May 2020
JUDGE
As Christians, throughout history, we often see God’s judgment coming upon humanity. But why do I talk about judgment?
We notice that the manifestation of the present virus is universal. There is no predilection for race, social class or religion. We can only conclude that the events are under the sovereign rule of the Lord and that this world has an apocalyptic destiny revealed in all scripture.
This preaching about divine intervention in history through human suffering is refuted by many in our time. The dualistic and ancient version of a loving god who submits himself to the human being before a god, wrathful and evil and older, is widely accepted and preached. Rarely is it heard about the attributes of God, such as his anger, justice, sovereignty, etc.
What is the result of this?
Afflictions of this life are often God crying out to humanity and the Church that must change!
AFFLICATIONS
In days of distress, divinely proportionate or exploited, how should we behave?
Well the Christian faith in the West world has for some decades been suffering from a terrible devil called neo-Pentecostalism. This evil has contaminated western Christian thinking ( already reaching Europe and Africa ) and its churches resulting in syncretistic and unbiblical practices.
Why is it an evil?
Because it relativizes the Christocentric message of the Bible, makes God a servant of human will and pleasure. Man becomes the center of his worship and sin is seen as something natural, inherent to man and not hated by God, who has to understand and justify human weaknesses in the name of a superior love.
Many are in conflict, for they are astonished and don’t recognize the way a God acts to which they have never been presented. This is due to a population that sees God only from the pulpits, and does not even read the Bible.
What is the result?
Afflictions of this life, it is often God crying out to humanity and the Church that must change!
CAUSES
Our churches have been taken by a gospel that doesn’t change, doesn’t clash, without cross and repentance. We create schedules on top schedules, and enter into a frantic scale of “success”where our temples reflect our “prosperity”. They are larger and larger, more equipped, more publicized, more full of events that satisfy the visio applied there and longings of men inert to biblical principles.
We can no longer do “our alms” in secret. Some love, others pray, but most share, often without “enjoying”.
What is the result?
Afflictions of this life, it is often God crying out to humanity and the Church that must change!
We allow the Word to be increasingly forgotten, our suppers more and more desecrated. Strange elements began to stand out in our services. Today there are more and more “normal” elements of Judaism, Catholicism, Umbanda, esoterism, among others.
What is the result of this?
Afflictions of this life, many times it is God crying out to humanity and the Church that must change!
OPPORTUNITY
Today, the pulpits have been emptied, the temples closed, and we have been divinely compelled to do something that should be natural, the domestic service, our home as an altar, and our families as a church. Today, most of our homes have been led by priests who can’t even pastor themselves and that has been the way we have felt ‘close’ to God. Shouldn’t that be the norm? Shouldn’t the God proclaimed in the temples be the one celebrated in families?
Just as we outsource the education of our children to teachers, we also outsource catechesis to churches. Both should be done in the homes.
We have, as pastors, the opportunity to return! Yes! To thrive on the wrong path is to regress.
What is the result of that?
Afflictions of this life, it is often God crying out to humanity and the Church that must change!
FULLNESS OF TIME
Jesus manifested himself to the world in the midst of the Roman Empire. His trade roads made the ancient world narrow. Thus the spread of the gospel with the dispersion of the Church was ready to reach ‘the ends of the earth’.
Today, through technology, not only the ancient world, but the entire planet, are no longer borders. But as Jesus said to Jerusalem, “we do not understand the visitation of the Lord. We have been reproached and rejected for it. The only way to progress is to return to the first love, the first things, to Christ.
Many pastors, with the opportunity afforded by technology, are merely reproducing their unbiblical graceful and man-centered services. Shouldn’t they take the opportunity and change the form as well? Far beyond the form, the content? It would be like being inside the Jonah Fish still wanting to escape from Nineveh.
We still do not understand that the opportunity to be “isolated” is to meet again with the Christ of the cross and the importance of a servile love for the family.
What is the result of this?
Afflictions of this life, it is often God crying out to humanity and the Church that must change!
May the Lord have mercy on us!
Alê Rocha]
Translation by Raiane Oliveira
