Edward McKendree Bounds

Men of prayer, before anything else, are indispensable to the furtherance of the kingdom of God on earth. No other sort will fit in the scheme or do the deed. Men, great and influential in other things but small in prayer, cannot do the work Almighty God has set out for His Church to do in this, His world.

Prayer must be broad in its scope - it must plead for others. Intercession for others is the hallmark of all true prayer. When prayer is confined to self and to the sphere of one's personal needs, it dies by reason of its littleness, narrowness and selfishness.

We are feeble, weak and impoverished because of our failure to pray. God is restrained in doing because we are restrained by reason of our non-praying. All failures in securing heaven are traceable to lack of prayer or misdirected petition.

The men to whom Jesus Christ committed the fortunes and destiny of His Church were men of prayer. To no other kind of men has God ever committed Himself in this world.

Men who pray are, in reality, the only religious men, and it takes a full-measured man to pray.

Nothing is more important to God than prayer in dealing with mankind. But it is likewise all-important to man to pray.

We may excuse the spiritual poverty of our preaching in many ways, but the true secret will be found in the lack of urgent prayer for God's presence in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men - men of prayer.

Christianity is not rationalism, but faith in God's revelation. A conspicuous, all-important item in that revelation is the resurrection of the body.

Woe to the generation of sons who find their censers empty of the rich incense of prayer, whose fathers have been too busy or too unbelieving to pray, and perils inexpressible and consequences untold are their unhappy heritage.

The Scriptures bear ample and continuous evidence that the faith of the resurrection of the body lies in the faith that Jesus Christ died and rose again.

Faith accepts the Bible as the word and will of God and rests upon its truth without question and without other evidence.