China's Arms Industry Makes Global Inroads

By Edward Wong and Nicola Clark, NY Times, October 20, 2013

BEIJING—From the moment Turkey announced plans two years ago to acquire a long-range missile defense system, the multibillion-dollar contract from a key NATO member appeared to be an American company’s to lose.

For years, Turkey’s military had relied on NATO-supplied Patriot missiles, built by the American companies Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, to defend its skies, and the system was fully compatible with the air-defense platforms operated by other members of the alliance.

There were other contenders for the deal, of course. Rival manufacturers in Russia and Europe made bids. Turkey rejected those—but not in favor of the American companies. Its selection last month of a little-known Chinese defense company, China Precision Machinery Export-Import Corp oration, stunned the military-industrial establishment in Washington and Brussels.

The sale was especially unusual because the Chinese missile defense system, known as the HQ-9, would be difficult to integrate with existing NATO equipment. China Precision is also subject to sanctions from the United States for selling technologies that the United States says could help Iran, Syria and North Korea develop unconventional weapons. A State Department spokeswoman said this month that American officials had expressed to the Turkish government “serious concerns” about the deal, which has not yet been signed.

Industry executives and arms-sales analysts say the Chinese probably beat out their more established rivals by significantly undercutting them on price, offering their system at $3 billion. Nonetheless, Turkey’s selection of a Chinese state-owned manufacturer is a breakthrough for China, a nation that has set its sights on moving up the value chain in arms technology and establishing itself as a credible competitor in the global weapons market.

"This is a remarkable win for the Chinese arms industry," said Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms sales and transfers.

In the past, Chinese companies have been known mainly as suppliers of small arms, but that is changing quickly. From drones to frigates to fighter jets, the companies are aggressively pushing foreign sales of high-tech hardware, mostly in the developing world. Russian companies are feeling the greatest pressure, but American and other Western companies are also increasingly running into the Chinese.

"China will be competing with us in many, many domains, and in the high end," said Marwan Lahoud, the head of strategy and marketing at European Aeronautic Defense and Space, Europe’s largest aerospace company. "Out of 100 campaigns, that is, the commercial prospects we have, we may have the Chinese in front of us among the competitors in about three or four. They have the full range of capabilities, and they are offering them."

The Stockholm institute released a report this year on global weapons transfers that found the volume of Chinese conventional weapons exports—which included high-end aircraft, missiles, ships and artillery—jumped by 162 percent from 2008 to 2012, compared with the previous five years. Pakistan is the leading customer. The institute now estimates that China is the fifth-largest arms exporter in the world, ahead of Britain. From 2003 to 2007, China ranked eighth.

China’s foreign arms sales are also rising fast in dollar terms. According to IHS Jane’s, an industry consulting and analysis company, Chinese exports have nearly doubled over the past five years to $2.2 billion, surpassing Canada and Sweden, and making China the world’s eighth-largest exporter by value.

The total global arms trade revenue in 2012 was estimated to be $73.5 billion, and the United States had a 39 percent share, according to IHS Jane’s.

Xu Guangyu, a retired major general in the People’s Liberation Army and director of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, said in an interview that the push by Chinese companies to develop and sell higher-tech arms was “a very normal phenomenon.”

"In arms manufacturing, China is trying to increase the quality and reduce price," he said. "We’re driven by competition."

Mr. Xu said that besides pricing, Chinese companies had another advantage: they do not “make demands over other governments’ status and internal policies.” He added: “Our policy of noninterference applies here. Whoever is in the government, whoever has diplomatic status with us, we can talk about arms sales with them.”

A defense official from Japan, a territorial rival of China that monitors its arms trade closely, said Chinese jets still had big shortcomings that could hurt international sales; most notably, China cannot make reliable engines or avionics, he said. The JF-17 uses a Russian engine.

"I believe they can make a few very good engines in the laboratory, but they can’t make it in the factory, kind of mass produce it in factories, because of lack of quality control and maybe experience," he said.

He added that Chinese engineers had been trying to develop an engine, the WS-10, a copy of a Russian model, but had been having problems.

It is not uncommon for customers to overcome weaknesses in Chinese manufacturing by buying Chinese platforms and outfitting them with better Western equipment. Algeria placed an order last year for three Chinese corvettes, but is outfitting the ships with radar and communications equipment from Thales Nederland, a unit of the Thales Group, based in France.

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Argentines link health problems to agrochemicals

By Michael Warren and Natacha Pisarenko, AP, Oct 20, 2013

BASAVILBASO, Argentina (AP)—Argentine farmworker Fabian Tomasi was never trained to handle pesticides. His job was to keep the crop-dusters flying by filling their tanks as quickly as possible, although it often meant getting drenched in poison.

Now, at 47, he’s a living skeleton, so weak he can hardly leave his house in Entre Rios province.

Schoolteacher Andrea Druetta lives in Santa Fe Province, the heart of Argentina’s soy country, where agrochemical spraying is banned within 500 meters (550 yards) of populated areas. But soy is planted just 30 meters (33 yards) from her back door. Her boys were showered in chemicals recently while swimming in the backyard pool.

After Sofia Gatica lost her newborn to kidney failure, she filed a complaint that led to Argentina’s first criminal convictions for illegal spraying. But last year’s verdict came too late for many of her 5,300 neighbors in Ituzaingo Annex. A government study there found alarming levels of agrochemical contamination in the soil and drinking water, and 80 percent of the children surveyed carried traces of pesticide in their blood.

American biotechnology has turned Argentina into the world’s third-largest soybean producer, but the chemicals powering the boom aren’t confined to soy and cotton and corn fields.

The Associated Press documented dozens of cases around the country where poisons are applied in ways unanticipated by regulatory science or specifically banned by existing law. The spray drifts into schools and homes and settles over water sources; farmworkers mix poisons with no protective gear; villagers store water in pesticide containers that should have been destroyed.

Now doctors are warning that uncontrolled pesticide applications could be the cause of growing health problems among the 12 million people who live in the South American nation’s vast farm belt.

In Santa Fe, cancer rates are two times to four times higher than the national average. In Chaco, birth defects quadrupled in the decade after biotechnology dramatically expanded farming in Argentina.

"The change in how agriculture is produced has brought, frankly, a change in the profile of diseases," says Dr. Medardo Avila Vazquez, a pediatrician and neonatologist who co-founded Doctors of Fumigated Towns, part of a growing movement demanding enforcement of agricultural safety rules. "We’ve gone from a pretty healthy population to one with a high rate of cancer, birth defects, and illnesses seldom seen before."

A nation once known for its grass-fed beef has undergone a remarkable transformation since 1996, when the St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. promised that adopting its patented seeds and chemicals would increase crop yields and lower pesticide use. Today, Argentina’s entire soy crop and nearly all its corn and cotton are genetically modified, with soy cultivation alone tripling to 47 million acres (19 million hectares).

Agrochemical use did decline at first, then it bounced back, increasing eightfold from 9 million gallons (34 million liters) in 1990 to more than 84 million gallons (317 million liters) today as farmers squeezed in more harvests and pests became resistant to the poisons. Overall, Argentine farmers apply an estimated 4.3 pounds of agrochemical concentrate per acre, more than twice what U.S. farmers use, according to an AP analysis of government and pesticide industry data.

Government officials insist the problem is misinformation that plays on people’s emotions.

"I’ve seen countless documents, surveys, videos, articles in the news and in universities, and really our citizens who read all this end up dizzy and confused," Agriculture Secretary Lorenzo Basso said. "I think we have to publicize the commitment that Argentina has to being a food producer. Our model as an exporting nation has been called into question. We need to defend our model."

Argentina was among the earliest adopters of the new biotech farming model promoted by Monsanto and other U.S. agribusinesses.

Instead of turning the topsoil, spraying pesticides and then waiting until the poison dissipates before planting, farmers sow the seeds and spray afterward without harming crops genetically modified to tolerate specific chemicals.

This “no-till” method takes so much less time and money that farmers can reap more harvests and expand into land not worth the trouble before.

But pests develop resistance, even more so when the same chemicals are applied to genetically identical crops on a vast scale.

So while glyphosate is one of the world’s safest herbicides, farmers now use it in higher concentrates and mix in much more toxic poisons, such as 2,4,D, which the U.S. military used in “Agent Orange” to defoliate jungles during the Vietnam War.

Molecular biologist Dr. Andres Carrasco at the University of Buenos Aires says the burden from the chemical cocktails is worrisome, but even glyphosate alone could spell trouble for human health. He found that injecting a very low dose of glyphosate into embryos can change levels of retinoic acid, causing the same sort of spinal defects in frogs and chickens that doctors increasingly are registering in communities where farm chemicals are ubiquitous.

This acid, a form of vitamin A, is fundamental for keeping cancers in check and triggering genetic expression, the process by which embryonic cells develop into organs and limbs.

"If it’s possible to reproduce this in a laboratory, surely what is happening in the field is much worse," Carrasco said. "And if it’s much worse, and we suspect that it is, what we have to do is put this under a magnifying glass."

His findings, published in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology in 2010, were rebutted by Monsanto, which said the results “are not surprising given their methodology and unrealistic exposure scenarios.”

For three years, Tomasi was routinely exposed to chemicals as he pumped pesticides into the tanks of crop-dusters. Now he’s near death from polyneuropathy, a debilitating neurological disorder, which has left him wasted and shriveled.

"I prepared millions of liters of poison without any kind of protection, no gloves, masks or special clothing," he said. "I didn’t know anything. I only learned later what it did to me, after contacting scientists."

"The poison comes in liquid concentrates, in containers with lots of precautions to take when applying it," Tomasi explained. "But nobody takes precautions."

With soybeans selling for about $500 a ton, growers plant wherever they can, often disregarding Monsanto’s guidelines and provincial law by spraying with no advance warning, and even in windy conditions.

In Entre Rios, teachers reported that sprayers failed to respect 50-meter (55-yard) limits at 18 schools, dousing 11 during class. Five teachers filed police complaints this year.

Druetta also filed complaints in Santa Fe, alleging that students fainted when pesticides drifted into their classrooms and that their tap water is contaminated. She is struggling to get clean drinking water into her school, she said, while a neighbor keeps a freezer of rabbit and bird carcasses, hoping someone will test them to see why they dropped dead after spraying.

Buenos Aires forbids loading or hosing off spraying equipment in populated areas, but in the town of Rawson, it’s done directly across the street from homes and a school, with the runoff flowing into an open ditch.

Felix San Roman says that when he complained about clouds of chemicals drifting into his yard, the sprayers beat him up, fracturing his spine and knocking out his teeth. He said he filed a complaint in 2011, but it was ignored.

"This is a small town where nobody confronts anyone, and the authorities look the other way," San Roman said.

Sometimes even court orders are ignored. In January, activist Oscar Di Vincensi stood in a field near a friend’s house waving a ruling against spraying within 1,000 meters (1,100 yards) of homes in his town of Alberti. A tractor driver simply ignored him, dousing him in pesticide.

Dr. Damian Verzenassi, who directs the Environment and Health program at the National University of Rosario’s medical school, decided to try to figure out what was behind an increase in cancer, birth defects and miscarriages in Argentina’s hospitals.

"We didn’t set out to find problems with agrochemicals. We went to see what was happening with the people," he said.

Since 2010, this house-to-house epidemiological study has reached 65,000 people in Santa Fe province, finding cancer rates two times to four times higher than the national average, including breast, prostate and lung cancers. Researchers also found high rates of thyroid disorders and chronic respiratory illness.

"It could be linked to agrochemicals," he said. "They do all sorts of analysis for toxicity of the first ingredient, but they have never studied the interactions between all the chemicals they’re applying."

Dr. Maria del Carmen Seveso, who has spent 33 years running intensive care wards and ethics committees in Chaco province, became alarmed at regional birth reports showing a quadrupling of congenital defects, from 19.1 per 10,000 to 85.3 per 10,000 in the decade after genetically modified crops and their agrochemicals were approved in Argentina.

Determined to find out why, she and her colleagues surveyed 2,051 people in six towns in Chaco, and found significantly more diseases and defects in villages surrounded by industrial agriculture than in those surrounded by cattle ranches. In Avia Terai, 31 percent said a family member had cancer in the past 10 years, compared with 3 percent in the ranching village of Charadai.

It’s nearly impossible to prove that exposure to a specific chemical caused an individual’s cancer or birth defect. But like the other doctors, Seveso said their findings should prompt a rigorous government investigation. Instead, their 68-page report was shelved for a year by Chaco’s health ministry. A year later, a leaked copy was posted on the Internet.

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Ser Amigo

Uma compilação

O amigo ama em todos os momentos; é um irmão na adversidade.—Provérbios 17:17[1]

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Por isso, exortem-se e edifiquem-se uns aos outros, como de fato vocês estão fazendo. —1 Tessalonicenses 5:11[2]

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O apóstolo Paulo revela que a essência da verdadeira amizade cristã é estar presente para o outro. Começamos a nos assemelhar a Cristo quando começamos a desejar fazer o bem a outros. No mundo difunde-se a ideia de “cada um por si”, mas Cristo estabeleceu um padrão diferente para Seus seguidores. Toda vez que temos contato com alguém devemos pensar: “O que posso fazer por esta pessoa? Como posso lhe ser útil? Como posso fazer algo de bom para ela, ajudá-la, consolá-la e fortalecê-la?” Devemos estar sempre prontos para sermos gentis e amorosos com todo ser humano que encontramos. Pode ser que ela não precise de nós... mas quem sabe? E se ela precisar? Não devemos deixar de ajudá-la como for possível.

Nós não sabemos como muitos que encontramos durante o dia precisam de nós. Talvez a necessidade não se evidencie por meio de algo que desperte compaixão. Talvez passemos anos sem encontrar alguém ferido na calçada. Mas existem outras necessidades tão reais quanto essas e até mais trágicas. Existe pessoas angustiadas que precisam de encorajamento para não desfalecerem. Existem pessoas que estão passando por tentações, vacilantes, quase desmoronando. Existem pessoas carregando um fardo de tristeza clamando por consolo. E existem as que sentem sede de amor.

Sempre existem oportunidades de ajudar, e o mundo só precisa de pessoas prontas para atender a cada anelo por amor. ...Devemos ter um alto conceito de amizade e da missão de ser amigo, sempre lembrando que o cristão é representante de Cristo no mundo. E Ele quer estender a mão a outros por meio de nós. Ele deseja derramar a Sua graça no coração de outro por meio do nosso coração. Não existe privilégio maior no mundo do que ser amigo. Quando Deus coloca no nosso caminho alguém dessa maneira tão sagrada, devemos elevar o coração a Ele em reverência e reconhecer, com gratidão, a honra que nos foi conferida. Devemos também pensar da responsabilidade que essa confiança coloca sobre nós. Para aqueles que vêm a nós em busca de amor e confiança, contando com nossa ajuda e consolo, com a bênção que podemos dar, nós representamos Cristo. Assim se dirigiu uma pessoa a alguém que Deus lhe enviou:

“Do amor de Deus esta foi a mais doce demonstração;
Apenas Ele pode nos enviar tal consolação;
E expressou Seu grande amor para comigo
Enviando você, meu fiel amigo!”

Se você for enviado por Deus para ser amigo de alguém, imagine o significado de desempenhar tão nobre papel. Como você vai agir para com aquele que precisa de forças, encorajamento, inspiração e ajuda? Como você pode contribuir para enriquecer a vida dessa pessoa? Como você pode oferecer ternos toques que vão embelezar a alma que descansa à sombra que a sua amizade oferece?—J. R. Miller[3]

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Uma amizade é um relacionamento. Bons relacionamentos fazem valer a pena viver, pois é por meio deles que crescemos como pessoas, aprender a confiar e amar, e nos tornamos aquilo que fomos criados para ser. Por isso um elemento muito importante para ser um guia na amizade é construir um relacionamento com a pessoa.

Como então começar a construir grandes relacionamentos para poder guiar dentro da amizade?

A minha primeira sugestão é aprender a encorajar as pessoas. Pense na última vez que alguém o elogiou. Você não ficou repassando as palavras na sua mente e saboreando cada uma?

Com certeza. O encorajamento encoraja!

Pense na maneira como você se sente quando as pessoas lhe dizem, por exemplo:
“Foi fantástico. Você se saiu otimamente bem.”
“Puxa, eu jamais conseguiria fazer isso. Você é bom nesse negócio!”
“Muito obrigado. Com a sua ajuda foi tudo super tranquilo.”
“Olha, o seu desempenho melhorou cem por cento.”

Esse tipo de elogio não o faz sentir bem? Você pode encorajar as pessoas simplesmente salpicando palavras como essas por onde passa.

É fácil encorajar alguém. Basta pensar em algo bom, animador ou proveitoso para dizer. — E diga.—John C. Maxwell e Mark Littleton[4]

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É melhor ter companhia do que estar sozinho, porque maior é a recompensa do trabalho de duas pessoas. Se um cair, o amigo pode ajudá-lo a levantar-se. Mas pobre do homem que cai e não tem quem o ajude a levantar-se! E se dois dormirem juntos, vão manter-se aquecidos. Como, porém, manter-se aquecido sozinho? Um homem sozinho pode ser vencido, mas dois conseguem defender-se. Um cordão de três dobras não se rompe com facilidade. —Eclesiastes 4:9–12[5]

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Assim como o ferro afia o ferro, o homem afia o seu companheiro. —Provérbios 27:17[6]

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O Senhor está nos guiando cada vez mais ao tipo de testificação em que existe reciprocidade na relação entre as pessoas. Para isso é preciso construir uma relação de confiança e amizade, por assim dizer, de modo que ambas contribuem de alguma forma. É uma relação construída mais no princípio de “Vamos nos ajudar mutuamente segundo nossas necessidades. Quero participar da sua vida como você participa da minha. Quero aprender com você, e se eu for amigo de verdade, você talvez também queira aprender comigo”.

Em alguns sentidos, interagir com carinho e amor é natural para nós. Na vida de serviço ao Senhor aprendemos que Ele quer que nos dediquemos. No entanto, interesse sincero pelas pessoas exige tempo, esforço, oração e atenção constante. Tempo é precioso, e quando demonstramos estar dispostos a dedicar nosso tempo a outrem, isso causa um grande impacto na pessoa — quer se trate de tempo em oração, ou para receber uma mensagem do Senhor, ou escrever uma recomendação, ou pensar como lhe demonstrar apreço ou ajudá-la de maneira prática. Não importa o que o Senhor lhe mostre para fazer, não vai passar despercebido.—Maria Fontaine[7]

Publicado no Âncora em outubro de 2013. Tradução Hebe Rondon Flandoli.


[1] ESV.

[2] ESV.

[3] The Lesson of Love (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1903).

[4] Leading as a Friend (Nashville, TN: Tommy Nelson, 2001).

[5] ESV.

[6] ESV.

[7] Originalmente publicado em junho de 2012.

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Title Deed Faith

a complilation

“According to your faith be it done unto you.”1 If you’ve got the faith for it, God will do it. And faith is not just hoping, believing, or somewhat expecting, but knowing—absolutely knowing!

Faith has lost its meaning to us today. Today the word faith means kind of a hazy, vague belief of some kind in something or other. It meant more than that in God’s Word. But it doesn’t mean much today to most Christians. It is the substance, it is the hupostasis, it is the title deed.

About that word translated “substance” in the 11th chapter of Hebrews: When they translated the New Testament from the Greek nearly 400 years ago, they were still puzzled by the word hupostasis. Now they knew from the way this word hupostasis was used in some Greek literature that it was apparently something fairly substantial, very sure evidence of some kind, so they translated it “substance.” With Greek classical literature not ordinarily using business terminology, it was very difficult to find this word or what it meant.

But a few years ago archaeologists uncovered the burned ruins of an old inn in northern Israel. There they found a small iron chest containing what were apparently the valuable papers of some Roman noblewoman who had been traveling in Israel at that time. In this little chest they found most of the papers labeled with a big titleHUPOSTASIS at the top of almost every paper. The business of the day was done in Greek because this was the worldwide language of business and culture, even though the Romans were ruling the world.

All of these papers which had the title Hupostasis in big letters across the top were title deeds to her properties! But this was long after the King James Version was translated, so they didn’t have the advantage of that discovery.

If you turn to Hebrews, the 11th chapter, the word “substance” there is just as good and conveys the message and I am quite sure it’s sufficient, but if you want to make it even clearer and more explicit, you can write above that word “substance,” in parentheses, “title deed.” Now faith is what? The title deed!

In fact, you could put it this way: “Now faith is the title deed to things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Perhaps this Roman woman had never seen the properties she’d bought in Israel, but she knew she had them and she could prove her ownership even though she had never seen them.

If you’ve got real faith, even though you haven’t seen the answer yet, you’ve got the title deed to it! It’s yours; your name’s written on it and you will see it eventually—that’s faith. You know you’ve got the title in your hands. Praise God! It’s done! Real faith knows, and it happens. It never fails!

So how do you get such faith? “Faith cometh by hearing the Word of God.”2 Hear andread the Word! The future is as bright as the promises of God!—David Brandt Berg3

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I love analogies. They help me understand complex things using a simple (and usually sorta fun) idea.

Today I have a quick analogy to share about faith. Faith is believing something that you cannot see or touch or taste. It is trusting something beyond your five senses. It is like a title deed.

If you own a car or a house, you have a title deed, a little certificate that says “Josh owns this car.” The title deed is proof that you own that thing, even if you can’t see it or touch it right at the moment. I cannot see my car from where I’m sitting, but I have a title deed, I have ownership of it, and so I know that it is parked outside waiting for me to use it whenever I like.

I live my life based on my ownership of that car, not based on whether I can see my car at any given moment. I make plans to get coffee with someone, or to travel to an appointment, because I know I possess a car that can take me there. I have a title deed that gives me that right and that ability.

Faith is your title deed to the wealth of wisdom, authority, and power that God has given us as His children. Faith is living as God intends you to live, knowing that He has already given you everything you need to be fully capable at it.

Faith gives you the ability to speak against sickness and see God heal it, because Jesus died to give us that right. Faith gives you the confidence to do what God has given you to do, knowing that He will give you the words to speak when the time is right. Faith is making plans to go “get coffee” because you own a vehicle that can take you there, even if you can’t see it right at this moment.

Besides ownership, a title deed also indicates responsibility. My title deed tells me that I own my car, but it implies that no one else is going to put air in the tires when they get low. It implies that if I don’t use it, the edges will rust and the battery will die.

Like my car, if I don’t use the faith that I have, it will grow rusty. Slowly it will corrode away, and I will find myself unable to trust God as easily, or become hesitant rather than stepping out—in faith—to do the things He asks me to do.

If I don’t use the faith that I have, what good is it to me or to anyone? If I don’t allow it to change the way I live my life, it’s just a status on my Facebook page. It’s just a word. It means nothing.

To put it simply, having faith but not using it is worthless. Or even better, dead—like a corpse. Dead things can’t walk or talk or do jumping jacks. They cannot do anything at all.4

So I have to ask myself, what am I doing right now that requires faith? “Faith is assurance about what we do not see.”5—Josh Clark6

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Faith is the title deed. Well, what is a title deed? In a nutshell, a document showing the right of ownership. Faith is your right as a [child] of God to access all that He has for you on the basis of His Word, who He is, and His character. It has nothing to do with how “hard” I try and believe. This takes the pressure off of me, because so many times I feel I can’t believe enough. I feel that I have weak faith. Another mental sigh comes up and says “Ugh, here we go again. I can’t get it together to believe!” But if I begin to reference the Word of God about what faith truly is … my entire perspective changes. I see it really has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the character and nature of God and His Word.—Natalia T.7

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Hebrews 11:1 teaches that faith is the “conviction (or proof) of things not seen.” The word “conviction” was also used literally to refer to title deeds. Faith is the title deed to our inheritance. Just like the title deed to a piece of property, faith guarantees our possession not of pieces of property but of what God has promised us in the unseen, eternal realm—of provision, of healing, of taking nations for Christ. We need to wave the title deed of our faith in the face of the devil and start taking back ground for God and His kingdom. We have authority, through prayer and obedient action, in absolute submission to the will of God, not only to make the declaration, but also to bring about the result of the declaration, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”8—David Campbell9

Published on Anchor October 2013. Read by Gabriel Garcia Valdivieso.
Music by Daniel Sozzi.


1 Matthew 9:29.

2 Romans 10:17.

3 Originally published July 1969.

4 Faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead... A person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone (James 2:17, 24 NIV).

5 Hebrews 11:1.

6 http://www.joshclark.com/2011/03/faith-is-like-a-title-deed/

7 http://nataliat.com/strong-and-beautiful-faith-the-title-deed/

8 Matthew 6:10.

9 http://trinitychristianowensound.com/2012/11/our-title-deed/

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The Power of One

by Peter Amsterdam

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.[1]

Nothing can hinder the LORD from saving by many or by few.[2]

If God is for us, who can be against us?[3]

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.[4]

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.[5]

The Family International’s fifth core value is:

The power of one. We value each individual and his or her unique talents, skills, and strengths. We believe that every person can contribute to changing the world by changing one heart at a time.

Jesus says to each of His followers, “I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit.” I find this to be a wonderful verse. It’s God’s personal vote of confidence in each of us. This should bolster our faith and provide the assurance that we can do what God asks of us, because He personally picked us for the job. You’re not just a random person that God happened to end up with. It’s not that He couldn’t find anyone else, so He got stuck with you. To the contrary, He chose you. Not only that, He appointed you. And to do what? To bear lasting fruit!

So we know that we have been divinely selected and appointed. We also know that, as individuals, God knows everything about us. He knows our frame. He knows what we’re capable of. He knows our gifts, talents, weaknesses, and strengths. And despite whatever we might think of ourselves or our lacks, He picked us for His team! He is certain that, with His power, we have what it takes to fulfill the role that He wants us to play.

When we look at ourselves through God’s perspective, it causes us to have godly respect for ourselves. As God’s children, we’re valuable. As Christians, we are His representatives, the bearers of His truth and message. That makes us pretty important! So don’t belittle yourself or talk yourself out of faith to do what He is asking you to do. You’re made in God’s image. You’re saved. God loves you so much that He let His Son die for you, so you must be awfully important. You are completely and perfectly loved by God. You have the Holy Spirit dwelling within you. That’s an awesome thing. Clearly you have value to God, therefore you should value yourself also and realize that God can use you.

The secret in all of this is God’s power. The true value in the “power of one” is the power ofthe One who created us, redeemed us, and now asks us to glorify Him with our lives. I love this verse from the Gospel of Mark: “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.’”[6] That is true power. And that is the power that we harness in the “power of one.” The “power of one” relies fully on the One we serve—Jesus.

We should also exhibit appreciation and respect for the gifts and talents of others. God can use every single person—anyone. Other people may have talents and gifts that you don’t have, but all gifts are needed within the Body of Christ. Most people need encouragement to develop and use their unique gifts, and when you encourage a co-worker to use their God-given talents, you empower them to do more for God.

God made each of us unique. There is no one else in the whole world that is just like you, with exactly the same experiences, knowledge, interests, or abilities as you. The Lord made you to be you. God intended for you to discover the natural talents and abilities that He gifted you with, to hone them, and to use them for your personal good and happiness, as well as to contribute to the good and happiness of others.

Each of us, as Christians, is called by God to bear lasting fruit. That means that each of us has something good and beneficial to bring to the table. Our natural gifts and talents, the way God made us, can be used by Him to first bear fruit within our own life journey, and second, to bear fruit in connecting others with Him.

When a person’s heart and life are changed upon coming to know and accept Jesus, they in turn are called, as His follower, to share the good news of salvation with others. It follows logically that God wants to use our unique talents, skills, and strengths to some extent in the mission of changing the world.

We can each contribute to the change needed in our world through living our lives as a reflection of Jesus, through letting the Holy Spirit shine through us, and through sharing the Gospel with others. We are called to be world-changers … by being heart-changers. We each have the power to positively affect people’s lives, but in order to do so, we need to intentionally use our gifts and talents, even our personalities, together with our time and effort, for God’s glory.

God wants to use you and your gifts as a unique expression of His love to humanity.

Knowing that God wants to use our individual gifts and talents for His glory, it’s fitting for us to discover what our gifts, talents, and abilities are. God gifts us with raw talent, and He expects us to invest in ourselves, to work at growing our gifts and honing our skills.

When you give yourself to God, He makes you a new creation.[7] But He wants you to still beyou—just what He envisioned when He created you. He doesn’t discard or change the raw talent that He put within you when He created you. As you put your talents to good use, He helps you to flourish. As C.S. Lewis said, “The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become—because He made us.”

You have the Holy Spirit, therefore you also have a gift or some gifts of the Spirit that God can use as you help others. The New Testament outlines these spiritual gifts, some of which are wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, working of miracles, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits, tongues, interpretation of tongues, teaching, helping, and guidance.[8]These are gifts of the Holy Spirit, given for our personal edification and for the edification of others within the Body of Christ.

Your natural talents, skills, and expertise, coupled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, provide an opportunity for the beautiful combination of your talent plus God’s Spirit to shine.

Nobody is too young, old, poor, or unlearned—or too anything else—to make a difference in God’s service. This story, printed in The Dawn, makes this point well:

Sir Michael Costa was once rehearsing with a large orchestra and hundreds of voices. Amidst the thunder of the organ, and the roll of the drums, the player on the piccolo said to himself: “In all this din, my little instrument doesn’t matter,” and he ceased to play. Suddenly the great conductor threw up his arms, and all was still. “Where is the piccolo?” he cried. God listens for [each of] our [parts] in His orchestra.

Here’s an excerpt from the Sunday School Times that serves as encouragement for us all:

There are certain qualifications we must have if we would be used of God. These qualifications do not include great learning, genius, riches, executive ability, and other similar assets that many of us will never have. Paul has told us, by inspiration, just what they are. D. L. Moody is quoted as follows: “Paul sums up five things that God uses: ‘the weak things,’ ‘the foolish things,’ ‘the base things,’ ‘the despised things,’ and ‘the things which are not.’ When we are ready to lay down our strength and our weakness before the Lord, He can use us.”

God made all types of people, and there isn’t one “type” of person that is most effective in reaching others for Jesus or making a difference in the world in the way God calls them. No matter how different you feel you are, there are other people in the world like you who will be attracted to you and who will identify with you. You will be able to interact with them with ease, and relate to them in a way that some others will be unable to.

Buckminster Fuller said:

“Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren't any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn't be here in the first place. And never forget, no matter how overwhelming life's challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person.”

And how much more is this true if you’re working in teamwork with the God of the universe!

Sometimes we feel that if we’re not involved in a big or “great work,” that what we’re doing is of little value. There are many organizations that are doing tremendous works, giving back to the community, helping to improve people’s lives, and bringing practical and spiritual help on a large scale. Those are certainly great works, and they are extremely valuable and to be commended.

However, the question we should ask ourselves is: What is the Lord expecting of me? What is He asking of me? And am I doing it?

Greatness is doing the things that God asks you to do. If that is loving one person, that is your great work. If that is winning one soul to Christ, that is your great work. As the late Mother Teresa said: “We can do no great things—only small things with great love.” Doing a “great thing” for God is not necessarily measured by the size of the project or the thousands of people affected; it is measured by your obedience and faithfulness to do His will in your life, and the great love with which you carry out God’s request.

If you don’t know exactly what to do, or how God wants you to help grow His kingdom, or serve others, ask Him for guidance and leading. Commit your steps and decisions to Him, and trust that He will direct your path. He has a plan that will work for you, and if you’re open to Him, don’t worry, He will guide you.

You could also consider that maybe it’s time to just step out and do something. Do what you can. Try out a few things. If you start doing something, you’ll probably find out what you’re best suited to. You’ll feel the tug on your heart of the Lord’s leading. He will either confirm that you’re in the right spot or you’ll see that “no, it’s not this.” As the saying goes: “A boat has to be in motion before the rudder can take effect.”

If you’re a busy person, like most of us are, when you fit something new into your life, you’ll have to shave off a little time from somewhere. Serving others will displace something else from your life. That’s part of denying yourself and taking up your cross.[9] It’s called service because you’re serving others; you’re giving of your time and strength. Anything that is worth something costs something. But we are disciples who are passionate about God and pursuing His Spirit, living active discipleship, and His love flows through us to those around us. Cost goes hand in glove with commitment.

If we want to live the “power of one” and let God use us to do His work, we have to actually take action and step out and do something. The first step is in our court. We have to get up, stop procrastinating, and take that step. When we do, God will multiply our efforts.

I want to read some quotes from men and women of God who understood the power of one.

Billy Graham summed it up in one sentence:

“One with God is a majority.”

Helen Keller said:

“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”

It’s easy to feel alone, and it’s natural to feel a bit shaky when you step out, hoping and praying that God will use you. You might lack finances, or not speak the local language, or feel that you have a big learning curve ahead of you, but that’s when we have to focus on the power of God to help us.

Oswald Chambers addressed our fears of inadequacy and insufficiency when he said:

“When it is a question of God's almighty Spirit, never say, ‘I can't.’”

John Wesley admonished:

“Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, to all the souls you can, in every place you can, at all the times you can, with all the zeal you can, as long as ever you can.”

If you feel that there are few opportunities in your life today for service, perhaps you are in a time of preparation.—In God’s workshop, so to speak, where He is fashioning you with the tool of patience, as you exhibit faithfulness in the seemingly small, mundane things of life. If you feel that your life has little or no outlet for worthy service, be encouraged by this thought from A. B. Simpson. “God is preparing His heroes. And when the opportunity comes, He can fit them into their places in a moment. And the world will wonder where they came from.”

We’re sometimes tempted to despair, feeling that there’s not enough time to accomplish what we feel is God’s will in our lives. We’re often impatient and want to get to our goals more quickly. But God is not often in a hurry. We can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that God always gives us enough time to do His will.

God has a part for every one of us to play in building His kingdom on earth. The way to grow the kingdom of God is to reach out to others and invite them to join in this wonderful life of love and redemption that we live. You don’t have to be a public speaker to partake in the Great Commission. You don’t have to have thousands of friends and acquaintances to share the Good News with. You don’t have to have a gregarious personality. This is where the “power of one” comes into play. You—just you—can reach out to one person. Befriend one person and share the Good News with them. God is calling you to be part of His grand plan to change the world one heart at a time. And that’s something that each one of us can be part of. When we apply the “power of one,” others will come to know Jesus. And their “power of one” will in turn reach others.

When you meet someone and make a difference in their life, and bring them the gift of salvation, how priceless is that? Few people in the world have the privilege of impacting another person’s life in an eternal way, but we have that privilege because we have Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit, and we intentionally witness and bring people to Him. What a privilege. What a thrill, really.

As Henry Thoreau said:

“When it's time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.”

Let’s truly “live” and step up to the plate of usefulness that God has for us by:
Honing our talents and gifts and letting them shine.
Being intentional in our witness.
And, claiming the Holy Spirit’s help to use our “power of one” to the full.

Let’s be all that God made us to be! Amen?

Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all scriptures are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

[1] 1 Corinthians 1:26–29.


[2] 1 Samuel 14:6b.


[3] Romans 8:31.


[4] John 15:16.


[5] Philippians 4:13.


[6] Mark 10:27.


[7] 2 Corinthians 5:17.


[8] 1 Corinthians 12:7–11.


[9] Luke 9:23.

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The Superhero Within! Maria Fontaine

October 19, 2013

by Maria Fontaine

The Superhero Within

Have you ever experienced some particular problem or pain that surprised you by how debilitating it was? Perhaps it was a sore toe, or an earache that outwardly seemed small, but it made your day a major struggle. Then along comes someone who says, “I get infections in my toe all the time, and it’s uncomfortable but I don’t let it bother me. You just need to praise the Lord and keep going.” Well, though we do need to strive to “give thanks in all circumstances,” trying to keep your head above water may be difficult for you at these times.[1]

There you are, feeling as if you’re unable to even think straight. How do you communicate the agony to someone who has never had to face this exactly? Are you just being a big baby? Or is it possible that pain and suffering affect each person in different ways?

We can’t see what is going on inside of others. They may actually be making a superhero-like effort, considering what they’re enduring, but we tend to see things very differently. We see the human being buckling under what to us might look like something trivial. From ourperspective, what a person appears to be struggling with might not seem like such a big deal, but are we really able to judge whether that is true?

It seems obvious that those experiencing famine, war, violence, or torture, are facing levels of suffering and loss that are far greater than what most people go through. But many times there are cases of suffering that are severe and debilitating, yet they are borne internally, invisibly. Outwardly, the depths and magnitude of what people are going through isn’t apparent.

I know someone who I consider a true saint of God who has faced pain and suffering for much of his life on a scale that I’m certain I could never have kept going through. Yet, in spite of barely being able to open his eyes sometimes for the pain, he gets up and launches, or sometimes limps, into his day, showing patience and dedication and compassion on others, and always praising the Lord. He’s so positive that you could easily pass by him and not even realize the suffering that he faces daily.

Besides physical suffering, there is another form of suffering that can be every bit as intense, yet even less visible to our eyes. The Bible talks about how the spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?[2] That would seem to indicate that some spiritual suffering is even more unbearable than the infirmities and suffering of the body and mind.

Even the terrible physical agony that Jesus faced couldn’t compare to the horrors that He went through as He experienced the death of the sinner, total isolation from God and apparent abandonment by His Father. That short sentence “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” which He cried out from the cross, had a depth of utter and total anguish of spirit behind it that dwarfs any experience of physical or mental suffering.[3] It was the ultimate in spiritual suffering, which we will never have to face because He faced it for us. But that suffering was not fully visible to the eye.

The Bible admonishes us not to judge according to outward appearance.[4] Things might look fine to us, when the reality is actually very different. Our perception of the situation could cause us to minimize what someone is passing through. So many factors can turn something that might seem trivial to us into a life-shattering experience for someone else.

At some point we’ll all probably encounter what to us may seem to be someone’s overreaction to or difficulties coping with something that we see as minor. We may feel tempted to take a “just get over it” attitude. But I hope we can always remember that we may have no idea what another person is facing and experiencing or how difficult someseemingly minor affliction, setback, or inconvenience may be for them.

Compassion is so essential to our helping those we encounter each day. This touch of His Spirit through our showing understanding and mercy can demonstrate His unconditional love, even when we don’t know what to do or say. His compassion through us can comfort others in their tribulation with the comfort that we ourselves have been comforted with by God.[5]

He sees what we’re incapable of seeing. We don’t have to determine to what degree someone is suffering or make a call as to whether someone is worthy of His love and compassion poured through us as His representatives here. His commission to us is to follow Him and to demonstrate His unconditional love to this world that’s so in need of it. So let’s avoid judging or sizing things up according to our own understanding when it comes to the challenges and afflictions others face. Let’s strive to be the best example of God’s love we can be. The rest is in His hands.

[1] 1 Thessalonians 5:18 NIV.


[2] Proverbs 18:14 KJV.


[3] Matthew 27:46.


[4] 1 Samuel 16:7; John 7:24.


[5] 2 Corinthians 1:4.

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Nun Raised in Beverly Hills Traded Posh Life for Prison Life

By Claudine Zap, Healthy Living, Oct. 18, 2013

She was living what many would consider to be a dream life: Raised in Beverly Hills, living in a beachfront home along the California coast, lots of kids and grandkids nearby.

And then she left it all to live in a Mexican prison.

After making headlines for her decision to become a nun and tend to prisoners in Tijuana, Mexico, more than three decades ago, Sister Antonia Brenner has died at age 86, the Los Angeles Times reported. Brenner died in the convent she founded in Mexico, according to Channel 8 in San Diego, She had been suffering from a weak heart and a neuromuscular condition.

The wife and mother who became a sister at the age of 50 raised seven children and had married (and divorced) twice.

Born Mary Clarke in 1926 to Irish immigrants, she led a busy life in Southern California, raising her children and doing charity work, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In 1965, she made her first trip to La Mesa State Penitentiary to deliver medical supplies, according to the Daily Mail. The place, inhabited with drug dealers, murderers, and thieves, had an impact on her, “filling her with compassion,” the Times reported.

"Something happened to me when I saw men behind bars," Brenner told the Times in a 1982 interview. "When I left, I thought a lot about the men. When it was cold, I wondered if the men were warm; when it was raining, if they had shelter. I wondered if they had medicine and how their families were doing. … You know, when I returned to the prison to live, I felt as if I’d come home."

In 1977, divorced and with her children out of the house, Brenner gave away her pricey possessions to become a Roman Catholic nun and moved into the Mexican prison, trading her Ventura beach house for a concrete 10-by-10 room and slept on a cot. She became known as the “prison angel.”

"I’m the mother of seven children," the nun with a memorable giggle told the Times in a 2002 interview. "I’m prepared for everything."

Not that it was an easy life. The prison had a reputation for riots, which she did not fear. An uprising in 2008 led to the death of 23 inmates. “I’m effective in riots because I’m not afraid. I just pray and walk into it,” she told the Associated Press in 2005. “A woman in a white veil walks in, someone they know loves them. So silence comes, explanation comes, and arms go down.”

But Brenner did not isolate herself from her family. According to her daughter-in-law, she made frequent trips back to Southern California with stories of her charitable work. “She was a tiny woman with a little fire and a lot of passion,” Christina Brenner told the Associated Press. “We called her the Eveready battery. She wouldn’t stop. She was always going.”

Guards and inmates referred to her as “Mama,” and she helped victims and guards as well as the prisoners. “There isn’t anyone who hasn’t heard my lecture on victims,” she told the Times in a 2002 interview. “They have to accept that they’re wrong. They have to see the consequences. They have to feel the agony. … But I do love them dearly.”

Along with her seven children, Brenner is survived by 45 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the Times reported.

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God Sees the Individual

By Peter Amsterdam

Does a Christian worldview allow for passing general moral judgments on groups of people? Can we label a certain group of people or nation as evil or anti-God, encompassing everyone of that nation or culture?

In the case of catastrophic events, such as natural disasters, would it be possible to pronounce a blanket judgment that applies to every individual who suffered calamity in these countries?

What about the age-old questions of why suffering, and why does God allow hurt and pain and misery in the world? Should these questions be answered within a judgment context?

Pronouncing strong judgments on people was a very minor feature of Jesus’ message. Jesus offered love and mercy, which He told the religionists they had lost in their pursuit of the law.1 He told the people to love their enemies, to bless them that cursed them, and to do good to them that hated them.2 He said to “judge not, that ye be not judged.”3 He taught that He had “not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”4

Let’s take a look at recorded instances where Jesus was asked questions or was faced with situations that involved passing judgment on people, to see how He responded.

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”5

As the time approached for Him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And He sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for Him; but the people there did not welcome Him, because He was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do You want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” But Jesus turned and rebuked them, and He said, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”6

Jesus said that He had not come to judge the world but to save it.7 Only God can pass judgment on nations, and only God knows why certain events happen to people in one country and not to those in another. Paul said that the judgments of God are “unsearchable, and His ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor?”8

It’s not our job or calling as Christians to try to apportion blame and sin, and to determine whether the sufferings of a people are because of x or y sin. It’s not our place to pass such sweeping judgments on people, as each person stands before God as an individual. God takes people where they’re at and works in their hearts and lives accordingly. Each person will stand before God, either at the Great White Throne judgment or before the Judgment Seat of Christ, if they’re saved.9

What we do know is that God is love, and He’s not willing that any should perish. He loves every single man, woman, and child, no matter who they are, where they live, what color their skin is, what their ancestors did or didn’t do, and what they believe or don’t believe. He still loves them, even if their lives are consumed with sin or they live in spiritual darkness. That’s what makes Christianity so beautiful—God’s love compels us to love everyone and to share His truth and love with as many people as we can.

God looks at the individual. Each person is a unique individual, created in His image, and He loves each one as if they were the only one. Each person is someone Jesus died to save. He loves and cares for all people—even those who don’t know Him or haven’t received Him, or have rejected Him.

He doesn’t hold every person in a nation accountable for the evils and ills of the nation. A nation may be accountable for the wars it perpetrates or for its foreign policies or mistreatment of minorities within its borders but when you break that down into individuals, every person can’t be held responsible for the decisions that their government and powerful lobby groups and politicians make. Realistically, many people don’t agree with the policies of their government or aren’t very knowledgeable of the government’s activities or are not politically empowered to resist policies they don’t agree with. There are many different individuals, with vastly different perspectives.

Everywhere on the planet there are people in need of Jesus and His love, people who are lonely, lost, unhappy, and searching for answers. While the governments of their countries may be misguided, morally bankrupt, corrupt, or evil in some cases, that doesn’t mean that the people are guilty of this collectively. It would be unfair to categorize every citizen of a country by their government or the powers that be.

No matter who we come in contact with, whether or not they are interested in Jesus, everyone deserves to feel a touch of Jesus’ love and Spirit. Not just because of who they are—fellow men and women, part of the world that God loved so much that He sent His Son to die for them—but also because of who we are as Christians—ambassadors of God’s kingdom, Jesus’ disciples who are meant to be known for our love.

Our core purpose is to bring the Good News of salvation and God’s love to as many people as we can, while living that love and giving it to others.

Love conquers all, and to win some, you must be winsome and willing to become all things to all men that ye might win some. Love loves the unlovely and casts a veil over countless sins!10

Let me emphasize here [that] the preeminent requisite … for anyone in the Revolution [for Jesus] must be the same driving passion which motivated the apostle Paul and all the apostles and all the martyrs and every great man or woman of God—in fact, that irresistible compassion which should motivate everychild of God in everything they do, everything you say, everywhere you go, with everybody, and which that great fanatical apostle summed up in these few famous and ringing words which have cried out from the heart of every true Christian in every true good deed he has ever done, and for which indeed he is willing to die: “The love of Christ constraineth us!”11—David Brandt Berg12


Originally published August 2010. Excerpted and republished October 2013.

1 Matthew 23:23.

2 Matthew 5:44.

3 Matthew 7:1.

4 Luke 9:56.

5 Luke 13:1–5 NIV.

6 Luke 9:51–56 NIV/NASB.

7 John 12:47.

8 Romans 11:33–34 NKJV.

9 Revelation 20:11; 2 Corinthians 5:10.

10 1 Corinthians 9:22.

11 2 Corinthians 5:14.

12 Originally published January 1972.

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Pope Francis launches reform of Vatican bureaucracy, with cleanup of Vatican bank

By Anthony Faiola, Washington Post, October 18, 2013

VATICAN CITY—Seven months after ascending the throne of Saint Peter, Pope Francis is in the midst of a crusade against the sins of Vatican City.

Since succeeding Benedict XVI, Francis has publicly sought to transform the tone of his office, extending surprise olive branches to everyone from gays and lesbians to professed atheists. But much more quietly, Vatican officials and observers say, the new pontiff has also begun to alter the atmosphere inside the Holy See, taking steps to shed light on the notoriously opaque Vatican Curia.

Before Benedict stepped down, documents leaked to the Italian news media detailed a lurid opera of rivalries and corruption inside the sprawling bureaucracy of 2,900 clerics and lay functionaries operating in the shadow of St. Peter’s Basilica. Reform is seen as key to restoring the faith of the world’s 1 billion Catholics in the Vatican’s administration.

Observers say it is too early to gauge the depth or success of the pope’s internal reform effort. But even many longtime Vatican critics say the new pope has already begun to confront the problem head-on in a way his predecessor never did.

In a place where change is often measured in decades if not centuries, Francis personally moved to oust top officials of the secretive Vatican bank only days after a fresh corruption scandal engulfed the institution, officials say. Francis has also backed a push for greater financial transparency, while moving faster than many expected to replace Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone—Benedict’s secretary of state, who once wielded the power of a vice pope. Bertone, who allegedly stymied efforts to clean up Vatican City, was seen by many observers as a big part of the Holy See’s problem.

More reforms are coming. Two Vatican officials with direct knowledge of the situation said the pope is preparing to consolidate the Curia’s myriad operations, with the aim of reducing the size of the bureaucracy. Francis has recently suggested that clerics should focus on their home dioceses rather than angle for prestigious postings in the Holy See. His new advisory board of eight cardinals from around the globe is seen as a counterweight to the power of Vatican-based authorities.

"Is this going to mean real change? We do not yet know," said Massimo Teodori, a former Italian senator and longtime critic of the Holy See who penned a tome titled "The Greedy Vatican." "But something may be happening. There have been announcements and pronouncements, and under this pope, the power of the Curia around Cardinal Bertone is already no more."

Inside the Vatican, a sense of apprehension similar to that of company management after the arrival of a crusading new chief executive has taken root. Bishops who were once chatty with journalists have clammed up. And after Bertone’s exit, the question floating around the ancient walls of the city-state is: Whose dome-hatted head could roll next?

Francis is also feeling the beginnings of a backlash. Last week, two leading Italian commentators from the same camp as conservative members of the Curia unleashed a front-page tirade in the Foglio newspaper under the headline: “We don’t like the new pope.” The outburst immediately led to the cancellation of both men’s shows on the Italian Catholic radio station, Radio Maria.

Though their commentaries had largely targeted what they called the new pope’s embrace of modernity and his Everyman approach to his lofty office, analysts here also read them as part of a pressure campaign against too much reform, too quickly.

"They know they can’t openly attack his structural reforms, so they attack him for his doctrine, accusing him of relativism and hurting the stature of the office of the pope," said Carlo Marroni, the Vatican correspondent for the Milan-based financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.

Perhaps no single entity inside Vatican City has seen the light of change more than the Institute for Religious Works, also known as the Vatican bank.

Founded in its modern form during the 1940s, the bank became a clearinghouse for donations and charities while facilitating the banking needs of those engaged in church business as well as diplomatic missions to the Holy See. But the Vatican’s fiercely guarded sovereignty and culture of secrecy also made the bank an ideal target for criminals, enveloping the institution in scandals involving Mafia cash and corrupt clerics.

Inside the circular 15th-century citadel and former prison that houses the Vatican bank, priests, nuns and laity from all corners of the globe lined up on a recent afternoon to conduct their business with multilingual tellers. A large wooden cross, framed pictures of Pope Francis, and ATMs with Latin-language options indicated that this was no ordinary bank.

But officials here insist it is trying to become one. Inside the former office of the bank’s president, a team of 25 consultants is now laboring under a dark painting of the Crucifixion. The team from Promontory, a New York-based outfit specializing in regulatory policy and bank cleanups, arrived in July, with the mission of vetting every single account held by the Vatican bank’s 19,000 clients.

To be sure, the process of bank reform began under Benedict. But it gained momentum only in late 2012, when the Vatican brought in Rene Brulhart, the Swiss consultant who helped clean up Liechtenstein’s books, to take over the city-state’s relatively new financial watchdog.

Under Francis, the march toward transparency appears to have accelerated.

In August, he issued a papal edict against money laundering, which translated into enactment of a law last week that gave real teeth to Brulhart’s agency. Last month, the bank released its first ever financial report (it is doing quite well, making $117 million last year, more than quadruple the 2011 figure. This year’s number is projected to be substantially lower partly because of the costs of the transparency campaign).

More important, Vatican officials say, Francis has become personally involved in the bank’s operations.

In June, for instance, Italian authorities arrested Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, a senior Vatican accountant who lived a lavish lifestyle and allegedly used his account at the Vatican bank for illicit deals. Scarano, who denies wrongdoing and claims he actually tried to warn Vatican officials about internal wrongdoing and corruption, additionally stands accused of plotting with an unscrupulous secret service agent to shuttle nearly $27 million in undeclared funds from Switzerland to Italy.

The size of Scarano’s deals—including a single withdrawal of 560,000 euros, or $766,000—made it hard to believe that the bank’s directors had failed to notice the transactions. Within days of the case going public, both the bank’s director and deputy director had resigned. Or at least that was the public story. Three Vatican officials said Francis had forced them out.

"He blazes a trail; everything we’re doing now is because he wants it," said Ernst Von Freyberg, a German financier who arrived in February to help clean up the bank and who is now the acting director.

As more light is cast on the Vatican books, however, the scandals are likely to get worse. Last month, Reuters reported that Vatican regulators had flagged suspicious transactions being made from the diplomatic accounts held at the Vatican bank by several high-risk countries, including Iran.

Officials say that those accounts are now being investigated and that new procedures—standard among major international banks—are being put in place to ensure that more information is collected on clients and on large transactions. Technically, only organizations and individuals related to the Catholic Church or Vatican City can maintain accounts at the bank, but officials are now uncovering accounts that either should have been closed or never opened. Thus far, officials say, reviews have produced at least six instances of possible money laundering and a number of suspicious accounts are being closed, referred to Vatican judicial authorities or both.

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Did God Make A Mistake?

By D.Brandt Berg, published January 1971.



"Didn't You care what people thought about You and Your followers, Jesus? Did you have to be such a drop-out, and pick such a motley crew of ne'er-do-wells -- including some of the town's worst harlots and radicals?"

Did God make a mistake by putting Adam and Eve in the Garden where they wound up making their own choice--the wrong one? (See Genesis 3:6.) Did God have to confess failure by the Flood, in that He had to wipe out all Mankind for its wickedness? (See Genesis 6:5-7.) Was the Tower of Babel a total disaster, and was the confusion of tongues a catastrophe? Or was it necessary to accomplish God's purpose to humble and scatter Man over the face of the Earth? (See Genesis 11:1-9.)



Was it a mistake when Moses killed an Egyptian and had to flee for his life, and ended up living for forty years in the wilderness learning to be a humble shepherd tending sheep? (See Exodus 2.) Wasn't that a terrible setback to the cause and the deliverance of his people? Or was it necessary for Moses to go into exile to learn the lessons God had to teach him to make him the man he needed to be to deliver his people?--Totally dependent on God, not himself.

Did God make a mistake when He chose Saul to be king of Israel considering the way Saul turned out? Was Saul a failure? Or did he accomplish God's purpose in training the king God was really after, David? (See 1 Samuel.) God gets some of His greatest victories out of seeming defeat, and He causes the wrath of Man to praise Him!

Did God make a mistake when He let David fall for Bathsheba, and fall from grace in the eyes of the kingdom, fall from the throne at the hand of his own rebellious son Absalom, and depart in disgrace and scandal to another country with only a handful of his friends? (See 2 Samuel 15.) Did David really fall downward or was this a fall upward? Sometimes God's way up is down--usually, in fact!--Just the opposite of what we think! God loves to do things contrary to natural expectation, because that takes a miracle, and shows that it's God, and not Man! David was humbled and the whole kingdom was humbled, and they were reminded it was only the Lord that made them what they were!

From that squeezing and twisting of David's life came forth the sweetness of the Psalms, and the fragrance of his praises to the Lord for His mercy! It was all God and all grace, and none of himself or his own righteousness!--A lesson that's been an encouragement to other great sinners like me and you ever since!

Was Elijah's ministry defeated when he ran from Jezebel, after his great victory on Mt. Carmel? Was his great bravery there completely scuttled by his cowardice in the wilderness? After slaying the hundreds of false prophets, here he was running from a mere woman! What a picture! (See 1Kings 18,19.) The great, brave, statuesque prophet, who had towered above all the rest in the might and power of God on top of Mt. Carmel, and called down fire from Heaven, now running fearfully, ignominiously and disgracefully from that filthy, wicked Queen Jezebel! Here was the prophet of God afraid of a woman! Or was God trying to show him something that was going to make him a better prophet?--A humbler prophet, who would come back unafraid, even of the king, much less the queen?

Wasn't it a disgrace and a terrible blow to the Lord's cause for the great prophet of doom, Jeremiah, to be hung in stocks before the temple door, so his brethren could spit in his face, or be dropped in the mud to his armpits by his enemies, so that his dear friend, Ebed, had to come secretly and pull him out? And wasn't that finally the most scandalous disgrace of all, that he should land in jail, branded as a traitor and a criminal, disloyal to his nation and his own people? (See Jeremiah 38.)

Yes, but not to God! It was all a part of God's plan to keep Jeremiah humble and close to the Lord, utterly dependent on God, and not his family, or his friends, or even his brethren or the king. God put him in the safety of the cold storage of prison until he could be delivered by his country's enemies, the Babylonians, and be blessed and protected, provided for and encouraged, by the ones you would have least expected it from--the cruel, heathen enemies of his people! Was it a mistake? Couldn't there have been a better, more proper way of doing it?

Forget the "proper way!" The proper way is of Man! The unexpected and the improper, the unconventional and untraditional, the unorthodox and unceremonious, contrary to Man's natural expectation, this is the way God usually works! "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts!" (Isaiah 55:8,9). Who can know the mind of the Lord, and who can show Him anything? (See 1 Corinthians 2:16.)

Who do we think we are, anyway, to tell God what to do and how to do it? God knows what He's doing and it's none of our business how He does it! So we ought to quit trying to tell God how He ought to do things! "Now Lord, You must do it this way or that way, so we'll be accepted and people will understand." Forget about people who don't understand! Your friends don't need an explanation, and your enemies would never believe it anyhow! So why explain? Just trust God that He knows what He's doing! "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart: and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths" (Proverbs 3:5,6).

God loves to do things contrary to the way we think He ought to do them! Is this a mistake? Is God wrong? Did God fail? Why didn't God take Gideon's 32,000 men and let them destroy the army of Midian so they could pat themselves on the back and boast what a great people they were? Instead, He had a ridiculous little band of 300 break up dishes in the middle of the night, brandishing fireworks and tooting and yelling their heads off, to the point they scared their enemies so silly, they slew themselves! (See Judges 7.)

What an ignominious way to win a battle! What an inglorious way to conquer the enemy! It was stupid, idiotic, ridiculous--but God did it! Gideon and his band could only thank God for the victory, because all they did was something stupid, like breaking dishes, waving torches, and yelling their fool heads off, while God did the dirty work! Who could possibly get the credit for that kind of a battle but the Lord? Certainly not a fool like Gideon, who was crazy enough to believe God and do what He said! But he was willing to be a fool and be laughed at, as long as he got the job done!

The minute you try to figure the Lord's plans out in your own natural reasoning, you might as well quit, because it will probably never work out that way anyhow. "Lest you say, `Mine own hand hath saved me'!" (Judges 7:2).

And what shall I say more? For the time would fail me to tell of Barak, and of a nut like Samson! What a dandy bad example he was--long hair, always running after the women, getting in fights and drinking it up with the boys, cracking jokes and betting!--A guy who knocked off a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, acting like an ass himself, sometimes! (See Judges 14-16.) What a reckless, unconventional, crazy way for God to save His people, by using a revolutionary rebel like that! Did God make a mistake? Or was He trying to show that He can use anything--even someone like you--by giving us such encouraging examples of His successful failures, His fabulous flops, His daring dropouts, who dared to trust Him in spite of themselves and give Him all the glory because they knew it had to be God!

Wouldn't it have been much more respectable and acceptable for the King of kings, Jesus, to have been born in a palace, with illustrious members of the court in attendance, and with all the honour and praise of society? Instead, He was born on the dirty floor of a barn under the cows and asses, wrapped in rags and lying in a feed trough, with a motley crew of poor little shepherd boys kneeling on the floor beside Him? The manger has been so glorified by Man since then, that they've forgotten what it was used for! It was nothing but a rough bin for the cows to eat out of!

Wouldn't it have been better for His father to have been a prominent potentate, instead of a humble hewer of wood? Wouldn't that have made it easier on Jesus and His followers, and advanced His Work a little more rapidly, to have the approval of the established order? And wasn't that rather humiliating for His humble parents to become fugitives from injustice, and flee the country like common criminals for having given birth to the leader of a rival revolutionary government--the Kingdom of God? (See Matthew 1,2.)

And wouldn't it have been better for Him to have lived a little more decently and acceptably, instead of being born in another man's stable, scrounging His food in other men's fields, and sleeping in other people's houses?--Including in the house of a couple of lovely young single sisters, Mary and Martha--and buried in another man's grave? (See Luke 10:38-42; John 19:38-42.) Did He have to always be challenging the religious establishment, defying convention, destroying traditions, and threatening the status quo?--So that He had to be executed with common criminals, and leave behind the evil reputation of having been a companion of publicans and sinners, a glutton and a winebibber, often in the company of drunks and harlots, a law-breaker, a rabble-rouser, a disturber of the peace, a demon-possessed fanatic and false prophet of the wrong way! That's what they called Him! Couldn't God have used less controversial tactics than that, and done it more peaceably and respectably and acceptably? Couldn't the King of kings have gotten off to a better start, instead of being hated from the beginning? Didn't God make a mistake?

Why deliberately offend the system, or the established order? Why deliberately pick a bunch of stinking long-haired fishermen and a hated tax collector for His disciples? Wouldn't You have made easier progress, Jesus, if You'd done it Man's way, and chosen them from the learned Sanhedrin (the local seminary) with the approval of the synagogues, and the permission of the high priests and a license from Rome through the governor? Wouldn't You have gotten off to a better start, Jesus? Don't You think You could have improved Your tactics, Lord? Don't You think that was really making it a little too rough from the beginning, and suffering undue and unnecessary hardship and persecution due to Your Own foolhardy methods and lack of wisdom, Jesus?

Did You have to be such a dropout, and pick up such a motley crew of ne'er-do-wells--including some of the town's worst harlots and radicals? There must have been a better way! Surely You didn't have to do so many things in such a horrible fashion! One can understand Your making a few mistakes, but going so consistently and stubbornly contrary to all acceptable reason and logic and custom, wasn't that a little foolish, Lord? And You might have known that to have beat up the money changers in the Temple once--they might have overlooked it as the hair-brained eccentricity of some madman, a little off his rocker--but to whip'em out, and bust the furniture, and spill all the money three times--You know that was too much! Somebody was bound to get mad and get You in the end! (See John 2:13-16; Matthew 21:12,13; Mark 11:15.)

You've made it very hard, Lord, for us to explain You to respectable society, why You had to be so unconventional and controversial--such an iconoclast! Couldn't You have compromised just a little bit on some of these issues, and not have continued to have to run head-on into the religious authorities with Your revolutionary doctrines? Couldn't You have polished up Your manner and Your message a little bit so it wouldn't have been quite so hard to swallow--such as when You told Your disciples to eat Your flesh and drink Your blood! Why, they could have thought You were starting to teach cannibalism! (See John 6:48-63.)

Lord, there must have been a better way! And certainly You could have had better living conditions than that!--The idea of You camping out on the grass under the trees! You knew that was bound to raise eyebrows and questions about Your character and morality and that of Your disciples, who were a rather questionable group of characters to begin with! Surely You must have been mistaken, Lord, about some of these things, and could have done some of them some better way!

And on top of it all, You had to pick that fanatic Paul to be one of Your leading apostles! You might have known that the Jews wouldn't have liked Your stealing one of their top men and turning him into a radical Christian! You might have known that even Your disciples would have doubted the sincerity of such a man, and found it hard to believe that You'd do such a thing, to take their worst persecutor and expect them to believe he was their bosom buddy now, after all the damage he'd done them!

Really, Lord, You do make it all rather difficult! Surely some of this was a mistake! We might have understood Your stupid, uneducated followers pulling some boners like this--but You, Lord, their leader! How could You have been guilty of such disgraceful conduct? What did You expect people to think? Of course they would accuse You of being a drunk and a glutton, a libertine, and a radical revolutionary! You really didn't make it very easy for them to accept You, because Your method and message were terribly hard to swallow for any of us who are accustomed to even the least bit of respectability! Weren't You at all concerned about the opinions of men? Didn't You care what people thought about You and Your followers? Didn't the stories that were going around about You and the men and women who were following You make any difference to You?

Lord, how could You do this to us? Why did You have to make it so hard for us to interpret You to society? When Your actions were almost inexcusable, what do You expect society to believe? They can only go by what they see and hear, and that's bad enough!

Lord, please let us improve on Your methods, and polish up Your message a little, and eradicate some of these irreconcilable, controversial features of Your ministry! Lord, we don't want to make the same kind of mistakes You did! Please help us to be more acceptable in the eyes of the World! Couldn't we classify this amongst the "greater things shall ye do than this"? (John 14:12).--That we, unlike You, manage to be accepted by society, even recognised and blessed by it--even working together with it? And in this case, wouldn't You permit us to be "unequally yoked with the unbelievers"? (2 Corinthians 6:14).

Couldn't You just, in our case, make it a little more equal, so we wouldn't have to suffer the kind of persecution You and Your early followers did? Shouldn't we have learned something from Your dandy bad example, of what not to do next time? Surely we could learn something from these mistakes of Yours! Otherwise, Lord, if Your disciples throughout all history are going to follow such a nonconformist example as Yours, they're going to have nothing but trouble from beginning to end, because You know the World isn't going to stand for it, and Christianity is going to be absolutely obliterated!

And Lord, You should also have had much more respect for the temple and their synagogues, because You know buildings are the foundation of every religion, and without them, where would our religion be? Why, we couldn't have any ceremonies, and what would we say we belong to without our denomination? We'd be out in the cold, Lord, with nothing to do but witness, and we'd have no support or backing but Yours. Now, that's not very businesslike, and we'd certainly not last long at that rate! Look what happened to all the rest of Your followers throughout history who insisted on defying the established religious order, and preaching in the streets with no visible means of support--no jobs, no homes, no governmental recognition! Almost without exception, from Your earliest prophets to Your latest martyrs, they were ridiculed, scoffed at, disbelieved, jailed, fined, beaten, and even killed!

But what could You expect, Lord? You might have known the people wouldn't stand for that sort of thing! Society couldn't have people like that running around loose, without some kind of regulation and control! It might undermine their whole set-up, and destroy the people's confidence in their religion, their buildings and their religious leaders. You know You just can't have that, Lord! Everything has to be done in decency and order, and we just couldn't have all these religious fanatics running around loose, screaming, "Jesus loves you!" They're bound to call it disorderly conduct, because it's not according to their order, or the usual order of the day!

Haven't You made a mistake, Lord? Isn't there some better way You could do things?--With a little better class of people and some more acceptable methods and a less offensive message, something that wouldn't disturb and upset people so much and make them so angry at You? Most of us want to be of some reputation and to be well-thought- of and respected by our communities! Most of us don't care to be a news headline, Lord!--Especially not in this somewhat distasteful fashion. Most people don't care to be considered religious fanatics. Don't You think You and Your first followers set them a rather bad example, Lord, which got them off to a rather bad start with the community? I realise, Lord, that they did seem to reach people with the Gospel, but what a Gospel!

And what's the matter with a little formal higher education? Don't You think You and Your disciples would have been much more readily recognised by the respectable citizenry if You had been a little more literate and learned and versed in the ways of the World and what it expects of its religious leaders?

And to actually say that their temple was going to be destroyed!--Wasn't this sacrilege and blasphemy, that what they called the very House of God was doomed to destruction? (See Matthew 24:2.) If we said things like that, who would You expect to follow us then, Lord?--No one but the riffraff of society like You had, or Jeremiah had, or St. Francis had, or some of those other unconventional nonconformists of Yours! This would get us nowhere with society and the general public, just as it got them nowhere but jail and judgment and execution! I'm sure we must have learned something from all of this, Lord!--And we don't care to repeat Your mistakes! In this modern and civilised day, we must use new, improved and more civilised methods, more consistent with the scientific age of educated men in an affluent society!

And last, but not least, Lord, this business of us reverting after thousands of years to a primitive cooperative society such as that of Your disciples, where people share and have all things in common, and live together and devote their time to nothing but prayer, praise, Bible study and witnessing!--This is a thing of the past, and it apparently didn't work well, because the established churches discontinued its practice! As You can understand, it's not attractive to most people! How many of us want to share our hard-earned cash with others not so blessed? Let them get out and earn their own! We must surely need a few things to call our own, and some place to lay our heads! (See Acts 2:44-47; 4:31-35.)

We can't just be drifters, like You and Your disciples, Lord!--And even Your great apostle, Paul!--Imagine having "no certain dwellingplace!" (1 Corinthians 4:11). This is just inconceivable in this modern day! It just isn't done any more! You know that such a lifestyle is bound to draw criticism and be abhorred by a modern society which believes that our lives consist of the abundance of the things which we possess, and not some mere vague and uncertain spiritual values!

Lord, do we have to be so completely denounced by the World, in order to keep us separate and uncompromising, and from drifting back into it? Do they have to reject us entirely to drive us to You? Must we utterly burn our bridges behind us, so that it's impossible for us to go back? Isn't this asking a little too much, to make us such an offscouring of society as Paul was, as he said the apostles were, such dregs of humanity as Your early followers were, Lord?--Such misfits, odd characters, fanatics and peculiar people? (See 1 Corinthians 4:13.) If we go this far, we'll never be able to go back! Society will never accept us again. It might bring division and betrayal by those who are not loyal, like Judas did to You! It might offend so many weaker brethren, we'd have very few left, and we would be able to persuade very few to follow such extremes of loyalty, dedication, and doctrine!--Like what happened to You after that "blood and flesh sermon"! (See John 6:48-66.)

Yes, Gideon did lose most of his army through such extremism, but that was a long time ago, Lord, and things are different now! You're not supposed to make the tests so hard today, Lord, that You lose most of Your army! Where would the established church be if she did that today? There wouldn't be much left! Even Your Own disciples forsook You over some of Your hard sayings! (See John 6:66.) It's just too much, Lord; You'll never get a very big army that way! We'll never be very popular, practising such extremes as this! We'll never be generally accepted if we preach and practise everything in the Bible! You surely wouldn't expect that of us! It's just too much! It must be a mistake! Please don't ask that of us! Do we have to be so different? Aren't You making a mistake, Lord? Isn't there some other way?
* * *

What does the Bible say about all this?: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; and no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me. . . . Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. . . . Many are called, but few are chosen! . . . Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the World to confound the wise; and the weak things to confound the things which are mighty. . . . And many of His disciples, when they had heard this, said, `This is an hard saying: who can hear it?' . . . And from that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him! . . . Then said Jesus unto the twelve, `Will ye also go away?'" And another time, "All the disciples forsook Him, and fled."

"Let us go forth unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach." For He "made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant. . . . He is despised and rejected of men; a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He was taken from prison and from judgement . . . and He made His grave with the wicked, and with the rich in His death. . . . And ye shall be hated of all nations for My Name's sake . . . and then shall the end come. . . . Because ye are not of the World, but I have chosen you out of the World, therefore the World hateth you. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. . . . He that receiveth you, receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me receiveth Him that sent Me. . . . The disciple is not above his Master, nor the servant above His Lord" (John 14:6; Matthew 7:14; 22:14; 1 Corinthians 1:26,27; John 6:60,66,67; Matthew 26:56; Hebrews 13:13; Philippians 2:7; Isaiah 53:3,8,9; Matthew 24:9,14; John 15:19,20; Matthew 10:40; 10:24).

God doesn't make mistakes, and even the "foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men." There is no other way than God's way. Hear ye Him! "And He saith unto them, `Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.' And they immediately left all and followed Him . . . even unto the death of the Cross. . . . Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Me and of My Words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father with the holy Angels." Beware "when all men shall speak well of you!" (1 Corinthians 1:25; Matthew 4:19,20; Philippians 2:8; Mark 8:38; Luke 6:26).

Are you willing to enter that straight gate that leads unto life, even if you are considered a fool and of no reputation in the eyes of the World? If you have not already done so, and would like to receive Jesus' Love and Salvation today, simply pray the following prayer:

Dear Jesus, I believe that You are the Son of God and that You died for me. I now ask You to forgive me for all of my sins. I open the door and I invite You into my heart, and ask that You give me the gift of Eternal Life. Please come in, Jesus, and help me to read Your Word, the Bible, and to live for You. Please fill me with Your Holy Spirit and help me to tell others about You so they may find You too. In Your name I ask, amen.
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family International

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