Sunday, December 9, 2007

Back to Tadian

This Friday Jerry, Bert and I went to Tadian and Bunga, Jerrys hometown.

We had orignally planned to visit 2 wakes, give a bible to Jerrys Aunt, visist a pentecostal church then go to Segada to visit Berts sister.

We took the bible to Jerrys aunt; this same aunt is the mother of Autrey the man who remarked "if you dont live by the book you aren’t a Christian". The aunty who is a member of the Pentecostal church we preached at in Bunga told us that her church felt as if "we are the only ones", and that applying the teachings we shared with them were "of no benefit".

I suppose they feel this way because they believe they are sealed in their salvation. If you are sealed already why obey? They are thinking "why obey and make life hard, if salvation is not a matter of obeying?".

We were also told that they are calling us Mormons and accused us of different heretical things. Praise the Lord, right?

Jerrys aunty also shared that one of her sons is interested in learning about the Bible. He lives in Baguio as a successful gambler. She asked him give his winnings to tithing since he wasn’t using it for anything better. He told her sarcastically "why don’t you give you're money to the missionaries and church so they can spread the gospel". In other words he's telling her the church is corrupted, I'll use my money for myself.

I thought about Mathew the tax collector when he made Jesus dinner all the Pharisees asked "why does Jesus eat with sinners?". It seems the Pharisees failed to recognize that Jesus accused them of being crooks and thieves all the time, yet He never brought a direct accusation against the Tax collectors. Why? Because the Pharisees were crooks int eh name of God. The tax collectors were crooks in the name of the Govt, which is worse?

Jesus responds to the Pharisees "those who are well have no need of a doctor, but those who are sick". In Luke he preaches a similar message saying, I have come to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and to set at liberty those who are oppressed. In another place He preaches that He came to seek the Lost sheep of Israel.

It would seem to me that Mathew was one of the lost sheep of Israel, someone Jesus said was sick. Perhaps Mathew was like this gambler, a man that sought religion only to see hypocrisy and crookedness. Maybe these people have come the conclusion that: "if religion doesn’t have the answer I'll just go get rich, only I'm not going to use the name of God to make money".

Anyhow we went to the Pentecostal Church and shared Sunday morning. We preached against tithing and talked about the deception that will occur before Jesus' coming. The message was completely rejected. Praise the Lord, right?

We didn’t get a chance to go to Segada because we didn’t have enough money, so we just caught a bus back home and enjoyed each other’s fellowship. Bert was a real blessing to us, he is full of scripture, he quoted passages almost the whole way there and back. When I would share something with him he would almost immediately respond with a connecting scripture.

One last thing. I shared Romans 6 with Jerry last week, he wants to be rebaptized.

God Bless everyone, Johnathan and Jerry.