Yesterday, in cleaning the room where Karen and I keep books, I found a book that was given to Karen many years ago. On the back of the cover page I saw that it was given to Karen and the mother and daughter who gave it wrote “Love” before their names. That brought to mind how the Bible is God’s love letter to us. One of the verses that is quoted often and is written on large boards is John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” When Karen and I began seeing each other, I would love to give her love letters and was excited when she gave me love letters.
In the forward to the book that I found yesterday, Brian Stiller wrote: “No name better describes the message of Jesus of Nazareth as does evangel, meaning ‘the good news.’ Out of that word springs the designation ‘evangelist,’ one who spreads the good news. That good news is that Jesus, God’s Son, has come to earth in human form and is Himself the message of salvation.
It was out of the spiritual and moral darkness of the middle centuries (1500-1600) that a young priest, Martin Luther, helped his generation understand the most essential of human religious experience, which is to know God’s forgiveness and His living presence. Not surprisingly, Luther called those who followed him ‘evangelicals,’ meaning those who have discovered Christ’s good news of salvation.”
Stiller goes on to note “In twentieth century North America, there were three major shifts within the Christian community. First was the Protestant church’s slide into liberalism which increasingly viewed the Bible as a collection of human writings rather than God’s Word, and a message which celebrated human endeavour more than God’s breakthrough into the human condition.
Do you sometimes read the last page of a book before reading the book? I don’t usually, but I did yesterday. Here is how Dr. Walter De Sousa concluded “The Evangelical Experience”: “May we who are part of the Church, living in this fast-paced new millennium, whose main feature seems to be constant change, remember our heritage. And may we seek to lead precious people into the biblical truth of the Evangelical Experience.”
Scripture for the weekend: “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world … But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” Ephesians 2:1-5 (NASB)
Steve