The Key Teachings of Dwight L. Moody

This is not a book by Dwight L. Moody. It is a companion to him — an independent work of exposition and appreciation, written by Ochorus, that gathers the heart of his teaching into seventeen short chapters for the ordinary reader, with a chapter on his life, a conclusion and a guide to his books.

Moody preached one message in a thousand forms: God loves you, Christ has died for you, and the door is open now. From a shoe shop in Boston to the largest halls in Britain and America, he told plain people that they were lost, that they were loved, and that they need not wait another night to come home. This volume follows that message through its parts — the fall, the blood and the new birth; faith, repentance and restitution; assurance and the Word; the nine elements of prevailing prayer; the power of the Spirit and the life wholly given to God; heaven, and the urgency that the Chicago fire burned into him. It weighs honestly where his plainness could thin out the truth, where the methods of the enquiry room need care, and where his hope for the world ran low. And it ends each chapter as he ended nearly every sermon: with a call to act, and a prayer.

Moody’s own writings are in the public domain and freely available, and every chapter here names them so the reader can go to the source; The Way to God, Prevailing Prayer, the devotional collection Thoughts for the Quiet Hour and eleven of his sermons are in the Ochorus library. This companion is offered only to open the door. It quotes Scripture from the Authorised (King James) Version, and it makes no claim to stand in for the warm, urgent voice of the man himself.