Bob’s Fall Report

Fall is definitely in the air here in Central Florida. The nighttime temperatures have been dipping into the 60's and the daytime temperatures have been in the 80's rather than 90's. The leaves are falling from the trees as we approach November. Unfortunately, the leaves are not the only thing that has been falling.

Last Friday, I went out to eat with friends. As we were walking in the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant, I tripped over a curb and fell on the pavement. Initially, it looked like my left knee took the brunt of the fall. I scraped it pretty good, and it was beginning to swell. When we got inside, I asked for a baggie with some ice. That took the swelling down right away. I knew that my shoulder and ribs also suffered some damage from the fall. I consulted with one of the nurses here when I got home. She felt like I did not suffer any broken bones. There were no external signs of injury to my torso. But when I would take a deep breath, I felt some pain. The following day the pain to my ribs and shoulder was worse. The level of pain did not begin to subside until Tuesday. On Monday I sneezed, and it felt like someone shot me in the back with a 357 magnum at point blank range. Yesterday I sneezed and the guy only shot me with a 22 that time. I guess that means that I'm getting better. I still have some pain using my left arm, but it is not nearly as bad as it was at the beginning of the week. I have seen progress in the last 7 days as my body recovers from that fall. I would appreciate your prayers for my continued healing.

My new contact lenses are working great for which I am very thankful. God has certainly answered prayer concerning that need.

Our Biblical Resource Group continues to update some old doctrinal papers that were written a number of years ago for New Tribes Mission. We are definitely making good progress. There is an approval process that the papers need to go through before they can be officially posted. Sometimes it feels like getting approval for the papers is the slowest part of the process. 

Blessings,

Bob

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From Effort to Rest

Exhaustive effort brings home the necessity of strengthening rest. The believer will not be ready to enter into his spiritual rest until he is utterly worn out by his unsuccessful efforts to conquer sin and the old man. There is no rest for the "wretched man" of Romans 7—that struggle must lead to the rest of Romans 8. -MJS

Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. -Rom. 7:24, 8:1

 

 

October Update

Last month I mentioned a problem I have had with one of my contact lenses. CooperVision no longer makes the Hydrasoft lens I have used for years in my left eye. We tried several Bausch and Lomb lenses which correct for astigmatism and none of them worked as well as the discontinued Hydrasoft lens.

I am happy to report that we found the solution to the problem. It has to do with something called “monovision” which I have used for years. With monovision, one lens is prescribed to see better at a distance, and the other lens is prescribed to see better close-up. All we did is change which eye is for distance and which eye is for reading. It worked perfectly. In fact, I am seeing better now than I have for years. PTL!

In last month’s letter I also mentioned an “internal webpage” for Ethnos360 USA that I have been helping to create. The page is done and now it is a matter of adding content. We have a section for doctrinal papers, a section for book reviews, and a section called Voices from the Past which has articles written by many older theologians. Right now we do not have a lot of content there, but we are adding papers and articles on a regular basis. Our Biblical Resource Group is in the process of revising and updating 22 doctrinal papers that were written a number of years ago for New Tribes Mission. We just finished revising the paper on Dispensational and Covenant Theologies.

There are seven fellows who are members of the Biblical Resource Group. Five live here in Sanford Florida, one works at our training institute in Canada, and one works at our training institute in the United Kingdom. We meet once a week to discuss things like the papers that we are working on. The five who live here meet in my living room and the other two meet with us via video conference on the internet. We wanted to make our group available to field doctrinal questions that come from members of Ethnos360 USA. So we set up an email distribution list for our folks to use and posted the email address on our Biblical Resources page. When anyone sends an email to that address, it comes to all 7 of us to see and respond to. We had our first question the other day which came from the chairman of our Papua New Guinea field. The question related to N.T. Wright and the New Perspective on Paul. A few years ago, I wrote a couple of chapters on that topic in the book Navigating the Minefields of Bible Interpretation. I sent him those two chapters and we had a good chat via email.

BTW, that book was not published in a hardcopy format. But you can find the PDF files here: http://www.sanfordbiblechurch.org/articles_issues.html

Blessings,

Bob

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Religion vs Christianity

There is a vast difference between religion and genuine Christianity.

Religion consists of two letters: D-O.

Christianity consists of four letters: D-O-N-E.

So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit. John 19:30