Hawaii Documentary: Paradise Planted

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Welcome everybody, welcome to the inaugural service of Apology of Church Kauai. It's exciting.

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Amen. I call upon you now,

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Lord, to bless Claudio and just call.

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We need to be corrected that there was an outright invasion in a foreign country, okay, and why this is a treaty.

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It's about money and land. This is really what it's all about. What we need to be ready for is the mundane.

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Church. So we have been involved in this amazing privilege to plant a church on the island of Kauai for some time.

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It's been a long, tedious process. Starting three years ago, really, with Jeff and Luke, finding this island through a series of events, but it's been a long, long process to say the least.

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Getting to Kauai was an amazing work of providence. No real plan to ever plant a church on the island of Kauai, but getting to Kauai and seeing this incredible opportunity to preach the gospel to this amazing community of people was something that just stunned, really, all of us.

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Luke and I had a preliminary thought, a two -year plan, that we take time to build up, to get things in order, to raise as much money as we can, to train leadership and have a team that's committed to going out.

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Even if you're not planting there and you're not living in Kauai, I still really, really want you all to be a part of this plant.

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It cannot be just send a team there, hey guys, go for it. For those of us that are committed,

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I want us to be able to go out there on short -term missions trips to support the people who are out there. So kind of thinking of a two -year plan is a preliminary idea.

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God may do it sooner, He may do it later, but we're thinking a two -year plan. So this trip is obviously going to get everyone a sense of the island, scout it out, get a chance to interact with the locals, figure out who really feels led to be there and is committed to actually living there, and this is that preliminary trip.

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When Shelly and I found out that we were, that this was happening, we were on board from the get -go.

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I think Shelly was a little faster than I was, but it didn't take me long afterward to come on board with the idea of moving my family here.

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We got to the island of Kauai and we saw the dramatic need for a clear communication of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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We saw the need to plant a solid church, biblically -based, gospel -centered church, a reformed church on the island of Kauai.

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We learned after some time that the Hawaiian islands were at one time considered a

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Christian kingdom, which was amazing to us, and it was a humbling thing to discover all of the opportunity we had to win the

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Hawaiian islands to Christ once again. In the 1840 constitution, you actually have wording that says that no law of the

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Hawaiian kingdom will be at variance with the laws of Jehovah God, and that's a distinctly

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Christian name of God, the God of the Bible. We saw the dramatic need for a solid biblical church on the island of Kauai.

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The island is covered in the cults and in false religions. You have the

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Mormon church, the Watchtower, Jehovah's Witnesses all over the island. You have the problem of all the isms, the

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Buddhism, Shintoism, the New Age is all over the island, and we felt that with this small community of about 68 ,000 permanent residents on the island, we have an amazing opportunity to reach that island effectively with the gospel.

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But one of the things that we discovered was that because of the kind of community it is, the close -knit community that it is, it becomes very, very difficult to have a church that is involved in a proclamation of the gospel in the public square.

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As a matter of fact, we discovered that while it's also resisted on the mainland, the ministry of proclaiming the gospel in the public square is something you don't do.

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But if people don't like you... Then they don't like us. You just cussed us out, ma 'am. I can cuss anytime

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I want to cuss. It has nothing to do with me cussing or not cussing. Out of the abundance of the heart, your mouth is speaking right now. Turn this s*** off!

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Do not touch my stuff, ma 'am. Turn your s*** off! No, we care too much about people. I'm not going to turn.

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No, if you care, let people enjoy their day at the beach with the family. They're going to go ahead and enjoy. We're not going to stay s*** all day.

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No, you believe that. Jesus did not support this. No, he did come and preach, ma 'am. Jesus did not support what you're doing. Why are you so hateful and judgmental, ma 'am?

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Because you should hear how loud and obnoxious he sounds. No, we don't want to be hateful and judgmental. We want to lift up the name of Jesus Christ.

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Not in a good way. I don't want to talk to you folks anymore. I'll be honest with you. I don't trust you. I don't have to be accountable to anybody but myself.

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No. And knowing the experience. I know that's what you believe. And there's not a he. But you deny Jesus. God is not a he.

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Why is he not a he? Why are you so upset? Based on what standard?

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How do you know that to be true? The objective standard of God's word.

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There's a commitment to Ohana, to family, to not create problems on this small island.

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And so there isn't a lot of effort and emphasis put onto public square proclamation of the gospel.

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And so one of the things we knew that we needed to do was to create loving, respectful relationships with the people of Kauai.

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By loving them, by caring for their needs, by ministering to their needs. But also we knew that it was important for us to actually get out into the public square to preach the gospel.

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I would say that the proclamation of the gospel, especially in the public square,

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I believe is a strange thing to the people of Hawaii. I don't, it's at least been our experience up to this point that we're not seeing a lot of churches that are willing to do that.

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Why that is, I don't really know. But it's always been our charge at Apologia to operate in that way.

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We take scripture seriously in the sense that we know that we have examples in the book of Acts and other places where you see the apostles going into the culture, into the public square.

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Confronting religious leaders, confronting the government. One of the things you see in our New Testament record in the book of Acts is that the early apostles and leaders of the church were engaged in proclamation of the gospel in the public square.

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And it was difficult for them as well. They were in a pagan culture, a hostile culture, and they would go into a town.

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They would preach the gospel and a riot would break out. It wasn't easy for them either.

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But what you see in the book of Acts, one of my favorite places to touch is the book of Acts chapter 9.

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You see that when the apostle Paul was converted to Christ, he immediately goes to the synagogues and he's arguing with the

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Hellenistic Jews. Refuting them, proving that Jesus is the Messiah. And it says that the result of that work was that the church was built up, it experienced peace, and that it was multiplied.

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It was growing in number constantly. And some people wanted to kill the apostle Paul. So you see throughout the book of Acts, in that record alone, you see that the

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Spirit of God drove the early Christians into the public square to proclaim the gospel in a gracious way, in a loving way, in a gentle way, but also in a very bold way.

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And so, yeah, we're completely willing to do things in a similar manner. So, yeah, that's what we're doing.

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Hey, guys. Welcome to Hanapepe. My name is Pastor Jeff. Mahalo to my brothers that let me take the mic right now to tell you about Jesus.

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So, as you guys walk by, I just wanted to share a little bit of my story before I get started. I want to talk about tonight how we know that Jesus is the

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King of the world, how we know that Jesus actually is the Messiah. Long before Jesus comes, it says that He would be cut off.

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He would die a violent death. He'd be cut off out of the land of the living. He would die for the sins of His people, be pierced for their iniquities, crushed for their sins.

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It says that He'd be cut off out of the land of the living. But watch this. It gets better. It says He was struck because of My people's rebellion.

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They made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man and his death. I think there's a good way of looking at that.

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Jesus died with what? Criminals. Jesus died with criminals, with rebels.

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But more importantly, Jesus died as our substitute. Jesus died with the wicked.

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Jesus died to take the sins of His people. And it says here, He made His grave with the wicked and with the rich man and his death.

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Jesus was buried in a rich man's tomb, although He had done no violence and had not spoken deceitfully.

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Yet the Lord, and this is the glory of the Gospel, the Lord was pleased to crush

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Him severely. Our plan to build the church is, quite frankly, just through the faithful proclamation of the

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Word and engaging the people here on the island. This week's been marvelous in the sense that we've had such a good team that's come together who has been so willing to hand out postcards, to talk to people, to engage the culture with the

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Gospel. And in a smaller scale, that's what we'll be doing really day in and day out. And one of the things that was exciting for us was to be able to actually go door to door and to have that be very effective ministry, to go door to door, to invite people to worship, to actually be able to make contact with the community.

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This is my community. This is where this guy lives. And you can go door to door and you can invite people to church and to welcome them and to introduce yourself.

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And you know, again, where this ends. I'm on this island. This is my community. This is who I'm praying for.

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This is who I'm to love. And we got to do a lot of that too, a lot of the door to door, which I'm excited about. I don't think it's as effective in some communities on the mainland, but in Kauai, it is very effective to be able to get on your feet, to be able to meet the community, to be able to get face to face with them, to introduce yourself and to begin communication with them, to begin conversations about Christ and the

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Gospel. It's really a powerful thing. And there are just so many opportunities on that island to communicate effectively with the people around you in a way that I think we miss sometimes.

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In reality, what you have that's all -encompassing is not just the beauty of nature, but it's the beauty of the people.

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The Hawaiian culture is such a beautiful culture. We have such a great respect for the

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Hawaiian people, for who they are, for their strength, for their tenacity. We got to the island of Kauai this past January.

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Simply for who they are, they're just wonderful, wonderful people. We planted Apology of Kauai. It's amazing to dream about something, to pray about something, to so love a certain community, and then to see

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God move heaven and earth to get you there, to effectively minister to those amazing people, truly.

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And we planted the church. We had our first worship service, and it was, for me, I keep using the word humbling.

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Good? Welcome, everybody. Welcome to the inaugural service of Apology of Church Kauai.

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It's exciting. It's been a long time coming. We can tell you story after story about the process of us coming here, but it's really a glorious occasion.

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And so the Bible teaches that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. And it teaches that the gospel is the power of God for salvation.

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So we know, as believers, that what we must do is not wait until we are worthy to preach the gospel to people.

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It's his gospel. It's his message of peace. We know that it's important for us to go and to proclaim the truth to the island.

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And we believe with all of our hearts that Christ has his sheep, and his sheep will hear his voice, and they will come.

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And he will put them in his hand, and he will never lose them or forsake them. And so our duty, our privilege, is to go out and to go on to these beautiful feet and to proclaim the excellencies of Jesus and to preach his gospel.

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And our hope is not to start Bible studies in basements in Kauai, but our hope is that the people in Kauai would experience the peace of God through Christ, forgiveness and salvation, and that the islands would know

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God once again completely. That's our hope. That's the call from us at Apologia Church to these wonderful people of Kauai is, can you obtain true justice and peace in this land without God?

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That's the question. That's the question we'll constantly ask. And we'll proclaim the gospel faithfully.

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There will be those that will come against us. We understand that. We know that. We're prepared for it.

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That's okay. That's okay. That's the nature of the gospel. It has nothing to do with us, quite frankly. You know, people cannot like the way my beard looks or think that my truck is dirty and ugly and that, you know, my postcards stick to their doors and they do things like that.

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That's fine. I have no issue with that. But I know and I understand that as a team here at Apologia Kauai and those that will be coming in from Apologia Tempe to assist us, we're going to be proclaiming the gospel.

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Plain and simple, people are going to be offended by that. I get that. I understand that. But nonetheless, we're here.

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We're grateful that we're here. And we're encouraged by, I think, everything that's gone on here over the last several years.

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So, prayerfully, as we move forward, we will bring the gospel to the island.

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Not that the gospel is not already here. We've got some churches here and some men that are evangelists who are willing to confront the culture with the gospel.

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We just want to continue on that or build on that. So, really, that's our purpose. That's our goal. The city council is going to get used to seeing me.

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The various magistrates and people within the community are going to get used to seeing me. We're going to preach

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God's law and the gospel, and we'll see what happens from there. Jesus is the King of kings, and he is the

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Lord of lords. We're out to give you the most important message that you could possibly hear. You've seen the hypocrisy of those who call themselves

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Christians. You know the history of those who profess the name of Christ and ravaged this island, stole the island from the

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Hawaiian people. You know that history, and so maybe you're distrusting now of people who would come to you and talk to you about Jesus, but I want you to know that today my coming to you is not to share

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American culture with you. I'm not coming here to tell you about the amazing things of Independence Day.

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I'm here to talk to you today about the living God, the true God, the maker of heaven and earth, the maker of all of this, who has given his son for people from every tribe, tongue, and nation and language to be reconciled to God, to have peace with God, forgiveness, eternal life, and salvation.

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Unto us a child is born, a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder, and he shall be called

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Wonderful Counselor. And the word in Hebrew is Mighty God, El Gibor, the

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Father of Eternity. He says, Before me there was no God for him, neither shall there be any after me.

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He says, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. Hear, O Israel, the

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Lord our God, the Lord is one. Understand, we are motivated to come out here and lift up the name of Christ because we love you, we care about you, we care about our neighbor.

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That's what God has called us to do, is love him with all of our heart, mind, and soul, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

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The message of Jesus is that he owns this world because he bought it with his blood.

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Yes, he purchased it. It's his. Done, once for all sacrifice for sin.

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The Bible, I was just reading a passage a few moments ago, it says that after he made purification for sin, what did he do?

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He sat down. Though I have no righteousness that avails before a holy

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God, Christ gives me his righteousness as a gift through faith.

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The call of the gospel is to repent and to believe. Turn from sin to God and put your faith in Jesus, in his perfect life and death and resurrection.

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Receive the gift of eternal life. Be freed from your sin, your powerlessness, your helplessness, your unrighteousness.

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Be forgiven. That God is our creator, that God made this beautiful island, that God made every single human.

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Every single thing comes into existence and has its being because of our great and wonderful God.

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Maybe you've heard about the glories of Jesus and you've wondered, why am I still on a beach with a needle in my arm or meth in my body?

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How come I can't get free when I've heard this message? And I want to say to you, maybe you haven't heard the call of the gospel, which is to repent and to believe, to turn away from sin and unrighteousness and to turn to God, the living

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God in faith, to put your faith in Jesus Christ, to receive the gift of eternal life and righteousness.

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Faith without works is dead. Amen. James said that, not telling us how to get saved. He was telling, how do we know the difference between true living faith and false dead faith?

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Right. And based upon what it does. Right. But it's only that faith that brings you to a place where God declares you righteous.

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What the message of the gospel brings is something that disrupts and brings peace simultaneously. It brings peace to those that can hear the message, and this is the message.

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Jesus bought this world. It's his. He owns it all. And he brings this message like a herald that proclaims his good news on behalf of the king as an ambassador.

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Do you want to know Christ now? Yeah. Okay, I'll stand with you, and if you want to put your faith in Christ and in his work for you,

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I'll sit here quietly with you while you pray. Do you want to? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I do. And I just pray,

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God, that you would grant eyes to see even now and grant a heart to turn from sin to Christ, and,

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Lord, you would grant to this man eternal life. And I pray that even now you grant faith.

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We thank you, Lord, for the gift of eternal life and salvation and forgiveness. We thank you for Jesus. It's in his name we pray.

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Amen. To the people back home,

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I would say with great humility, there have been so many people that have supported us along the way just through prayers, through financially.

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They have just been an absolute blessing to us. To anybody who would take on the idea of wanting to come here, to live here, to be a part of what we're doing here,

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I would absolutely without any question encourage that. This is not an easy place to live. This is not an easy place to find a place to live.

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Unless you have a substantial amount of income, it can be a very, very difficult place to live. But we know, just as an example with Shelly and I, that God's in this in such a way that he's blessed the people who have come so far.

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And I have no doubt in my mind that if there was a family or group of people who prayerfully wanted to come to this island to be a part of this ministry, prayerfully if they worked through it,

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God divinely will make sure that they are here and we'll find them a place to live and give them the strength to minister in the way that we're going to.