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."
Amen, amen, amen.
Yes, it is. And it’s wonderful.
You’re a sad case, Kolo, if you think you have ‘the truth.’ God will have the final say to all of us but loving Him and having a relationship with Him here on earth beats any church hierarchy and some of the rites you claim bring salvation. It comes by faith in Him and Him alone, not baptism, not the eucharist, not any rites. We will always disagree on those things but I trust my God to bring all of us to the truth.
You are so wrong, but you will never see it.
If I am correct in assuming that you include us calf-licks among the "apostolic", this testifies to me that we have done a downright HORRIBLE job of communicating.
Last night at Mass (the Gospel reading was the anointing at Bethany; the sermon was in invitation to give your "best stuff", to squander it, on paying attention to the Love of God) I was thinking that the Great Battle of the Passion was not just about humans and human souls and salvation (as though that weren't enough), but about wresting the entire cosmos from Satan's grasp.
TO be totally and geekily ridiculous, the death of Christ is like the bomb that Luke Skywalker is able to send right into the heart of the death-star. Sorta kinda as kosta said, Satan expected a corpse and got a nuke!
IN the dark ages, when I was very young and toys weren't designed for children, I got a present that involved winding something up. Being a southpaw (and very very young) I wound it up backwards and fried the spring completely.
The Passion and death fried Satan's clockwork. Without Jesus, evil leads to evil. WITH Jesus, Joseph's betrayal by his brothers saves God's promise to Abraham and saves their own lives.
Death is no longer an end but a beginning ...
I could go on and on. Let us all glorify the miracle of Easter!
As a Dominican whose excellence as a writer is exceeded only by his modesty wrote a dozen years ago:
Always mind that though Lent lasts forty days, the holy season of Easter lasts a full fifty days, from Easter Day until Pentecost, and is followed by still more feasts, those of the Holy Trinity and of the Sacred Body and Blood of Our Lord. It is as though, after a time of sorrow, our Joy -- even our merriment -- should continue until we can celebrate no more. We are spent before our Joy is done.Of course, in my household we don't say that last word until Easter. We say "A-word", so we can save up the whoopee.And must it not be so: that though our sin gives grave cause for great and lengthy sorrow, yet the great Triumph of the Love of God, made plain in the rising of The Son, gives weightier cause for greater and more lengthy Joy? We ought to grieve and to be abashed for a season, because our sin required so dreadful and doleful a remedy. But much more ought we to make merry because Our Sweet Lord so willingly paid the price of our sin and now is risen gloriously.
And much more still ought we to rejoice because He carries us as captives in His climbing train and bears us as precious trophies to lay before the Father’s throne. Alleluia!
Both were inspired by God, "God Breathed".
Not that it should matter, but I’m with FK on this. I think “Abba” means “Papa” which in most of the US translates as “Daddy”.<p.And it is the very terror of the “consuming fire” of the OT that makes the divine permission to think of Him as “Papa”, that is the miracle, I think.
You wrote:
“So is worshipping the church...”
Thank goodness we’ve never done that. We just worship God.
I know that the scripture is inspired by God and do not dispute that. I am Catholic, you know.
Are you familiar with the people called St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. John, St. Luke, St. Paul, St. Peter, St. James and St. Jude?
MD: I'm sure it's the handicap of my up-bringing, but I sure never heard THAT one before.
I don't feel like playing softball so I'll let that one go.
MD: Are there any other instances in Scripture where Scripture and being "born of water" are in that kind of metaphorical relationship?
Yes.
Eph.5:26 that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word
IPet.1:23 having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,
I am sure Kosta is referring to the modern goofy connotation of "daddy" nonstop promoted by the secular media, and not the sense of familial intimacy with God that Christ gave us in His Church.
Rings a bell .... Um, didn't the last one start a hospital or something?
One of the reasons we fail to communicate is that when I read "word", usually my first (not my only thought, just my first) thought is "Jesus", while I think you guys think "Bible" first.
I suddenly got booked, but I'll muse upon these texts.
Where do you find this in the scriptures? There is nothing that says they were “ordained” or that they were anything but laity exercising the gifts given to everyone in the church.
“Fine, if +Mark is not included, +Matthew was the real witnessed. He heard the Commission. +Luke had to “research” it and all he could come up with is eleven plus women (I suppose the women who discovered the empty tomb, and even that is controversial as to how many were there).”
But Luke says he got his information from “eyewitnesses” to the events he was reporting. A simple solution to the problem could be there were to “Great Commissions”; one taking place indoors and the other outdoors with the makeup of the audience including the same people along with others in the different audiences.
“In fact, Matthew's Genealogy of Joseph and Luke's differ on very crucial points: Jospeh’s own father's name and the number of generations and names involved.”
Matthew’s genealogy is of Joseph and Luke’s is of Mary; both being from the tribe of Judah.
“+Luke's account of +Paul's “event” on the way to Damascus doesn't agree with +Paul's own, or +Paul's account abut the division that boiled up in Jerusalem with the party of +James.”
Where is there a disagreement?
“My point exactly. +Paul is adamant about women being silent in the church.”
There is no evidence that Priscilla was teaching in the church. It says she and Aquilla “took him unto them and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly”. They took him aside and taught him privately. There is no disagreement with Paul or the early church.
kosher magicsterical
IF
it affirmed one of the many strange perspectives postulated hereon. LOL.
Certainly, at the very least . . . it shows that DADDY is not at all a far fetched translation that only 'ignorant non-Greeks' would think of.
Have often thought of the issue.
I think INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS influence behavior wholesale.
We wouldn't dream of offending a beloved wife or hubby we were intimately enraptured with and devoted to.
I think satan makes much hay with all of us when he can emphasize even a perceived distance between us and God . . . whether through a large, pontifical, encrusted, gilded, processional, hierarchically elaborately constructed magicsterical and RELIGIOUS CLUB or 'merely' through trying to shred the SCRIPTURAL ABBA FATHER, DADDY.
Christ shed HIS BLOOD that I might have intimacy with DADDY. Far be it from me to mangle that effort, intent, reality . . . or to try and define it out of existence . . . or to layer all manner of rital and hogwash between, in the middle of it.
merely illustrative of man-made theologies.
= = =
I certainly recognize the RC reps and magicsterical trumping the rest of us on being masters of that phenomena.
BRACE YOURSELF.
i AGREE!
goofy connotation of “daddy”
= =
Had I felt that close to an earthly Daddy,
I would certainly not have considered it goofy! Sheesh!
Blessed,
Treasured,
God-sent,
Protective,
Thrilling,
Redemptive,
Guiding,
Supportive,
Loving,
Righteous,
Godly,
. . .
. . .
NOT goofy, at all.
I did have some cousins who could do goofy quite well, however.
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