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."
He gives us ice cream and He also gives us spinach.
lol. And if we're on Atkins, we don't get either of them, but He still provides the protein. 8~)
"Ask, and it shall be given you..." -- Matthew 7:7
"And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day... And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father." -- John 6:35-39,65 "...your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him." -- Matthew 6:8
***I am confident that all of the elect on these threads could point out how they’ve changed over the years. How the desire to do bad things has diminished and the desire to please God has become more and more important.***
The Gnostic elect? I could point out many public examples (and private ones, too) of the Reformed who went the other way. You have not gotten to the end of your life; you have miles to go before you go in front of the Judge.
Thank you so very much for your encouragements and especially all of those beautiful Scriptures!
AMEN!
I was reading Mark 10 this morning where Christ is telling His disciples what was about to happen to Him...
And they shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him: and the third day he shall rise again." -- Mark 10:33-34"Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles:
At which point James and John asked Christ to "Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory."
And then Christ spoke these verses...
And they said unto him, We can. And Jesus said unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized: But to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared." -- Mark 10:38-40"But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye ask: can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?
Christ must be referring here to the two men who died next to Him on the cross; two men whose lives and deaths God had ordained according to His purpose, "declaring the end from the beginning."
It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me." -- John 6:44-45"No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
Just as one thief did, and one thief didn't.
***Where was the RCC in this whole mess. They have a big voice in the media. RC’s are a sizable portion of the population...
The Church condemned war across the board. The Church does not take political stands. Only moral stands.***
The Church, and Roman Catholics in particular, has taken tremendous heat, most particularly from the evangelicals and right wing Protestants for attempting to mediate wars.
Yes, I think you're exactly right. Thanks for your wonderful post. I see what you're talking about every time we are compared to Muslims, which is often.
Spiritual is unreliable, unrepeatable and basically whatever one wants to make it. It relies on "miracles." It cannot be measured, painted, described, or packaged. We could just as easily call it subjective.
We have no way of knowing if there is such a "thing" as a spirit. The word itself comes from the ancient Hebrew and Greek words for "breath." The ancients assigned life-like properties to that breath, which is really a mechanical movement of air and it is present in all creatures that have active lungs. In others, gas-exchange takes place passively.
When humans and other lung-reathing animals die, they stop bretahing. Death (irreversable cessation of mechanical life functions) follows a while lated when the cell fuctions cease do to lack of oxygen, and not because the "spirit" left the body. Let's get real here.
The Reformed are being equated to Mohammedans not because of their "spiritual" perception but because of their fundamentalist views, which are very often identical.
The empiricist looks at the universe and says "I have no clue why I am here. I could make up a story and let my fancy weave a myth, but I will just accept life as is, and if there is something higher out there, I offer my deepest thanks for all the blessings I received." That's not rejecting God, it's simply not presuming anything we cannot understand.
I suppose that without the extra-scriptural Tradition of the Church, everyone else, including other Christians, are all Gnostics.
Gnosticism is well defined. It holds that spirits pre-existed their bodies (Origen was specifically condemned for this Gnostic belief), and that the spiritual person "knows" rather than believes. We know who they are and we call them for what they preach. It is not Christianity.
I have been saying that our faith is indeed a reasonable (reasoned) one, but with the prerequisite that we start with Godly presuppositions
There you go again with that a priori acceptance. Like I said, once you accept something on blind faith, everything else the becomes self-evident "truth."
These must be given by God.
Objection! Conjecture.
Without them, God's word is nonsense
Objection! Assumption.
but with them I think the faith makes perfect sense.
I am glad you said "I think" because you are not sure, are you? There is some "empiricist' still left in you, FK. :)
***If we believe in Jesus Christ alone as Lord and Savior, God incarnate; if we believe He is of God and from God and is God; if we believe He died to pay for our sins and was resurrected into heaven to prove it all true; then we can be assured by Christ’s own word that we are not damned, but instead are numbered among His sheep who will be glorified with Him in heaven.
You ask for evidence of these facts, and this is where the reformed perspective answers most clearly. This belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is evidence of our salvation; not a requirement for it. The only requirement for our salvation is Christ on the cross “by whose stripes we are healed.”***
It looks as if cause and effect are reversed within the space of two paragraphs.
Paragraph 1: The belief in God causes salvation.
Paragraph 2: The belief in God is as a result of salvation.
By their fruits (and their words) shall ye know them. I appear to be looking at contradictory and contrarily opposite fruit. I understand that this confusion and error is at the center of Reformed theology; and I thank you for your contribution towards identifying it.
***Before man sinned God had devised the punishment for sin Gen. 2:17, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” The fact of sin had already been created and provided for. So where did the concept originate? Certainly not in man for he had no categories to devise it as yet. His freedom was not absolute for he was created and susceptible to his created passions and ambitions.***
Foreknowledge is not predestination.
God knew that Adam and Eve would sin; he did not make them sin. Bit of a difference, no?
The great deceiver was made by God to be the brightest light in the sky, yet, he sinned the first and the greatest. Did God make satan sin?
They may, but that doesn't make them anything more than false gods.
Our Saviour blessed us with proof. He rose from the dead and told us what we must do.
John 3:15-16 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Mark 16:16 He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.
Little children are most prone to dream and create imaginary conditions.. Oh! and play church..
They also do something which adults have great difficulty with, they believe unconditionally.
This may just be one of those rare times I disagree with you. I think Scripture is clear in order to be a member of God's family you must believe The Gospel and have Faith in Christ Alone.
Amen!
Works, works, works that's all you have. I pray some day you see how little they do for you.
If the Holy Spirit indwells you the works you value so highly will occur. However, those works will not cause the Holy Spirit to indwell you no matter how hard you try.
Gal.5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
You have not gotten to the end of your life; you have miles to go before you go in front of the Judge.
I rather have Faith in the Judge than depend on deeds.
John 10:28 And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.
***Well, on the MOST important core beliefs in Christianity, all true believers ARE in harmony. It might be a short list, but I assume you would agree that there are SOME things that must be believed for a person to be a true Christian believer.***
I would agree. And I would also point out the numbers of otherwise holy men that descended in apostacy and heresy. What do true believers believe? What is core and what is fringe? Who decides?
Either those who claim the indwelling Holy Spirit, or the Church.
Excellent point, Mark! I would only add one more contradiction in the Reformed reptertoire:
***Fact - Man sinned because God provided the opportunity, the ability, and the consequences***
Does this mean that the Reformed God is the author of all sin?
We have never said that the Spirit does not lead.
We have had 2000 years of people claiming that the Spirit has led them to do this, do that or do the other. While in conflict with and opposed to others that claim the same.
The Spirit may lead in stages, but not in conflict.
Poor St. Paul. How can he possibly handle being so badly misinterpreted.
***So, as you can see, since we claim to be Bible-believing Christians, we could not possibly hold to the view that you project onto us. The old self, which might do those horrible things you listed earlier, was CRUCIFIED with Christ and he no longer lives, but Christ lives within us. The death Christ died, He died to sin once and for all, and the elect along with Him.***
But even the self-described elect does do these things. It is admitted even by the most die hard Calvinist. Your personal old self was not crucified with Christ. It wasn’t even around for nearly 2000 years.
Everyone sins. With that fact in mind, how can you rationalize your statement?
Either way.
A problem there.. what?..
No. No problem.
***He who believes and is baptized will be saved***
This statement, which is without any sort of conditions, means that it is true for all who:
1) believe
2) are baptized
Sounds pretty plain to me.
Come on, Mark, we have been through this countless times. Why did God plant that tree in the garden? Why did God establish the penalty for sin before sin was done? (Hint: If you eat of this tree you will surely die.) God knew ahead of time that man would sin, God PROVIDED the tree so that man could sin, God planned for Jesus to die before the beginning of the world. I could go on and on, but you keep asking the same questions without ever answering ours.
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