I want to open this text by stating that far be it from me to be the owner of truth. Far be it from me to be considered, or thought of, as the Perfect One, as the Lord of War.
I will state certainties, ideologies. Utopian, I don’t care. Following Jesus is living with this ambitious hope of being like Him, doing the works He did, perhaps even greater. Doing greater works than Jesus is extending the expression of God’s love, grace, and goodness to the ends of the earth.
That’s fine, I am willing to suffer the consequences of being considered crazy and even judged for the love of lost causes.
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I grew up in the evangelical church. I know the Brazilian evangelical church. No one told me, I didn’t hear stories, I’m not “following voices.” I saw with my own eyes how cowardly, opportunistic, and lying our leaders are.
I saw people cry, beg for love, for a little bit of God’s Kingdom, and even so be stabbed in the back, despised, judged, kicked out, expelled from their congregations.
In the old days, it was Gideon who expelled the cowards. Today it is the cowards who want to expel the “Gideons.”
They transformed the image of Christ into a soft and politically correct person, very convenient to keep ecclesiastical “order.”
That rude man from Nazareth, who in no way differed from other men, is gone. There is no space for men in the current Church.
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Today, the prophets are “horoscope readers,” people with pre-written phrases, doctrinated for decades by pastors without character and manipulators.
Today the prophets “read the fortune” of Brazil, saying: Brazil will be the Lord Jesus’s. The enemy will fall. The Holy Spirit will come upon all, all will be saved…
The biblical prophets bled and died for speaking the truth, confronting the King and the Bishop. The True prophet is the one who gives his life for the truth.
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My request to you, who hears me, follower of Christ, is that you FIGHT so the Brazilian church does not isolate itself!
A church that doesn’t mix, talks to itself, and instead of falling into grace, falls into the disgrace of the people!
May the church remain mobilized as it was in Brasília a few days ago, and go to the streets in these days of June.
You may be remembered as men who, from the gospel, mobilized your churches to walk for the transformation of the world… or be forgotten…
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Don’t be oppressed by a pastor who doesn’t get involved with this, and insists that we should only pray.
This speech is the speech of cowards, of the omissive, who prefer to keep silent.
Martin Luther King and his movement ended in violence, but that never took away the legitimacy of what he started.
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Isaiah, a true prophet, said:
STOP IT!!!
When you raise your hands I HIDE from you;
Even if you pray a lot more, I WILL NOT LISTEN!!!
Your hands are full of blood!!! Go wash yourselves, purify yourselves, stop these evil acts, STOP DOING EVIL!
Learn to do good!
Seek what is just!
Help the Oppressed!
Do justice for the orphans!
Fight for the widows!
Then, ahhh, then, rest easy… though your sins be red as blood, they shall become whiter than snow.
If you are willing, AND OBEY ME, you will succeed even in this life!
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As C.S. Lewis wrote: I thought we followed paths already made, but it seems there are none. Our GOING makes the path!