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."
“the illegitimate children of the reformation: the cults?”
Please tell me of whom ye speak and where they may be found. Randall and I may actually go there together and witness what they do and of the Truth.
This thread started off with his last day on the trip - one he spent in Mexico City. Thats’ why it has much of its content filled with observations he made while there. Search on “Randall Easter” and you will find other reports from his trip wherein he reports on helping local pastors and thanking God for their firm faith in the Lord. Much violence against churches in parts of Latin America. We have it very easy in this country.
GC, now you know how he aquired his "list" from upthread. He arrogated them to himself as is so amply demonstrated when you consider this diatribe was elicited by my use of the term "sado-evangelist."
SOUNDS GOOD
to me.
A query . . .
Am I supposed to treat the following as an honest, true statement?
“He arrogated them to himself”
Doesn’t mesh with any reality I’m familiar with.
We agree! It’s grace alone that saves! I’ve told people that faith cannot save anyone (see this post:http://menofhonorministry.org/Discipleship/Salvation.htm ).
The object of one’s faith is what’s important. The Lord gives us faith to believe in Him and it’s His grace that saves us. None of our works contribute to being born again in Christ Jesus.
Oh, but then you contradict yourself by saying it’s grace plus works that save. By your use of the word “salvation” in that sentence, do you mean being converted or born again, justified in the sight of God? Or did you mean present-tense as in still saving?
If you think any works - tied to grace or faith or a goat in Iraq - help in the conversion from spiritually dead to spiritually alive means that you think Christ’s work was inadequate. That’s heresy, because He alone is sufficient.
AMEN! Last Sunday, at Mass, I was lamenting the rotten music and the folk guitar accompaniment, the various and asundry abuses of the GIRM (the official directions for the Mass) among other "miseries" I have to "endure". It dawned on me that I drove my healthy family in a climate controlled car to a comfortable church that has never been fire bombed, where no member has ever lost a relative because they were beheaded because they were a Christian, to a Mass said publicly...What a miserable whiner I am sometimes.
Sorry dude, I have numerous copies of the Scripture at home. Never once has any of them consumed anything, moved, reproduced, or exhibited any one of the other indicators that demonstrate "life" by definition.
And I've had wonderful spiritual JESUS FOCUSED unity with quite a number of precious RC's.
"Unity" like "love," is not an event, it is a commitment.
***We on this side of things do not, for a microsecond, believe that the 400 year-johnny-come-lately theological political power mongers in Rome founded THE Church that Jesus founded—at all. ***
That is your prerogative. Since we were around at Pentecost and all the heretics were successfully combated until the Reformers threw their hats into the ring, we have the perspective of the ages, and, since we were there from the beginning, we have the advantage of having been started by Him.
***MANY OTHER CLUSTERS OF PEOPLE WHO LOVE JESUS EARNESTLY AS FULLY AS THEY KNOW HOW . . . ***
That’s it. As fully as they know how. Turning your back on the Church of Jesus is a really strange way to try to love Jesus more fully.
******Who’d be dopey enough to believe that?***
Ask MarkBsnr.***
Sure. Anyone who believes in the WCF, the Longer and Shorter Confessions, the Belgic Confession, and so on. They’re well represented here, I must say.
***What kind of guppy gobbler are you?***
I like my guppies a little on the larger side, with sharp teeth and a disposition to match.
***Don’t you know the Catholic Church came up with the Creeds so they wouldn’t have to let the illiterate peasants read the Bible ;o)***
Nasty ol’ Catlicks. If it wasn’t for the snake oil salesmen of the Reformation, we’d be concentrating more on God than on government sponsored creeds and confessions.
***And Mark, I am just thrilled you continue to show such interest in the WCF which, IMO, is second only to the Bible and then Calvin’s Institutes as the finest reiteration of God’s will and word ever written.***
And you are most welcome to your opinions. That free will thing, you know.
And you know my opinion of Calvin and his doctrines; of the government of England (and Scotland as well) and their doctrines.
***The WCF doesn’t save anyone. Christ alone saves the fallen sinner.***
The WCF doesn’t say that. It says that Christ alone saves the fallen sinners that He has predestined before Creation to be saved.
Often enough . . .
it seems like . . .
such threads are primarily an occasion to throw words across a net . . . rather across the UNGrand Canyon . . .
and to do so in a way that
dares
the other side to reply . . . thereby affording the sending side the UNGreat opportunity to
play dodge-ball with a different meaning of a common word than might have been understood or thought of to begin with.
Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo admirable, that.
I guess I would just say . . .
Scripure as well as THE LIVING WORD CHRIST JESUS have been full of Life to me, for me. Daily life and eternal life and saving my life in a list of ways quite literally.
I can concur that unity is a commitment
TO JESUS FIRST, LAST, MOST, ALWAYS, PERIOD.
BLOOD BROTHERS IN HIS BLOOD.
FOCUSED ON HIM AND HIS PRIORITIES ACCORDING TO THE GUIDANCE OF HIS WORD AND HIS SPIRIT moment by moment.
UNITY IN JESUS
is NOT
REMOTELY BOUND, NOR BOUNDARIED
by ANY human organization, structure, dogma . . . etc. If anything, such are virtually ALWAYS antithetical to UNITY IN CHRIST.
This notion that the unity that Christ prayed for will be achieved only when all the “rebels” “return” to the RC edifice is a crock of pork rinds from hell.
Jesus did not exhort the Jewish RELIGION leaders to shape up so the Disciples could carry on in the great
RELIGIOUS !!!TRADITIONS!!! in great seamless organizational UNITY.
Hogwash. That’s not unity—it’s idolatry of the flesh and of flesh driven structures, priorities and idols.
***John 3:18 He who believes in Him is not condemned...***
But the Calvinists warp that into:
Only some can believe if they are chosen and the rest are discarded like yesterday’s garbage.
NOT AT ALL!
The RC edifice was NOT around at Pentecost.
Revisionist history just does not wash with those truly exammining the UNRUBBERIZED HISTORICAL RECORD.
I realize that delusion/illusion/fantasy is comforting to those addicted to worshipping a world system, structure, organization, group of leaders, dogma etc.
But God has quite a different perspective from that of the RC magicsterical.
Otherwise, He would not have confirmed so many signs following of so many authentic healings and deliverances through Christ’s Blood and Spirit via so many other folks who’ve had nothing to do with the RC edifice and often nothing to do with any other group . . . but only received the Bible and began believing it and applying it.
I’ll take GOD’S CONFIRMATIONS over the magicsterical’s any day, week, month, year, decade, century, millenium.
***Mark, did you really say that? The authority of the church gives one a belief in the Gospel?***
The quote is from St. Augustine, one of the heroes of the Reformers, if I understand correctly.
***You could not and would not believe in the Gospel by your own Spirit-led reading comprehension? By your own quickened mind and reborn heart? With your own two eyes and ears given by God alone? ***
Ah, but isn’t the Reformed view of the essence that only the saved can believe?
***We can conclude from this logic that if the church moved you away from the Gospel you would follow happily since the church has all authority.***
The Church has the authority and it also has the divine guidance of the Holy Spirit (psst, it’s Scriptural, doncha know). I don’t believe that the Holy Spirit would lead His Church away from Himself. That contradicts everything that we know and believe about Him.
***When you hear them say, “there is no bible without the Romanist Church”,***
I challenge you to present a single post that says this. One, just one. Go ahead, prove our day.
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