Conclusion from Peru and Mexico

ESV Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

In recent days I have spent time in Lima and Sullana Peru and Mexico City and I have discovered that people by nature are the same. Man has a heart that is inclined to selfishness and idolatry. Sin abounds in the remotest parts of the land because the heart is desperately wicked. Thousands bow before statues of Mary and pray to her hoping for answers. I have seen these people stare hopelessly at Mary icons, Jesus icons, and a host of dead saints who will do nothing for them. I have talked with people who pray to the pope and say that they love him. I talked with one lady who said that she knew that Jesus was the Savior, but she loved the pope. Thousands bow before Santa Muerte (holy death angel) in hopes that she will do whatever they ask her. I have seen people bring money, burning cigarettes, beer, whiskey, chocolate, plants, and flowers to Santa Muerte in hopes of her answers. I have seen these people bowing on their knees on the concrete in the middle of public places to worship their idol. Millions of people come into the Basilica in Mexico City and pay their money, confess their sins, and stare hopelessly at relics in hope that their sins will be pardoned. In America countless thousands are chained to baseball games, football games, material possessions, and whatever else their heart of idols can produce to worship.

My heart has broken in these last weeks because the God of heaven is not honored as he ought to be honored. People worship the things that are created rather than worshiping the Creator. God has been gracious to all mankind and yet mankind has hardened their hearts against a loving God. God brings the rain on the just and unjust. God brings the beautiful sunrises and sunsets upon the just and unjust. God gives good gifts unto all and above all things he has given his Son that those who would believe in him would be saved. However, man has taken the good things of God and perverted them unto idols and turned their attention away from God. I get a feel for Jesus as he overlooked Jerusalem or Paul as he beseeched for God to save Israel. When you accept the reality of the truth of the glory of God is breaks your heart that people would turn away from the great and awesome God of heaven to serve lesser things. Moses was outraged by the golden calf, the prophets passionately preached against idolatry, Jesus was angered that the temple was changed in an idolatrous business, and Paul preached to the idolaters of Mars Hill by telling them of the unknown God.

I arrived back at home wondering how I should respond to all the idolatry that I have beheld in these last three weeks. I wondered how our church here in the states should respond to all of the idolatry in the world. What are the options? First, I suppose we could sit around and hope that people chose to get their life together and stop being idolaters. However, I do not know how that could ever happen apart from them hearing the truth. Second, I suppose we could spend a lifetime studying cultural issues and customs in hope that we could somehow learn to relate to the people of other countries. However, the bible is quite clear that all men are the same. Men are dead in sin, shaped in iniquity, and by nature are the enemies of God. Thirdly, we could pay other people or other agencies to go and do a work for us while we remain comfortably in the states. However, there is no way to insure that there will be doctrinal accuracy or integrity. If we only pay other people to take the gospel we will miss out on all of the benefits of being obedient to the mission of God. Lastly, we could seek where God would have us to do a lasting work and then invest our lives there for the glory of God. The gospel has the power to raise the dead in any culture and we must be willing to take the gospel wherever God would have us take it. It is for sure that our church cannot go to every country and reach every people group, so we must determine where God would have us work and seek to be obedient wherever that is.

It seems that some doors are opening in the Spanish speaking countries below us and perhaps God is beginning to reveal where we are to work. There are some options for work to be partnered with in Peru and there could be a couple of options in Mexico. The need is greater than I can express upon this paper for a biblical gospel to be proclaimed in Peru and Mexico. Oh, that God would glorify his great name in Peru and Mexico by using a small little church in a town that does not exist to proclaim his great gospel amongst a people who desperately need the truth.

I give thanks to the LORD for allowing me the privilege of going to these countries and broadening my horizons. The things that I have seen will be forever engraved upon my heart. I will long remember the pastors that I spent time with in Peru and I will never forget Adolfo who translated for me in Mexico. I will relish the time that I spent with Paul Washer and the others. When I think of church I will forever remember being on top of that mountain in Sullana at that church which had no electricity and no roof. I am convinced that heaven was looking down on that little church on top of that mountain and very few people on earth even know that it exist. Oh, God I pray that the things of this world will continue to grow dim and that God’s people will be caught up in his glorious presence.

Because of the truth: Pastor: J. Randall Easter II Timothy 2:19 "Our God is in heaven and does whatever He pleases."(Ps. 115:3) "He predestined us according to the good pleasure of His will."(Eph. 1:5) Those who have been saved have been saved for His glory and they are being made holy for this is the will of God. Are you being made holy? Spurgeon says, "If your religion does not make you holy it will damn you to hell."

“Jesus proved he is the Son of God by his resurrection which was witnessed by hundreds”

“That “proof” is based on the scriptures “proving” scriptures. This is like me verifying that I am who I say I am. Trust me, I am. :)”

The apostle Paul makes this point with regard to the most astounding miracle story of all, the resurrection: “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead.” (1 Corinthians 15:13-15)

Paul, then immediately repeats his argument: “But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ [that is, have died as believers] are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” (1 Corinthians 15:15-19)

There are many accounts in the New Testament of Jesus’ appearance after the crucifixion. Matthew, Luke, John and Acts all contain vivid records (Matthew 28:8-10; Luke 24:13-43; John 20:11-29; Acts 1:1-11). A summary of them is a major part of one of the earliest descriptions of what the first Christians believed. Paul, in his letter to the church at Corinth in the early 50s AD., wrote:

“Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance:

that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that he was buried,
that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.
After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
Then he appeared to James,
then to all the apostles,
and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.”
(1 Corinthians 15:1-8)

This ‘creed” is especially significant for its date. It occurs in a letter written in the early 50s but it dates to a very few years after Jesus’ death. This material is traditional and pre-Pauline is evident from the technical terms delivered and received, the parallelism and somewhat stylized content, the proper names of Cephas and James, the non- Pauline words, and the possibility of an Aramaic original.

Concerning the date of this creed, critical scholars almost always agree that it has an early origin, usually placing it in the AD. 30s. Paul most likely received this material during his first visit in Jerusalem with Peter and James, who are included in the list of appearances (1 Cor 15:5, 7). In fact, Fuller, Hunter, and Pannenberg are examples of critical scholars who date Paul’s receiving of this creed from three to eight years after the Crucifixion itself while people who were knowledgeable about the event, were still alive. And if Paul received it at such an early date, the creed itself would be even earlier because it would have existed before the time he was told. And the facts upon which the creed was originally based would be earlier still. We are for all practical purposes back to the original events.

The implications of the early date are: first, that these “traditions” about Jesus are “unlikely to have been distorted because the period (after the events occurred) was so brief’; and second, that it would be incredible if such traditions did not reflect the mind of Jesus who had been so recently with the disciples.

For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a vital event. If it happened, it means that human sins have been paid for; Christ’s death was sufficient; people can be redeemed. If he was not raised from the dead, then his life and death were no more significant than the life and death of any other good person. The whole fabric of the Christian faith is not just torn but shredded. It should be abandoned.

There is also the testimony of women. The importance of this one detail may be lost on us today. That is the fact that women are credited both with the discovery that the grave was empty and with the first post resurrection encounters with Jesus. In Jesus’ day the testimony of women was not even allowed in court. If the reports of the empty tomb were invented, it is difficult to understand why their inventors should have embellished their accounts of the discovery with something virtually guaranteed to discredit them. That women were the first witnesses must be true; there would be no other reason for including the detail.

“Biblical miracles “verified” by the Bible! Back to the scriptures being their own proof.”

If the resurrection was not true and the bible writers were just writing fiction or myths it would have been disproved long before Paul wrote.

First, if the disciples stole the body. or they paid the soldiers guarding the tomb to say that the disciples had whisked the body away (Matthew 28:11-15) then the grave clothes would have been disturbed. The disciples had no reason to steal the body; they did not believe that Jesus was going to be raised from the dead. Any plot to steal the body and perpetrate a resurrection hoax would have unraveled under the persecution as did the Watergate conspiracy.

The disciples who saw Jesus after the resurrection were not “victims of hysterical delusions” in that there were too many reported appearances under too many different conditions for this explanation to be tenable, and again, there was no expectation of his return from the dead.

Thank you.

such a messy process

Exactly.

Now I'm going to do this as though I hadn't been repeatedly hit in the face with charges of Idolatry and with mockery of my Church and her institutions.

Over here with have the Books, tas graphas, biblia. They come presented to us as a union of several writings; the writings, the little books, become THE Book, most emphatically singular. Their origin and history are messy and unsatisfactorily unclear. Sometimes there appear to be contradictions. A few hundred years ago verses which are now deemed by inaccessible "authorities" to be spurious were presented as the infallible word of God.

And yet we believe that somehow God can insure through such a messy process that what He wills about his self-disclosure is accomplished.The Bible speaks of God's promises to lead the Apostles into truth and records a prototypical ecclesiastical council, held, as some maintain, even before there was a vague notion of Church.

The Church speaks of the Scriptures even before the notion of "The Bible" as one entity, not to mention which scriptures are in and which not, is established.

Both have indeterminate histories, each testifies (as some read and hear them) to the other.

Some firmly hold that God can handle the scribes, editors, scholars, clerics and people in such a way that His self-disclosure in Scripture is uncompromised. They suggest that to question God's reliable self-disclosure in Scripture is to suggest that God is weak or doesn't care.

But the idea that God would (or could?) work through a bunch of venal clerics to provide us with His reliable, fruitful, and efficacious self-disclosure, which does not return to Him empty but accomplishes that for which He sent (as in apostello) it, is risible to some of the same people. He has the power and the will to work through the Bible, which by itself has been used to excuse schism after schism, but in the estimation of some, cannot redeem the work of Bishops.

So who has the "smaller" God, those who think he stuck with a book and abandoned sinful men as too hard to direct, or those who trust Him and his promises even in the face of a Borgia or a Medici or two.

Or, with less passion: why trust Him in the Book, but not in the Church?

***The Pope had now attained two of the three grades of power that constitute his stupendous dignity. He had made himself a bishop of bishops, head of the Church, and he had become a crowned monarch. Did this content him? No! He said, “I will ascend the sides of the mount; I will plant my throne above the stars; I will be as God.” Not content with being a bishop of bishops, and so governing the whole spiritual affairs of Christendom, he aimed at becoming a king of kings, and so of governing the whole temporal affairs of the world. He aspired to supremacy, sole, absolute, and unlimited. This alone was wanting to complete that colossal fabric of power, the Popedom, and towards this the pontiff now began to strive. ***

A tad slanted, would you not say?

***This success, continued through seven centuries, was audaciously interpreted into a proof of the divinity of the Papacy. ***

The cited site is liberally scattered with such gems, a little lean on proofs and many appeals to unnamed authority.

***The apostacy was not universal. At no time did God leave his ancient Gospel without witnesses. When one body of confessors yielded to the darkness, or was cut off by violence, another arose in some other land, so that there was no age in which, in some country or other of Christendom, public testimony was not borne against the errors of Rome, and in behalf of the Gospel which she sought to destroy. ***

I think that the flavour, as well as the accuracy of this site is captured here. The author appeals to the romantic idea of an underground Church which the Holy Spirit in His wisdom has quietly supported, as well as one of the main planks in the continuing Protestant platform of the Church attempting to destroy the Gospel.

The prose is quite entertaining, I’ll give you that. But I think that direction of the article was chosen before any supporting evidence was assembled. It is a marvelous work of half fiction. I commend the author both in its writing style and in its magnitude.

Thank you oh so very much for sharing your testimony and insights, dear brother in Christ!

Of a Truth, there is only one Great Commandment: to love God with all our heart and soul and mind. (Matthew 22:37-38)

If we miss that one, nothing else we do will matter as the church of Ephesus discovered:

Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted.

Nevertheless I have [somewhat] against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.

Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. – Revelation 2:1-5

Maranatha, Jesus!!!

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