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Sometimes we have to wait a long time to see conversions.

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
Conversion
Wait
Waiting
Sometimes
Long
Time
Conversions

More quotes by 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.
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Worldliness in the church is a lot more pervasive than a lack of passion for evangelism. Nevertheless, one of the results of worldliness is a waning enthusiasm for evangelism.
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Avoiding the doctrine of Hell is one step away from denying it altogether.
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Membership is the church's corporate endorsement of a person's salvation.
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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.
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Unbelief is like gravity, it's always pulling down on the authority of Scripture.
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I think it's unhelpful to suggest that the task of evangelism is essentially the responsibility of ministers.
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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.
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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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Testimonies are great things about what the Lord has done for us, but no-one will be offended when you talk about what God has done for you. You need to be specific about sin, about Christ's death on the cross, about others' need for a saviour, and about their need to repent and trust in Christ.
Mark Dever
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We mustn't be content to just sit around pointing out the errors in others we actually need to be sharing the gospel and praying for people to be converted.
Mark Dever
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Sadly, there are some fine Christian people who believe that the only way to advance the gospel is to pray for revival and nothing else. You don't know if they have any non-Christian friends or if they have ever shared the gospel with anybody in the last 30 years. It's depressing going to prayer meetings like that. I don't want to pray like that.
Mark Dever
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The truly changed, truly converted, truly Christian heart can say with John Newton, “I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I wish to be. I am not what I hope to be. Yet I can truly say, I am not what I once was. By the grace of God, I am what I am.
Mark Dever
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Christians are defined not by our heritage, but by our mission not by our blood, but by His.
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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God can use even stray, honest comments to bring people to himself.
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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The church arises only from the gospel. And a distorted church usually coincides with a distorted gospel.
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
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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