Revising The Gospel

A great post and quote from JR Woodward over at Dream Awakener and worthy of a listen. May God convict and deliver us from a convoluted, adulterated, watered-down Gospel. Is this what so many have given their life-blood for?

For the life of me, I can’t see it.

The following thought was written in 1984: “Many evangelicals here [San Jose, Costa Rica] have commented on the implications of the fact that, when one of our best evangelists held a campaign a few years ago in Nicaragua, President Somaza gladly helped defray campaign expenses. Such a fact - hardly an isolated instance in Latin America - raises the suspicion that something has gone wrong with our comprehension of the gospel.

When John the Baptist preached the good news of the kingdom, the Roman government (quite superior to that of Somoza) imprisoned and beheaded him. When Jesus preached his good news to the poor, he was crucified. Peter and Paul were always getting carted off to prison.

But when we preach our revised, apolitical version, dictators and tyrants are eager to help us cover the costs! This anomaly has even the fundamentalists and dispensational theologians in Latin America starting to ask whether our “made in the U.S.A.” version of the gospel has not changed and emasculated the message in some way.

Everything we say may appear exceedingly good and biblical. But instead of ‘making low the mountains and elevating the valleys’ have we managed to bury the ’stone of stumbling’?”

- Thomas D. Hanks For God So Loved the Third World