but frivolous about serious things? Without frivolity they are simply too tremendous."
Martyrologist
"What storms and tempests it [the church] hath overpast, wondrous it is to behold."
“The Fifth Evangelist”
"At a reverent performance of music, God is always at hand with his gracious presence."
Mystic and political activist
"[You are] not to love Me for your own sake, or your neighbor for your own sake, but to love Me for Myself, yourself for Myself, your neighbor for Myself." —from a divine vision to Catherine of Siena
America's greatest theologian
"[I wish] to lie low before God, as in the dust; that I might be nothing, and that God might be all, that I might become as a little child."
Controversial evangelist to China
"Those that adore Heaven instead of the Lord of Heaven are like a man who, desiring to pay the emperor homage, prostrates himself before the imperial palace at Peking and venerates its beauty."
First Christian emperor
"I have experienced this in others and in myself, for I walked not in the way of righteousness. … But the Almighty God, who sits in the court of heaven, granted what I did not deserve."
Faith missionary to China
"China is not to be won for Christ by quiet, ease-loving men and women … The stamp of men and women we need is such as will put Jesus, China, [and] souls first and foremost in everything and at every time—even life itself must be secondary."
Father of American revivalism
"I have a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead his cause, and cannot plead yours."
Fabled Victorian writer
"With his divine alchemy, he [God] turns not only water into wine, but common things into radiant mysteries, yea, every meal into a Eucharist, and the jaws of death into an outgoing gate."
Founder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits)
"Without seeing any vision, he understood and knew many things, as well spiritual things as things of the faith." —Ignatius of Loyola, writing of himself
First General of the Salvation Army
"I seemed to hear a voice sounding in my ears, 'Where can you go and find such heathen as these, and where is there so great a need for your labors?'"
Unrelenting advocate for the poor
"What is the most effectual method of making Christianity so to bear upon a population as that it shall reach every door and be brought into contact with all families?"
Translator of the first English New Testament
"Let it not make thee despair, neither yet discourage thee, O reader, that it is forbidden thee in pain of life and goods, or that it is made breaking of the king's peace, or treason unto his highness, to read the Word of thy soul's health—for if God be on our side, what matter maketh it who be against us, be they bishops, cardinals, popes."
Godly English statesman
"Social reforms, so necessary, so indispensable, require as much of God's grace as a change of heart."
Presbyterian with a sword
"The sword of justice is God's, and if princes and rulers fail to use it, others may."
Evangelist to millions
"When God gets ready to shake America, he may not take the Ph.D. and the D.D. God may choose a country boy … and I pray that he would!"
Reformed slave trader
"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me."
Abolitionist and women’s rights advocate
"The Lord has made me a sign unto this nation, an' I go round a'testifyin' an' showin' on 'em their sins agin my people."
Saintly king of France
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem." —Louis IX's dying words
Scientific and spiritual prodigy
"The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know at all."
Pre-Reformation reformer
"Lord Jesus, it is for thee that I patiently endure this cruel death. I pray thee to have mercy on my enemies."
Revivalist with a common touch
"If this world is going to be reached, I am convinced that it must be done by men and women of average talent."
Medieval “protestant”
"Trust wholly in Christ; rely altogether on his sufferings; beware of seeking to be justified in any other way than by his righteousness."
Evangelical Mentor and Model
"On the Wednesday of Holy Week began a hope of mercy. On the Thursday, that hope increased. On … Easter Day … I awoke with these words upon my heart and lips: Jesus Christ is risen today, hallelujah, hallelujah!"
Pious humanist who sparked the Reformation
"Would that the farmer might sing snatches of Scripture at his plough and that the weaver might hum phrases of Scripture to the tune of his shuttle, that the traveler might lighten with stories from Scripture the weariness of his journey."
Pope and international diplomat
"As the primacy of the apostolic see is based on the title of the blessed Peter, … no illicit steps may be taken against this see to usurp its authority."
“Servant of the Servants of God”
"Act in such a way that your humility may not be weakness, nor your authority be severity. Justice must be accompanied by humility, that humility may render justice lovable."
Misjudged astronomer
"God is known by nature in his works, and by doctrine in his revealed word."
Mystical founder of the Franciscans
"Praised be You, my Lord, with all your creatures, especially Sir Brother Sun, who is the day and through whom You give us light."
Teenage war hero with visions
"If I were to say that God sent me, I shall be condemned, but God really did send me."
Author of the most popular devotional classic
"We must imitate Christ's life and his ways if we are to be truly enlightened and set free from the darkness of our own hearts. Let it be the most important thing we do."
Most talented bishop of the early church
"When we are speaking about truth and life and redemption, we are speaking about Christ."
Puritan author of Paradise Lost
"Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, … but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself."
Christian ruler of a “holy” empire
"Our task [as secular ruler] is externally, with God's help, to defend with our arms the holy Church of Christ against attacks by the heathen from any side and against devastation by the infidels."
First friend
"These things I did not see by the help of man, nor by the letter … but I saw them in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by his immediate spirit and power, as did the holy men of God by whom the Holy Scriptures were written."
Greatest Byzantine
There are two great gifts which God, in his love for man, has granted from on high: the priesthood and the imperial dignity" —Justinian I
Medieval England’s greatest storyteller
"Now I beg all those that listen to this little treatise [Canterbury Tales], or read it, that if there be anything in it that pleases them, they thank our Lord Jesus Christ for it, from whom proceeds all understanding and goodness."
Modernist poet
"The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre— To be redeemed from fire by fire."
Father of English hymnody
"Joy to the world, the Lord is come / Let earth receive her King / Let every heart, prepare him room / And heaven and nature sing."
Biblical scholar and philosopher
"We who by our prayers destroy all demons which stir up wars, violate oaths, and disturb the peace are of more help to the emperors than those who seem to be doing the fighting."
Medieval reformer and mystic
"You wish me to tell you why and how God should be loved. My answer is that God himself is the reason he is to be loved."
Antislavery politician
"So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the [slave] trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition."
Father of modern Protestant missions
"Expect great things; attempt great things."
First missionary to Japan
"Be great in little things."
Father of English history
"It has ever been my delight to learn or teach or write."
England’s greatest religious poet
"A verse may find him who a sermon flies."
Apostles to the Slavs
"One cannot estimate the significance, for the future of Orthodoxy, of the Slavonic translations [of Cyril and Methodius]."—Orthodox apologist Timothy Ware
High society believer
"It will all happen in the prisoner's dock as God wills, for you may be sure that we are not left to ourselves but are all in his power."
Mistaken founder of Adventism
"We have passed what the world calls the last round of 1843 … Does your heart begin to quail? Or are you waiting for your blessed hope in the glorious appearing of Jesus Christ?"
Prime Minister of impeccable morals
"My political or public life is the best part of my life: it is that part in which I am conscious of the greatest effort to do and avoid as the Lord Christ would have me do and avoid."
Moderate in an Age of Extremes
"I preached … as a dying man to dying men."
Father of western monasticism
"The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love."
The “Moses” of Her People
"I always tole God, 'I'm gwine [going] to hole stiddy on you, an' you've got to see me through.'"
Sensational Evangelist of Britain and America
"I would give a hundred guineas, if I could say 'Oh' like Mr. Whitefield." — Actor David Garrick
Pilgrim who made progress in prison
"I saw a man clothed with rags … a book in his hand and a great burden upon his back."
Reluctant bishop with a remarkable mind
"No one but one who is God-man can make the satisfaction by which man is saved."
Benedictine abbess, visionary, and writer
"A fiery light, flashing intensely, came from the open vault of heaven and poured through my whole brain. Like a flame that is hot without burning it kindled all my heart and all my breast … Suddenly I could understand."
Poet of God’s love
"Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so."
Defender of the “true philosophy”
"I fell in love with the prophets and these men who had loved Christ; I reflected on all their words and found that this philosophy alone was true and profitable."
Champion of the social gospel
"Christ's conception of the kingdom of God came to me as a new revelation. Here was the idea and purpose that had dominated the mind of the Master himself … I found … this new conception … strangely satisfying. It responded to all the old and all the new elements of my religious life."
Mother of the holiness movement
"Earnest prayers, long fasting, and burning tears may seem befitting, but cannot move the heart of infinite love to a greater willingness to save. God's time is now. The question is not, What have I been? or What do I expect to be? But, Am I now trusting in Jesus to save to the uttermost? If so, I am now saved from all sin."
Father of dispensationalism
"The Christian is directed to turn away from evil and turn to the Scriptures."
The “Se-Baptist”
"Baptism is not washing with water: but it is the baptism of the Spirit, the confession of the mouth, and the washing with water."
Emperor who made Christianity the Roman religion
"He … earned the title 'the Great' because of his devout Christianity." —Michael Grant
Theologian for the intelligentsia
"Let us remove the ignorance and darkness that spreads like a mist over our sight, and let us get a vision of the true God."
Militant Swiss reformer
"For God's sake, do not put yourself at odds with the Word of God. For truly it will persist as surely as the Rhine follows its course. One can perhaps dam it up for awhile, but it is impossible to stop it."
Foursquare phenomenon
"Never did I hear such language from a human being. Without one moment's intermission, she would talk from an hour to an hour and a half, holding her audience spellbound." — a reporter's description
Father of the Reformed faith
"I labored at the task [writing The Institutes] especially for our Frenchmen, for I saw that many were hungering and thirsting after Christ and yet that only a few had any real knowledge of him."
This 18th century Irishman became one of the founders of the Church of Christ.
"The union of Christians with the apostles' testimony is all-sufficient and alone sufficient to the conversion of the world."
Methodical pietist
"About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed."
Anabaptist peacemaker
"If the Head had to suffer such torture, anguish, misery, and pain, how shall his servants, children, and members expect peace and freedom as to their flesh?"
The English composer behind the “Messiah.”
"He [Handel] would frequently declare the pleasure he felt in setting the Scriptures to music, and how contemplating the many sublime passages in the Psalms had contributed to his edification." —Sir John Hawkins
Finest nineteenth-century preacher
"I am perhaps vulgar, but it is not intentional, save that I must and will make people listen."
Christ-centered Moravian “brother”
"There can be no Christianity without community."
Prison reformer
" … to form in them, as much as possible, those habits of sobriety, order, and industry, which may render them docile and peaceable while in prison, and respectable when they leave it."
Philosopher of science
"Knowledge is the rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate"
Dutch painter of the soul
"[He paints with] the greatest and most natural emotion." — a description of Rembrandt's style
Preacher who gave his utmost
"The great word of Jesus to his disciples is abandon. When God has brought us into the relationship of disciples, we have to venture on his word; trust entirely to him and watch that when he brings us to the venture, we take it."
Worldly creator of divine verse
"O conscience, upright and stainless, how bitter a sting to thee is a little fault!"
Image-conscious Arab
"I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which works for my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God."