Conclusion from Peru and Mexico

email from Randall Easter | 25 January 2008 | Randall Easter

[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."

[Alamo-Girl]

It's all about the source.

Soooo very true.

Whether knowledge or any other carnal thing, our old lives are moot. We are dead to this world and alive with Christ in God.

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. – Galatians 2:20

For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. – Colossians 3:3

[There is] therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded [is] death; but to be spiritually minded [is] life and peace. Because the carnal mind [is] enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. – Romans 8:1-9

Knowledge, the wisdom of man, is meaningless.

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

Where [is] the wise? where [is] the scribe? where [is] the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. - I Corinthians 1:18-25

To God be the glory, not man, never man.

[MarkBsnr]

One is always brighter when God helps.

I don’t know Quix well enough to figure out some of your “figures of speech”, though. A couple of examples of me wailing or whining may prove illustrative.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

"Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the LORD?" ~ Exodus 4:11

AMEN!

"The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even both of them." -- Proverbs 20:12

Men love God to be everywhere except when he is on his throne. When he is there, he is revealed to be Sovereign.

AMEN. We have been so saturated with the worldly opinion that we are our own epicenter, and that the world, even God, revolves around us, that it's really difficult to pry our eyes off of ourselves and place them on God alone.

God either controls everything, according to His own definition of Himself and the reality He has created, or He doesn't exist.

To think something is outside of His providence denies His own perfect, holy, omnipotent essence.

What exists today, exists because God, for reasons known only to Himself, wants it this way today. Tomorrow, many things will most likely be different, and they, too, will exist by and for and through the will of God, for His glory.

But throughout all the change and turmoil and doubt, His love for His family is constant; His promises are all true.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." -- Romans 8:35-39

Gratitude is the proper perspective.

[MarkBsnr]

Reference.com says that: The Nicolaitanes or Nicolaitans were a group of people mentioned twice in the book of Revelation in the New Testament. According to this reference, they were known in the cities of Ephesus and Pergamos around A.D. 99. The church at Ephesus (Rev. 2:6) is commended for "hating the deeds of the Nicolaitanes," and the church of Pergamos is blamed for "having them who hold their doctrines" (15). There is no other first-hand evidence to give us certainty about the nature of this sect. Several of the early church fathers, including Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and Theodoret mentioned this group. Irenaeus discusses them but adds nothing to the Apocalypse except that "they lead lives of unrestrained indulgence." Tertullian refers to them, but apparently knows only what is found in St. John. Hippolytus of Rome based his narrative on Irenaeus, though he states that the deacon Nicholas was the author of the heresy and the sect (Philosph., VII, xxvi). Clement of Alexandria exonerates Nicholas, and attributes the doctrine of promiscuity, which the sect claimed to have derived from him, to a malicious distortion of words harmless in themselves. With the exception of the statement in Eusebius (H. E., III, xxix) that the sect was short-lived, none of the references in Epiphanius, Theodoret etc. deserve mention, as they are taken from Irenaeus. The common statement, that the Nicolaitanes held the antinomian heresy of Corinth, seems not to have been proved. Another opinion, favoured by a number of authors, is that, because of the allegorical character of the Apocalypse, the reference to the Nicolaitans is merely a symbolic manner of reference. Scofield, in his Notes on the Bible, following dispensationalist thought, suggests that the Seven Letters in Revelation foretell the various eras of Christian history, and that "Nicolaitans" "refers to the earliest form of the notion of a priestly order, or "clergy," which later divided an equal brotherhood into "priests" and "laity."" Barnes notes: "Vitringa supposes that the word is derived from νικος, victory, and λαος, people, and that thus it corresponds with the name Balaam, as meaning either lord of the people, or he destroyed the people; and that, as the same effect was produced by their doctrines as by those of Balaam, that the people were led to commit fornication and to join in idolatrous worship, they might be called Balaamites or Nicolaitanes--that is, corrupters of the people. But to this it may be replied, (a) that it is far-fetched, and is adopted only to remove a difficulty; (b) that there is every reason to suppose that the word here used refers to a class of people who bore that name, and who were well known in the two churches specified; (c) that, in Rev 2:15 , they are expressly distinguished from those who held the doctrine of Balaam, Rev 2:14 --"So hast thou also (και) those that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes."" I don't seem to be able to find references that support your understanding of them. Would you be so good as to supply some more references for me?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for that beautiful passage of Scripture!

[Dr. Eckleburg]

"...that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end"

AMEN!

[MarkBsnr]

Arrrgh; let's try this again: Reference.com says that: The Nicolaitanes or Nicolaitans were a group of people mentioned twice in the book of Revelation in the New Testament. According to this reference, they were known in the cities of Ephesus and Pergamos around A.D. 99. The church at Ephesus (Rev. 2:6) is commended for "hating the deeds of the Nicolaitanes," and the church of Pergamos is blamed for "having them who hold their doctrines" (15). There is no other first-hand evidence to give us certainty about the nature of this sect. Several of the early church fathers, including Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and Theodoret mentioned this group. Irenaeus discusses them but adds nothing to the Apocalypse except that "they lead lives of unrestrained indulgence." Tertullian refers to them, but apparently knows only what is found in St. John. Hippolytus of Rome based his narrative on Irenaeus, though he states that the deacon Nicholas was the author of the heresy and the sect (Philosph., VII, xxvi). Clement of Alexandria exonerates Nicholas, and attributes the doctrine of promiscuity, which the sect claimed to have derived from him, to a malicious distortion of words harmless in themselves. With the exception of the statement in Eusebius (H. E., III, xxix) that the sect was short-lived, none of the references in Epiphanius, Theodoret etc. deserve mention, as they are taken from Irenaeus. The common statement, that the Nicolaitanes held the antinomian heresy of Corinth, seems not to have been proved. Another opinion, favoured by a number of authors, is that, because of the allegorical character of the Apocalypse, the reference to the Nicolaitans is merely a symbolic manner of reference. Scofield, in his Notes on the Bible, following dispensationalist thought, suggests that the Seven Letters in Revelation foretell the various eras of Christian history, and that "Nicolaitans" "refers to the earliest form of the notion of a priestly order, or "clergy," which later divided an equal brotherhood into "priests" and "laity."" Barnes notes: "Vitringa supposes that the word is derived from νικος, victory, and λαος, people, and that thus it corresponds with the name Balaam, as meaning either lord of the people, or he destroyed the people; and that, as the same effect was produced by their doctrines as by those of Balaam, that the people were led to commit fornication and to join in idolatrous worship, they might be called Balaamites or Nicolaitanes--that is, corrupters of the people. But to this it may be replied, (a) that it is far-fetched, and is adopted only to remove a difficulty; (b) that there is every reason to suppose that the word here used refers to a class of people who bore that name, and who were well known in the two churches specified; (c) that, in Rev 2:15 , they are expressly distinguished from those who held the doctrine of Balaam, Rev 2:14 --"So hast thou also (και) those that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes."" I don't seem to be able to find references that support your understanding of them. Would you be so good as to supply some more references for me?

[blue-duncan]

You don’t have to thank me; a simple insincere grovel will be sufficient.

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOL!

[Dr. Eckleburg]

LOL.

A-G, we're trying to tame him, but if his Godly wife has failed so far, what chance do we have? 8~)

[hosepipe]

Yeomans work.. It is about the source..

[Quix]

Naw.

You are plenty bright. If you and God can’t or won’t work it out, then my opinion is worthless to you anyway.

[hosepipe]

A lot of words to overlook the obvious meaning of the word(Nicolaitans) as an epithet.. Revelation is "the" vision of Christ shared with John as a "sub-vision".. The seven churchs of Asia are examples or metaphorical examples(models) in the vision.. as is the epithet of the Nicolaitans.. Trying to make Revelation "literal" is a mistake.. God(Jesus) HATES the deeds of the Nicolaitans or heirarchical clergy.. But then he did while in the flesh also..

GOD uses epithets?... Absolutely,,

[Dr. Eckleburg]

For the Scripture teaches that only those called by God to become son of His are truly loved by Him; this being beyond the common love and common grace He freely bestows on all men. The saving love and saving grace is for the elect of God and none other.

AMEN!

I can understand the temporal world trying to erase this fact. What's really puzzling is that so many Christians work to obscure the specific, transformative, personal love of God for His family which He ordained from before the foundation of the world.

Seems like some of us are working the wrong side of the street here.

Added to Christ's own words in John 17, Ephesians 1 should end the debate...

"According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved." -- Ephesians 1:4-6

[blue-duncan]

What is interesting is some can’t tell the difference between testing and temptation. When God uses hunger it is for testing. When Satan uses hunger it is for temptation.

“and that he might test thee,”

“Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man”

[Dr. Eckleburg]

LOL. If you can’t articulate the criticism you’re leveling at me, don’t expect me to help out.

[blue-duncan]

“Godly wife”

One more miracle and saint K becomes Saint K. She might just be there tonight if I can remember to put my socks in the hamper one more time.

[MarkBsnr]

Opinions are just that.

[Quix]

Is that what your mirror says?

[MarkBsnr]

Snicker.

A rather clumsy slur, in my opinion. But up to Reformed standards, no doubt.