“God might work on mysterious ways, but hell worked on efficient ones.”
Richelle Mead (1976) American writer
Source: Succubus Shadows
This statement is a rebuke to the famous assertion by William Cowper: "God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm."
2000s
Context: It's fair to say that the Bible contains equal amounts of fact, history, and pizza. … God works in mysterious, inefficient, and breathtakingly cruel ways.
“God might work on mysterious ways, but hell worked on efficient ones.”
Richelle Mead (1976) American writer
Source: Succubus Shadows
Ichabod Spencer (1798–1854) American minister
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 421.
“Remember, the inevitable inefficiency of a huge bureaucracy will be working for you.”
Robert Sheckley book The Status Civilization
Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 20 (p. 84)
François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 280.
“Men put roadblocks in front of women as a way of hiding their inefficiencies.”
Bernadette Lahai (1960) Sierra Leonean politician
30% (Women and Politics in Sierra Leone), Anna Cady, 2018-06-18 https://vimeo.com/43595116,
“God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supplies.”
James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China
(Leslie T. Lyall. A Passion for the Impossible: The Continuing Story of the Mission Hudson Taylor Began. London: OMF Books, 1965, 37).
William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist
The opening statement is often paraphrased: God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.
No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness".
Olney Hymns (1779)
The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)
Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason
1790s <br class="br">Source: "A Letter: Being an Answer to a Friend, on the publication of The Age of Reason" (12 May 1797), published in an 1852 edition of The Age of Reason, p. 205 http://books.google.com/books?id=2PgRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA205