Quotes by J.B. Johnston

The prayer meeting furnishes a very accurate discriminating test of character. The live Christian loves its enjoyments; the spiritually dead have no delights there.

Every converted sinner is a soul revived to prayer. Every saint restored from backsliding is a soul returned to the life and power of prayer. Every congregation enjoying an outpouring of the Spirit is a congregation revived and alive to the prayer meeting.

The prayer meeting answers to this demand of the spiritual brotherhood, with more exclusiveness and direct fitness than any other ordinance of religious worship… There is a power in conferring and covenanting, on the part of kindred spirits, to come before God, and plead together some special promise… The prayer meeting is a divine ordinance, founded in man’s social nature… The prayer meeting is a special means of developing and cultivating Christian graces, and of promoting individual and social edification.

As prayer meetings fail in a congregation, so will the ministrations of the pastor become unfruitful, the preaching of the word fail to convert sinners and promote holiness in the professors of religion… History confirms the truth that wherever evangelical and vital religion flourish, there lives the earnest gatherings for social prayer.

The prayer meeting is the pulse of the church… The prayer meeting is the rallying point where the power of faith in the church concentrates, and takes hold on the arm that moves the world… The spirit of prayer, and the love and practice of the prayer meeting, will so give organic strength to the church as to make her terrible as an army with banners.