Posted on 01/27/2008 7:56:14 PM PST by Manfred the Wonder Dawg
January 25, 2008
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."
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Anti-war sentiment denigrates our service men and women - I will not tolerate that though criticism of the President's or country's foreign policy is ok.
The primary and most damaging difference between the Christian theologies is that some are rooted in the “historical-critical method” of reading ancient manuscripts - Biblical ones, in particular – while others, the Spiritual hearing of the words of God.
The "historical-critical method" is much like science's “methodological naturalism." In science, the method accepts that science cannot "measure" God and thus cannot say whether or not He exists; and then proceeds with the assumption that nature is knowable and predictable and therefore, whatever the explanation for a thing is, it will be natural, or material, or physical.
Likewise the “historical-critical method” excludes the power of God on principle in reviewing ancient texts. It is thought to be scholarly and secular - but I assert that it is useless in Spiritual understanding. And, worse, it can be harmful to new Christians.
My testimony is that the words of God are alive – they are not merely text (or language symbols) – and the only way to comprehend them is spiritual per se.
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned. - I Corinthians 2:14
(b) testing the words of God by the rules of “methodological naturalism” and/or
(c) testing the words of God by man’s rules of logic (e.g. Law of the Excluded Middle, Law of Identity)
Man is not the "measure" of God.
Great points very well put.
"Our vines have tender grapes."
There aren't many verses in Scripture more delicate or gentle as that one.
"...and every [branch] that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
Amen. We all face trials and difficulties and anxious moments. very one of them is given by God to make us trust in Him alone and to conform us to His perfect Son.
And then we come to the OT truth revealed more clearly in the NT by Christ when He tells us those branches are growing from the "the true vine," the root of God, Jesus Christ, in whom we are all one and have been from before the foundation of the world.
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye [are] the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. - John 15:3-5 "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
AMEN! What strength the Christian can draw from Christ's words here. He's telling believers that their faith results from Christ indwelling them by the will of God. God, who made us, made us to "abide in Christ" and Christ in us.
That's the reason we were created in the first place...because without Him we can do nothing.
And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning." -- John 15:26-27"But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:
"From the beginning..."
AMEN.
THX.
I think the condensed [if possible, probably not] essence of this post would do well as a routine part of your signature.
This statement is a total misrepresentation of Catholic belief, as usual.
You mean the Protestant world?
He received a lot of manuscripts from the Greeks but chose only the two most reliable and representative
Your ignorance is amusing. Somone taught you the exact opposite...hmmm, who could that be?
Oh no -- don't tell us that the Greeks actually left words out of their own manuscrripts. God Forbid. Thank God that the Latin retained them
No, only his "reliable" copies didn't.
And since he knew Greek and Latin so well, he probably fixed the text for you guys
Actually, his Greek was lousy. Besides, what he presented was a fraud.
Why indeed??? They may know Greek, but they sure don't know English.
Actually, it's usually the English=speaking people who don't know any oyther language (they don't even know English it seems), but the Greeks were under no obligation to make translations for nayone, let alone English which was hardly alanguage capable of prose, let alone biblical complexity. Anglo-Saxon contained about 500 grumnts before it borrowed heavily form Latin and Norman languages.
Codex Alexandrinus is a hybrid
It's still "christianzied" compared to earlier Codices, and therefore less reliable.
And what are your sources, UC? Vulgate?
LOL! "Least altered???"
I guess that might be true. Who needs to "alter" a forgery?
Amazing, isn't it, to think there are some people who actually believe some questionable fragments (still in good shape and thus obviously not widely used or accepted) were "discovered" only a few hundred years ago, and were judged as authentic by the RCC, when they are actually just more intrigue and diversion from Rome.
The Vaticanus and Sinaitcus disagree with each other over 3,000 in the Gospels alone, while all manuscripts of the Textus Receptus agree with each other over 95%!
From the following excellent site...
The Vaticanus was found... in 1481 in the Vatican library in Rome, where it is currently held..." ""The Sinaiticus is a manuscript that was found in 1844 in a trash pile in St.Catherine's Monastery near Mt. Sinai, by a man named Mr Tischendorf. It contains nearly all of the New Testament plus it adds the 'Shepherd of Hermes' and the 'Epistle of Barnabas' to the New Testament...
And where no man can view the "original," but only "copies" of it distributed by Rome.
You can fool some people some of the time...
A fact Rome has counted on for quite a while.
K:That would be in the West, WF, not in the East.
Well that's a start at least half of the Christian world could read.
Why is the American government paying for Fatah and both the Sunni and Shia movements in Lebanon and the Turkish hell of No. Cyprus, ethnically cleansed of Christians?
I may not like all the tactics in the war, but I understand what the overall strategy is and why it's so important. Did we like having communists as allies during WWII? No, but they were allies against a greater more immediate threat.
Does that make you proud WF? Are you satisfied that the non Protestant heretics are getting what they deserve and are you happy your money is paying for it?
Why would you even think that. We may be opposites on Christian doctrine, but I would never wish to see any Christians harmed.
And WF, do you really think that we went into Iraq to bring the blessings of liberty and democracy to that benighted land or did we go in to whack a guy we thought posed a threat to us and make an example of him...
Why not both?
How does any American excuse the monstrosities of Kosovo and Lebanon and No. Cyprus and the destruction of 2000 year old Christianity in Iraq? Short of saying that those Christian communities were not products of the Protestant Revolution and thus heretics, no American can!
This statement makes absolutely no sense! I can't believe you even think this.
American exceptionalism allowed all churches to come and be a part of this country. They did not exclude EO, or RC's, even though they had not been so kind to Protestants in the past. A huge portion of our population is RC, I have never heard them complaining that there is some sinister plot afoot to see Non-Protestant Christians hurt.
Oops, K. I didn't see this before I posted you a response.
I don't agree with your idealistic portrayal of the world. You left out greed and business interests that also have their place in our society and foreign policy. You also left out dirty politics.
I served twenty years in the military through three wars. You are going to tell me that I "accommodate" the enemy? Shame on you.
Maybe the problem is that we have decided to change how 1.2 billion people live and what they believe and make them in our image. Or maybe we decided to side with their enemies, and get involved in their local dispute, instead of minding our own business.
How do we promote our values in Bosnia and Kosovo or in tolerating occupied Cyprus? Why are we keeping a couple of thousand troops in Western Europe 19 years after the Soviet Union collapsed? Why is NATO expanding now that it is no longer a "defensive" organization? Are you ready to send our sons and daughters to nuclear holocaust over Estonia? For what?
And how would you like if Germans or French of Japanese tried to interfere in our elections and push their values on us?
Are you going to call Gen Wesley Clark and tell him he is "accommodating" the enemy too because he is opposed to our senseless war in Iraq? Accommodating the enemy is treason. Are you calling Gen Clark, all EO's and RCCs traitors because they disagree with one of the worst Presidents in the American history (my opinion), George W. Bush? Shame on you.
You are shutting people up for speaking their mind because you disagree with their opinion. And you are exalting freedom of speech as the basic American value? Being opposed to foreign policy is not treason. Maybe it was in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. But not in America. Shame on you.
Kolo is absolutely right. But one must be able to see the other side to make a comparison. Unfortunately, multidimensional weltanschauun is alien to so many one-dimentional individuals whose see only one side of the moon and therefore have nothing to compare it to.
739 - ...Through the Church's sacraments, Christ communicates his Holy and sanctifying Spirit to the members of his Body. 740 - These "mighty works of God," offered to believers in the sacraments of the Church, bear their fruit in the new life in Christ, according to the Spirit. (This will be the topic of Part Three.)737 - The mission of Christ and the Holy Spirit is brought to completion in the Church, which is the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit.
Right off the bat the catechism has it wrong. The church is not the "temple of the Holy Spirit." Individual believers are indwelled by the Holy Spirit. Each believer whom God has adopted from before the foundation of the world is a "lively stone" which makes up the church of God on earth.
The RCC has the sacraments being the means of Christ revealing Himself to us and paying for our sins, when Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit gives all believers the knowledge of what is good and true regarding Christ's one-time, accomplished sacrifice for all this sins of His flock.
And the RCC has "the mighty works of God" offered through the sacraments, when according to God's word, the "mighty work" of Christ has been offered and accepted by God and is now made known to each believer by the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
As usual, this is an untruth.
Alexandrian or "neutral" text-type. The Gospels are highly polished and harmonized Byzantine text-type. But there is a difference in the OT as well, especially in Isaiah which appears thoroughly christianized, depending which copy of the Sptuagint one is using. Whatever copy the Greeks are using, it agrees with the western OT when it comes to those "critical" Christian point such as Virgin Birth, and such passsages as Isa 9:6-8.
The Church is the Body of Christ, composed of believers. Believers have the Holy Spirit, ergo, "the Church [is] the Temple of the Holy Spirit".
The RCC has the sacraments being the means of Christ revealing Himself to us and paying for our sins, when Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit gives all believers the knowledge of what is good and true regarding Christ's one-time, accomplished sacrifice for all this sins of His flock.
The first statement does not necessarily negate the latter. Think about it.
And the RCC has "the mighty works of God" offered through the sacraments, when according to God's word, the "mighty work" of Christ has been offered and accepted by God and is now made known to each believer by the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Same as above (the two statements are not mutually exclusive).
It speaks of "leaving the land of the Chaldeans." And Stephen is talking about Abraham. What does that have to do with the Chaldean language (Hebraisti) of the Jews in the 1st century AD? Seems like you are drowing and grababing every straw you can find. Pathetic.
Codex Alexandrinus is a hybrid. It's still "christianzied" compared to earlier Codices, and therefore less reliable.
The Jews were faithful to preserve the Hebrew scriptures entrusted to them. What happened to you Greeks????
You know, kosta, these are the Greek scriptures that you are talking about here -- the scriptures that God entrusted to the Greek Church, that they were supposed to preserve, maintain, and protect from corruption. You are saying that the Greek Church failed and were not up to the task.
If the Greek Orthodox could not be trusted with the scriptures entrusted to them, then what makes you think that any of those other things that the Greek Orthodox do and proclaim are not also corrupted????
Your words are not a condemnation of the Greek scriptures but a condemnation of the Eastern Orthodox Church entrusted with those scriptures -- if in fact you are correct. If the scriptures passed from Greek Orthodox hands to the West were not reliable, then the Greek Orthodox are not reliable. Would you like another chance at the question???
And that as such, a man...
"becomes a priest through the power of Jesus Christ operating through the normal channels of his Church. Orders produce an ontological or real change in the one ordained. Once consecrated he is no longer a lay person and he is no longer exactly like non-priests. He has received a charism that consecrates him to continuing Christ's prophetic and sacramental ministry."
Can anyone raise the bread and wine and have it transform into the "actual body and blood of Christ?"
Or is this astounding ability to change matter only possessed by "another Christ?" Which means that the offering for Christ's sins can only be transmitted by "another Christ" who has been "ontologically changed" to render the bread and wine into Christ Himself for the forgiveness of sins?
And thus there is no individual forgiveness of sins within the RCC. Forgiveness has to take place by the actions of "another Christ" through the "sacramental ministry."
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