# Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church

## Metadata
- Author: [[Paul Washer]]
- Full Title: Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church
- Category: #books
## Highlights
- When you come to believe as a people that the Bible is inspired, you have only fought half the battle, because the question is not merely “is the Bible inspired?” i.e., is it inerrant? The major question following that, which must be answered, is this: Is the Bible sufficient,[13] or do we have to bring in every so-called social science and cultural study in order to know how to run a church? That is the major question! ([Location 103](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=103))
- Our missionary activity, our church activity, and everything we do ought to flow from the theologian and the exegete—the man who opens up his Bible and has only one question: What is Thy will, Oh God? We are not to send out questionnaires to carnal people to discover what kind of church they would attend! ([Location 118](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=118))
- A church ought to be seeker friendly, but the church ought to recognize there is only one Seeker. His name is God!—and if you want to be friendly to someone, if you want to accommodate someone, accommodate Him and His glory, even if it is rejected by everyone else. We are not called to build empires. We are not called to be excessive. We are called to glorify God. And if you want the Church to be something other than a peculiar people[14](Ti 2:14; 1Pe 2:9), then you want something God does not want. ([Location 120](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=120))
- Start now. There are so many different things you want to know and do, and so many books you want to read. Get out a book on God—this one, the Bible—and study it to know Him, to know Him! ([Location 164](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=164))
- Sunday morning is the greatest hour of idolatry in the entire week of America, because the great mass at least of people are not worshipping the one true God. They instead are worshipping a god formed out of their own hearts by their own flesh, satanic devices, and worldly intelligence. They have made a god just like themselves—and he looks more like Santa Claus than he does Jehovah. There can be no fear of the Lord among us, because there is no knowledge of the Lord among us! ([Location 166](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=166))
- Today we just walk in and talk to them, give them three exploratory questions, and ask them if they want to pray a prayer and ask Jesus to come into their heart. We make a two-fold son of hell who will never again be open to the Gospel because of the religious lie that we, as evangelicals, have spewed out of our mouth. ([Location 193](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=193))
- We are deceivers when we deal with the malady of men lightly, like shepherds of Jeremiah’s day. “They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.” (Jer 6:14). ([Location 201](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=201))
- Our world is overrun with this disgusting malady of self-esteem[19]—our greatest problem is that we esteem self more than we esteem God! ([Location 210](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=210))
- When you refuse to teach on the radical depravity of men, it is an impossibility that you bring glory to God, His Christ, and His Cross—because the Cross of Jesus Christ and its glory is most magnified when it is placed in front of the backdrop of our depravity. ([Location 215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=215))
- “Pursue peace with all men,” the writer of Hebrews tells us, “and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb 12:14). Does anybody believe this? A pastor says, “But Brother Paul, I have been blamed so often for teaching, you know, ‘works’ religion.” Listen to me. Listen. It goes back again to regeneration and the providence of God. If God truly converts a man, He will continue working in that man, through teaching, blessing, admonition, and discipline. He will see to it that the work He has begun will be finished. And that is why the writer says, “Without holiness no one will see the Lord.” Why?—because if there is no growth in holiness, then God is not working in your life. And if He is not working in your life, it is because you are not His child! ([Location 601](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=601))
- If God truly converts a man, He will continue working in that man, through teaching, blessing, admonition, and discipline. He will see to it that the work He has begun will be finished. And that is why the writer says, “Without holiness no one will see the Lord.” Why?—because if there is no growth in holiness, then God is not working in your life. And if He is not working in your life, it is because you are not His child! ([Location 603](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=603))
- Look at the difference between Jacob and Esau. “Jacob I loved...Esau I hated” (Rom 9:13). Yet God fulfilled all His promises to both of them. Jacob was blessed; Esau was blessed. How did God demonstrate His judgments and wrath against Esau, and His love toward Jacob? First, He let them both run wild. But in Esau there was no work of discipline, no work of godly correction, nothing—this was the wrath of God upon him! But God severely disciplined Jacob almost every day of his life—this was the love of God upon him! It was the loving discipline, the correction of God, to bring him to holiness. And it is the same for all true believers today. ([Location 607](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=607))
- The heart, my friend, is not some blood-pumping muscle or some figment of a poet’s imagination. In the Bible, heart refers to the very essence or core of your being. Don’t tell me Jesus has the very essence and core of your being and it doesn’t affect your whole body and life. It just does not happen that way! ([Location 619](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=619))
- In the Bible, heart refers to the very essence or core of your being. Don’t tell me Jesus has the very essence and core of your being and it doesn’t affect your whole body and life. It just does not happen that way! ([Location 619](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=619))
- do not agree with everything the Puritans said, but I do love the Puritans, and one of the reasons why I love them is because I believe they honestly made an attempt to bring everything in their lives under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Everything! ([Location 623](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=623))
- Some of you young men, you cry out probably more than I do that the Spirit of God would fill you and work in you, but it only takes one-half hour of television to so grieve Him, that He will be miles from you. If water is ninety-nine percent pure, and 1% sewer, then I am not drinking it! ([Location 633](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=633))
- One time I was struggling, and Leonard Ravenhill heard about it from my friend, and he sent a tract to me. I still have that tract. I will never, never part with that. It says, “Others can; you cannot.” Young man, listen to me: I don’t go to malls. I don’t, and not because I am more holy than you. It is because I know what I am! ([Location 635](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=635))
- You say, “I want the power of God on my life”—then something has got to go. “I want to know Him”—then some separation from the world has to occur! ([Location 640](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=640))
- Maybe you need to get alone in the wilderness with God, and fast for seven days on your knees studying the book of Psalms—just being alone with God, belonging to Him. ([Location 643](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=643))
- Today in our churches, there is a silence on separation from the world. “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness?” (2Co 6:14)—nothing! Or “what fellowship has light with darkness?” (vs. 14)—nothing! Darkness is the opposite of God’s revelation. Or what harmony does Christ have with devils? (vs. 15)—nothing! Or what has the believer in common with the unbeliever? (vs. 15)—nothing! The Lord says, “Come out from their midst” (vs. 17). Come out from the midst of what? Come out from the midst of lawlessness, darkness, satanic devices, and the life and worldliness of the unbeliever. Come out from it! ([Location 646](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=646))
- Just because there seems to be beautiful worship, and the sermon went well, and people seem to be moved, that is not evidence of real spirituality. I will tell you what evidence is: the home, the marriages, the families.[40] ([Location 657](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=657))
- Young men, I can tell you this. Being born in the age that you have been born, unless you are some exception, if you are under 30, yea, even under 40—you probably lack discipline because you have never been required to really work. You have never needed to work for your food—and your fathers probably never made you work so hard that your bones cried. The men who have accomplished much and have been used of God, have been men of labor in the ministry. Effectual ministry is hard, and it will cost you everything! And by the time you are an old man, you will be broken—but strong in the things of God! “Exercise thyself rather ([Location 766](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=766))
- These Olympic athletes, how majestic they are—but only for a moment. They start training when they are four and five years old. They never do anything but train until they are twenty-two. They run a nine-second race for a medal they hang up on a wall, and that’s it! There moment of glory and all they have lived for is over! Cannot you give equal for eternal things? ([Location 774](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=774))
- We are men of God. We are ministers of the most high. There should be an otherness about us. We should have a distant gaze in our eyes towards a distant star. The greatest thing we can do for our people is to be men of God, absorbed in the things of God, so that when we open our mouths the Word of God comes out. ([Location 794](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=794))
- I have a question, pastor: when was the last time you examined your own life to see if you were in the faith, to see if you really know the Lord? You see, my dear friend, I have great assurance when I study my own conversion, when I discuss it with other men, when I look over the twenty-five years of my pilgrimage with Christ, I have great assurance of having come to know Him. But even now, if I were to depart from the faith, and walk away, and keep going in that direction, into heresy, into worldliness, it could be the greatest of proofs that I never knew Him—that the whole thing was a work of the flesh. ([Location 805](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008H3T5Z8&location=805))