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."

The Bible doesn't say which sins we should confess, just that we should confess sins

Sure, you confess ingratitude to God, anger, envy, pride, arrogance, gluttony, coveting, lying, etc. The details don't make sins more, or less sinful. The Bible teaches that committing one sin is as good as committing all of them.

The idea is to change your behavior, and you do that by becoming aware that your behaving is sin and by repenting, which is to say to never wish to repeat it.

More confession leads to more conviction and repentance.

We should confess everything we are aware of that is sinful in our daily lives, whether deeds or thoughts. Just because we may not remember all of them doesn't mean we don't regret them. So we must confess in principle and repent in principle.

Sure, and when you are aware of that, then you won't become angry and there is no issue of sin

If someone threatens your life with his carelessness, or causes great deal of damage, which may result in injury or even a death of a loved one, a missed appointment, flight, whatever, it is difficult not to get angry. The important thing is not to judge. We can hate the sin but not the sinner.

There are a hundred different ways of committing adultery. Are you telling me that the confession of a single person sleeping around should be the same as that of one who consistently lies to his wife about his whereabouts and pays to have unsafe sex with a brood of prostitutes?

I presume both of them are married. In which case the answer is Yes. Is one murder any less of a sin than three in the eyes of God? Are you any less of a murder if you commit one and not three?

The problem in both cases in your scenario is that neither one of them is regretful and ready to stop the offensive behavior. Maybe that's because they believe they are already "saved"...

That is why I say content DOES matter

I disagree. It makes no difference if one commits adultery with a blonde, brunette or both.

Well, I thought that your point was that the murder would be wrapped into the sin of adultery

No, that was not my point, FK. Murder is a separate sin.

The intention was to get away with adultery.

You don't know that.

Well, contrast that to "I was in a trans and saw a vision....and wrote it down and claim it was from God."

So, is it your position that it is illegitimate for God to choose to communicate through dreams and visions? How about Joseph's dream in the Gospels, did that never happen?

Jesus never directed anyone to write anything down.

As Savedbygrace correctly observed, Revelation 1 is absolutely clear on the matter, and is not subject to varied interpretations among reasonable people concerning this issue. Revelation 1 is scripture, and one can either accept scripture or one can reject it.

The disciples didn't write anything down because they all expected the end of the world to be within their lifetime, so there was no need for it. ...... The writings came later when it became obvious that the Apostles, shall we say, "misunderstood" what Jesus meant when He said "some of you will not taste death" before I return (and they did so despite the Holy Spirit who will "teach you all things.").

What? Are you saying they became disillusioned and THEN wrote the Gospels and the rest of the NT? And all this DESPITE the HS??? That means they were completely on their own as far as you are concerned. Do you have any justification at all for these views since it seems that no Christian church, including your own as far as I can tell, backs them up?

FK: If that is not correct, then what sort of revelation are you referring to?

Christianity, Judaism, Menacheanism, etc. are revealed faiths. People who were instrumental in establishing these religions claimed revelation as the source of their "knowledge." Some of it may be philosophical, and some may be even empirical.

For instance, we can say that this world is not merciful by nature and conclude that mercy must be from "another world."

Likewise, we can observe the universe around us and the earth and conclude that "something" created all this. And since there is structure and order and "rules" that this creation was intelligent, and therefore from a being higher than and greater and more powerful than we are.

Is this what you call God's revelation? From all this would it be right to say that for you God's revelation to us is mostly or solely found in the observations we make for ourselves about the world around us? If so, I don't know how to square this with your earlier statements that unknowable God is only seen through blind faith. It seems like we might have a clash here between logic and blind faith. However, you may be saying that naming that "entity" that is the cause "God" is where the blind faith comes in. I still don't know what you call revelation, though.

Kosta: It's not God's truth that is imperfect; it's our perception that is.

FK: That would appear to confirm a belief that the scriptures are not from God, but are only from men. That's what I thought you thought.

Kosta: How so?

Because I thought you hold that the words of scriptures are men's words and not God's words, that God's inspiration only means that He nudged them to write at all, etc. Here you say that God's truth is not imperfect. That must be because He never gave it to the writers of the scriptures. I mean, consider how much of the Bible you accept. :)

So you claim that your faith and worship are perfect?

Of course not, else I would be God. The faith and worship are there in the scriptures and I continue to find more of it as I am sanctified in my Christian walk for the rest of my life.

You also must claim, then, that every version of the Bible, and every translation of it, is equally perfect because it contains the truth of God in it.

I can't possibly speak for every version since I haven't come close to reading all of them. I am familiar enough with the NIV, KJV, and ESV to know that all of them convey the true and complete faith in accordance with 2 Tim. 3:16-17.

And if the HS, which so many of you claim to be indwelling you..., "will teach you everything" you need to know, how does that explain 33,000 denominations and different beliefs?

Well, the question blows itself out of the water since it includes a false claim. The core beliefs of Bible-believing Christians are very similar, AND the teaching of the HS is a lifelong process.

But I have already told you that Jesus chose to work within the framework of Judaism, or else He could have just as easily confederated everyone's hearts and be done with the whole thing, no blood, no suffering...and within that framework He spoke what the Jews believed and have believed for centuries. He did not come to discredit their faith.

So Jesus played the hand He was dealt by man? Since you give these as the only two options it really seems like this is what you are saying. Besides, He certainly DID discredit the false faiths of many Jews.

Instead He came to reveal that God is not the Zeus-like God of the OT, but just the opposite.

God did not come to trash His own revelation. :) He showed many how they were misinterpreting the truth that was always there and is still there today.

We can ask, why did He even bother coming into this world as a Jew, since He must have known that, despite being sent ONLY for the lost sheep of Israel, the faith in Him was rejected by the very people He came for.

He came into the world as a Jew because the Jews were God's people. The lost sheep of Israel are all of the elect who do or did not yet believe, including Gentiles, as Paul tells us. Jews and Gentiles alike both rejected Him and accepted Him.

So, what difference does it make if He had challenged their beliefs or not, except that they would have rejected Him sooner!

Christ was not a salesman. The predestined elect were always going to be saved, and the lost will always be lost. Christ completed the revelation God wanted us to have.

But from what is written about His ministry, it is clear that God is not the cause of death, but is the source of life, and that passages in the OT that contradict Christ are not understood correctly.

That is the mono-faceted, smaller, limited God and starts with the incorrect presupposition that the Gospels are the complete message and the rest of the Bible is fluff. Christ had a specific mission for His time here on earth. For some reason you have converted that to the sum total of the entity we know as God. IOW, you have invented a rule of some kind that Christ's mission on earth was to show us everything that God wanted us to know. If that was really so, then He would have had no desire to tell others to know their OT scriptures. If the revelation of Jesus was absolutely everything, then Jesus would have had the same opinion of the OT as you do. He clearly did not.

Did God kill all the Egyptian firstborn? If that is the same God we know in Christ, He didn't. And I think the Church would be hard pressed to show otherwise.

That's because you see Christ's singular mission on earth to be the sum of His being. I don't know why you believe that, but to believe it WOULD require throwing out the vast majority of scriptures.

Holy is that which is from God; perfection is only in God. If we assign holiness only to perfection, then nothing would be holy, except God. If you want to use that as a criterion, I have no problem with that, as I don't believe anything is holy but God.

That's all I need to know. None of your clergy are holy men. I will believe you since you are telling me that now. :) As for me, I agree with your premises above, but not your conclusion.

We also refer to the Bible as "Holy." For the same reason, it is a collection of books about what we know of Holiness in an imperfect way. Otherwise we would be doing what so many so-called Bible-believing Christians do: we would worship a book.

So anyone who doesn't agree with you about how corrupt the Bible is worships the Bible? OK. Can you give us an example of how one of us worships the Bible? For example, do we pray to the Bible? Or, do we consider the physical Book, the one I hold in my hand, a Mediatrix and Redemptrix to our salvation? Do we construct statues of the Bible which we kneel before? Anything like that?

We are more concerned what the message is than what the story is.

When a story is clearly presented as being factually true, and then one divorces that factual truth from the truth of the message, then the message is relativized into meaning absolutely anything the reader wants it to mean. The desired interpretation becomes unassailable, since any inconvenient facts in the story can be simply ignored at will. Even with parables, the stories are meant to be taken as internally factually true, that is, assuming there was such a man who did thus and so, etc. Declaring most of the OT to be myth is one way of divorcing these truths. Any facts in the story can be dismissed at will, and are, in order to arrive at the reader's desired conclusions. This is even if the actual words of the story teach something opposite of what the reader wants to hear.

I have no idea if Abraham really existed or not. It's quite immaterial if he lived or not. He is the archetype of a man who would be "righteous." Like Job, or Jonah, he serves a purpose in the development of Judaism and through Judaism of Christianity and Islam. He give it legitimacy of sorts.

But doesn't this lay out the same foundation for the OT (Christian) God as for say, the Greek gods, i.e. myth? Using this approach, I don't see how following the one and only God is any better than following the Greek gods. Lots of men blindly believed in and wrote about them too.

[Re: Matt. 12:12] I think you are missing the point, FK: Jesus here is telling the Jews they got the whole thing wrong. He is redefining what Moses wrote. He is telling them that 1300 years of Judaism had it all wrong and that it's okay to do work on a Sabbath, even though the OT Bible says it isn't.

The OT wasn't wrong. Properly interpreted it teaches that God is to be honored on the Sabbath. Doing good honors God. Declaring the OT wrong countermands what Jesus taught.

As St. John of Damascus, the last of the Desert Fathers, wrote in his Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith," Ch. IV ...... "But what He [God] is in His essence anti nature is absolutely incomprehensible and unknowable. For it is evident that He is incorporeal. For how could that possess body which is infinite, and boundless, and formless, and intangible and invisible, in short, simple and not compound? How could that be immutable which is circumscribed and subject to passion? And how could that be passionless which is composed of elements and is resolved again into them? ......"

All this says to me is how could God be God if He was subject to human frailty. I would agree with that. It seems that on the one hand the Orthodox position is that we can know nothing of the essence of God, but on the other hand we CAN KNOW that His essence is both mono-faceted AND definable as "love"???

Oh boy! A "compound" God!

I don't know what you mean by a "compound" God. We believe in the God revealed to us in the scriptures, which includes the OT. You appear to reject that revelation.

FK: ... how do YOU answer the question "Did God want Jesus to die on the cross?" Yes or no.

The question is wrong. Christ died because He (Christ) willed it. Either He is fully God, or He is a lesser God or not even God.

I suppose I'll take that as a "yes". But doesn't that ruin the Orthodox view that God has nothing to do with death? You just told me that God willed death. The OT says the same thing.

And what is He going to "do" after the End of Times?

Other than reign in Heaven and be our loving Father, the Bible doesn't tell us.

According to the Reformed "theology" God is the author of what happened, in which case there is no reason whatsoever for Him to grieve.

So, are you saying it is impossible to be the author of something and when the expected results happen one has reason to grieve? I remember that a few years ago there was a lone rock climber who got his arm wedged between a boulder and a wall. Knowing he was going to die because he was in a remote location, he wound up sawing off his own arm to free himself. He was the author of an expected result. You are telling me here that he had no reason to grieve the loss of his arm.

So, is it your position that it is illegitimate for God to choose to communicate through dreams and visions? How about Joseph's dream in the Gospels, did that never happen?

And what proof do you have that God uses dreams and visions to communicate and how does one know they are from God and not from the insanity inside one's head?

How about Joseph's dream in the Gospels, did that never happen?

Of course not. It "happened" right when it was needed for the Gentiles to accept the faith without having to go through Jewish customs and circumcision. Very convenient.

St. Paul also reminds us not to condemn anyone for what they eat. That was an essential part of making the new religion acceptable to the Gentiles.

The account of Peter's dream is in Acts, and Acts is intimately related to Paul, through his disciple Luke. So, it all has to do with making the new religion "just right" for the Gentile to accept.

As Savedbygrace correctly observed, Revelation 1 is absolutely clear on the matter, and is not subject to varied interpretations among reasonable people concerning this issue

It's not a matter of interpretation but of credibility. Jesus never told anyone to write down anything when He was on earth. Revelation borders on hallucination. If you want to treat hallucinatory experiences as eyewitness accounts, that's your prerogative.

My point was that those who witnessed Christ on earth never recorded anything like that from His mouth.

Revelation was written when it was necessary, given the context of where Christianity was at the end of the first century.

Are you saying they became disillusioned and THEN wrote the Gospels and the rest of the NT? And all this DESPITE the HS???

Not disillusioned [funny you should use that word, since it means they were under an illusion to begin with :)], but they realized that they misinterpreted what the Lord told them. Until then they were teaching the end was near and would come within their lifetime, because that's what they believed the Lord meant.

When they realized that this was not the correct interpretation (a sobering reminder that even the Apostles were not without error), they had no choice but to seek a better one.

Is this what you call God's revelation?

And what is God;s revelation, FK? Dreams and illusions and hallucinations in a trans?

I don't know how to square this with your earlier statements that unknowable God is only seen through blind faith

That's what the entire creationist philosophy is based on: observation. They call it evidence of a Maker, the evidence of God's existence. This observation of the universe around us is the pillar of faith that God is real.

Here you say that God's truth is not imperfect. That must be because He never gave it to the writers of the scriptures. I mean, consider how much of the Bible you accept

You are twisting what I wrote, which was: "It's not God's truth that is imperfect; it's our perception that is." God only reveals truth. We receive His revelation in an imperfect manner. That's all I meant. So, as far as the Bible is concerned, other than the eyewitness accounts of Christ (which are not revelations), the Bible contains God's truth but as understood and expressed through imperfect human capacity.

I accept all of the Bible (except for the Gospels) as God's revealed truth embedded in imperfect human perceptions.

Even from the Gospels we learn that the Apostles didn't understand fully who Christ was and earlier I mentioned their misunderstanding of the time of His second coming. So, imperfect perceptions and interpretations are the norm rather than an exception. Part of Jesus' ministry was to show exactly that to the Jews.

The faith and worship are there in the scriptures and I continue to find more of it as I am sanctified in my Christian walk for the rest of my life.

Where does the Bible prescribe "worship?"

There is no conflict between them at all? You now that for certain? Then why do we have more than one version?

The core beliefs of Bible-believing Christians are very similar, AND the teaching of the HS is a lifelong process

Jesus never spoke of the "core" belief. Core belief is not enough. What is the core belief? It's not even a fixed entity. It's what we don't share that blows your theory out of the water.

So Jesus played the hand He was dealt by man?

Well, He could have converted the hearts and not have to go through all the blood and guts and suffering, but He didn't. That shows that He chose to play the hand dealt by man. I know this may "offend" your idea of a more powerful God, but you will have to take that up with Him.

We find nothing unusual with that, given that God chose to humble Himself to become man.

Besides, He certainly DID discredit the false faiths of many Jews

He "discredited" some of the interpretations but not the faith itself.

God did not come to trash His own revelation. :) He showed many how they were misinterpreting the truth that was always there and is still there today.

I agree. Truth is truth yesterday, today and tomorrow. The problem is in knowing what is true and what isn't.

He came into the world as a Jew because the Jews were God's people. The lost sheep of Israel are all of the elect who do or did not yet believe, including Gentiles, as Paul tells us

The Jews are God's people only because that' what they believe. Other nations believed that they were God's people. Eve Americans believe our destiny is providential.

Jesus never taught that the Gentiles are the lost sheep of Israel. That is Paul's claim. It was necessary to save the Church.

Christ was not a salesman. The predestined elect were always going to be saved, and the lost will always be lost. Christ completed the revelation God wanted us to have

That's nonsense, with all due respect, FK. Then what was His preaching all about? He never said what you wrote above. In fact He remind us that those who deny Him He will deny before the Father as well. In other words, He recognizes that people have a choice, and puts the consequence of our choice squarely on on our shoulders. God offers His love to all; we accept or reject it.

That is the mono-faceted, smaller, limited God and starts with the incorrect presupposition that the Gospels are the complete message and the rest of the Bible is fluff.

We (Orthodox and Catholics) are Christians; we believe in Christ. Where we can find Christ, based on the Gospels, we are sure it's God. God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are one and the same God as Christ. You cannot find Christ wihtout the Ftaher or without the Holy Spirit. And since Christ was observed and witnessed, the Gospels are our standard.

IOW, you have invented a rule of some kind that Christ's mission on earth was to show us everything that God wanted us to know. If that was really so, then He would have had no desire to tell others to know their OT scriptures

Well, if that is so, then I say the whole thing is invented! Everyone invented something. And what an invention it is! If we all lived according to it, what a wonderful world it would be, eve if it were only an invention!

Your rules are no more a fact than mine. Christ is the epitome of God's revelation, the apex of it, the complete and true revelation, and as such Christ, as witnessed represents the true God. Everything that doesn't conform to Christ is not Christian God, it's not Christianity. Logic, not an invention.

That's because you see Christ's singular mission on earth to be the sum of His being. I don't know why you believe that, but to believe it WOULD require throwing out the vast majority of scriptures.

The alternative is to make Christ something other than God, something lesser, which seems to be the underlying current in many so-called Christian groups outside the Apostolic Church.

Non-Christains believe that we are wrong with equal fervor we believe they are. Do we have absolute proof that our is the right faith? No, we only believe that it is.

The OT wasn't wrong. Properly interpreted it teaches that God is to be honored on the Sabbath. Doing good honors God.

No, FK, the OT says that any work is prohibited on a Sabbath. It could't be more plain.

any

[Exodus 31:14] Therefore you are to observe the sabbath, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people

[Exodus 31:15, Lev 23:3] For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the LORD; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall surely be put to death.

[Jeremiah 17:22] You shall not bring a load out of your houses on the sabbath day nor do any work, but keep the sabbath day holy, as I commanded your forefathers.

[Jer 17:24] ...but to keep the sabbath day holy by doing no work on it

These are not interpretations, FK. This is supposedly straight from the words of God, recorded by Moses and prophets.

And I am telling you that Jesus discredited Moses and the prophets when He said that good works are acceptable on a Sabbath, because that's surely NOT what the OT says even thought that's what God may have had in mind, and the good authors of OT books just didn't "hear" it right! But there is no doubt as to what they wrote.

It seems that on the one hand the Orthodox position is that we can know nothing of the essence of God, but on the other hand we CAN KNOW that His essence is both mono-faceted AND definable as "love"???

Love is not God's essence; Love is God. And Love is never hate, lest it ceases being Love. You are human; at no instance can you be not human. God is God and He is never non-God. That much we can know (through negation).

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.