Count Zinzendorf Quotes

Preach the Gospel, die, and be forgotten.

I have but one passion: It is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.

I am destined to proclaim the message, unmindful of personal consequences to myself.

Remember, you must never use your position to lord it over the heathen. Instead you must humble yourself and earn their respect though your own quiet faith and the power of the Holy Spirit. The missionary must seek nothing for himself, no seat of honor or hope of fame. Like the cabhorse in London, each of you must wear blinkers that blind you to every danger and to every snare and conceit. You must be content to suffer, to die, and to be forgotten. -Count Zinzendorf

The believer's cross is no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or tension, the bearing of which is demanded. The believer's cross must be, like his Lord's, the price of his social nonconformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end of the path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is not, like Luther's or Thomas Muntzer's or Zinzendorf's or Kierkegaard's cross, an inward wrestling of the sensitive soul with self and sin; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to come.

The full extent and far-ranging influences of Pietism on Christianity are beyond the scope of this chapter. However, it is important to note that the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation did not produce any missionaries.18 It was the advent of Pietism two centuries later that produced the first Protestant missionaries, Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and Henry Plutschau, who went to India in 1705 through the Danish-Halle mission. However, the Moravians and the mobilization efforts of Count Nicolas von Zinzendorf will be the focus of this historical spotlight because the Moravians represent the first major Protestant missionary movement.

There are many Christians whose salvation is genuine, but equally there are many people who claim to be “Christians” but are not actually true servants of the Lord. To be a member of this Order, you must be a genuine servant and follower of Christ.

Zinzendorf had done a lot of reflecting on what he was really looking for in a marriage partner. He spoke of such matters in a letter, which was far removed from the usual formalities, to his future mother-in-law: I foresee many difficulties in this case; as I am but a poor acquisition for any person, and the dear Countess Erdmuth must not only enter upon a life of self-denial with me, but also co-operate with me in my principal design, namely, to assist men in gaining souls for Christ, under shame and reproach, if she will be of any service to me.