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Martyred for the Gospel

Martyred for the Gospel
The burning of Tharchbishop of Cant. D. Tho. Cranmer in the town dich at Oxford, with his hand first thrust into the fyre, wherwith he subscribed before. [Click on the picture to see Cranmer's last words.]

Daily Bible Verse

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

A Short-Term Mission Trip to Nicaragua: Conclusion

 


The principle of the greatest good for the greatest number is one by which dictators can justify their cruelty. When the communists starved to death millions of Ukrainians, massacred thousands of Polish officers, murdered possibly twenty million Chinese, and slaughtered the Tibetans, they could justify themselves on the ground that the pleasure of future generations of communists would outweigh the temporary pain. Certainly no scientific observation can prove the contrary.  (Clark, "Ethics," ibid., p. 77).  Also online at "Ethics,"  Gordon H. Clark Foundation.

A Short-Term Mission Trip to Nicaragua:  Part 4

 

Around 1989 I was in my second year at Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God.  The chapel services that year began to promote a short-term mission trip to Nicaragua which was to be led by an Assemblies of God mission and professor at Southeastern, Rev. Ralph Leslie.  There was another professor on the trip, also a mature man, whose name I cannot recall.  The trip was to take place during spring break of that year as I remember.  I was able to raise funds from friends at the college and from members at my home church.

I was slightly older than most of the other students on the trip being 29 years old.  We were instructed to bring audio equipment for street preaching to help the Nicaraguan churches there in the Grande CampaƱa to be held all over the area of Managua.  No one should bring any equipment that would not be donated because in that country everything is viewed as community property.  As you know, Nicaragua is a communist country and most of the industry there is state owned and controlled.

Ronald Reagan’s second term of office as President of the United States ended in 1988.  George H. W. Bush, the former Vice President had just been elected as the new President of the United States of America.  So things were still tense after the Iran-Contra affair where Reagan had to apologize for subsidizing the Contras in Nicaragua without the authority of the Congress.  Feelings in Nicaragua among the general population was towards a communist nationalism and against the Contra rebels. 

In light of this, we were instructed not to discuss politics or anything remotely connected to politics while were there.  Of course, this was no problem for me because I didn’t speak much Spanish anyway.  I was to go into the mountains to a church in a remote area because I was one of the more mature students on the trip, or so they said.  The problem was that I had no interpreter.  Perhaps it was selfish of me, but I had envisioned being able to preach to the small church with an interpreter because that is what was implied in going on the trip in the first place.  So after several days, I finally was able to speak to Ralph Leslie and told him that I was not happy about not having an interpreter.  It was then agreed that I would be partnered with another student who spoke at least passable Spanish because he was of Hispanic background and his parents spoke fluent Spanish.

On the trip back to Managua I rode with the pastor of the church where I had been assigned.  We rode in the back of a small truck with dual rear tires.  There was a handrail running over the top of our heads and there was fencing sides to the truck.  Before the truck made it to Managua it was crowded, and we were standing shoulder to shoulder with at least fifteen to twenty people on the back of the truck.

Later, we transferred to the back of a pickup truck, which I learned later was owned by a local church.  There were about eight to ten pastors riding in the back of the pickup, all of whom were Nicaraguan Assemblia de Dios ministers.  I had with me my preferred translation of the Bible, a King James Version with cross references in a small edition that I had purchased sometime after my joining the A/G church in Wauchula, Florida.  For some reason during the trip to Managua the driver stopped and we took a break on the side of the road near a sidewalk.  One of the older men in truck, who had gray facial hair, held up a pocket sized book and began speaking to me in Spanish.  I did not understand what he was talking about as I don’t speak Spanish.  But suddenly I saw on the cover of the little hardback book the title, Manifiesto del Partido Comunista.

I saw that the pastor had a serious and intense look on his face.  I had an epiphany at that moment that he was testing me to see if I would make any anti-communist remarks so that I could be arrested and imprisoned.  We had been instructed not to mention that we as students were Americans because in the minds of the Nicaraguans, they too were Americans, albeit Americans Central America.  We were to them Norte Americanos.

I patiently waited for him to finish his lecture in Spanish.  After he finished, I held up my KJV Bible and gave him a look just as serious as he had given me.  I mustered up the best Spanish I could remember and told him, “No comprende.”  I should have said, “No comprendo.”  I wanted to say that I didn’t understand Spanish but I was actually saying that he didn’t understand.  I then said, “No Estados Unidos, no Nicaragua, pero La Palabra de Dios, la Santa Biblia!”  After that, it got very quiet.  None of the other ministers said anything and the elder pastor said nothing else.  I had said what I said in a firm voice.  I was essentially saying I don’t agree with your communism.  I am here to preach God’s Word.  No one bothered bringing up the Communist Manifesto again after that.

Given the “holy boldness” of the moment, I am glad that I did not offend them to the point of being arrested.  For all I know, the pastor could have been an informant for the government. 

Later I was able to visit the home of a family that Rev. Leslie had known during his missionary years in Nicaragua.  Rev. Leslie’s daughter, Melinda, was there.  She spoke fluent Spanish because she had grown up in Nicaragua when her father was appointed there as a missionary.  There was a young man there around age 18 or 19 years old.  He had had one leg seriously injured as a soldier in the Nicaraguan army fighting against the Contras.  There was a military draft there at the time, so I was unsure if he supported the government or not.  But as the discussion via the translator went on I perceived that the majority of the Christians there were supportive of the communist government.  I later surmised that the Pentecostal churches in the communist countries were very much influenced by the Latin American Liberation Theology of the leftist progressives.

This was a sharp contrast to the prosperity gospel of the majority of Pentecostal/Charismatic megachurches with which I had been familiar.  It was troubling to me for at least two reasons.  First, I grew up very poor and was somewhat sympathetic to the poor and their unmet needs.  I opposed the false gospel of prosperity and the health and wealth movement.  On the other hand, I still believed in capitalism, freedom of speech, and the American view of the freedom of religion.  Communism by its very nature is based on materialistic atheism.  It seems to me that liberation theology is a this worldly natural religion, even a godless religion.  Liberation theology in its many forms is loosely based on the Bible but reinterprets the Scriptures in terms of a this worldly justice for the poor.  That I could and will never agree with.

May God have mercy.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Monday, December 16, 2024

A Short-Term Mission Trip to Nicaragua: Part Three

 

“The critique of secular views continues to ethics. Here too, Clark contends, secular philosophy fails. He briefly dispatches Kantianism before addressing utilitarianism. As he has written elsewhere, a major problem is that the calculations required by utilitarianism are impossible. The ‘still greater difficulty’ in calculating the greatest good of the greatest number is establishing the normative proposition in the first place; why ought man to seek the greatest good for the greatest number? This cannot be established by observation. Referencing Hitler and Stalin, Clark writes, ‘The greatest good of the greatest number is a principle for tyrants.’ (p. 46) Among critiques of other philosophies, Clark writes that Existentialism fails of ‘establishing values or norms of conduct.’ (p. 53) Existentialism’s freedom of choice, he contends, ‘totally unrestricted, empties life of all meaning.’ (p. 54) Sartre ‘can command us to choose, as insistently as he wants, but he can give us no idea of what to choose.’ (p. 54) Secular ethics, Clark concludes, ‘do not justify a single norm of conduct.’ (p. 54).”  Doug Douma.  “GHC Review 17: The Philosophy of Gordon H. Clark.”  A Place for Thoughts Blog.  December 2, 2018.

 

A Short-Term Mission Trip to Nicaragua:  Part 3

 

Purposely, I did not go straight to the point in this article because I wanted to give some background.  My excursion into Pentecostalism was a good detour.  It was good because it showed me the shallow and vacuous nature of experientialism and existentialism.  As an avid reader and an interest I had in the supernatural and in psychology, I once bought a few books from the Psychology Today magazine.  Several of those articles had to do with Christian Science and the possibility of healing the body through self-affirming positive thinking.  Later, that knowledge proved helpful in my beginning to question what was being taught at my church, Forida’s First Assembly of God, Wauchula, Florida.  I neglected to mention in an earlier post that allegedly the first Assembly of God church in the entire state of Florida was established in Wauchula.  I do not know the dates, though.

At any rate, one of the assistant pastors at the church at that time was a disciple of Kenneth Hagin and the Word of Faith movement.  I had questions but due to peer pressure and not being informed enough to be able to refute the teaching or doctrine, I kept quiet.  I came from a poor background, so the prosperity gospel was both enticing and disturbing.  If true, it could get me out of living from paycheck to paycheck to having more financial security.  Fortunately, I was wise enough to see through it all.

After two years of being a new convert at my church, I felt the call to ministry.  The point of that decision came when Dr. James Hennessy came to preach at our church.  He was the president of Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God at that time.  As I mentioned in a previous post, Southeastern changed its name to Southeastern University to reflect a change to a liberal arts emphasis.  Southeastern is located in Lakeland, Florida.  I matriculated there in 1988.

There were several challenges at the college.  The first one is that I learned that the Word of Faith movement was actually based in Christian Science and New Thought.  The professor of New Testament theology at that time was Dr. Terris Neuman.  Neuman recommended that we read a book by D. R. McConnell titled, A Different Gospel.  (See:  Updated edition of 1994).  In that book, McConnell confirmed my suspicions that the Word of Faith movement was not Pentecostal at all.  Instead, it was rooted in Christian Science as taught by Mary Baker Eddy and New Thought as disseminated by Phineas P. Quimby.  The thesis of McConnell’s book was that Kenneth Hagin had plagiarized almost word for word the writings of E. W. Kenyon, a Baptist evangelist of the 1940s.  Kenyon had done studies in rhetoric and public speaking at Boston College in Massachusetts.  While there Kenyon adopted the Christian Science views being propagated there and incorporated them into his preaching.  Kenyon became a faith healer, though not necessarily a full blown Pentecostal.

The position of the most of the professors at Southeastern, who were mostly Pentecostal preachers with higher theological degrees, was classical Pentecostalism, not necessarily the more radical Charismatic views being taught in the third wave.  While I was a student, one of the megachurches in Lakeland split over this very issue.  At the time Jimmy Swaggart had not yet had a moral failure publicly.  Swaggart had been critical of the Charismatic movement, Jim and Tammy Bakker, and Karl Strader.  The Rev. Karl Strader, who is now deceased, was the pastor of Carpenter’s Home Church, Lakeland, Florida, which was a megachurch of over 2,000 members with a sanctuary that could seat 10,000.  Strader built his ministry on the Charismatic movement and the Word of Faith prosperity Gospel.  There was also a radio station called W.C.I.E. at FM 91.5.  The classical Pentecostals finally split and started King’s Way Assembly of God, now the largest A/G church in the area.  After a scandal a few years later, Carpenter’s Home Church lost most of its members and the radio station was sold to Moody Broadcasting.  Karl Strader’s son, Daniel Strader, went to prison for over 30 years.  The building itself was later bulldozed and no longer exists.

For a time, then I investigated alternatives to the prosperity gospel.  My faculty adviser at the time was Dr. Michael Dusing.  Dusing pushed a more leftist view of the Evangelicals for Social Action and other ministries for the poor.  Unfortunately, Dusing was also a proponent of a postmodernist view of truth because he still believed in the classical Pentecostal views on miracles, healing and supernatural Spirit empowered ministry as taught in classical Pentecostal theology.  Another emphasis of Pentecostal theology is what is called experiential exegesis.  Most of the professors at Southeastern, including the classical professors, was that the early Pentecostals interpreted Scripture according to their ecstatic experiences of speaking in glossolalia and experiencing supernatural miracles of healings, tongues and interpretation of tongues, etc.  Most of them believed in anywhere from seven to nine supernatural gifts which went beyond just the gift of teaching.

I have since that time totally rejected existentialism, experiential theology, and the entire Pentecostal/Charismatic movement.  I will save the reasons for that for a later post.  However, to get to the point of this series of posts and the title, I was impressed by the providence of God to go on a short-term mission trip to Nicaragua in 1989.  I will cover that in the next post, the Conclusion.  Stay tuned.

See:  Part 1, and Part 2Conclusion.

 

 

Saturday, December 14, 2024

A Short-Term Mission Trip to Nicaragua: Part Two

 

“The first and basic point in a Christian philosophy of education, or a Christian philosophy of anything, is Biblical authority.  Just as Platonism is defined by what Plato wrote, and not by the decadent skeptical Academy of later years, so the ultimate definition of Christianit not the decadent confusion of the liberal churches, not the pronouncements of the Pope, not the inconsistent opinions of a so-called Christian community, as is so frequently asserted in ecumenical circles, but what is written in the Bible.  . . .”  Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  A Christian Philosophy of Education.  1946.  3rd Ed.  (Trinity Foundation: Unicoi, 2000).  P. 86.

 

A Short-Term Mission Trip to Nicaragua:  Part 2

 

To avoid confusion, let me say upfront that I am no longer a Pentecostal, a Charismatic, or a continuationist.  I am a cessationist of the highest degree.  I totally repudiate the experiential theology of the classical Pentecostal movement, and I particularly dislike and reject the so-called third wave of the Pentecostal movement or the Charismatic movement.  My purpose in writing this article is to lay out the many reasons that I am no longer a Pentecostal.  I gave a brief testimonial of my first time going to church to show why I was early on influenced by the Pentecostal movement, as that is a major part of the Evangelical movement in the Bible belt South.  Fortunately, I would later learn that there were other options, particularly the Presbyterian churches.

Following my family history, it came to pass that my father lost his job at Friedman’s Jewelry Store as a watch and jewelry repairman because of the Timex watch and other modern innovations.  Our family had now grown to seven children.  I have three younger sisters and three younger brothers, being the eldest of the seven.  My father took new employment in central Florida working in the phosphate mines in Polk County.  Unfortunately, only a few years after moving to Florida, he was killed in a car crash south bound on U.S. 17 just north of the Hardee County line.

My mother was left as a widow with seven children, and I was only 12 and in the 6th grade at the time.  Fortunately, I had visited a Presbyterian church in Wauchula, Florida several times with our neighbors in Wauchula, Florida a year or two before moving to my hometown of Bowling Green, Florida.  It was there that I began to read about Calvinism and double predestination in the Encyclopedia Britannica that my father had purchased in Alabama before we moved to Florida.  Say what you will, but in the days prior to the internet the Encyclopedia Britannica was full of useful information. I followed the chain index and read about infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism; I read about the Synod of Dort and the Arminian Remonstrance, all at an early age.

Unfortunately, in Bowling Green there was no Presbyterian church.  The church I had attended in Wauchula was formerly part of the Presbyterian Church in the United States or PCUS.  But there was a controversy over the ordination of women as teaching elders in the early 1970s.  The pastor and the congregation of First Presbyterian Church voted to leave the PCUS and join with the new formed Presbyterian Church in America or PCA.  I was too young at the time to understand all the issues.  However, it left an indelible mark on my memories.  I later learned that Pastor Thoms had given up his retirement and other benefits because of his commitment to biblical truth.

Moving on to the story, my mother became an alcoholic a few years after my father passed away.  She did not attend church and did not profess to be a Christian.  I was left to care for my siblings, along with my two oldest sisters.  As time went on and in high school, I became involved with smoking marijuana and experimenting with other drugs.  I was not serving the Lord during this time.

Without airing too much dirty laundry let me say that I am not proud of that period of my life.  After high school this pattern continued.  At one point I almost dropped out of high school, but my mother and a few friends encouraged me to go back and graduate, which I did.  I opted not to go to college.  Instead, one of my mother’s many boyfriends after my father’s death helped me to get a job working at a phosphate mine in Brewster, Florida. 

After only a few years, that was not working out.  I started out working hard labor on the section crew, a crew of railroad maintenance workers which maintained about 11 miles of railroad tracks between the Fort Lonesome mine and the Brewster mine.  I bid on a dragline oiler job and went from working all day shift to working a rotating shift.  I got along well with my operator at first.  He even let me learn to swing and dig with the huge machine with the 45 cubic yard bucket.

As time went on, however, we had a falling out because I was caught sleeping on the job.  I left and joined the U.S. Navy for almost two years.  At that point, things did not work out for me and I was given an honorable discharge because I was not suitable for military service.  I returned to work at the Brewster mine because I was a member of the union.  While I was gone, one of the foremen on the section crew had become a Christian.  He was a black man named Sam Johnson.  I later learned that he was illiterate.  He could not read or write.   However, he knew the Bible backwards and forwards.  He carried a Gideon’s pocket New Testament with the Psalms in the King James Version.  What a coincidence that was.  During break times he would witness to me.  He did so by handing me the Gideon’s New Testament and asking me to read a passage.  After I read it, he would then explain it to me, most likely as he had been taught by his pastor or someone in the Sunday school class at Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church in Bradley Junction, just down the road from Brewster.

This was the beginning of a renewal of my Christian faith.  After a few more hardships, I began attending First Assembly of God, Wauchula, Florida.  I gave up my drug use and turned fully to God.

Here ends Part 2 of my story about my Christian faith and my short-term mission trip to Nicaragua in 1989.  Please read my next post tomorrow.

 

You can read Part 1 of my series here:  A Short-Term Mission Trip to Nicaragua:  Part 1

Part 3

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