I have always known that joy is a distinguishing mark of the Gospel. All religions carry with them a sense of sobriety rooted in uncertainty of whether or not we are accepted by God. There is fear that maybe our offerings or prayers were insufficient to please a supposedly displeased deity. The Gospel will have none of this. It is the liberating truth that we are accepted, not on the basis of anything we have done, but only because of what Jesus has done. Well, last night that joy was evident here in Kalimantan. It broke out all over the stadium.

Hello from Kalimantan,

Tonight our theme was “The blind can see again”. I love this service. I openly tell the people that I ask God for three things: that blind will see, that many other sickness will be healed, and most of all that spiritual blindness will fall from people’s inward eyes and they will see Jesus.

What is God’s love? Many think of it as a big strong rope, a lifeline that God dropped down from heaven, and now we have the privilege of trying to climb it. In other words, God sent Jesus because of His love, and now that He has done His part, the rest is up to us. God has thrown us a rope and now we need to climb ever closer to Him.  There are many Christian books that tell you how to climb faster, higher, and with greater success.  Many study such books, underline them and then get on with the task of holding on to the rope and clawing ourselves upward to God.

Can you believe the Bible literally? Books and movies today convey the idea that the Bible developed from oral traditions that were written down only centuries after the events had occurred. The time span involved would make it next to impossible to know if any stories of the Bible represent actual historical events. Take the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as an example. Can we know the real historical Jesus? After Jesus’ crucifixion and death, it is suggested, that many viewpoints emerged, one that Jesus was a mere human teacher who “lived on” spiritually in the hearts of his disciples, while others claimed that he was divine and had physically risen from the dead. The power struggle of ideas lasted for several centuries, and finally with the help of the Roman Emperor Constantine, those who advocated “a divine Jesus” won, and the four Gospels we have in our Bible today were approved, while the “lost Gospels” of Thomas, Judas and others were disallowed. Consequently, no one can really know what Jesus said and did; his deity, atonement and resurrection become legends.