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."
Harley, Harley, Harley.
Do you really know so little of St. Augustine? He called for greater veneration of the Virgin Mary for the Church faithful. And we have over 100 panegyrics written by him for the saints.
It is rather sad that the education of our Protestant brethren does not extend beyond the immediate past. I’d really like you guys to be able to understand the Church and its development.
And who's works are those?
Our works are a natural result of our relationship with Christ. They are not some we produce but something that He produces through us. He is the vine. We are the branches. Without Him we can do nothing. Would you disagree?
I understand Augustine having read a great many of his works. Like you, I reserve the right to pick and choose which parts of Augustine to appreciate and which to discard. I tend to favor those writings where Augustine clearly ties his thoughts back to scripture.
I don’t mind people who believe the Bible. I do mind people who use the term “Bible-believing” as a means of differentiating themselves from, say, Catholics. As has happened on this thread.
The Scots were barbarians scarcely differentiable from the Normans and the Danes that they battled.
The hardscrabble life for the many and the soft life of the nobles found fertile soil for the theology of Calvin and Knox.
I've traced it back to around 600AD when the Pope allowed both Augustine's and Cassian's theologies to coexist in the Church.
HD-Faith, then, as well in its beginning as in its completion, is God’s gift
MarkBsnr-Google is not my friend in trying to track this down. Would you please provide a website for me to go to?
I'm sure you can look up Romans 12 without a Google.
God does predestine some to heaven; he predestines none to hell. There is no Scripture that supports that contention.
We do not gainsay this from Augustine. We know and accept it. It is a pity that the Reformed do not understand that Augustine was a pure Catholic when he died. It’s okay to make that crossing even now.
Amen, Harley. Your Augustine scholarship is always appreciated.
And you seem to favor Augustine's later writings. Augustine certainly matured later than a lot of other Christians and lived a pretty wild life until he settled down to the truth which grew in him year by year. His later writings show his real beliefs and his firm and confident faith in God's perfect purpose throughout all of life.
"The nature of the Divine goodness is not only to open to those that knock, but also to cause them to knock and ask.""The grace of God does not find men fit to be elected, but makes them so..."
Sounds like Augustine acknowledges God's sovereignty above all else.
lol. That same "barbarian" ethos created this country.
In fact, William Wallace's last word was not "Freedom," as the film would have us believe.
Braveheart's last word was "Scotland!"
If that's "barbarian," may I have some more, please?
Then unless you're God ... why are you wasting all this time saying the same things, thread after thread, trying to save folks through your works? What, precisely, is the point of your posting?
As it happens, Harley, you would have to ignore a number of Jesus' own comments concerning "works," and the salvific effects thereof. For example, Jesus says salvation requires certain works: "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." (Mark 16:16) That's salvation by works: I must believe; and I must be baptized. The consequences of my not doing those things is condemnation.
And on the other side, we have Jesus saying "With man this [salvation] is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matt. 19:26)
So unless Jesus was talking out of both sides of his mouth, you've got a problem. God's sovereign, we're responsible. Both backed by Scripture. What's in the middle ... it's a mystery.
To simply ignore what Jesus said in service of your own narrow (and logically pointless) theology is not a very impressive religion. In fact, it's downright silly to reject what Scripture plainly says, because you're afraid that it somehow makes God "less sovereign" if we have the ability to exercise any sort of free choice in our salvation.
In fact, if we're going to hold "idol-worshipers" up to scorn, perhaps we should reserve our scorn for "idol-worshipers" who place the purity of their ideology above all else.
lol.
We don't dispute the correct understanding of the Filioque. Our own fathers express the same concept. However, it does not belong in the Creed because it does not express clearly that—as far as His existence is concerned—the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father.
The Catholics know that; they do not profess double origin. But I wouldn't put it past the Protestants.
The second reason the Filioque does not belong in the Creed is because it is an unatuhorized change the Fathers knew to probibit precisely because such alterations lead to heresy.
Now, after more than a thousand years of using the Filioque in their Creed, the Catholics are unlikely to just drop it, just as Christains are unlikely to expunge those parts of the bible we know were added at a later date. Part of it is pride, and a large part of it is that no religius group will or can ever admit to being wrong and sruvive.
Not according to Augustine.
You think to preach the Gospel is to waste time? You think to preach the Gospel is work?
It's only work if you expect to get rewarded for it.
Bible-believing Christians, however, know it is our God-given duty to preach the truth of Christ risen as Christ instructs and the Holy Spirit enables.
"So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do." -- Luke 17:10
Did any Ecumenical Council find +John Cassian to be a heretic? Obviously, the Pope considered these theologies as theologoumenna and not dogma.
Both saints are venerated in the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.
And what are the Beatitudes? Jesus did not preach 'saved by grace alone.' That would be the 'other' Reformed God—Deformed Paul.
“barbarian,”
Only a “barbarian” could get away with wearing a kilt, except in the winter on cold metal chairs.
Oh, my, Kosta, you've told us you do not represent mainline Orthodoxy, and now I'm pretty sure you don't represent Roman Catholicism and its understanding of the Filioque.
Check out New Advent on the Filioque.
Orthodoxy is the odd-man out in this regard.
AMEN!
Marcion specifically considered Paul's Epistles as the 'canon.' If he had affinity for Luke, it's because of Luke's affinity for Paul.
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