1989......The Year Of Revolutions

                It was the winter....here in Western Pennsylvania....February of 1989....and I had gone on a two week missionary trip to Paraguay....which had one of the most unequal wealth distributions in the world....where a strongman simply gave power and wealth to the few who kept him in power. Well it was summer at the time in Paraguay....(I checked just now...it is 102 in Asuncion)....and the temperature hit 100 degrees every day that I was there....and there was a coup in progress as we waited to board our plane out of Florida. Would we even be able to go? We did....and as we took the short trip from the airport in Asuncion to where we would be working....we could see the main government building pockmarked from artillery fire. 1989 of course would be a year of revolutions.
                 The mission trip was with the Assemblies of God....and our group continued where others had left off in building a school. We would fill two 12 seat vans and eat out every evening. On one evening after we returned...three of us took a walk in a small town. As I mentioned it was sweltering....and in amongst the brightly lit storefronts there was a church with its doors open. We could see people sitting in a circle of chairs....a halo of yellow around them....praying. I asked my friends to walk on as I was drawn to stay and just watch these people with their bowed heads. We as a group had visited about a half dozen churches....just fellowshipping and experiencing the local Paraguayan Pentecostal church....which was all wonderful....but something about that quiet humble and unassuming prayer group in that small Baptist church affected me in a way that I was not even sure and barely aware of.
                   When I returned home to Pennsylvania I knew that I needed to find that small....serious church. There were many other things going on in my life. That experience in Paraguay was not even one of the more important ones. Only a few years later we wound up at a reformed Presbyterian church. There were only about a dozen people in the congregation....and our 8 year old son was the only child....but the message from the pulpit....from a humble pastor who preached with a stutter....was the serious message that I wanted. So a revolution of sorts began in my own mind in 1989....and it took about ten years sort out what was happening.
                   Well it is now 25 years later....Billy Graham and R. C. Sproul and Tim Keller and Pat Robertson David Wilkerson are all gone to be with the Lord. There are no more Christian bookstores anymore....(my wife and I once owned one).....so we are in effect a people without knowledge....and few avenues to attain knowledge. The megachurch....of necessity....with the need to grow fast....weakened the gospel message. The cross is all but gone....other than the gold cross that shows up on the V neckline of celebrates and female government officials. Evangelicalism fell for a false prophet....all the warnings of God's judgment are gone....and we now no longer look for the glorious return of our Lord and Savior in power and glory....but the return of our country to what we perceive to be greatness....but a 'greatness' that even Billy Graham warned was going to be judged.