- {VISHAL MANGALWADI}
- May 10, 2022 (en route to Bogota, Colombia)
Simon Bolivar, the “Liberator” of Gran Colombia, was one of the greatest military heroes of all times. The French Revolution (1789-99) inspired him to liberate Latin America from medieval (un)Holy Roman (Spanish) Catholic Empire. French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Spain (1808) gave Bolivar the opportunity to organize Latinos to liberate themselves from the Spanish Yoke. They knew that just three decades earlier North American colonies had liberated themselves from the British Yoke through a Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Bolivar’s “Gran Colombia” was an attempt to create the “United States of South America”.
Bolivar’s grand dream fell apart within his life-time. In his formal resignation as the President of Gran Colombia he quoted Prophet Amos (6:2) that the Revolutionaries who followed him and the European Enlightenment had been plowing the ocean. (Contemporary English Bibles mistranslate Amos.)
There was little intellectual consensus to keep Bolivar’s ambitious and ruthless generals united. The “Gran Colombia” splintered first into his native Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador and later also Panama. Bolivia was named after him.
This week (May 11-17, 2022) in Bogota and Cali, in my lectures to Christian leaders from ten Spanish speaking countries, I will discuss some of the factors that explain South America’s failure and North America’s success. The fundamental reason is that North American colonies were able to build a “great nation” upon the Bible as taught during the First Great Awakening. In contrast, “Gran Colombia” was plunged into darkness because the revolutionaries sought to build a nation upon human ideas articulated by the Enlightenment. During his military expeditions besides his mistress, Simone Bolivar travelled with three books: Adam Smith’s “Wealth of the Nations,” Montesquieu’s “Spirit of the Laws,” and Voltaire’s Philosophical “Essays” that explored why Post-Reformation England became greater than France. Without God’s Word, South America continues to be plagued with the spirit of lawlessness, poverty and corruption.
From 1820s – 1960s South America witnessed a period of spectacular success and disastrous failure of secular humanism. Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe also witnessed similar democratic disasters. Western Europe also reaped the consequences of rejecting God’s Word and following man-made ideologies of Fascism, Nazism and Communism.
Tragic failures of Paganism, Roman Catholicism and Humanist Enlightenment opened South Americans to Protestant missions in the second-half of the 20th century. Unfortunately, most mkissiologists were far too spiritual and otherworldly to understand the sociological reasons behind their “success.”
Missionaries were as godly and hardworking as any American pastor. However, they labored to save souls for heaven. In that they did succeed. They wanted God’s will to be done on earth during the Millennium, not now. Therefore, they could not teach their converts to be the light of their world now. During the present dispensation they were looking for the Anti-Christ. He was supposed to come to establish his kingdom in South America.
That sad “evangelical” vision is now coming true in South America. Anti-Christ’s will is already being done in Venezuela, which is the most resource-rich country in South America. Young mothers are forced to leave their starving children with grandparents and go to other nations to serve as sex-workers. That way they can send some money to feed their babies! Christian statesmen are sobered because other nations that witnessed evangelical “success” are also marching in Venezuela’s direction.
Being Born-Again in the Evangelical sense or getting Baptized with the Holy Spirit in Pentecostal/Charismatic sense does not transform nations, if the minds are filled by human or diabolical ideas. After 1940s, many American seminaries abandoned the Protestant, biblical understanding of “nation” and “great nations.” They had little interest in God’s mission to bless all nations. Missions limited themselves to ‘reaching unreached people groups’ in order to “hasten the coming of the Lord,” preferably by Y2K.
This is not meant to ignore the fact that the “evangelical gospel” has done a historic job of bringing to South America a sense of personal, individual responsibility for SIN and a quest for deliverance from evil in individual hearts. The evangelical movement has also given to South America the Bible’s idea of Family — that is, a father ought to be faithful to the mother and take responsibility for children. This is transformational indeed.
In my lectures this week, I will point out that when a missionary builds an American style “self-governing” church, he plants the seeds of grassroots democracy. South American democracies have failed because neither Roman Catholicism nor the Enlightenment built nurseries for democracy. In comparison, North American democracy succeeded for so long, because its DNA was forged by Congregationalist (Harvard) and Presbyterian (Yale) universities. Such universities and colleges trained leaders for the USA.
If you feel that the USA is now going the way of the South, then your perception is correct. “Sexual Revolutionaries” running USA and Canada are indeed plowing the ocean. Their Anti-Patriarchy makes fathers irresponsible. Their view of sex and family does much more than disintegrate the “traditional” family. It has set the Caucasian race on a suicidal mission. A people that have made themselves morally incapable of replenishing their stock are sick.
Evangelicalism had a season of success as did the Enlightenment. Now it is losing South America. Why? Because it lost Europe, Canada and the USA. Why did evangelicalism lose the great nations that the Bible built?
It lost the West because the Church handed over to the State its God-given ministry of education. The American Church still has the capacity to disciple the USA, but it has lost its original understanding that to disciple a nation is to educate that nation.
The State is not baptized with the Spirit of Truth. It is not the States’ job to determine whether a human being is different than animals; endowed with unique dignity, rights and responsibilities; that man is created to live eternally; that parents are responsible to make sacrifices to nurture their children into abundant life, not to abort them. The state does not know the meaning and purpose of life, therefore, it cannot help individuals find meaning of work.
The Lord Jesus baptized His Church with the Spirit of Truth, so that it may fill the earth with the knowledge of Truth. . . Evangelicalism lost the West because it no longer disciples nations; it does not even understand the Great Commission.
I have been invited to teach, because, thankfully, there are wise leaders who are rethinking mission. They want the Spanish speaking Church to take responsibility to educate the next generation.
If you care for South America, please get a copy of “The Third Education Revolution” from http://www.SoughtAfterMedia.com and carefully read two chapters on South America by Ricardo Rodriguez and Heliel Gomes de Carvalho. The book is being translated into Spanish and Portuguese and should be available within 2022.
Today, as I go to sleep at 4 am, Our prayer warriors will zoom together at 11 am Central Time. You can get the Link from David.Glesne@VirtuesCampus.com
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