Bro. Archie Miller

Committed to Excellence in Communicating Biblical Truth and it’s Application!

July 2018

Revisiting Religious Freedom

Each of us must surrender our lives to the service of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The commitment to the Lord and His Word disappeared decades ago from our shores.  And, now the evangelized are outdoing the evangelists: they are teaching the teachers about what evangelism is all about. We are seeing an influx of very dedicated Christians to these shores from Africa, South America, and Asia.  They are coming here to evangelize what to them is a pagan nation.

The Hispanic population in the United States is teaching American Christians the same thing: evangelism.  There are now over 26 million Hispanics in the United States, and they are bringing their faith with them.  While many, if not most, are Roman Catholic, it is estimated that over 20 percent are what is considered Protestant.  The United States Catholic Conference says the majority of Catholics in the United States now are of Hispanic descent.  If you and I surrender our lives to our Lord Jesus Christ, we will reach out to that 20 percent of Hispanics who are not Roman Catholic.  But how can we do that?  How can we become connected to those Protestant Hispanics who hold to the inspiration of Scripture; who do not subscribe to liberal, non Scriptural practices?  

According to the leading Protestant Hispanics in the United States, I have been wrong in thinking that we needed to have a separate Spanish Worship Service.  We need to keep our services in English, and reach out to the Hispanic community and “bring them in.”  We need to love them as Christ loves them.  We need to have their Christian influence, perhaps more than they need to have ours.  

When I think of the area of Santa Maria in which we evangelize, I am awed at the ethnic diversity.  Indeed, the inspired Apostle Paul informs us that

Acts 17:26-27 (GW)
26 From one man He has made every nation of humanity to live all over the earth. He has given them the seasons of the year and the boundaries within which to live. 27 He has done this so that they would look for God, somehow reach for him, and find him. In fact, he is never far from any one of us.

Does that not suggest that we need to get over the “we-them” attitude.  We need to reach out to our ethnically diversified community, and bring them to worship here at OCC. It is carrying our our Lord’s commission to reach, teach, immerse, teach and send out.  And, what about those who are being incarinated, and haveing their children ripped away.  Is not Scripture full of commands to “love those who are foreigners” among us (Deut. 10:19) and to care for the vulnerable (Matt. 25:40).  Grace has to triumph over justice.  Pray over this, because this will help the cause of religious freedom.

Happy 4th of July

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Dr. Archie Miller, D.PTh.

805.478.8841

W6alm35@gMail.Com

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