{"id":5210,"date":"2022-11-02T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-02T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=5210"},"modified":"2022-10-23T08:28:08","modified_gmt":"2022-10-23T14:28:08","slug":"the-gospel-advances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=5210","title":{"rendered":"The Gospel Advances&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We continue with lessons learned from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9SAPOLKF59U\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sheep Among Wolves, Volume II<\/a>, a documentary about disciple-making movements in Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The film was released in 2019, but some of what I heard about the Ayatollah I\u2019m hearing today. An October 6, 2022, <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/the-islamic-republics-war-on-islam-protests-antiregime-mahsa-amini-womens-rights-freedom-hijab-headscarf-religion-arrests-11665085591?st=ugkflvpk7zfmg9q&amp;reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink\" target=\"_blank\">editorial in the Wall Street Journal<\/a> said that the Ayatollah&#8217;s actions are a &#8220;gift to secularism,&#8221; declaring correctly that &#8220;religion doesn&#8217;t flourish when it&#8217;s compulsory.&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the Iranian believers were saying several years ago:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The best evangelist for Jesus is the Ayatollah. People are finding out that Islam is a lie. They\u2019re 40 years into their &#8220;utopia,&#8221; and it\u2019s not there&#8230;Mosques are empty in Iran. &#8211; <\/em>From Sheep Among Wolves, Volume II<em> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Their philosophy of ministry is that they are always discipling people, even before they become believers. Jesus did. They point out that there was A LOT the original twelve didn&#8217;t understand. With a large number of new believers, pre-believers the &#8220;church&#8221; is messy. But that&#8217;s ok:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>In the graveyard, there is perfect order. Nurseries are messy. Samson wouldn\u2019t be a leader in our churches: he had character issues, anger issues, and lust issues.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The bottom line?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The &#8220;software&#8221; of the gospel will not run on the &#8220;hardware&#8221; of the west in the Middle East. (It doesn\u2019t run well in the US either!)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Again, it&#8217;s a film worth seeing on many levels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing\u2014as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth. (Colossians 1.5, 6, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We continue with lessons learned from Sheep Among Wolves, Volume II, a documentary about disciple-making movements in Iran. The film was released in 2019, but some of what I heard about the Ayatollah I\u2019m hearing today. An October 6, 2022, editorial in the Wall Street Journal said that the Ayatollah&#8217;s actions are a &#8220;gift to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=5210\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Gospel Advances&#8230;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-1m2","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5211,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210\/revisions\/5211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}