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."
That is not true dear friend. Not true at all.
You always seem to be mocking people who feel the Holy Spirit is within the believer. How sad for you
No,not at all. I do not mock people for their beliefs. I remind them that their beliefs and not necessarily facts—because so many state them as facts—unless they can prove that they are.
Regarding beards of clergy.
Well..... You really do learn something new every day.
I found sone writings from the early Church Fathers on this as well
“This, then, is the mark of the man, the beard. By this, he is seen to be a man. It is older than Eve. It is the token of the superior nature. . . . It is therefore unholy to descrate the symbol of manhood, hairiness.” - Clement of Alexandria (vol. 2, p. 276)
“The nature of the beard contributes in an incredible degree to distinguish the maturity of bodies, or to distinguish the sex, or to contribute to the beauty of manliness and strength.” - Lactantius (vol. 7, p. 288)
“This sex of ours acknowledges to itself deceptive trickeries of form peculiarly its own–such as to cut the beard too sharply, to pluck it out here and there, to shave around the mouth.” - Tertullian (vol. 4, p. 22)
“Let the chin have the hair. . . . For an ample beard suffices it for men. . . . The hair on the chin is not to be disturbed.” - Clement of Alexandria (vol. 2, p. 286)
I already told you that who and what Jesus is to us is a matter of human interpretatation. Do you have a monopoly on yours?
You mock all who do, which is a dangerous place for anyone to be. I pray for you
I just got done explaining to you that I don't mock anyone's beliefs, but remind them that they are just that, not necessarily facts. Simple humility should lead one to not state them as facts. But religious pride often gets in the way.
You pray for me because you pitty me because, allegedly (by your standards), I don't know Christ personally. But you should really pray for all of us because neither you nor I are above condmenation. Step down a little from your high place, dear friend.
Please re-read that part of the NT where a Pharisee makes himself better than the taxcollector. Have a blessed day.
Excellent find, STA. It reminds us of the mindset of the early Church, and it reveals to us how little Orthodoxy has changed. When you step into an Orthodox church (and I don't mean some OCA ones), you step into a timless bubble.
Problem solved!-;)
Please pray for my mother,she was admitted to the hospital last night and they found bleeding on her brain.
I wish you a Blessed day!
I don’t consider myself or any of the born again Christians on this thread as being on a pedestal or prideful. Most of us are troubled by the heresies we see here and the lack of relationship to the Living Lord. My heart aches for people to know their Lord in an intimate and personal way, not just a religious way. I’m sorry you can’t receive my words but I’m not in the least bit surprised.
Thank you for your encouragements, dear brother in Christ!
Are you saying that we entertain the possibility that Jesus is apart from God?
No, I don't see any evidence for that. I think Kosta was saying or implying that Jesus was free to disobey the will of the Father, and I disagree with that.
FK: ***By never sinning He did everything God wanted Him to do. ***
Are you saying that you entertain the possibility that Jesus is apart from God?
No, there's no evidence for that either. :) I was trying to show that Jesus told the truth when He said He came to do the will of the Father, and that He never deviated once. Because they are not apart I don't think it was possible for Him to deviate.
Are you saying that Jesus is a separate entity from God?
The Son is a separate person from the Father and the Spirit, and they are all one in essence. Jesus has two natures, one fully human and one fully Divine.
So your response to my straightforward and cheap-shot-free showing that satan misquoted scripture is to compare satan to Protestants. SHEESH!!!
Of course the scriptures prove you right once again, Dr. E. :) All we have to do is look at the end of the Sermon:
Matt 7:28-29 : 28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, 29 because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.
Seems clear enough.
“So your response to my straightforward and cheap-shot-free showing that satan misquoted scripture is to compare satan to Protestants. SHEESH!!!”
Evangelical Protestantism supports an American foreign policy which has had its greatest success, in league with Mohammedanism, in destroying Eastern Christians communities from the Adriatic to the Iran/Iraq border. That’s pretty demonic to me FK. When I see Evangelicals publicly and loudly condemning that policy and calling for the removal of the politicians and bureaucrats responsible for it, I’ll rethink my position. In the meantime, I think Mark’s insinuation, to the extent it is one, is a fair one.
Frankly, I think you are making more of the comment or reading more into it than it deserves. In any event, here is what +John Chrysostomos says in his Homily XIII on Matthew:
........... For that it is written, “He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee,” this surely is not advice to dash and toss one’s self down headlong; and moreover, this was not so much as spoken concerning the Lord. However, this for the time He did not expose, although there was both insult in his manner of speech, and great inconsistency. For of God’s Son no man requires these things: but to cast one’s self down is the part of the devil, and of demons. Whereas God’s part is to raise up even them that are down. And if He ought to have displayed His own power, it would not have been by casting and tossing Himself down at random, but by saving others. ........
Well, it looks like Chrysostomos is at least hinting at what I am saying. Casting Himself down would not have been a thing for Christ to do, not "His ways". Christ's ways were other ways. We know that the Father of Lies mixes in some truth with his lies, so why would we think that he would quote scripture fully and accurately? Further, what do you say was the crux of the temptation? I say it was satan using scripture to show Jesus that He could do ANYTHING and the angels would protect Him. That is a lie.
The Sermon on the Mount has its parallel on Mount Sinai. Only this time, the people get it directly, and still do
Neither am I. And speaking of abundace of heresies, there is that too. I wish that you would have your relationship with God in His Church, but you choose to be outside of it. That is your choice. The Church, like the father of the prodigal son, welcomes back all who left. I am sorry that you don't see the error of Protestantism, but I am not surprised. God respects out choice. :)
Sadly,you're very correct.
Protestantism decayed very quickly from any unity from the start
In its modern form, (evangelical) protestantism has reduced religion to personal feeling,thus the reduction of religion to personal experience leads the rich and powerful amongst them to sell their atrocities to people in the name of God and love of country with all of its false freedom.
This is exactly what many of the founding fathers of this country did.
This is completely opposite of the early Church Fathers who were humble and contrite,many of them giving away everything they had and gave their lives to follow the will of God for the love of Christ and His Church.
The powerful leaders of the evangelical community views their riches as given to them by God and are willing to trade the lives of the weak in the name of God for what they call for the good of the people
We can't "allow" it, SFA, because communion is an expression of union through faith. Until our particular Churches work out our theoogical differences, with God's help, we cannot commune because we do not profess the same faith no matter how close it is. Our differences may be few in number but they reach to the core of our belief.
The good news is that we now know that our differences are to a large part an expression of our separate linguistic and cultural traditions, and ways of expressing them, and this gives us hope that we can define a common faith, once again.
+Benedict XVI said the union cannot be achieved through absorption of one Church into the other, and he is right. But at the same time, he has turned the Western Church towards our common patristic roots. And part of it may result in tossing away razors and scissors and Latin clergy, once agian, becoming patristic, as an expression of their mindset and not as an imitation of the East.
We in the East truly believes that the Catholic Church is in its roots no different whether it was in the East or in the West: both catholic and orthodox, externally and internally. Up until the TLM, the Mass in Rome was the divine Liturgy of Antiochan origin. For six centuries the East and the West did not differ externally of internally. When you look at us, you see the past when we were one, in faith and in communion.
I think the example of the beards was a telling one as to the effect how much we remain that Old and unchanged Cburch. But, no matter what happens, you are our brothers and your clery is true clergy just like ours is, and your Eucharist is true Eucharist just as ours is, and in dire straights neither Kolo and I would have second thoughts about receiving communion from a Latin priest.
Thanks for your excellent post.
I agree entirely with what you wrote and I appreciate the following statement and feel the same towards My Orthodox Brothers and Sisters
“”But, no matter what happens, you are our brothers and your clergy is true clergy just like ours is, and your Eucharist is true Eucharist just as ours is, and in dire straights neither Kolo and I would have second thoughts about receiving communion from a Latin priest.””
BTW, I am sorry if my poor attempt at silly sarcasm in post #3965 came across in the wrong way.
I wish you both a Blessed evening!
Let us pray unceasingly and give thanks to the Lord for His infinite mercy. The Bible tells us of the hope of prayer
Amen.
To Thee, O Lord.
And I should have written "neither Kolo nor I," but I changed the wording and forgot to change the rest...oh well. No biggie, as they say. :) Be well. Hope your mother get well soon.
What's the news on your mom?
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