The Blessing of Illegal Immigration is a meditation or reflection on missions. If you don’t go to the heathen, God will send the heathen to you. Either way, you have to witness to them.
There is a teaching of Scripture that all things are in God’s hands, whether it is a blessing to us, or even if we perceive the things as bad experiences. God still sits on the throne, and whether we see the events of our lives as “good” or “bad”, as “blessing” or “curse”, everything comes from God, and we should humble ourselves before God, and thank Him for all of it. I think of Job and the trials and tribulations of Job, and it was all for God’s glory, happening according to the precise timing and purpose of God, even though Job was basically clueless during the entire experience. But Job stuck firm in his faith in the goodness of God, and accept what God sent him.
Contents
More articles from the Devotional Thoughts Category
- The Blessing of Illegal Immigration
- J.B. Stone – Heavenly Ground
- How we esteem God’s Word
- J.B. Stone – Take Heed How ye Hear
There are many immigrants overflowing our country
(Our country is the United States, and since I have spent most of my life now in Mexico, Mexico is “my country” also.) To some people, they see the problem with all of these immigrants, unbelievers for the most part, and a part of them are hateful enemies of Christianity, coming into our country as a great problem and even a curse. Meditate on this. Why is this happening in the plans of God? God commands us to reach the heathen of the world with missionaries and the gospel.
Matthew 28:19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Matthew 28:20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
Let us be brutally honest for one moment. America has been blessed by God over these past 200 or so years. America has been “Christian” from its founding until the last 30 or 40 years. In giving freedom of religion entrance into our country, have we done things the best that could be? No, not really. While I am not for establishing a state religion, I think that along with freedom of religion, we should positively teach and convert other unbelieving people to Christ.
To allow them to practice their religion is not to say we are doing anything wrong in living our religion, and trying to persuade them by all means to become believers in Christ.
The “short” of this is simply that we should be highly active in sending out missionaries. We are not. Missions is dying. The problem is not really the lack of missionary personnel, because there are many who would go if they had the funds to do so. The problem starts much deeper. Churches in America have lost the vision of evangelizing. They live their religion, and let the others live their religion, and most Christians would be hard put to give a coherent plan of salvation to a person of another culture and religious beliefs.
Calvinism has no Burning Desire to Reach the Lost
My home church was Calvinistic when I was growing up. My dad was not. Although, as Calvinist preachers go, most do not have a lot of zeal in winning the lost. Our particular pastor, which tended towards hyper-Calvinism, never let an opportunity to witness go by. I applaud him for that. I did not convert to Calvinist because of his testimony, though. As I studied Calvinism on my own, reading Calvinist authors, I arrived at the conclusion that as a whole, Calvinism put tripping points in the life of a Christian, i.e. if God has predestined everybody before the world began, and the majority are going to hell no matter what anybody does, nor no matter any individual desires, these will go to hell, and adding to that the inherent laziness of the human being, most Christians who are Calvinists will do very little in the evangelizing department.
Calvinism is basically a live and let live kind of mentality, where Calvinistic Christians don’t aggressive witness to the unsaved. Jesus Christ was an aggressive soul-winner. That was the primary purpose on His mind at all times. He gave his life for the salvation of mankind, so I see Calvinism as perhaps Christian, but at the opposite extreme of Christ, a bad place to be.
What has been the Consequences of the Live and Let Live Philosophy?
Well, the first consequence is simply God’s wrath. Whether all Calvinists are “elected” (they think that means “saved” in all contexts, and only people of their religious persuasion are going to heaven) or not, I do not know. Christ spoke sternly about the servant who knew the Master’s will and did not do it.
Luke 12:47 And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.
So I will do what I know my Master’s will is, and that is to be an ambassador to the unbelievers, and the heathen nations.
2 Corinthians 5:20 Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.
The Calvinist will have to wrestle with his “superior understanding of God’s will” that he brags about to everybody else, and we will see if he will win over God or God will beat him with many stripes in the end. But I make the observations that 1) not going full force, doing all you can to evangelize the lost is wrong, a sin in God’s eyes, 2) teaching Calvinism and its principles is in no way the gospel, and does not count towards evangelism, 3) the Calvinist’s position and life practice pulls many ordinary Christians into a life of similar apathy in evangelism. 4) When evangelism in supporting churches die, these churches shrink, shrivel, and die also, causing any support for missions to disappear.
In addition to that, the fourth point speaks of money. Missionaries go home, retire, or are not replaced when they die. But a missionary can do little to nothing if his efforts are not saturated in prayer by many good Christians. In the years I have observed die hard Calvinists and their ministries, their Christian lives, I rarely if ever have seen an on-fire, full of evangelistic zeal Calvinist. They take a laid back attitude toward things, and they are rarely strong prayer warriors. Many only pray to go through the motions, but are not zealous in their prayers.
As a missionary of more than 40 years on the field, I can feel the prayers of God’s people for me and my work. When my parents, both good Christians, died, our ministry started having a lot of problems. We have always had problems because Satan opposes us. But there was a difference when we no longer had their prayers for us.
Calvinism kills, slaughters, murders, and drains the prayers of God’s people for missions and evangelism. This is seen back at home in these churches, as well as those on the front lines of missions.
The Disobedience of Christians
But God is still on the throne. If Christians and churches “back home” won’t send missionaries to win the heathen in other countries, then God will let loose the restraints that governments put on their borders, and the heathen will flood America. (Mexico is now experiencing this also.) Although this is really a judgment of God on Christians and America, it is a blessing in disguise.
Christians in the United States now have those heathen that they could not be put out by sending missionaries to win them to Christ, now these heathen are learning English, crowding out these Christians in their own land, and are kind of “in your face” before these lazy Christians. But this is a last ditch effort by God to get these Christians to evangelize. If they don’t, the wrath of God waits them in the future.
The Blessing of Illegal Immigration