10 Powerful Quotes from Paul Washer About the American Church

Paul Washer is known for a lot of things. Pulling punches when preaching is not one of them.

He has the rare ability to speak pure – sometimes harsh – Biblical truth while not asserting a prideful or self-righteous position as a person. His famous sermon, (now published as an eBook), Ten Indictments Against The Modern Church speaks some painful truth about the state of evangelicalism today. Here are the ten quotes I found to be the most powerful, relevant, and important in his message. 

1. “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 (Timothy 2:14; 1 Peter 2:9), then you want something God does not want.”

2. “Sunday morning is the greatest hour of idolatry in the entire week of America, because the great mass 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!”

3. “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.”

4. “Here in America, because of the last several decades of modern evangelism, the idea of ‘born again’ is totally lost. Now it only means that at one time in a crusade, you made a decision and you think you were sincere. But there is no evidence of a supernatural recreated work of the Holy Spirit in your life. ‘If any man,’ not if some men, ‘if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.’ (2 Corinthians 5:17).”

5. “And I am here to tell you, if there is anything I have declared war on, it is the sinner’s prayer. Yes, in the same way that dependence upon infant baptism for salvation, in my opinion, was the golden calf of the Reformation, the sinner’s prayer is the golden calf of today for the Baptists, the Evangelicals, and everyone else who has followed them. The sinner’s prayer has sent more people to hell than anything on the face of the earth!”

6. “We don’t have a lot of churches in America; we have a lot of really nice brick buildings on finely manicured lawns!”

7. “‘Just as many people are going out the back doors,’ they say, ‘as are coming in the front doors, and the reason why this is happening is because we are not discipling people.’ No! The reason why it is happening is because people aren’t getting converted. They show themselves as unconverted because Christ’s sheep hear His voice and follow Him (John 10:3), whether you disciple them or not.”

8. “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!”

9. “Upon what are you rearing your children and loving your wife? Based upon what? If you can’t start going into Scriptures right now and showing me how your family is founded upon it, I can assure you, you are a captive to psychology, sociology, and the whims and lies of this age.”

10. “’Exercise thyself rather unto godliness. For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.’ Oh, my dear friends, who cares about ‘your best life now’? It is all about eternity! Someday you will stand in those granite halls before the Lord of glory, and kings and the greatest men on earth will be divided and split and culled—some cast into eternal hell and some invited into eternal glory to live for eternity. 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! Their moment of glory and all they have lived for is over! Cannot you give equal for eternal things?”

Quotes taken from Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church by Paul Washer. Download the free Kindle eBook now or watch the message online.

 Eric is a blogger, videographer, designer, and full-time missionary with Rooftop Missions. While in the US, he works to raise support to help fund pastors and orphanages in closed countries. When he is traveling internationally, he provides leadership training for national pastors, as well as documenting the trips through photography and video. To partner with Eric financially, click here.