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There is no gospel without the offence. This is God's wisdom. It never seems sensible to us in our flesh.

Mark Dever

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Mark Dever
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: August 28
Erudite
Missionary
Pastor
Preacher
Theologian
Writer
the United States of America
Seems
Without
Never
Offence
Sensible
Gospel
Flesh
Wisdom

More quotes by Mark Dever

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An evangelist no more imposes his views on others than a pilot imposes his views on his passengers when he lands a plane on a runway. I bet the passengers are glad!
Mark Dever
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We do not fail in our evangelism if we faithfully tell the gospel to someone who is not subsequently converted we fail only if we do not faithfully tell the gospel at all.
Mark Dever
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Sometimes we have to wait a long time to see conversions.
Mark Dever
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Every believer should evangelize. I know some Christians think that evangelism is only for people with special gifts for it, but I don't believe the New Testament teaches that. While Paul does say that some believers have the call to be evangelists, all of us have the responsibility of evangelism.
Mark Dever
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What really concerns me is for Christians to understand the fundamentals of evangelism in a way that is helpful in the contemporary scene.
Mark Dever
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When a person becomes a Christian, he doesn’t just join a local church because it’s a good habit for growing in spiritual maturity. He joins a local church because it’s the expression of what Christ has made him—a member of the body of Christ.
Mark Dever
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I think it's unhelpful to suggest that the task of evangelism is essentially the responsibility of ministers.
Mark Dever
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Most people are glad for somebody else to share their own story of how they have found spiritual help. The problems start when you begin to universalize your story - when your narrative becomes authoritative and begins affecting their lives as well.
Mark Dever
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Unbelief is like gravity, it's always pulling down on the authority of Scripture.
Mark Dever
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Evangelism is not simply looking at someone and saying, Look, you have to become a Christian. Instead, an evangelist tells us the truth about who God is, and explains where we stand as a result of that. People can ignore us - indeed, they have every legal right to do so.
Mark Dever
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Our examples of enduring hardship are often more powerful than our stories of success and triumph.
Mark Dever
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According to the New Testament, the church is primarily a body of people who profess and give evidence that they have been saved by God's grace alone, for His glory alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
Mark Dever
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It's fine to deal with people's doubts and explain why they have good reasons to believe in Christ. But until we tell them the good news of Jesus Christ, we haven't done our job. They need a saviour that God has provided them in Christ. Once they know that, we can do as much apologetics as we need to.
Mark Dever
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We may be sinking in the North Atlantic in the most famous ship disaster of all time, but God can still use us to reach out and save others through our witness.
Mark Dever
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The more you come to know the Bible - both in reading it extensively and also meditating on it deeply - the more integrated your understanding of all of life will be. And this means that there will be fewer steps between what you are doing at work and sharing your faith in Christ.
Mark Dever
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The difference between apologetics and evangelism is that in apologetics, you are answering objections that the world raises, whereas in evangelism, you are bringing the message that Christ brought. So unbelievers tend to set the agenda in apologetics, and you set the agenda in evangelism.
Mark Dever
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There is simply so much reason to believe the good news of Jesus Christ in history, in Scripture, as well as in our own experience that it would take a leap of faith not to believe in the gospel.
Mark Dever
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We can't know at any given time how God will bless our faithful witness. So the apparent numerical growth of the church is never a good guide to how faithful we have been in evangelism.
Mark Dever
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Too often preachers want to deal with people simply at the level of publicly accessible reason. We participate with them in their own epistemology. But this is not New Testament preaching. We have a message that is not from this world it is from God. We don't know it by our own cleverness we know it because God has revealed it.
Mark Dever
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As long as quick numerical growth remains the primary indicator of church health, the truth will be compromised. Instead, churches must once again begin measuring success not in terms of numbers but in terms of fidelity to the Scriptures.
Mark Dever