Monday, August 10. Tolagnaro (Fort Dauphin). Continued from yesterday's post.
"The Four Spiritual Laws" are
1. God loves you, and offers a wonderful plan for your life.
2. Humans are sinful; therefore we cannot know and experience God's love and plan for our lives.
3. Jesus Christ is God's only provision for human sin.
4. We must personally receive Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives.
These Four Spiritual Laws were written in 1965 by the evangelical Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ, Inc.
Irenaeus of Lyon was a first century bishop (he died in 202). He learned the Christian faith from Bishop Polycarp of Ephesus, who had learned the Christian faith from St. John the Evangelist. While still a teenager, Irenaeus evangelized southern France. His greatest legacy is a large treatise known as Against Heresies. In it, Irenaeus made his classic case for Christianity, citing Holy Scriptures and stressing the continuity between the teaching of the Apostles and the bishops who followed them. His treatise has four sections, one for each of four doctrines, or teachings:
1. The Doctrine of Creation
2. The Doctrine of Sin
3. The Doctrine of Redemption
4. The Doctrine of Appropriation
Sound familiar?!
After the new congregation's first service on April 26, more conversations took place about whom to visit and invite for the next service. The church continued to grow, and then a new mission team arrived, comprised of 4 evangelists, 4 student evangelists, and 2 clergy. For the service on Sunday, May 24, at the end of their five-day mission, Rev. Theodore arrived from St. Lioka's in Toliara to celebrate the Holy Eucharist. The schoolhouse was filled with people from other Christian churches, and also many who were unchurched but had responded to the door-to-door visits.
After the May 24 service Bishop Todd decided to keep Donné and Tomboasy as the leaders of the new parish. And yesterday's service, on Sunday, August 9, was remarkable for two related reasons: it was the first service of Holy Baptism, and most of the people came from non-Christian families.
I asked Donné why so many Christians from other churches had decided to join this new Anglican congregation.
I'll tell you his answer tomorrow!
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