Posted on 01/24/2007 5:24:55 AM PST by Quix
FAITH COMES BY HEARING--NT ON MP3 [SOLA SCRIPTURA PROVEN]
By Quix with appendixes from the FCBH website
Pastor Brent, of our church—DESERT HEIGHTS COMMUNITY CHURCH—has partnered with FAITH COMES BY HEARING (FCBH) to collect $25,000 to translate the NT into a South American language. The Seranon sp? people group have had written Scriptures since the late 1800’s as I recall. But the vast majority (90%?) of the population are illiterate.
The organization brings together the copyright holders of at least one major Bible translation with the means and resources of translating Scripture into language groups where there is no Scripture available or where the people are too illiterate to make use of what may be available.
Once the Scriptures have been translated, they are put on a windup MP3 player and given to A MAN OF PEACE in a village in the language group. The man agrees to host all who want to listen once a week—listening for 30 minutes and discussing for 30 minutes. More is an option.
About 6 out of 10 times A CHURCH SPONTANEOUSLY APPEARS—FUNCTIONING, HEALTHY, BIBLICAL. Many times, MULTIPLE CHURCHES ARISE spontaneously—from one MP3 player as it’s shared beyond the original agreement.
CLEARLY HOLY SPIRIT IS WELL ABLE TO INSURE THAT GOD’S WORD DOES NOT RETURN VOID. MORE IMPORTANTLY, HOLY SPIRIT HAS REPEATEDLY MADE CLEAR OVER 30 YEARS THAT HE IS WELL ABLE TO ESTABLISH HIS CHURCH AND MAINTAIN IT’S HEALTHY FUNCTIONING
WITHOUT
ANY BUREAUCRACY FROM THE WEST OR ANYWHERE ELSE. . . .
without any tradition bound, traditions of men infected magesterium;
without any pontifical seminaries;
without any arguments about the original artifacts;
without any trumped up line of political succession;
without any denominational pride, parochialness and haughtily held distinctives;
without any formal or informal inquisitions;
without any arrogant authoritarian doctrinal police;
WITHOUT any elaborate explanations and straight jackets about how GOD CAN’T/WOULDN’T DO IT THAT WAY; GOD WOULDN’T DO !THAT!
WITHOUT anything but GOD’S WORD. TRULY LITERAL SOLA SCRIPTURA.
AND FROM HIS WORD, GOD PERSISTENTLY SPRINGS, BIRTHS HEALTHY ENDURING CHURCHES WHICH GO ON TO MATURE THEIR BELIVERS IN THE FAITH AND TO PLANT NEW CHURCHES.
PRAISE GOD FOR HIS FAITHFULNESS. PRAISE GOD FOR HIS ABILITY TO DO HIS WORK without our flesh driven organizations mucking it up.
PRAISE GOD FOR THE FREEDOM OF HIS SALVATION AND LIFE IN HIS SPIRIT!
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Below are some selected portions from the FCBH website with links. I strongly encourage all true believers to consider this organization in their prayers and however else God might lead. Those with translating and other helpful skills and resources might find a place of service that could be very rewarding.
We are a small congregation. Already we are more than 1/5 toward the $25,000 goal of translating the NT into the Seranon language orally—in less than 6-10 months (I don’t recall for sure). It may be something God would lead your church to consider.
BTW, churches who partner with the organization get MP3 format CD’s for their members to listen to Scripture in their homes and cars. FAITH COMES BY HEARING has proven over and over again to be a productive, fruitful blessing in the lives of those of us who have useful written Scriptures. There’s just something about repeatedly HEARING Scripture that is spiritually potent and life-giving.
IIRC, using such methods, it is projected that all the language groups still without Scripture can have it within the next 8-12 years. This should alert all who pay attention to Biblical prophecy . . . related to Scripture being spread to all language groups/people groups throughout the world before Christ’s return.
MAY GOD CONTINUE TO BLESS THE HEARING OF HIS WORD.
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APPENDIXES:
HOSANNA/Faith Comes By Hearing is a non-profit, religious organization founded in 1972. The purpose of the organization is wholly religious: to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord in all that we do.
Trusting Jesus Christ as our Savior, we believe in:
The Bible as the inspired Word of God. The deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son. The vicarious death of Jesus Christ for our sins, His bodily resurrection and His personal return. The presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the work of regeneration.
Vision Our Vision is to bring His Church together and make disciples.
Mission Statement To accomplish our vision, we are committed to putting every translation of the Bible in audio form, and to implementing Faith Comes By Hearing in every church or village in the world, so that all people, especially the 50% of the world who cannot read, can hear God's Word in the language they pray in.
Hosanna/Faith Comes By Hearing is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
More than half the world cannot read and in some countries as many as 80-90% are illiterate. And even people from an oral tradition who CAN read, often learn best by listening.
Faith Comes By Hearing® is dedicated to overcoming every barrier of illiteracy, poverty, or oral culture, so that people around the world can hear God's Word in the "heart languages," find salvation in Jesus Christ and become disciples. The Audio New Testament breaks the barriers, bringing poor and illiterate people to God's Word.
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How it works:
From:
http://www.hosanna.org/HowItWorks.pdf
Local pastors and village leaders commit with their people to listen through the New Testament for at least 30 minutes each week, followed by discussion.
Many sessions are held outdoors for lack of a room large enough to accommodate all who want to hear.
Attendance, testimonies and commitments are tracked and reported to FCBH.
A check is made 6 weeks after placing an MP3 player with the NT. If a church has not spontaneously arisen, the MP3 player is taken to a different village and MAN OF PEACE to host it.
Approximately 6 out of 10 times, a church appears spontaneously--LITERALLY SOLA SCRIPTURA by Holy Spirit’s work through the spoken Word and the hearts of the listeners.
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Pdf report of 30 years of Faith Comes By Hearing here:
http://www.hosanna.org/newsletter_30-yr.pdf
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LANGUAGES THAT MP3 PLAYERS ARE NOW AVAILABLE IN AT THIS LINK:
http://www.hosanna.org/Products/Search_p.cfm?CFID=248914&CFTOKEN=75276606
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In four years, 6,375 people believed . . . from a Wycliffe article here:
http://www.faithcomesbyhearing.com/wfl.pdf
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YWAM article on winning the ORAL MAJORITY from this link:
http://www.ywam.org/articles/article.asp?AID=346&bhcp=1
Winning the Oral Majority Mission agencies rethink outreach to the world's non-literate masses By Dawn Herzog Jewell
Nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus and his band of disciples proclaimed a revolutionary message through stories, parables, and proverbs. Although few members of the early church could read or write, the message of the gospel took root, owing partly to its method of proclamation. Today, a number of mission leaders are calling for a return to Jesus' oral method of communicating. The majority of the world's people, they say, won't be reached any other way.
"Seventy percent of the world's people today can't, don't, or won't read," says Avery Willis, executive director of the recently formed International Orality Network (ION), a partnership of 22 mission agencies including the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board (IMB), Youth With a Mission (YWAM), Trans World Radio, Campus Crusade for Christ, and Wycliffe Bible Translators.
Since the printing of the Gutenberg Bible, Willis says, Western Christianity "has walked on literate feet," indirectly requiring literacy for evangelism and discipleship. Yet more than 4 billion of the world's people are oral learners. According to the 2004 Lausanne paper "Making Disciples of Oral Learners," nearly 90 percent of the world's Christian workers serve among auditory learners and often use inappropriate, literacy-based communication styles.
ION seeks to equip mission agencies, churches, and individuals in effective oral strategies, and its mobilization of vastly different agencies has already been a feat in itself. "The amazing thing is we've all come with an attitude of what we can give, not what we can get," Willis says. "We've all agreed to leave our logos and egos at the door."
Powered by Partnership Reaching the oral majority for Christ requires communicating in forms familiar to oral cultures, such as stories, proverbs, drama, songs, chants, and poetry.
The Lausanne paper tells the testimony of an Indian Hindu, a pastor named Dinanath, who came to Christ in 1995 through the work of a cross-cultural missionary. When Pastor Dinanath returned to his village in 1998 following two years of Bible college, he began preaching in the way he'd been taught. But few villagers showed any interest, leaving him discouraged and confused.
The next year, Pastor Dinanath attended a seminar on storytelling methods. He realized that a lecture style and printed books couldn't reach his people, so he changed his preaching. He began telling Bible stories and singing gospel songs put to traditional music.
By 2004, his village church had multiplied into 75 churches with 1,350 baptized members. "This is the next wave in missions," Willis says, "like a Gutenberg II."
A former senior vice president for the IMB, Willis saw the door for cross-agency collaboration open in 1995 at the AD2000 and Beyond Movement's Korea gathering. It was there that he publicly repented for the Southern Baptists' pride in believing they could reach the world by themselves. Later, at the Amsterdam 2000 conference, a group of nine mission leaders including Willis formed an informal organization, Table 71, to begin talking about ways to work together. In February 2005, ION was formed.
Willis is quick to cite the gifts of agencies involved in ION: "Wycliffe brings the integrity of Bible translation, the IMB contributes church planting and Bible storying methodology, Campus Crusade brings its global media expertise in the Jesus film and its work on college campuses, YWAM brings its training and recruiting gifts, Trans World Radio has the ability to put stories on radio, and so on."
That's not to say that the agencies agree on everything. Although Wycliffe actively participates in ION, it remains committed to literacy training and Scripture translation for the world's minority language groups. Freddy Boswell, Wycliffe International's vice president for Scripture promotion, hesitates to throw his full support behind the orality movement. "There's an emotional rush to meet oral needs. It's something new and exciting to say, 'Hey, can we do something to reach 70 percent of the world's population?' " he says. "But let's not forget literacy and translation."
Wycliffe still promotes study of the printed Word as the key to evangelism and long-term discipleship.
Morgan Jackson, international director of Hosanna/Faith Comes By Hearing (FCBH), affirms that, ideally, "orality never moves people away from literacy—it moves them to literacy."
Working with Wycliffe and national Bible societies, Jackson's ministry records and distributes Scripture readings around the world. After hearing the Scriptures, many listeners immediately want to read the Bible themselves, Jackson says.
Last year, FCBH joined the Jesus Film Project to test an outreach program in 28 languages. Following more than 4,000 showings of the Jesus film, local volunteers trained by FCBH led weekly Scripture-listening and discussion groups. The results surpassed all expectations. In Nigeria, 10,000 people made decisions for Christ, and 7,900 joined listening groups. Six months later, 42 of the groups had become churches. "Before, when you showed the Jesus film in some places," Jackson says, "people came to Christ, but you could come back six months later and nothing would exist."
It can take time to train cross-cultural workers in oral techniques, which require a greater appreciation for the concrete. Trans World Radio's training courses contrast how oral and literate learners think.
"When we're taught to read and write, one of our first lessons in literacy is categorizing shapes into circles, triangles, and squares," media services officer Tom Tatlow says. "But an oral person would say, 'That's a wheel, a pie, or a box.'"
Thanks to ION and others, oral strategies are beginning to seep into local church missions. At a Finishing the Task conference held in November at the Billy Graham Training Center in Asheville, North Carolina, ION provided each church that selected an unreached people group with resources for oral strategies. Also, one of the five thrusts of the ambitious PEACE plan launched by Saddleback Church's Rick Warren targets literacy. Curtis Sergeant, Saddleback's director of church planting, stocks Saddleback's website with resources for training literacy tutors and employing oral strategies in a range of ministries.
LaNette Thompson, an orality consultant for IMB, has been receiving more requests than she can accept from mission agencies. She says that seminaries and church leaders in West Africa have been slow to accept oral strategies, because Western missionaries have instilled "the expectation that church leaders must be literate." However, Thompson believes gospel storying will catch on with African women, traditionally the storytellers in their families.
In early 2007, ION plans to hold a consultation in Delhi, India. "We really want to raise indigenous leaders on every continent who take this message and do what they need to do," Willis says.
While orality may make headlines in the West, its strategies aren't novel for majority-world Christians, says Scott Moreau, editor of Evangelical Missions Quarterly and chair of Wheaton Graduate School's intercultural studies department. Moreau points to the explosion of the church in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the last 50 years.
"We might be reinventing a wheel that they've been using a long time," he says. "But it's exciting that we're discovering for ourselves what's going on and using it to the kingdom's advantage."
Dawn Herzog Jewell works for Media Associates International, a communications training ministry. Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. March 2006, Vol. 50, No. 3, Page 56
Ref: categorie(s): News, News Events, Partnership, Stories: News
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United Bible Societies article here:
http://www.biblesociety.org/wr_402/402_contents.htm
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Do you think there is ever a time when the spoken word of God could be of less effect than no word at all?
How does this "prove" anything? I don't need an elaborate answer, but at least acknowledge that I asked it, think a little bit, and give me a simple answer.
P.S. Please no more all caps. Remember that doing that is interpreted as the same as yelling.
Do you think there is ever a time when the spoken word of God could be of less effect than no word at all?
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I do not think the least hint in that direction.
The Scripture is clear about itself on that score.
God's Word is powerful--He spoke all that is into existence.
Methinks the title of the fine book . . .
YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL
would fit a lot of the perceptions and constructions on reality which we read from the naysayers.
Amen! And that is no coincidence. God gave men the ability to speak in order to preach His glory and praise His name.
And it's through ears given by God that men know the truth of the Gospel. As you referred to Isaiah...
"So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." -- Isaiah 55:11
How does this "prove" anything? I don't need an elaborate answer, but at least acknowledge that I asked it, think a little bit, and give me a simple answer.
P.S. Please no more all caps. Remember that doing that is interpreted as the same as yelling.
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I don't believe I can fruitfully convince of anything when the construction on reality is so dead set against a different reality. I'm inadequate to the task.
To me, it's exceedingly simple.
Give a tribal group the Scriptures only--orally. Return some weeks to months later and a I Cor 12-14 Church is alive and well including healings, deliverance, miracles.
NO bureaucracy did it.
NO thousands of encyclicals did it.
NO college of Cardinals did it.
NO papal pontifications did it.
NO prayers to Mary and a thousand other saints did it.
NOfaithful enactments of 100's of rituals and ceremonies did it.
NO magesterium and related pontifications did it.
NO idol veneration, attention thereto, adoration or worship did it.
NO edifices of tradition did it.
NO endless lists of formal bureaucratic customs, edicts and obediences did it.
NO 100's of 'Hail Mary's' did it.
NO 100's of 'Our Father's' did it.
NO amount of crawling on knees on marble floors and steps to kiss the well worn toes of papal statues did it.
NO amount of candle burning did it.
NO amount of women's covered heads did it.
. . .
. . .
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No. Construing ALL CAPS as yelling is a common convention. It's not the only possible one. We each have choices of how we construe stimuli.
I happen to not prefer that construction on net reality. I recognize I'm in a minority. That's OK. I'm sure many other posts by many other posters would be much more comfortable to read for the ALL CAPS allergic.
Indeed. Agreed.
Holy Spirit is great at putting such in hearts--all the more so when the heart has been exposed to Scripture.
Isn't there a verse about two witnesses . . . Spirit and Word? or is it Word and Blood or Spirit and Blood?
AMEN! INDEED, INDEED.
Methinks that perhaps your God is too small, to borrow a book title.
God has SUFFICIENTLY protected the ESSENTIALS OF HIS WORD to afford millions a sufficiently clear route to establishing a lasting eternal relationship with HIM regardless of so called "transmission errors," "copying errors" and pervesity of man deliberate bias translation errors.
He clearly does the same thing with these tribal groups.
It still shocks and surprises me that folks would have trouble with God being God. Kind of like He's stepped out from under their bureaucratic thumb somehow--shame on Him.
NOT!
AMEN! AMEN!
Please check your email.
IN THE NAME OF GOD?
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Actually, my impression is that God rather gets a humorous kick out of my ALL CAPS.
I guess He didn't go to the right attitude school.
Comparing a translating process--very straightforward and faithful to the best scholarship available . . .
comparing THAT
to the fossilized; calcified; towering; granite rigid; narrow; moss and lichen encrusted acres of traditions of the RC edifice is somewhat like considering
a gnat's . . . burp
to an ocean full of sperm whale's vomiting all the squid they'd eaten the last 10 years.
Amazing twisting of reality, to me.
I think your shouts of "success" and your exuberant celebration of "Houston, we have a church" are a little premature.
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Evidently God disagrees. He's been confirming with sign's following, just as Scripture teaches, right along from the beginning.
I guess God didn't get the RC memo. Maybe He has that channel on permanent IGNORE.
2,000 years is nothing, try 3,700.
That said, one large assumption that you made is the one that became the title of this thread: that a group of people, given only the Scriptures (via audio) and that have formed churches that fit a model that those who believe in Sola Scriptura consider to be Biblical proves that Sola Scriptura is true.
What I'm asking you is how giving a group of people the Bible in a vacuum, with no interpreter or outside influence, *proves* that Sola Scriptura is true. The result is the one that would be expected, when all you have given them is Scripture. I'm attempting to say (although perhaps not well) that if these people had lived in the same historical context as the Apostles and the rest of the Early Church, their theology and ecclesiology would have been that OF the Early Church. You neglected to answer that challenge in your prior response; instead you chose to dismiss it.
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Wellllll . . . my data and logic are as follows.
1. God says His Word will not return void.
2. Holy Spirit plus Scripture is exceedingly powerful in the lives of individuals and groups per Scripture and my extensive personal experience.
3. GOD SAYS HE will establish HIS CHURCH. I find no qualifiers nor prescribed flesh driven edifices hidden in those words. And, further, I've SEEN HIM DO IT.
4. Here we have an organization that has been planting oral Scriptures in tribal groups for 30 years. They have some significant track record and amount of follow-up research to support their claims.
5. One can rant and rave all the year long about how God is not staying in THEIR tidy little boxes as THEY'VE ASSUMEd HE HAS TO . . . but HE clearly is not paying attention to their intellectual, organizational, flesh driven tantrums.
6. Scripture plus obviously Holy Spirit enlivening Scripture in the hearts, spirits and minds of individuals and the tribe produces a I Cor 12-14 Church.
What is NOT Sola Scriptura about that?
what happens when these individuals begin to stray off or disagree, when there is no authority to guide them?
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Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, so now, we are supposed to say that
Jesus The Christ was lying or an idiot when
HE DECLARED that
HOLY SPIRIT WOULD LEAD INTO ALL TRUTH?
So, not only is Jesus now a liar, but Holy Spirit is incompetent?
I wouldn't want to tell The Father that to HIS FACE!
I think HE would WHOLESALE disagree, as do I.
and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
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Oh, goodness, you MUST be WRONG, Dr E?!
You mean to tell me that Holy Spirit enlivened Scripture has no expiration date? You mean it's efficacious eternally?
I mean . . . some folks would have me believe that if someone hears the Scriptures . . . then within 30 seconds, they must have a troop of 100 ecclesiastical pontificators; another 100 Scriptural translation experts; another 100 interpretive pontificators; 25 supervising Bishops and Cardinals come along and explain every 3-5 word phrase MOST CORRECTLY else the hapless wallower in God's truth will STILL end up doomed to hell???
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Please excuse me while I go barf. This satire has been a bit much for even me.
It doesn't need to "prove" anything. We are commanded to preach the Gospel to all men, in season and out of season. God takes care of insuring the Gospel accomplishes everything He wills.
By virtue of Scripture being God's holy word and His instructions for correct living, then all the world profits by its proclamation.
But most assuredly, all whom have been appointed to eternal life will hear the Gospel with ears given by God, know the truth with a new heart given by God, and understand that their salvation has come about because Jesus Christ has mercifully paid for their sins in total, eternally, once for all time, as God ordained from before the foundation of the world.
"And when the gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed." -- Acts 13:48
>>In the name of God, please TURN OFF THE CAPS LOCK. It makes you look like a nutter.<<
I love ya man!
(How is your lovely wife?)
If our FRiends would only return to Scripture and read they would find the complete and transformative assurance that is God's word to His chidlren.
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." -- Johm 5:24
Of course not, and I am not in any way denigrating the effort. I am just questioning the certainty of the triumph. As we know from the writings of Paul, this is no easy task.
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