"He who bestows his goods upon the poor shall have as much again and ten times more."
—John Bunyan
"If any prophet, speaking in a trance, says, 'Give me your money (or anything else),' do not listen to him."
—the Didache
"Shun, as you would the plague, a cleric who from being poor has become wealthy, or who, from being nobody has become a celebrity."
—Jerome
"Do you know why God wants you rich? So you can do more. The wealthier you become, the more responsible you are to God."
—Jerry Savelle
"He that serves God for money will serve the Devil for better wages."
—Sir Roger L'Estrange
"I continually find it necessary to guard against that natural love of wealth and grandeur which prompts us always, when we come to apply our general doctrine to our own case, to claim an exception."
—William Wilberforce
"Perhaps the moral ambiguity of money is most plainly evidenced in the popular belief that money itself has value and that the worth of other things or of men is somehow measured in monetary terms, rather than the other way around."
—William Stringfellow
"It is more blessed to give than to receive, and therefore less blessed to receive than to give."
—Thomas Chalmers
"Put God to work for you and maximize your potential in our divinely ordered capitalist system."
—Norman Vincent Peale
"Money degrades all the gods of man and converts them into commodities."
—Karl Marx
"No one can earn a million dollars honestly."
—William Jennings Bryan
"Even if we were not sinful by nature, the sin of having private property would suffice to condemn us before God; for that which he gives us freely, we appropriate to ourselves."
—Ulrich Zwingli
"Evangelical agencies with ready funding may have too little depth and vision to cope with the current conflict. God's kingdom is built not on perpetual motion, one-liners, and flashbulbs but on Christ."
—Carl. F. Henry
"There is no such thing as Success. … That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey."
—G.K. Chesterton
"Money is God in action."
—Reverend Ike
"Nothing that is God's is obtainable by money"
—Tertullian
"Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected … . Hoarding is idolotry."
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Copyright © 1987 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine. Click here for reprint information on Christian History.
