Let us beware how we foster the spirit of caste. Charles Darwin pronounced the Patagonians (South end of Argentina and Chile) the missing link between man and the monkey, and thought that not even the lever of Christian missions could uplift them…
But…

Darwin thought the Fuegian peoples to be one of the links between man and monkey, and thought they could never be civilized. He later confessed he was wrong. (Picture modified slightly for modesty's sake.)

Admiral Sulivan, who lived on the Falkland Islands for a time, attended the annual meeting of the South American Missionary Society in 1881. While there, he stated that he had informed Darwin of the great changes that had taken place in his Patagonian “human monkeys”: of kindness shown to shipwrecked crews by the converted natives, and how chicken houses remained unlocked, without even the theft of an egg. He stated that in reply, Darwin had candidly confessed: “I could not have believed that all the missionaries in the world could ever have made the Fuegians honest.”
So remarkable is the testimony of this great naturalist—who was, however, no “supernaturalist,”—that with his oft-quoted testimony we close this brief sketch. He had said after his visit to Patagonia, “Nothing can be done by means of mission work; all the pains bestowed on the natives will be thrown away; they never can be civilized.” This was Darwin’s opinion until proofs of the facts confronted him. Then he candidly admitted he was wrong, and added: “I had always thought that the civilization of the Japanese is the most wonderful thing in history; but I am now convinced that what the missionaries have done in Tierra del Fuego, in civilizing the natives, is at least as wonderful.” From that time, Darwin himself regularly donated to the mission society’s funds.
-Taken from the book The New Acts of the Apostles by A.T. Pierson

Life that is aimless is both restless and forceless. How many a trumpet hangs on the walls of society, useless, voiceless and rusty! It has no luster and gives forth no music, and is losing the power to emit sound. What an hour of redemption, when some brave warrior lays hands on the long unused instrument, puts it to his lips and blows a bugle blast!
Young men—you whose life hangs idle, aimless, mute, while the right is battling with the wrong, would to God that some hero-spirit might set you quivering and resounding with the clarion-peal of a holy purpose to serve God and man! No work is so wearisome as doing nothing, and no self-sacrifice is so costly as self-indulgence. Could you wear the “magic skin” which makes sure the gratification of every selfish whim, it would shrink with every new carnal pleasure and so at last crush out all true life.
A.T. Pierson

My latest book is finally finished enough to post it online. It needs another edit to take out some typos, but you can download a pdf of The Birth, Life, and Death of the Bohemian Revival, or read it in html online. At present, I do not have all the html pages built, but hope to within the next week or so.
The pdf is 3.5mb, and set up so that it can be printed out in a booklet form, although it is too large to neatly make a booklet.
Here is the back cover.

Every movement, even though God begins it, suffers decline and corruption with time, because of the enemy’s wickedness. Now that is happening to the Unity of Brothers. Those looking on can see, by comparing the Unity to what it used to be, that what began in the Spirit is ending in the flesh. This is happening because the brothers wanted to avoid persecution and win large numbers of people into the church who were unwilling to make the sacrifices formerly demanded for entry into the brotherhood.

The above words were written around 500 years ago, by a member of the Bohemian brotherhood known as “The Unity of brothers”.

Not much has changed, has it?  That is because people are still people, and the flesh is still flesh- deceitful.

I am almost finished with the book I have been writing on the Bohemian revival.  Lord willing it will be available in a couple weeks.

Sword or pen?

You see two men, armed to the teeth, warring for righteousness.
One is looking left, the other right (on purpose, for the composite I made).
They are real historical figures, etched as a relief in stone.
On the left is John, on the right is Peter.  No, they are not John and Peter the apostles.
They are men you likely never heard of- John Zizca and Peter Chelcicky.
John and Peter hailed from medieval times, in the early days of the 1400s.  Both of these Bohemians-now called the Czech Republic-had a zeal for God, and a desire that the church of Jesus recover from the Roman Catholic apostasy.
John picked up his sword to defend against the Catholic crusaders.  Peter picked up his pen.
See the above picture.
One-eyed John Zizca was a formidable man to war against.  Five times he and his peasant warriors repelled Catholic crusaders who had come to squelch the “heresy” that Read the rest of this entry »

Eccl 7:1
A good name better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.
So goes the “upside-down” kingdom of God. We are told it is better to celebrate a day of death than a day of birth!
The reason? We cannot live (be born again) until we die (to self).
Die then, and celebrate!

Now, then, “strive to enter in at the strait gate,” being penetrated with the deepest sense of the inexpressible danger your soul is in, so long as you are in a broad way, — so long as you are void of poverty of spirit, and all that inward religion, which the many, the rich, the wise, account madness. “Strive to enter in;” being pierced with sorrow and shame for having so long run on with the unthinking crowd, utterly neglecting, if not despising, that “holiness without which no man can see the Lord.”
Strive, as in an agony of holy fear, lest “a promise being made you of entering into his rest,” even that “rest which remaineth for the people of God,” you should nevertheless “come short of it.” Strive, in all the fervour of desire, with “groanings which cannot be uttered. Strive by prayer without ceasing; at all times, in all places, lifting up your heart to God, and giving him no rest, till you “awake up after his likeness” and are “satisfied with it.”
To conclude. “Strive to enter in at the strait gate,” not only by this agony of soul, of conviction, of sorrow, of shame, of desire, of fear, of unceasing prayer; but likewise by ordering thy conversation aright, by walking with all thy strength in all the ways of God, the way of innocence, of piety, and of mercy.
Abstain from all appearance of evil: Do all possible good to all men: Deny thyself, thy own will, in all things, and take up thy cross daily. Be ready to cut off thy right hand, to pluck out thy right eye and cast it from thee; to suffer the loss of goods, friends, health, all things on earth, so thou mayst enter into the kingdom of heaven!
Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount- John Wesley

Psalm 34:1 “l will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth.”

All too often, a man’s mouth gives his heart away; for out of its abundance doth his mouth speak. What is in there is bound to make itself known!

Now it is indeed to be lamented that more of God’s people are not talking about the things of God. You meet them on the street and immediately the old, worn-out weather topic comes up or the recent road that is being put in, or the new house, or the new baby, or the new this, or the new that! But never anything new and fresh about the King of kings. One could much easier wring gasoline out of a tree trunk than he could squeeze a little fellowship or praise to God out of most Christians. Only a few days ago I had the opportunity of spending a few hours with a missionary brother; but try as I would, I could not get a word out of him in God’s favor; and yet he is supposed to be serving God here in Japan. Not a word to encourage me; not a word to show me that he had a spark of spiritual life in him; not a word to contribute toward more loving thoughts of Jesus. This kind of person knows how to drag his feet as you attempt to pull him down the praise road to God, but he won’t lift one little finger either to edify you or to praise God. However, find them at a meeting which they are leading and things are much different: they are all studied up and only too ready to share their notes with the anxious! When you accidentally bump into them on the street and ask, “What’s the word of the Lord today, brother?”, chances are it will take them five minutes to ramble around through the rubble of their thoughts in order to talk coherently about the King of kings. Read the rest of this entry »

We talked a bit in Driftology 102 about the difference between drifting and falling overboard.  While falling overboard seems more serious—and it is in the sense that if the person is not rescued promptly the current will take him downstream in a hurry, if not drown him—the drifter is not in much better shape.  He is all the while drifting along with the current, but feels good about himself because he is at least “still in the boat”.

How do we tell if we are drifting?

I like the analogy given by a preacher once of a bunch of boats on a bay.  As long as the boats keep looking at each and monitoring their position by each other, no one will give heed to the fact that every last one of them is being carried along with an unseen undercurrent.  They are still the same distance from each other as 12 hours ago…  Never mind that they all have drifted 2 and a half miles along the coast. Read the rest of this entry »

Brother Steve is making a trip by land from Cartagena, Colombia to northern Argentina, by land.  Along the way he will be stopping to visit some folks who have contacted me from my Spanish website El Cristianismo Primitivo.  It is an unusual opportunity, as not too many folks travel the spine of the Andes by vehicle.  Actually, his route will be mostly along the coast, where roads are not quite so snaky.  But along the way he will be visiting folks in various places, taking the gospel of the kingdom with him as he goes.

Pray!

Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Esteban Mast, Omar Dario Sanchez