Tuesday, April 5

Today we began at 9:30am with John teaching about the Deity of Christ. I picked it up from there and took the men through the humanity of Christ and his ministry while on earth. After lunch we were supposed to move to the study of the Holy Spirit, but it ended up taking all day to cover the life and ministry of Christ. We’ll have to move quickly in the next two days.

Sometimes the questions come out of left field but since they’re important to the Pastors we have to give them time to address the questions that they’re facing back home.

Here are a few of today’s questions:

Q: What kind of shoes was John speaking of when he said he was not worthy to untie Jesus sandals? Strange question, but Africans, as a whole, tend to over spiritualize everything and work hard at finding a “deep truth” in the strangest places!

Q: Am I lacking faith if I pray for one who is sick and then give them herbs? The issue of causing weaker believer’s to sin then came up. What if they were saved from witchcraft? Can they take the herbs that God gave and use them-even if they previously used them in their witchcraft?

Q: What do you think about the faith healer near Arusha who claims that a cup of his special juice will heal the five worst diseases (including AIDS)? 52 people have died so far just standing in line waiting for this magic elixir. Crowds are gathering all throughout Tanzanian and Kenya planning to travel to this faith healer. How do we encourage our people to not get involved in this?

Q: What exactly will the “Object of Desecration” that the Anti-Christ will put up in the restored Temple?

Q: What happens if you baptize only in the name of the Father…or of the Son…or of the Spirit? What if you don’t use all three names? Apparently several churches do this and it causes division among churches.

Q: If God never tempts anyone to sin, what about Adam and Eve? What about Abraham with Isaac? The problem here is that in Swahili there is only one word used for both “temptation” and “test.” Their Bible translates both words as “tempt” bringing confusion.

By the way, we had a few children coming into the meetings to see what was going on. No problem. But when the chickens started walking up toward where I was teaching I knew it was a first for me!

We ended the day by walking into Mwanza to find dinner (below). Another hot night awaits.

Advertisement