Quotes & Sayings About God's Not Dead

Under no circumstances are you to butter your entire roll and, my God!" she cried suddenly, switching Lan's hand three times in rapid succession. "Never lick your knife!" "Ouch! Fine! Buggering fuck! Leave off with that beshitted thing!" The dead woman let out a sound like the chirping of a bird, staring at her with an indignation that was nearly horror. "Ladies," she sputtered at last. "Ladies do not say bugger or fuck!" "But beshitted's all right?" Lan asked cautiously. "No, it is not!" "You know, I may not be as mannered-up as you are, but in Norwood, it's rude to yell at the table. — R. Lee Smith

How could anyone love Him? What did you just tell me yourself about the world? Don't you see, everybody hates God now. It's not that God is dead in the twentieth century. It's that everybody hates Him! At least I think so. — Anne Rice

The Bible is not, in other words, simply a list of true doctrines or a collection of proper moral commands - though it includes plenty of both. The Bible is not simply the record of what various people thought as they struggled to know God and follow him, though it is that as well. It is not simply the record of past revelations, as though what mattered were to study such things in the hopes that one might have one for oneself. It is the book whose whole narrative is about new creation, that is, about resurrection, so that when each of the gospels ends with the raising of Jesus from the dead, and when Revelation ends with new heavens and new earth populated by God's people risen from the dead, this should come not as a surprise but as the ultimate fulfillment of what the story had been about all along. — N. T. Wright

For I choose to follow not men or men's doctrines, but God and the doctrines [delivered] by Him. For if you have fallen in with some who are called Christians, but who do not admit this [truth], and venture to blaspheme the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven; do not imagine that they are Christians — Justin Martyr

If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild. — C.S. Lewis

How wicked it would be, if we could, to call the dead back! She said not to me but to the chaplain, 'I am at peace with God.' She smiled, but not at me. Poi si torno all' eterna fontana. — C.S. Lewis

Ammanas slipped noiselessly forward until he was on the other side of the corpse. 'It's her, isn't it.'
'It is.'
'How many times do our followers have to die, Cotillion?' the god asked, then sighed. 'Then again, she clearly ceased being a follower some time ago.'
'She thought we were gone, Ammanas. The Emperor and Dancer. Gone. Dead.'
'And in a way, she was right.'
'In a way, aye. But not in the most important way.'
'Which is?'
Cotillion glanced up, then grimaced. 'She was a friend.'
'Ah, that most important way. — Steven Erikson

I cried out for the pain of man,
I cried out for my bitter wrath
Against the hopeless life that ran
For ever in a circling path
From death to death since all began;
Till on a summer night
I lost my way in the pale starlight
And saw our planet, far and small,
Through endless depths of nothing fall
A lonely pin-prick spark of light,
Upon the wide, enfolding night,
With leagues on leagues of stars above it,
And powdered dust of stars below-
Dead things that neither hate nor love it
Not even their own loveliness can know,
Being but cosmic dust and dead.
And if some tears be shed,
Some evil God have power,
Some crown of sorrow sit
Upon a little world for a little hour-
Who shall remember? Who shall care for it? — C.S. Lewis

I love you," he said. "Oh, dear God, Skye, you have to know it. And if you'd gone ... "
He saw Eriko lying dead. He felt the roughness of the rocks he had piled to make her grave. And he said good-bye to her.
"Jamie," Skye said, shushing him as she put her hands on his head. "I - I ... you're my brother in all things. And that how I love you, too."
He froze as the meaning of her words penetrated the tidal wave of his emotions. "I'm not too late. I didn't tell you too late," he said desperately.
She hesitated. And then she said, "Holgar."
No. Jamie's world stopped. — Nancy Holder

Those who have overcome self-will and become instruments to do God's work can accomplish tasks which are seemingly impossible, but they experience no feeling of self achievement. I now know myself to be a part of the infinite cosmos, not separate from other souls or God. My illusory self is dead; the real self controls the garment of clay and uses it for God's work. — Peace Pilgrim

But he alone having reached our deep corruption, he alone having taken upon himself our labors, he alone having suffered the punishments due for our impieties, having recovered us who were not half dead merely, but were already in tombs and sepulchers, and altogether foul and offensive, saves us, both anciently and now, by his beneficent zeal, beyond the expectation of any one, even of ourselves, and imparts liberally of the Father's benefits - he who is the giver of life and light, our great Physician and King and Lord, the Christ of God. — Eusebius

Since both the departed saints and we ourselves are in Christ, we share with them in the 'communion of saints.' They are still our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we celebrate the Eucharist they are there with us, along with the angels and archangels. Why then should we not pray for and with them? The reason the Reformers and their successors did their best to outlaw praying for the dead was because that had been so bound up with the notion of purgatory and the need to get people out of it as soon as possible. Once we rule out purgatory, I see no reason why we should not pray for and with the dead and every reason why we should - not that they will get out of purgatory but that they will be refreshed and filled with God's joy and peace. Love passes into prayer; we still love them; why not hold them, in that love, before God? — N. T. Wright

16 So the promise is received by faith. It is given as a free gift. And we are all certain to receive it, whether or not we live according to the law of Moses, if we have faith like Abraham's. For Abraham is the father of all who believe. 17 That is what the Scriptures mean when God told him, "I have made you the father of many nations."[*] This happened because Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing. — Anonymous

On A Cold Day, Of A Cool Walking

The day is cold, and the clouds are gray.
The grass is white with frost, and may I say?
The sun is coming up, over the hill.
It's so quiet, and so still.
In the midst of all the trees, by the broke I see.
Something moving in the bush; what could it be?
The frost falls from the dead leaves, as he hops about in the breeze.
It's a bunny, all bundled up with fur, so he will not freeze.
Life keeps on going, even when we think not.
Where are you going, and what is your lot?
Looking for God's Love, from up above?
Jesus will fly to you, like a dove.
He is there; just start talking.
On a cold day, of a cool walking. — Jerrel C. Thomas

Resurrection. In the crude form in which it is preached to console the weak, it is alien to me. I have always understood Christ's words about the living and the dead in a different sense. Where could you find room for all these hordes of people accumulated over thousands of years? The universe isn't big enough for them; God, the good, and meaningful purpose would be crowded out. They'd be crushed by these throngs greedy merely for the animal life.
But all the time, life, one, immense, identical throughout its innumerable combinations and transformations, fills the universe and is continually reborn. You are anxious about whether you will rise from the dead or not, but you rose from the dead when you were born and you didn't notice it. — Boris Pasternak

We are to count on this fact that we are dead to sin's rule, that we can stand up to it and say no. Therefore we are to guard our bodies so that sin does not reign in us.
So we see that God has made provision for our holiness. Through Christ He has delivered us from sin's reign so that we can now resist sin. But the responsibility for resisting is ours. — Jerry Bridges

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing. — Douglas Adams

As an actor, you've worked very hard, and you've been doing this for 20-some years, and William Morris was never interested - or any studio, either - in your company or as an actor, and then 'God's Not Dead' happens, and now everyone calls you. — David A.R. White

By endeavoring to bring up our children in the fear of the Lord, we shall provide for God's glory when we are dead. A godly man should not only honor God while he lives - but do something that may promote God's glory when he is dead. If our children are seasoned with gracious principles, they will stand up in our place when we have gone, and will glorify God in their generation. A good piece of ground bears not only a fore-crop but an after-crop. He who is godly does not only bear God a good crop of obedience himself while he lives - but by training his child in the principles of piety, he bears God an after-crop when he is dead. — Thomas Watson

A ridiculous fear pursued me, in fact: one could not die without having confessed all one's lies. Not to God or to one of his representatives; I was above that, as you well imagine. No, it was a matter of confessing to men, to a friend, to a beloved woman, for example. Otherwise, were there but one lie hidden in life, death made it definitive. No one, ever again, would know the truth at this point, since the only one to know it was precisely the dead man sleeping on his secret. The absolute murder of truth used to make me dizzy. — Albert Camus

If God on the Cross is God shamming a human tragedy, it turns the Passion of Christ into the Farce of Christ. The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste for death forever in His mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love. That was Father Martin's answer. — Yann Martel

If you have no share in the living Lord may God have mercy upon you! If you have no share in Christ's rising from the dead then you will not be raised up in the likeness of His glorified body. If you do not attain to that resurrection from among the dead then you must abide in death. — Charles Spurgeon

Has anyone provided proof of God's inexistence? Not even close. Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close. Have our sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close. Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough. Has secularism in the terrible 20th century been a force for good? Not even close, to being close. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on. — David Berlinski

God the Eater
There is a god in whom I do not believe
Yet to this god my love stretches,
This god whom I do not believe in is
My whole life, my life and I am his.
Everything that I have of pleasure and pain
(Of pain, of bitter pain and men's contempt)
I give this god for him to feed upon
As he is my whole life and I am his.
When I am dead I hope that he will eat
Everything I have been and have not been
And crunch and feed upon it and grow fat
Eating my life all up as it is his. — Stevie Smith

The Lesson You've Got
to learn is the someday you'll someday
stagger to, blinking in cold light, all tears
shed, ready to poke your bovine head
in the yoke they've shaped.
Everyone learns this. Born, everyone
breathes, pays tax, plants dead
and hurts galore. There's grief enough
for each. My mother
learned by moving man to man,
outlived them all. The parched earth's
bare (once she leaves it) of any who watched
the instants I trod it.
Other than myself, of course.
I've made a study of bearing
and forbearance. Everyone does,
it turns out, and note
those faces passing by: Not one's a god. — Mary Karr

You see pictures of Buddha and he's sitting, reclining, at peace. The Hindus have their twelve-armed elephant god, who also seems so content but not powerless. But leave it to Christians to have a dead and bloody man nailed to a cross. — Dave Eggers

Good God!" Avery gasped at the bloody wound on Lucien's head and Cedric's grief-stricken expression.
"You were dueling?" Sir John growled. "Fools."
He relieved Lawrence of Lucien's feet to help carry the unconscious Marquess up the stairs to an empty bedroom.
The second Lucien was on the bed Lady Rochester burst into the room, fire in her eyes. "Is he dead?" she asked, panic creeping into her.
"The blow glanced his skull," Lawrence said. "He may still live."
"May? Oh, he will not die. I want to kill him myself and he will not deny me that."

-His Wicked Seduction — Lauren Smith

Is there something you are allowing to escape your grasp or to expire that was clearly within our reach? Are you stuck with the mentality that if God wants you to have it, He'll give it to you? Or if its meant to be, it will be? Don't fool yourself; Nothing just happens! There is a cause and effect to everything in life and you need to be an active participant in the creation of your destiny. Becoming a silent partner with God is still not enough because faith without works is dead. — Dwaun S. Cox

Symmetry is only a property of dead things. Did you ever see a tree or a mountain that was symmetrical? It's fine for buildings, but if you ever see a symmetrical human face, you will have the impression that you ought to think it beautiful, but that in fact you find it cold. The human heart likes a little disorder in its geometry, Kyria Pelagia. Look at your face in a mirror, Signorina, and you will see that one eyebrow is a little higher than the other, that the set of the lid of your left eye is such that the eye is a fraction more open that the other. It is these things that make you both attractive and beautiful, whereas ... otherwise you would be a statue. Symmetry is for God, not for us. — Louis De Bernieres

He had no doubt that Merrin had called out to God here in this place while she was been raped and killed, in her heart if not with her voice. God's reply had been that due to the high volume of calls she could expect to be on hold until she was dead. — Joe Hill

Only the gospel can truly save you. The gospel doesn't make good people good; it makes dead people alive. That's the difference between the gospel of Jesus Christ and every other world religion. All the others exhort their followers to save themselves by being good, by conforming their lives to whatever their worshiped deity is. But the gospel is God's acceptance of us based on what Christ has done, not on what we can do. — Tullian Tchividjian

dear god, I am only twenty seven, my cause is defeated, my husband is dead. am I to be one of the poor widows who will spend the rest of their days at someone else's fireside trying to be a good guest? shall I never be kissed again? shall I never feel joy? not ever again? — Philippa Gregory

God's standard of truth entailed more than merely "not lying." In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "You have heard it said ... but I say unto you." Jesus took the Old Testament laws to a deeper level of meaning and obedience, from the "letter of the Law" to the "Spirit of the Law." Following the letter of the law was the dead "religion" of which Barth, among others, had written. It was man's attempt to deceive God into thinking one was being obedient, which was a far greater deception. God always required something deeper than religious legalism. — Eric Metaxas

If we want that power to quicken our friends who are dead in sin, we must look to God, and not be looking to man to do it. If we look alone to ministers, if we look alone to Christ's disciples to do this work, we shall be disappointed. If we look to the Spirit of God and expect it to come from Him and Him alone, then we shall honor the Spirit, and the Spirit will do — Jim Cymbala

Christ on a cobnut!" he yelped, ducking behind the horse. "Lady thief, stop this madness!"
"Allan?" I cried, stopping. "What in God's name is going on?"
He peered around the horse. "Good Lord, you're even scary when you're dead."
"I'm not dead!" I shouted.
"Well, I didn't know that before!" Allan shouted back. — A.C. Gaughen

We are not preaching the Gospel of a dead Christ, but of a living Christ who sits exalted at the Father's right hand, and is living to save all who put their trust in Him. That is why those of us who really know the Gospel never have any crucifixes around our churches or in our homes. The crucifix represents a dead Christ hanging languid on a cross of shame. But we are not pointing men to a dead Christ; we are preaching a living Christ. He lives exalted at God's right hand, and He "saves to the uttermost all who come to God by Him." — Henry Allen Ironside

As a young man he had not dared risk God's wrath by questioning His purpose. Now he did not give a damn. Fuck it. There was no Paradise and there was no Hell and if there was a God, He was worse than inscrutable. What did exist was the cold, cruel truth of a young man, dead - from cancer or a car accident or suicide or God knows what - at the obscene age of thirty-two. — Christos Tsiolkas

i dreamt that i died. for an instant, all the voices in my head stood calm, and for a moment, my heart stopped panicking, and for once in my whole life, my cheeks dried from all the tears that were falling every night ... i thought to my self: how nice it is to be finally dead, i wish i did it sooner.
my brother once told me that people who commit suicide are mostly doing it for attention. that's so wrong. i'm not asking for attention, nor sympathy. when i put that blade on my shaking skin alone in my room at 3 am, you should be sure that i'm not thinking of anyone and i'm not asking for anyone's attention. all i'm doing is pushing my self to stop the pain. you see, i don't want to die too, all i want is for the pain to stop and for me to smile like everyone else.


yasuko amaya - the day i decided to be God - — Unknown Author 1

Are you there, God? It's me, Layla. I know I just jerked off some guy who is not even my boyfriend in the bathroom of this crappy, brown house. But if you could find a way to kill me quickly and painlessly within the next ten seconds, I promise to never touch another penis again. Well, I'll be dead, so, I guess I promise not to whore it up in heaven. Which, of course is where you'll be sending me, right? I mean I'd hate to think you'd deny me an eternity behind your pearly gates just because of one impetuous handjob. Thank you. Sincerely, Layla Warren. Amen. — T. Torrest

There was once a people in some land - and they may be still there for what I know - who thought it sacrilegious to stay the course of a raging fire. If a house were being burned, burn it must, even though there were facilities for saving it. For who would dare to interfere with the course of the god? Our idea of sorrow is much the same. We think it wicked, or at any rate heartless, to put it out. If a man's wife be dead, he should go about lugubrious, with long face, for at least two years, or perhaps with full length for eighteen months, decreasing gradually during the other six. If he be a man who can quench his sorrow - put out his fire as it were - in less time than that, let him at any rate not show his power! — Anthony Trollope

You are not here by chance, but by choice: God's choice. He has designed you with a purpose and for a purpose in order to advance His rule in this sinful and fallen world that He originally designed to be holy and pure. No one else can do what God has planned for you to do and running away from this, as Jonah found out, will not bring peace and rest. Only His plans for you will give you hope not despair, and they will lead you into a good future, not a dead end wilderness of wasted life and — Greg Haslam

12 Do not let sin control the way you live;* do not give in to sinful desires. 13 Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. 14 Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God's grace. — Anonymous

God might not be dead, but he's sure as hell missing in action. — Quentin R. Bufogle

We tend to think of the gospel as God's program to make bad people good, not dead people alive. — Tullian Tchividjian

Living Word. God's word is not a dead letter. The life of His nature in His word also makes me live when I receive it and act on it with faith. — Louis McCall

Not that I'm complaining. It was better than my old dream, where Harma Dogshead was feeding me to her pigs."
"Harma's dead." Jon said.
"But not the pigs. They look at me the way Slayer used to look at ham. Not to say that the wildlings mean us harm. Aye, we hacked their gods apart and made them burn the pieces, but we gave them onion soup. What's a god compared to a nice bowl of onion soup? I could do with mine myself. — George R R Martin

Ooh, Snowberry, you were right," one of them said, wrinkling her nose like she smelled something foul. "She does reek of a dead pig in the summer. I don't know how Mab can stand it."
Clenching my fists, I tried to keep my cool. I was so not in the mood for this now.God, it's like high school all over again. Will it never end? These are ancient faeries, for Pete's sake, and they're acting like my high school pom squad. — Julie Kagawa

With his ship faced with the danger of sinking, the Richard's chief gunner screamed to the Serapis, "Quarter! quarter! for God's sake!" Jones hurled a pistol at the man, felling him. But the cry had been heard by Pearson, the Serapis' commander, who called, "Do you ask for quarter?" Through the clash of battle, gunshot and crackle of fire the famous reply came faintly back to him: "I have not yet begun to fight!" Making good his boast, Jones sprang to a 9-pounder whose gun crew were killed or wounded, loaded and fired it himself, aiming at the Serapis' mainmast, then loaded and fired again. As the mast toppled, Pearson, surrounded by dead, with rigging on fire, hauled down his red ensign in token of surrender. Escorted to Richard's quarterdeck, he handed over his sword to Jones just as the Serapis' mainmast crashed over the side and its sail, nevermore to carry the wind, collapsed in a dying billow into the sea. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Oh, sure. Of course, they say now that we've got Freud and the motorcar, God is dead."
"He's not dead; just very tired. — Libba Bray

God the horror of watching yourself from the outside as everything you know about yourself gets stripped away and demolished. Not just the loss of power over your body, but power over your mind. Rape in the deepest, most hellish sense of the word. But wait, there's a spark. Inside that hollowed out woman there's a place they can't touch. There's more to me than I thought there was. Something that no one and nothing can take away from me. They can't break me. I won't cease. I'm strong, and I am never going to go away until I've gotten what I came for. I might have been lost for awhile but I was never gone. WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? With an explosive inhalation I snap upright in bed, and my eyes fly open like coming alive after being dead and interred in a coffin. I AM Mac and I am BACK! — Karen Marie Moning

What naive garbage. People don't want freedom anymore
even those to whom freedom is a kind of religion are afraid of it, like trembling acolytes who make sacrifices to some pagan god. People want their governments to keep secrets from them. They want the hand of law to be brutal. They are so terrified by their own power that they will vote to have it taken out of their hands. Look at America. Look at the sharia states. Freedom is a dead philosophy, Alif. The world is returning to its natural state, to the rule of the weak by the strong. Young as you are, it's you who are out of touch, not me. — G. Willow Wilson

Have you any idea how much my kingdom has swollen in this past century alone, how many subdivisions I've had to open?"
I opened my mouth to respond, but Hades was on a roll now.
More security ghouls," he moaned. "Traffic problems at the judgment pavilion. Double overtime for the staff. I used to be a rich god, Percy Jackson. I control all the precious metals under the earth. But my expenses!"
Charon wants a pay raise," I blurted, just remembering the fact. As soon as I said it, I wished I could sew up my mouth.
Don't get me started on Charon!" Hades yelled. "He's been impossible ever since he discovered Italian suits! Problems everywhere, and I've got to handle all of them personally. The commute time alone from the palace to the gates is enough to drive me insane! And the dead just keep arriving. No, godling. I need no help getting subjects! I did not ask for this war. — Rick Riordan

I am no nihilist. I am not even a cynic. I am, actually, rather romantic. And here's my idea of romance: You will soon be dead. Life will sometimes seem long and tough and, god, it's tiring. And you will sometimes be happy and sometimes sad. And then you'll be
old. And then you'll be dead. — Tim Minchin

Now the son whose father's existance in this world is historical and speculative even before the son has entered it in a bad way. All his life he carries before him the idol of a perfection to which he can never attain. The father dead has euchered his son of his patrimony. For it is the death of the father to which the son is entitled and to which he is heir, more than his goods.He will not hear of the small mean ways that tempered the man in life. He will not see him struggling in follies of his own devising. No. The world which he inherits bears him false witness. He is broken before a frozen god and he will never find his way. — Cormac McCarthy

The new is preceded by the destruction of the old, that which has become guilty, and not out of the possebilities which we possess, but in the impossible situation which confronts us, that the new shows itself as God's creative act. God's new reality is always like a novum ex nihilo. When all hopes have died, there comes the wave of the future like a spirit of resurrection into the dead bones (Ezek. 37), creating hope against hope. — Jurgen Moltmann

Our faith, therefore, is not in the words of the Bible. That would be fundamentalism. Our faith is in a person. Our faith is in the Lord who is revealing himself to us. He is the Word who is calling us into personal dialogue. Fundamentalism is a slavish idealization of words which inevitably leads to a rigid, closed-minded, dead-ended approach to the Bible. The Word calls us into a personal dialogue which, in many respects, is like Jacob's wrestling with the angel (Genesis 32: 23-33). Only there, in that sort of personal involvement, do we come face-to-face with the mystery that is God. — Richard Rohr

We cannot convince a man to believe any more than we can raise the dead. Such things are the work of God's Spirit. Men are brought to faith only through the supernatural working of God, and He has promised to work-not through human wisdom or intellectual expertise, but through the preaching of Christ crucified and resurrected from the dead! — Paul Washer

I'm not saying we shouldn't grieve. Just, why don't we put it in God's hands? she said. Why haven't we learned this, after all the evidence of all the dead? We're supposed to believe in God but then why don't we obey the laws of God's universe, which teach us how small we are and where we're all going to end up? — Don DeLillo

29Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. — Anonymous

You told me he was dead."
Red said through his teeth, "There was no point,for there's no meaner, more petty man in all of God's England."
"At least I'm not a wastrel," the old man snapped.
Red started toward the old man, but Sophia stepped between them. "Red, don't."
He looked as if he might burst into flames, then snapped, "I came to get you, Sophie.Have Mary bring your things, and let's go. — Karen Hawkins

It's not demons (who at least have a human face) but Hell itself that seems to be laughing inside me, it's the croaking madness of the dead universe, the spinning cadaver of physical space, the end of all worlds blowing blackly in the wind, formless and timeless, without a God who created it, without even its own self, impossibly whirling in the absolute darkness as the one and only reality, everything. — Fernando Pessoa

The Coming of the Lord 13But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, g that you may not grieve as others do h who have no hope. 14For i since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him j those who have fallen asleep. 15For this we declare to you k by a word from the Lord, [4] that l we who are alive, who are left until m the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For n the Lord himself will descend o from heaven p with a cry of command, with the voice of q an archangel, and r with the sound of the trumpet of God. And s the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we who are alive, who are left, will be t caught up together with them u in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so v we will always be with the Lord. 18Therefore encourage one another with these words. — Anonymous

Hallucinations are bad enough. But after awhile you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing. But nobody can handle that other trip-the possibility that any freak with $1.98 can walk into the Circus-Circus and suddenly appear in the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. — Hunter S. Thompson

I would be lying if I said I'm not flattered being voted as the 'Time's' Most Desirable Man of 2012. Frankly, I have no idea how the desirability quotient is arrived at. If it is just drop dead good looks, then I have to thank God and my parents for it. — Arjun Rampal

God is not dead; he really does communicate today. He's interested in every part of your life, your home, your finances, every kind of decision - and more than just the moral issues. His eye is always on you. He wants to lead you. But you have to believe that he will indeed speak to you when you wait before him in believing prayer, with a yielded heart to do his will. — Jim Cymbala

He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and it's not about his face, but the life force I can see in him. It's the smile and the pure promise of everything he has to offer. Like he's saying, 'Here I am world, are you ready for so much passion and beauty and goodness and love and every other word that should be in the dictionary under the word life?' Except this boy is dead, and the unnaturalness of it makes me want to pull my hair out with Tate and Narnie and Fitz and Jude's grief all combined. It makes me want to yell at the God that I wish I didn't believe in. For hogging him all to himself. I want to say, 'You greedy God. Give him back. I needed him here. — Melina Marchetta

When God created the heavens and the earth, darkness was upon the face of the deep. When the Eternal Son became flesh, He was carried for a time in the darkness of the sweet virgin's womb. When He died for the life of the world, it was in the darkness, seen by no one at the last. When He arose from the dead, it was ,'very early in the morning." No one saw Him rise. It is as if God were saying, "What I am is all that need matter to you, for there lie your hope and your peace. I will do what I will do, and it will all come to light at last, but how I do it is My secret. Trust Me, and be not afraid. — A.W. Tozer

On top of the good was a hideously ugly bronze statue in the modern style. The statue was of a couple, dressed in togas, wrapped in an embrace. Cupped in their hands was a piece of fruit. I couldn't be sure, because realism did not appear to be the artist's specialty, but it looked to me like a pomegranate.
"Good God," Frank, who'd trailed after us, said when he saw the statue. "Rector's even sicker than any of us thought. I've never wished I was blind before, like Graves, but I do now, because then I'd never have to look at that again."
"Frank," John said, his gaze on my face. "Be quiet."
"But what do they do in here?" Frank wanted to know. "Have picnics with their dead relatives and admire their ugly art? — Meg Cabot

The only test of possession is use. The talent that is buried is not owned. The napkin and the hole in the ground are far more truly the man's property, because they are accomplishing something for him, slothful and shameful though it be. And what is a lost soul? Is it not one that God cannot use, or one that cannot use God? Trustless, prayerless, fruitless, loveless
is it not so far lost? So may a man have a soul that is lost and be dead while he lives. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Possibly, mrs. laird ... i'd say. except he's dead, you see. well, not completely dead. he's more of a resurrected god. he judges mortal spirits and feeds the hearts of the wicked to his pet monster.oh, and he has blue skin. i'm sure he'd make quite an impression on career day, for all those students aspiring to grow up and become ancient egyptian deities — Serpent's Shadow Rick Riordan

Eternal life then is a certain kind of life I am living more and more now and will go on forever.17 I am living more and more in connection with God, and I will live connected with God forever. This has huge implications for when I do stumble, when I sin and the old person comes back from the dead for a few moments. I admit it. I confess it. I thank God I am forgiven. I make amends with anyone who has been affected by my actions. And then I move on. Not because sin isn't serious, but because I am taking seriously who God says I am. The point isn't my failure; it is God's success in remaking me into the person he originally intended me to be. God's strength, not mine. God's power, not mine. — Rob Bell

Lord, help me to be still before you. Lead me to a greater vision of who you are, and in so doing, may I see myself - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Grant me the courage to follow you, to be faithful to become the unique person you have created me to be. I ask you for the Holy Spirit's power to not copy another person's life or journey. "God, submerge me in the darkness of your love, that the consciousness of my false, everyday self falls away from [me] like a soiled garment. . . . May my 'deep self' fall into your presence. . . . knowing you alone . . . carried away into eternity like a dead leaf in the November wind."24 In Jesus' name, amen. — Peter Scazzero

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people's diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming. — Cheryl Strayed

There is no greater paradox in the cosmos," the deceased had written, "than the apparent contradiction of our helplessness ('without me, you can do nothing') alongside God's 'helplessness.' Oh, I know, God is all-powerful, and so on; but he cannot undo what he has done, and what he once did was to make men free. This means that he 'needs' us in order to get us to Heaven as his lovers, and in order to do his will in the world. All we have to do in order to frustrate those wishes - to render God 'helpless' - is to say No. But God is not helpless, really, because he has mercy - himself. And what mercy does is convert, change our hearts. Which God never stops trying to do until we are dead. This means continued suffering for him, which is what Christ is all about." Young — William F. Buckley Jr.

What about me? I love you so much. And I tried to make you go away. I killed you and it didn't help. And I hate it! I hate that it's so hard and that you can hurt me so much. I know everything that you did, because you did it to me. Oh, God! I wish that I wished you dead. I don't. I can't. Strong is fighting! It's hard, and it's painful, and it's every day. It's what we have to do. And we can do it together. But if you're too much of a coward for that, then burn. If I can't convince you that you belong in this world, then I don't know what can. But do not expect me to watch. And don't expect me to mourn for you, because ... — Joss Whedon

Well, do as you think best. That's every man's right and duty. But for me, I pledge you now I will not surrender one grain of my rights. What I took, I took and by God, I'll keep it, too. Take her home tomorrow, Archie, and never look back to watch what I do, for you know it before. I would not give him one knigh who had confided himself to me and none other, much less you. Only over my dead body," said Hotspur hardily, eye to eye with the friend he had made under Homildon Hill, "will King Henry ever claim you as his prisoner. — Edith Pargeter

If it's not for Him, I guess I'd be dead few years ago. — Jestoni Revealed

Like 'God's Not Dead,' the fundamentalist Christian movie that has become a popular hit, 'Transcendence' is essentially a dramatized debate. And as 'God's Not Dead' stacks the rhetorical cards for the Deity's existence, the Pfister film eventually hangs back with the Luddites. — Richard Corliss

WHEN YOU'RE BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE 1-4 But now, GOD's Message, the God who made you in the first place, Jacob, the One who got you started, Israel: "Don't be afraid, I've redeemed you. I've called your name. You're mine. When you're in over your head, I'll be there with you. When you're in rough waters, you will not go down. When you're between a rock and a hard place, it won't be a dead end - Because I am GOD, your personal God, The Holy of Israel, your Savior. I paid a huge price for you: all of Egypt, with rich Cush and Seba thrown in! That's how much you mean to me! That's how much I love you! I'd sell off the whole world to get you back, trade the creation just for you. 5-7 "So don't be afraid: I'm with you. — Anonymous

Oh, I believe you. It's too ridiculous not to be true. It's just that each time my world gets stranger, I think: Right. We're at maximum oddness now. At least I know the full extent of it. First, I find out my brother and I are descended from the pharaohs and have magic powers. All right. No problem. Then I find out my dead father has merged his soul with Osiris and Why not? Then my uncle takes over the House of Life and oversees hundreds of magicians around the world. Then my boyfriend turns out to be a hybrid magician boy/immortal god of funerals. And all the while I'm thinking, Of course! Keep calm and carry on! I've adjusted! And then you come along on a random Thursday, la-di-da, and say, Oh, by the way, Egyptian gods are just one small part of the cosmic absurdity. We've also got the Greeks to worry about! Hooray! — Rick Riordan

Only the high priest can enter the Holy of Holies, and on only one day a year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when all sins of Israel are wiped clean. On this day, the high priest comes into presence of God to atone for the whole nation. If he is worthy of God's blessing, Israel's sins are forgiven. If he is not, a rope tied to his waist ensures that when God strikes him dead, he can be dragged out of the Holy of Holies without anyone else defiling the sanctuary. — Reza Aslan

In the glare, the great and terrible light of this happening, God seems to signal that the story of the rest of us need not end, and that the new light can prove a troubled dawn.
For the rest of us, perhaps. Not for the dead, not for the more than fifty million real dead in the world's worst catastrophe: victors and vanquished, combatants and civilians, people of so many nations, men, women, and children, all cut down. For them there can be no new earthly dawn. Yet thought their bones like in the darkness of the grave, they will not have died in vain, if their remembrance can lead us from the long, long time of war to the time for peace. — Herman Wouk

The Greeks were more preoccupied with, where these ousted gods resided. That is: The fallen son's of God could go where humans were, but humans could not go where they were. According to Greek mythology, Tartarus was an imposed condition for bad gods
not bad humans. (page 10) — Michael Ben Zehabe

Most of the world is either asleep or dead. The religious people are, for the most part, asleep. The irreligious are dead. Those who are asleep are divided into two classes, like the Virgins in the parable, waiting for the Bridegroom's coming. The wise have oil in their lamps. That is to say they are detached from themselves and from the cares of the world, and they are full of charity. They are indeed waiting for the Bridegroom, and they desire nothing else but His coming, even though they may fall asleep while waiting for Him to appear. But the others are not only asleep: they are full of other dreams and other desires. Their lamps are empty because they have burned themselves out in the wisdom of the flesh and in their own vanity. When He comes, it is too late for them to buy oil. They light their lamps only after He has gone. So they fall asleep again, with useless lamps, and when they wake up they trim them to investigate, once again, the matters of a dying world. — Thomas Merton

The first duty of a Christian, of a disciple and follower of Jesus Christ, is to deny himself. To deny oneself means to give up one's bad habits, to root out of the heart all that ties us to the world; not to cherish bad desires and thoughts; to quench and suppress bad thoughts; to avoid occasions of sin; not to do or desire anything from self-love but to do everything out of love for God. To deny oneself means, according to the Apostle Paul, to be dead to sin and the world, but alive to God. — Innocent Of Alaska

In a lot of minds, God is big enough to raise dead people, but He's not big enough to deal with our running. — Jason Upton

It was Machiavelli, not Moses or Mohammed, who said it is better to be feared than to be loved: the creed of the terrorist and the suicide bomber. It was Nietzsche, the man who first wrote the words 'God is dead', whose ethic was the will to power. To invoke God to justify violence against the innocent is not an act of sanctity but of sacrilege. It is a kind of blasphemy. It is to take God's name in vain. — Jonathan Sacks

At any other time it's better. You can do the things you feel you should; you're an expert at going through the motions. Your handshakes with strangers are firm and your gaze never wavers; you think of steel and diamonds when you stare. In monotone you repeat the legendary words of long-dead lovers to those you claim to love; you take them into bed with you, and you mimic the rhythmic motions you've read of in manuals. When protocol demands it you dutifully drop to your knees and pray to a god who no longer exists. But in this hour you must admit to yourself that this is not enough, that you are not good enough. And when you knock your fist against your chest you hear a hollow ringing echo, and all your thoughts are accompanied by the ticks of clockwork spinning behind your eyes, and everything you eat and drink has the aftertaste of rust. — Dexter Palmer

There will come a time', I said, 'when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this.'
I gestured encompassingly
'will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organis,s experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does.' -Hazel Grace Lancaster — John Green

I continue to be immensely moved by the impermanence of hotels: not in any mundane Travel-and-Leisure way but with a fervor bordering on the transcendent. Some time in October, right around Day of the Dead actually, I stayed in a Mexican seaside hotel where the halls flowed with blown curtains and all the rooms were named after flowers. The Azalea Room, the Camellia Room, the Oleander Room. Opulence and splendor, breezy corridors that swept into something like eternity and each room with its different colored door. Peony, Wisteria, Rose, Passion Flower. And who knows
but maybe that's what's waiting for us at the end of the journey, a majesty unimaginable until the very moment we find ourselves walking through the doors of it, what we find ourselves gazing at in astonishment when God finally takes His hands off our eyes and says: Look! — Donna Tartt

Hello, Presley residence."

"Mrs. Presley, this is Dallas Memorial. I have - "

Penny started to weep. "Oh my God, he's dead, isn't he?"

"No, no, Mrs. Presley. Quite the contrary. The doctor wanted you to know that we think your husband is waking up."

Penny's emotions shuddered to a stop. Not dead? Not dead after all? Waking up? What the hell was all this about? — Sharon Sala

Have you gone beyond accepting the fact that there's a God? Have you moved beyond accepting Christ as God's Son and made Him Lord of your life? If you believe there's a God, that He sent His Son to die for you, that God raised Jesus from the dead after three days, and that Christ is coming back for His disciples - that's great. But Satan also believes all that! What makes your life any different from Satan's? To be different, you must come to Christ, pursue Him, give your life to Him, and keep growing in your relationship with Him - -for He's a Person to be loved, not an idea to be accepted. — Henry T. Blackaby

It is not that God's help and presence must still be proved in our life; rather God's presence and help have been demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ. It is in fact more important for us to know what God did to Israel, in God's Son Jesus Christ, than to discover what God intends for us today. The fact that Jesus Christ died is more important than the fact that I will die. And the fact that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, will be raised on the day of judgment — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Oh my God," Maddie whispered, horrified. "I rented him that boat. Does that make me a murderer?"
Tara's heart clutched. "He's not dead yet."
"Hurry," Maddie called to Ford. "I can't be the one who killed Tara's ex!" I look terrible in orange! — Jill Shalvis

Many theologians believe the Gospel writers include miracle stories in order to prove that Jesus is divine. But miracles are not proof of deity. Many Old Testament prophets heal people and even raise them from the dead, yet they are mere mortals. Jesus's miracle ministry is a demonstration that the kingdom of God has arrived. Heaven on Earth, pg. 105. — R. Alan Streett

If you're not dead, God's not done. — Perry Noble

When children's children shall talk of War as a madness that may not be; When we thank our God for our grief today, and blazon from sea to sea In the name of the Dead the banner of Peace ... that will be Victory. — Robert W. Service

Here's an example. When I first met Nick Gautier it was fated that he was to get married at age thirty and have a dozen kids. As our friendship grew, I lost the ability to see how his future would play out. Then in one moment of anger, I changed his destiny by telling him he should kill himself. I didn't mean it, but as a god of fate, such proclamations when made by me are law. Fate realigned the circumstances around him that would lead him to make a decision to take his own life. The woman he was to marry ended up dead in her store. His mother's life was taken by a Daimon and Nick shot himself at her feet. My free will would have been to not lash out at him. Instead I did. His free will would have been to seek revenge as a human against a Daimon and not kill himself. But because of who I am, my proclamation that he kill himself outweighed his will and he didn't really have any choice. I took his free will and I cost him everyone who was close to him. (Acheron) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Gretel in Darkness:


This is the world we wanted.
All who would have seen us dead
are dead. I hear the witch's cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas....

Now, far from women's arms
And memory of women, in our father's hut
we sleep, are never hungry.
Why do I not forget?
My father bars the door, bars harm
from this house, and it is years.

No one remembers. Even you, my brother,
summer afternoons you look at me as though
you meant to leave,
as though it never happened.
But I killed for you. I see armed firs,
the spires of that gleaming kiln--

Nights I turn to you to hold me
but you are not there.
Am I alone? Spies
hiss in the stillness, Hansel
we are there still, and it is real, real,
that black forest, and the fire in earnest. — Louise Gluck

Oh, they said God was dead, all those beatniks and snooty-ass Frenchmen. Not me. I knew better. I said to them, "Wait, boys! Don't break cover yet awhile. He might be faking. I mean, they thought Saddam was dead. And the novel. And Glenn Close in that last scene of Fatal Attraction." That's what I said. But did they listen? Ohh no. They went right ahead and organized God's funeral. Well, don't count your chickens before they come home to roost ... — Alan Moore