FAIR SUNSHINE

An hour long but healthy exchange with a very learned Roman Catholic apologist, Timothy. This is the first time in all my years on the street have I encountered someone adept in church history. He contended for the Roman Catholic faith. But one must still wrestle with the question, "is the work of Christ on the  cross ultimately sufficient, or is it still deficient?" Can one trust God fully, his salvation in Christ being sufficient, or must he still add to what God has done, if it is deficient?  Much of our exchange dealt with church history and the church fathers, which I am all too thankful to the Lord for giving me directions in studying them previously. One of the major misconception about the church fathers is they were Roman Catholics. It is important to understand what they meant when they called themselves " catholic ," and many Christians today still confuse "catholic" as being "Roman Catholic" . A The two do not hold the same meaning....

The observance of Holy Week is a tradition here in the Philippines. Even before I probably realized it as a child, people were already flocking to this site in Bulacan when good Friday comes around. People start their pilgrimage on a Thursday, coming from all over the metro, some from as far as Cavite on foot, to arrive in time for Good Friday. The traffic was blocked kilometers away to accommodate the crowd flooding the highway leading here so even if you did take the commute you still wind up walking a considerable distance to get there. I was in my teens when I was invited by my neighbor to go there on foot. We left our house 4 PM in the afternoon. We arrived just before midnight. The crowd then was shoulder to shoulder when you enter the gates. It would take you more than an hour to wade through the crowd to get to the main temple, and an hour more to walk around the grounds. People were lying on the ground everywhere. Back then people brought radios. No one had a phone. But ever s...

There is a difference between those who criticize and those who do. Between those who merely affirm there is something wrong, and those are broken before God because of the wrong. Between those who attend church and those who worship God in Spirit and in Truth. Scripture says the wicked surround the righteous, therefore wrong judgements abound (Hab 1:4). A lack of urgency for the advancement of the kingdom also falls under wrong judgment. It falls under complacency. It is against the Lord's command to, "occupy" till He comes (Luke 19:13). Church gatherings are important, but not in the sense that many claim it to be. Many of our brethren in dangerous lands cannot gather for peril to their lives, but it doesn't make them less Christian than those who do so freely. Many gather conveniently, but it doesn't make them any more Christian than those who blaspheme God.  Take for instance this: all believers know baptism cannot save, but the way they vehemently argue for i...

Father blesses the work by taking the Children's Church in a more experiential direction: the consciousness of the reality of the heart's corruption even in the little ones. We are totally inadequate to communicate the salvation of Christ, and we know our help comes from the Lord alone. Molested children are common here. It is a silent plague where parents and relatives themselves are often the offenders. We taught the children that their bodies were gifted by the Lord to be theirs alone, and no one else, except by their own mothers on necessary instances, can touch or see it. They were given warnings to be aware of when another person starts touching them where they are not supposed to be touched, and to wear clothes that cover a good portion of their bodies. One item in our monthly prayer and fasting includes the bringing out of many secret sins, in the children, and in the churches. It is of great comfort to us that our brethren from Lubbock, Texas and New Mexico are lifting...