June 14, 2024 Show with Carlos Spurgeon on “Challenges of the Mission Field in Communist Cuba”

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Well, today we have one of those rare programs—I've done this only several times before—where we are providing an alias for our guest because of the very sensitive and even dangerous activities that he is involved in for the glory of Christ and the furtherance of his kingdom.

So we are going to call our guest today Carlos Spurgeon, and he is an evangelist to the

Cuban people, and today we're going to be addressing the challenges of the mission field in communist

Cuba, and it's my honor and privilege to have you on the broadcast today, Carlos Spurgeon.

Greetings in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, Carlos, I would like to hear from you.

How is it that, first of all, you realized you had been given a burden upon your heart by our sovereign

Lord to bring the gospel to Cuba, and perhaps even before that?

Why don't you go back in time a little bit and tell our listeners how it came about that you became a missionary to begin with in general?

Well, I was blessed to have a mentor, Chris, that took me under his wing many, many years ago, back in the 1980s, that showed me the need that churches had for a true gospel, showed me the power of the gospel and the importance of sola scriptura.

And way back in those early days as a single man, there was a great burden for the local church.

And then as time went on, I was able to pastor and do other ministry -type activities.

And finally, many years ago, we went back into full -time evangelism, spreading the gospel all over the nation in the public square, in local churches, anywhere we could get in, and just praying that God would open the doors to places we could take the gospel outside of the

United States. Many people go to foreign fields. Many times they take mission trips.

Many of the mission trips are a little bit more recreational and probably some helpful things they do, but not a lot of hard work going into some of these trips.

And I prayed that God would open a door. And many years went by. And as I traveled the United States, virtually the

United States, all of it, preaching in churches, in the public arena, finally,

God began to open the door to take the gospel south of the border to places where there were no churches, to places where the migrant camps were meeting, to places where there was aliens, so -called, from other nations just waiting for different opportunities to come their way.

And so we went, assembled a team, and went down south and went to these people who were a captive audience and brought them the gospel, hours upon hours of gospel preaching, also being able to share with some of the leaders down there a true biblical doctrine.

We would not explain to them at that time, but we were really giving them Reformed Doctrine and giving them the

Doctrine of Grace while we were down there and praying that God would open the door to more opportunities.

Finally, a Cuban national pastor heard of our activities, met some of our team, and asked, would you come to Cuba?

But we were so excited about the opportunity and the offer to come. And then when we realized the great need that Cuba had, and we realized the fact that there were actually churches meeting legally, we were astounded that we could actually go there and legally spread the gospel in that country.

Well, praise God for that. And dare I say,

Babaluya. So tell us about the reception you have received in Cuba, perhaps even before that.

Yes. Tell us about the religious climate in Cuba and the relations, the relationships between the communist government there and those who are truly

Christians, both pastors and your average congregations.

And let us know the level of secrecy that is required.

I don't know if it's to the same extent where you have in China underground churches, but tell us about that.

Well, let me give you a little background. Of course, Cuba was an island, really, of what we would call different island and tribal peoples many, many years ago.

And finally, as far as the West was concerned, Columbus sailed there. And then as time went on,

Spain ruled in Cuba. And of course, there's lots of drama, lots of conspiracy theories, lots of history from both sides.

But many atrocities were performed. And when Spain was holding the yoke over Cuba, they had different upheavals.

And the United States finally began to get involved there. And as the

United States got involved, even though Cuba was prospering in many, many ways, being a sugar exporter and other things that they did, they were still very subject to our country.

There were rumors even that the United States was just trying to make it a part of the United States and have full control there.

And finally, the day would come, revolution would come once again. And finally, the government would be put down.

Spain is already out of the picture. The Cuban government is put out of the picture. And then, of course, the revolution, the revolution comes in the way of Castro, his brother

Raul Castro. Then, of course, the Che Guevara, the criminal. And then finally, after these men come off the scene, the president today,

Miguel Diaz Canel Bermudez, who is not a Castro, the people you speak to in Cuba will tell you that he is probably just a puppet of the

Castro family and that he's probably just an actor. He's probably just someone who looks good on camera, gives a good speech.

He's in with the party, but he is definitely being given orders from somewhere else.

Be that as it may, the nation of Cuba deciding to go communist, perhaps not being a fully

Marxist, Leninist type of ideology, but they were a country that wanted total control.

They wanted total control over their own nation, and they wanted to run their nation according to socialist principles.

But sadly for them, when the wall fell and when the Soviet Union totally was transformed in the way they were doing things around the world, the support to Cuba had been cut.

The lifeline was cut. Cuba was so dependent upon the Soviet Union because they had lost contact with the

West. They had jeopardized their trade with the West. And so now they were living off of the

Soviet Union and any other country that might give them aid or might give them credit.

And finally, when the Soviet Union backs up a little bit with their help for many years, they began to suffer under the regime, the totalitarian regime, even greater than before.

We have to remember Cuba is two groups of people. Cuba is the Cuban people who live day to day, and then there is the regime.

There is the civil government that lives in a different level. The higher up the aristocratic steps you climb in the party, the better they live, the better resources they have, and the more money, of course, they have.

The people down at the bottom, the average person, they're the ones that suffer through all the upheaval, no matter what country puts an embargo, whatever they do, those are the people that are actually suffering.

But some years ago, something very interesting happened. Fidel Castro, who was some type of a

Roman Catholic when he was just a baby, a baptizer, something like that, he put off all form of religion, but he did not speak against the

Roman Catholic Church fully. And finally, he allowed several popes to come in, and after the popes came in, he brought

Christmas back on the calendar. Then he actually allowed certain worship to take place.

Then he allowed churches to begin to meet. Well, the good thing for us was that not only the churches who may have been meeting secretly for many years, and I'm sure they were, they finally began to open their doors.

And so today, to catch up to your question, today we have reformed churches and non -reformed churches in Cuba that are actually meeting openly to give some semblance of a freedom of religion to the world, because it's very important for the

Cuban civil government that the world think highly of them because they need money. So to tell the

United Nations and others we have freedom of religion here, they do allow church to meet.

Now, there are many different rules and regulations to live in Cuba, but to say the least about this is that the churches do get to meet.

Many of the churches meeting homes, it doesn't matter what stripe of church it is, they usually meet in homes because it's very difficult to buy property, to own property, or to do anything on a greater scale.

We have heard of churches that have regular buildings and that type of thing. Most all of the churches that we have encountered, what you might consider a house church.

Now, when I say house church, Chris, I don't mean a church that just meets in the living room,

I mean you are in a very congested neighborhood area. You walk into an entrance.

It could be a dirt floor. It might be a ramshackle building. And suddenly you come into an open room that looks like perhaps a patio that they had enclosed and there is enough seating for maybe 75, 100 people.

Now, when I say seating, I mean sitting on pieces of wood that are placed upon bricks or perhaps chairs that have been salvaged and recycled over and over again in a plain room, most of the time without any kind of public address system, in a room, of course, that has perhaps just one toilet facility, one place perhaps to get a little bit of water or something like that.

That was the average type of church that we were able to go to. But they met openly and the reception was amazing because for them to get any type of real theology, any type of real doctrine, any type of help biblically, they have to look to the outside because only a few men in the circles that they're in have been trained in some way that can help get these pastors to the next level.

So let me tell you about the pastors, Chris. These pastors heard that we were having these special meetings.

They come from every background. Now, understand, they know that we are coming with reformed doctrine.

They know that we're not coming with a slip, shod, haphazard, easy -believe -ism, weak gospel.

They know we're bringing the Bible. And they come, they travel sometimes from an hour away, get to the meeting.

Many of them, we did not even believe, own a paper Bible, a handheld

Bible. We believe some of them probably just have it digitally on a phone or something like that.

But it's very hard to get a Bible. You cannot send a case of Bibles into Cuba. You cannot order

Bibles into Cuba. You cannot bring a shipment of gospel tracts or gospel literature into Cuba.

Yes, you can travel with a Bible in your suitcase or a Bible in your briefcase or something like that.

You might bring a couple of tracts tucked in between some pages. But they are keenly aware that people may try to bring things in that may run contrary to the doctrine and the teachings of the nation.

Things like abortion. If you were to come in there and have pamphlets against the murder of children, you are violating a human right granted by the civil government.

So they would take all that literature and, of course, dispose of it immediately. Wow. What we are told about in Cuba is this.

If you resist, you will be arrested. If you go against the regime, you will be arrested.

Chris, let me tell you something interesting. We are so spoiled in this country and other countries. Some superstar gets arrested or some known person gets arrested.

What do they do? They go on social media. They hold press conferences. They have crowds of people around them.

And it puts so much pressure on the government in this country. Oftentimes, it leads to their very simple charges being dropped or no one wants to talk about it anymore.

They get off easily. That does not happen in Cuba. In Cuba, when there are protests, the protesters are arrested.

The organizers are arrested. The protesters might be let out after a time.

But just an example, some people were protesting for food. We want more food.

Some of the leaders were still in prison four years later, Chris. Wow. Now, many of us know, especially those of us who are older and fully remember the existence of the

Soviet Union before the fall of the Iron Curtain, we may remember that Billy Graham went over to the

Soviet Union and was paraded around those puppet churches that existed in the

Soviet Union that were really catering to the party line.

They weren't violating any of the tenets of the Soviet Union. And Billy Graham was duped and actually made the public statement that there is no religious persecution in the

Soviet Union. And that was much to the outrage of those who had survived the persecution of the

Soviet Union, including Richard Wurmbrand and others that had spent time in the gulags and so on.

So these pastors that you are meeting over there, how certain are you that these are not just puppet pastors and churches?

Thank you for causing me to have to clarify this. So let's let's try to explain the best we can.

There are spies in every church. Wow. In every church, every citizen is suspect.

So I have to explain this. Cuba controls its people.

One of the very first ways they control the people is with food. This caused me to get into this subject with the food situation in Cuba.

And I'll get to your question, but I have to start with the food situation. The food situation in Cuba is amazingly terrible.

In fact, let me just give you an idea. Some years ago, about eight, nine years ago, they changed some food policies, giving less food to the people.

The average Cuban and you can Google a lot of the things I'm saying. The average Cuban lost 20 pounds because of malnutrition.

Wow. 20 pounds. Now, what they have done is they established a ration card system for every citizen in the nation.

I could not figure out when it starts at what age, but at a very early age, they begin the ration system.

And by the way, if you have a child, they will be in your home a couple of times a week,

Chris, to check on you and the child for many months. And as a toddler, to make sure the child is not being indoctrinated against the state.

Now, with the food situation, they give you a ration card. Now, when you talk to different people in Cuba, it's hard to get exactly the right numbers.

But I got a number from 2018. And this just to give you an idea, if you're a

Cuban citizen, your ration card, you would go kind of remind you of Nazi Germany. You have to go to your local building.

There's every neighborhood has a pickup point that you're able to walk to. And that's important.

I'll get to the walking part later. So it's a local pickup point. You bring your ration card to the pickup point.

And once a week, depending on what it is or once a month or even every day, but once once a week, you might come in and get five eggs or maybe one liter of cooking oil a month, a pound of spaghetti a month, three pounds of refined or white sugar, three pounds of unrefined or dark sugar, six pounds of white rice for the month, 20 ounces of black beans.

Some packets of mixed coffee, they call it. That is the food to give you for the month for that adult in your home.

Now, if anyone thinks somehow that's a lot of food, you have to understand that when you have a couple of adults in the house and perhaps a couple of children, that five eggs does not go very far for the month, much less even if that was for the week.

They have a place that gives daily bread. Now, when they said daily bread, I thought you were giving away a loaf of bread.

No, what they are giving away is a small, small pan, a small loaf of bread, perhaps about eight inches long.

And you get in line every day and you can get that bread. But the reports have given to me is a lot of the times when they get the bread,

Chris, it's not even edible. It's disgusting. It's messed. That's no good. Wow. And so this is the food situation in Cuba.

Meat and fish products are distributed at separate places and they have a different way of doing that.

But someone told me that perhaps two pounds of chicken per person per month.

This is on the ration system. Perhaps two pounds of sausage per person per month.

Now, obviously, that's not enough to live on. So this gets to the next subject, the black market.

Everything I have researched, and again, I would be happy to be told I'm wrong. Everything I have researched tells me that the black market that exists in Cuba is actually run by the government itself.

In other words, when they import all the food, because most everything has to be imported, when they import all the food, they sell to their own distribution companies.

And these companies are actually under the thumb of the government. They sell to their own companies and then they sell to black market connections, however that might work.

So they run both angles here. They give you the ration, then they sell it to you on the black market.

But technically, the black market is illegal, but it's an open secret. They sell food and things all over the place.

And here's how it works. Here's the example that was given to us. We had many conferences that were directed toward the clergy.

And perhaps after the conference is over, they knock on your door and they say, Mr. Chris, we heard that you were at the special meeting at the church last time.

And you said, yes, of course I was there. Please tell us what they spoke about. What did they talk about in that special meeting?

And you say, well, I don't want to talk about my Christian brothers, or that wouldn't be right of me to try to tell you what they said.

I don't remember everything they said. And they said, okay, that's fine. Why don't you let us come in your house and take a look around?

And because maybe you have a job and you work and you dig ditches, or you have your own little business or something.

You have a little money, so you buy food on the black market. So they come in and they say, well, look at this.

Your ration for rice is only six pounds. You have 20 pounds of rice in your home.

You have eight pounds of sausage in the freezer. I'm sorry, Mr. Chris, we're going to have to arrest you for violating the

Food Act. Four years in jail. Now tell me, how many citizens could not give in to that?

That would be very, very difficult. Please pick up where you left off there. Because we have to go to our first commercial break.

And if anybody wants to join us, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least. City and state and country of residence.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And we'll be right back after these messages with Carlos Spurgeon, evangelist to the

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Go to royaldiadem .com and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with my guest today,

Carlos Spurgeon, and for those of you who just tuned in, that is an alias for several reasons.

He wants to prevent being banned from re -entry into Cuba by the government.

He also wants to protect those who are involved in Christian ministry there with whom he labors, and so this is a precaution.

And we have another alias being provided by a listener who's sent us a comment.

We have Jose Spurgeon, Carlos Spurgeon's brother.

I am a part of the Cuban missions team that had the privilege of serving with Evangelist Carlos Spurgeon.

I can verify that what he speaks to is absolutely true. We witness the fear that the average citizens have of the oppressive authorities.

They are constantly guarded in their words and actions, always suspect about others that they are not absolutely familiar with.

We even had an instance while we were there that we are reasonably sure was a government agent observing us and our activities, posing as a van transportation driver.

It is definitely an eye -opening experience. Well, thank you, Jose Spurgeon for that commentary.

And before the break, Carlos, you were talking about the food rationing and how if the government officials who are going from door to door believe you have some kind of a connection with Christianity in a level that makes them uncomfortable, they will perhaps arrest you because they are claiming that you are abusing the food rations.

And perhaps you could reword it more accurately and just summarize where we left off.

Yes, so the best way to explain it is that they are using the food laws, we call them laws, the food laws to control the people.

And so by coming in there and asking these questions and seeing you might have some food that you bought on the black market, they will use that to coerce you and force you to be on their side.

Now, because the Cubans are very poor, it is a very simple thing for them to find people to work for them.

The email you received a minute ago from my brother Jose, it is exactly accurate.

In fact, probably the most important part of this part of what I'm going to say is this.

It is not so much that there are spies, but to us, the most eye -opening thing was that they firmly believe that they are spies.

In other words, it's a constant state of alertness that someone in your midst, someone that sits in your services, or in this case, someone that spent lots of time with us during our travels was actually a paid informant.

And I don't want to say too much more except to say he spent a lot of time with us and he ended up being a paid informant.

Now you might ask, what did this paid informant find out? Well, here's what he found out,

Chris. He found out that we prayed. He found out that we sang a lot.

He found out that we sang the psalms and hymns. He found out that we prayed before our meals.

He also heard us ask questions about the government, but he really never heard us criticize anything.

So he didn't hear much to report back to his superiors about the terrible things that we were trying to accomplish there in the country.

Without giving too many details, I will tell you this. Even though it is a small country, perhaps that's why, they are able to monitor everything.

They're able to monitor who stays in hotels. They're able to monitor the social networking of people in Cuba with people outside of Cuba, if that makes sense to you.

They're able to keep track of who the pastors are and where these pastors may be meeting.

So I'm going to go just a little bit out of my comfort zone, but I want to tell you this. Chris, I noticed you have your prayer banquets and you have these banquets where pastors come and they meet and you eat and then someone speaks to them.

Is that correct? That's exactly correct. All right. So imagine if right before you have this, that all of the local pastors in that city receive a phone call or a text message or a knock on the door from law enforcement telling them, it is not in your best interest to go to that meeting.

Wow. What I'm going to say is this, and I'll move on from that. That happened to us.

So they know what's going on. They know who's doing what.

They keep close tabs on many, many things there in the nation. Now, back to your question about these puppet pastors and others.

First of all, the very first thing that comes to mind is this, that we were able to be with men that preach the glorious gospel of Christ.

We're able to be with men that actually taught, preach and believe the

Bible as the truth of the gospel. Not only that, but these are men who are preaching a reformed doctrine.

And to go a little bit further with this, we also see that they are not asking anything from us.

In other words, we did not come there with our wallets open and everyone that said,

I'm a pastor, we're just putting money in their hand. They invited us to come, not so we could spread the word that religion is open there, but that we could come and bring biblical doctrine.

This was sort of seminary level, fourth year Bible college, seminary level teaching to those pastors and those preachers.

So their worship services were real. They were biblical songs.

They were scripture hours and hours of instruction. And then the time spent with these men outside of the services, we could see a love and a hunger for God.

And that just takes me, I guess we'll just get to this subject now. The churches in Cuba, the ones that we have encountered and heard of are strong.

Their faith is strong. They are not enamored with multimedia presentations.

They're not chasing after strange methodologies. They want the word of God to be brought to them.

We told the people in our meetings, we did not come to fix the Cuban church. We came to help the

Cuban church and push your wagon a little bit further down the road. So we definitely see a hunger for the truth and the gospel.

In fact, I'll go a little further here for you without saying which groups they are. There are groups of people and churches that you and I would not agree with.

You and I would not hold to their doctrine. They would call themselves Christian. They would have many tenants of Christianity.

Well, you and I would not join their churches and we would not feel fully comfortable under their preaching.

But Chris, can I tell you that those churches have asked us to come? They have knowing our doctrine, knowing what we believe.

They have said, we don't care. Come here and preach and teach to us because we want to hear the

Bible. And that is an amazing thing. Amen. Well, let me ask you something.

What would the government, the communist government of Cuba object to in regard to honest and biblically faithful preaching?

For instance, the gospel itself, the death, burial, resurrection, ascension and enthronement of Christ and the deity of Christ, the

Trinity, virgin birth of Christ, perfect sinlessness of Christ, and on and on.

What would a faithful biblical gospel message contain that would upset a communist official in Cuba?

I can't help but just remember hearing about Christians under the

Roman Empire. And when Christians were invited to bow down before a

Roman image, their lives could be spared if they would merely take a pinch of incense and put it on the fire that burned in the presence of the image of the

Roman Caesar. The Christians died rather than compromised with a tiny pinch of incense.

What is it that they are demanding a faithful Christian pastor do to make his message, for lack of a better term, kosher or acceptable to the

Cuban authorities? All right. I don't want to forget the last part of your question, so I'm going to keep that in my mind as I get to it.

Sure. First of all, let's remind ourselves this. The Roman Catholic Church operates freely in the nation, even having convents and special places like that for their people.

We were told that the Roman Catholic Church also has special dispensations given to them so they're able to get more food and more wine and better treatment of their people in their buildings because of their connection.

So that just reminds me of your question about Billy Graham and the Soviet Union that the Roman Catholic Church is in with the totalitarian government and apparently not bothering them at all.

No one's bothering anyone. Now, as far as the rest of the people, we do not know if there is anything about the actual gospel message that is a problem.

Adele Castro, in his biography, mentions that many tenants of Christianity and the way people are to be treated was actually something that was very favorable to a social gospel, that type of thing.

And so the churches are not bothering anyone while they preach the gospel.

We would understand, though, that if there was a regular preaching from the pulpit that there is no king but Jesus and that their officials are actually under the reign of Christ, that would probably get some attention in time.

In fact, in one of our meetings, the question was asked, what would you tell the officials of our country? We would tell them to repent and trust

Christ. We would tell them to bow at the foot of Christ, of Jesus Christ.

Now, here's what we know as far as giving things up, and you asked that a minute ago, and that'll take me into my next subject.

But here's the thing, Chris. Everyone, unless you have a very special little business, everyone works somehow hooked up to the state.

Just a few years ago, that changed to that happening. It used to be they basically ran every business somehow, had their finger in it, oversaw it, but somehow they were connected to every single business.

A few years ago, they changed that where they would allow some business licenses.

There's a name for that in Spanish, which I can't recall. Certain small businesses could function at a small level.

Actually, one of the ways, the loophole is they use their own home for their business.

That's why many churches meet in homes and not have buildings. Same reason restaurants and other places technically are using their own property to do this.

They allow the people to have a little bit semblance of what we would call a capitalistic mentality, even though they have to pay high taxes and bow to the regulations.

But again, most everything is run by the state somehow. If you have a job there, perhaps in a factory, or you work in some type of a way that perhaps in a warehouse or maybe even a construction company, for the most part, you really don't work for the owner of that company.

You work for the state. The way it was explained to me was like this. You get a job and that company pays the state your wages and the wages are paid back to you from the state.

So they're going to get their taxes and they're going to control your money. In fact, pick up where you left off there because we have to go to our midway break now.

But don't forget where you left off. I will. And folks, please use this time wisely.

Write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can so that you can more frequently and successfully contact our advertisers, keeping in mind that the funds that come through our advertisers are absolutely necessary for us to continue to exist.

And also, of course, sending your questions to Carlos Spurgeon on his missionary work in Cuba. We'll be right back.

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Before I return to my conversation with Carlos Spurgeon, which, if you've just tuned us in, is an alias for a dear brother who labors on the mission field in Cuba, we have a couple of important announcements to make before we return to that conversation.

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Carlos Spurgeon about the challenges of the mission field in Cuba under the communist regime.

If you send me an email, I would love to hear from you with your question for Carlos Spurgeon, which is an alias.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. And Carlos, please pick up where you left off, where I had to interrupt you before the midway break.

Absolutely, good to be back. I just want to make a just a little bit of a plug here. If you do have any questions about this that you can't talk about on the air, some things you want to ask about that I could not speak of, or perhaps you do want to know how to help us with our mission to Cuba, as well as our assistance to local pastors there, it is cubamissionsatproton .me.

That's cubamissionsatproton .me.

Going on from here, so the final thing I was talking about this was this, Chris, about the sacrifice.

That when a man proclaims himself to be a pastor, when a man begins to receive a salary from a church or a denomination, at some point, he is coming off of working in a regular job for or if the state finds out, falling short of it is this, when he becomes a pastor, he is removed from the

Cuban employment system. So we would consider bivocational in this country is legally an impossibility in Cuba.

He cannot be the pastor of a local church there or work in some type of denominational word and still have a job where the state knows about it.

He can do black market work, work for a neighbor, someone pays him on the side, but he can no longer have a regular job, no regular employment there.

Wow, that sounds even counterproductive. You would think that you would want as many people in the workforce in the nation you govern as possible.

Well, in the words of Dr. Joe Morecraft, they are afraid of preachers.

That is the bottom line. So let me explain as we talk about the money. Let me go into this to help us understand how crucial the situation is.

If you Google the Cuban peso today, you might discover that it's 24 to one

American dollar. Now, that might not sound too bad as compared to some other countries, 24 to one.

But in reality, Chris, if you go to Cuba, it is not 24 to one.

It is closer to 300 pesos to one, but it's in the opposite direction.

In other words, it is devalued so greatly that it does not help the Cuban at all. In fact, an article from April in the

AP News has it now closer on the street to 350 pesos to one.

According to one source, the average government job only pays $15 a month.

Now, I'm not sure if this is exactly accurate, but I actually read, Chris, that if you are a member of the armed forces or perhaps a policeman, that you may be paid as little as seven

American dollars a month, but you do get some food and housing and that type of thing.

Now, back to the regular citizen. Most websites tell you that the average income is somewhere between $30 to $60

American a month. The average man who may be pastoring a church, if he's receiving $30 a month, that is an amazing amount of money, but he can no longer work on the side.

So now he's just barely making it. I would always err on the lower side of these numbers because some websites have them higher.

But keep in mind, whatever numbers you read on the stock market, on the open market, on the petro markets, the numbers that are given to the public are never correct.

The Cuban government does everything they can to make fuel prices look good and the salaries look comparative to the rest of the world.

In fact, I read an article recently that said fundamentally that private food imports are not even allowed.

So you cannot say, well, my little fishmonger market, we're going to bring in fish from Japan.

No, you cannot import anything all your own. All food coming into the country is imported by the government.

All other food is grown in Cuba. The problem is there's not a lot grown there because the incentive is not there.

Many years ago, Fidel Castro said in a big speech, he said, the day will come because of socialism that milk will be freely given away.

Truth is, Chris, there's no milk. All the milk coming into Cuba is powdered milk coming in from imports because the

Cuban government is in debt to all the Central American and some Asian countries.

Now, the capitalist movement inside Cuba, we call capitalism, has no effect at all in bringing anything in the country.

In other words, some of the little local businesses that operate are still under the thumb of the government.

That's why if you go on YouTube and watch some videos about Cuba, and every video will have a different slant left or right, but if you watch any documentaries about Cuba, you'll find people when they discover the meat market has chicken, or someone says they have beef, which there's almost no beef in the country, or they have something else, they'll be in line for a day, two days, three days, just trying to purchase a little meat.

We asked, it was 100 people that were fed, and one thing I hadn't talked about was the food.

Rice is the staple food. Rice is morning, noon, and night, plus perhaps a little tomato or a little garnish, and very, very little meat.

And we asked, is there any way for us as Americans to perhaps give a little more money so you can give all these pastors a little better meal?

We'd like them to have a little bit more meat on the plate, because I'm telling you, Chris, what they get on the plate is not very much at all.

And here's what the answer was. They said, pastor, they said, problem is not that we don't have money, because if you have the money, you'd think we could buy the meat.

The problem is we can't buy the meat. There's nowhere to find the meat. We do all we can to scrounge up the food for these people.

So many restaurants that are doing well are doing well because they're being supplied by the government.

The other family businesses, of course, they have to ask, literally when you sit down in a restaurant in Cuba, you ask this question, what don't you have today?

Because there's always something on the menu they do not have. The money supply is controlled by the government.

Most banks, most ATM machines, there is a line of people trying to get the money.

It's not because there's no money in Cuba. Some people believe that the little entrepreneurs and the business owners are holding cash as long as they possibly can, because even they don't trust the banks, even though they are working with the government themselves.

So it's a terrible system. They control all the finances. And ultimately, the pastors are subject to this in one way or another.

So what do they do? They bravely step out of the system. And they said, I will trust

God to meet my needs and literally making what those people are able to give in tithes and offerings and any other giving that they can.

Well, we have a listener named Blanca in Mount Charleston, Nevada.

And Blanca says, I am totally baffled as to why there is such a shortage of food and of poultry and of beef and other staples in a tropical environment like Cuba.

Well, that's a very good question. That's one of the first questions we asked when we came there, when you went there.

Here's the best way I can answer the question. First of all, you have to be able to feed the animals.

Every almost every animal we saw was undernourished, underfed.

The chickens looked amazingly terrible. In fact, we had eggs almost every day, but I couldn't stand it anymore.

I had to stop eating the eggs. Chris, the yolk of the eggs were white.

Every farmer I've ever asked about that means that the yolk is there's no nourishment.

The chicken is malnourished. There's nothing in that. Remember, if they have feed, the feed has to come from another nation.

The government has to broker that deal out in the farm areas. We did see some animals, but I understand if you're a farmer and you say,

I'm going to raise cows and I'm going to sell my cows. As soon as you start getting a little bit busy, the government will swoop in.

They'll take your cows away or they will regulate you to the point where it's not worth raising any more cows.

Suddenly, there are no cows. Every type of animal that we would think of that we'd want to put on the menu, whether it's a pig or a cow or a chicken, someone has to pay to feed them or someone has to raise them, but the incentive to raise them or to have the money to feed them is not there.

Everything just about has to be imported into the country. The communist government ruined the nation as far as production and work ethic.

Raul Castro said he was going to bring up the agriculture market. All he did was destroy it even further.

They have no concept of open market. They have no concept of someone raising a pig and selling the pig, growing the tomatoes and selling the tomatoes.

Their hand is in everything to the discouragement of the producer. Okay, we have

Bristol in Aloha, Oregon. Bristol asks,

I don't understand why livestock cannot be adequately fed in Cuba for the very same reason the other listener asked.

How could this be possible in a tropical environment? Again, when someone has any type of business, especially when you're talking about agriculture, when you begin to multiply the animal out, the government swoops in, either steals the animal or takes the money.

If you know anything about farming, to raise cattle, to raise chickens or pigs requires work.

It requires labor. Now, the problem is when you're doing all this work and labor and the government comes and takes everything you've labored for, how much incentive do you have to continue that work?

Not a whole lot. The government is not involved in this business very much.

In fact, if there is any meat, I will guarantee you the meat is on the plates of the tables of the totalitarian regime.

They are eating well. The people at the bottom of the totem pole, the average Cuban citizen will not get the meat.

The meat starts at the top and works its way down. Remember, those in the government, the aristocracy of the government, those people, those families are doing pretty good.

Everyone else is not. Yeah, that shows you the absolute fallacy of communism, which is supposed to be a classless society.

That's no different from the aristocracy and the czars and everything else that that movement claimed to abolish.

It's all garbage. Well, just to throw one more thing into what you just said, the reports we received was that Fidel Castro himself was actually very racist to the

Cubans of dark skin. And so there was actually a racism in the Fidel family, the

Castro family, against the Cuban people that represented the more darker skinned

Cubans. Not a shock. Let's see, we have

Robby in Pequabuck, Connecticut. And Robby says, how severely are faithful Christians and perhaps especially pastors persecuted in Cuba?

Are their lives actually threatened or even taken from them? Are there known murders and physical tortures and things like that happening?

We've heard stories of things happening in the past. So let me explain what we know about today.

Because they have said there is freedom of religion, what that usually means is this. As long as your church doesn't get too big, as long as your church doesn't make too much noise, too much of a splash, we'll leave you alone.

And of course, our spies will come back with any reports that you have of dissidents or anything like that.

Now, here's what we were told. When the Americans come, if you would like to do anything, street preaching, anything in the public square, this is what will probably happen.

If you begin to cause a stir by preaching the gospel out in public, eventually the police will come and they will say, sir, we are going to have to ask you to stop doing this.

It's causing a ruckus. And then if we do not do that, they will come back and say, we are sorry.

We have warned you. You are an American citizen. Okay. You will have to leave the country.

And so within 24 hours, we'll probably put on a plane and sent back to America.

Then we will become persona non grata. They will not let us back in the country.

But after that happens, they will go to the local church that we were involved with and they will lock up the elders and they will close down the church and anybody else that's too close to the situation.

Wow, that's that's pretty scary. Let's see. We have

Reginald in Scutter Hole, Long Island, New York. And I've lived on Long Island most of my life and I've never heard of Scutter Hole.

But Reginald asks, when you mentioned earlier about restaurants being fully stocked with food, are these restaurants that are only for tourists and those who are not residents of Cuba, like some other countries have had that same arrangement?

Yeah, I actually have a friend. I don't even know if he's still there.

I haven't heard from him in a long time. But he was a missionary in Vietnam and he had to be there under the guise of an

English teacher. He couldn't be openly a missionary. And he said that, you know, there were great restaurants and things, but those are not the places that the citizens of Vietnam or the subjects could dine and frequent.

These were reserved for tourists and so on. But what's your answer in regard to Cuba? Well, let's get into the money situation and that'll help us finish what

I was talking about money. So if the average Cuban is making 30 to maybe 60 dollars a month on the high side, here's what we understand about the restaurants.

The Cuban government desperately wants American dollars and they also have the euro coming in. So what they do is they back the restaurants.

Now, there is a list on the Internet of places the American government asks you not to go because the state is running them.

But probably the state is running more restaurants than you realize somehow their hand is in them.

You can tell tourists what we would call tourist restaurants because they're in tourist parts of town.

They're in areas where people come. You can actually vacation there. People come from Europe on vacation.

They come from the United States because of history and the old cars and different things and the buildings and the

Spanish history. And so there are places in the tourist areas that have lots and lots of food and they're probably being backed by the state.

There's other places that are not in the tourist areas that probably are the ones that aren't fully stocked themselves.

Let's give you an example how this works. We were in a very small town and we took the elders of this church to a very small town.

We took them to eat afterwards and our team was having a dinner. It was a very nice place as far as the facilities went, but it was a very modest meal.

A very nice meal, but very modest. None of the meals were very large and we ate for anywhere between four and six dollars

American normally. After we ate this very nice meal, of course everyone had rice, the two pastors told us this, thank you for bringing us to this restaurant.

It has been years since we have been able to go out and eat in a restaurant.

Wow. Because when you spend four or five or six dollars and you only make thirty dollars a month, you're not going to go out to eat.

You're going to buy rice and beans for your house. You're going to buy fuel for your vehicle.

So yes, the restaurants that are more touristy will probably have better food and more food.

The restaurants off the beaten path like on the highways, that type of thing, they'll be a little bit different.

We talked about the fuel just a minute ago. Fuel prices are the same way. Ocasio -Cortez came back here and said, oh, the fuel prices are wonderful.

They have fuel under control. Well, it's a total lie. The globalpetrolprices .com and Reuters and the taxi drivers in Cuba will tell you many different things, different stories.

Fuel is anywhere from two dollars to five dollars a gallon. Problem is, again, when you make thirty dollars a month, three dollars a gallon is a lot of money.

They deal in liters over there. But normally, whatever you read in the market is not representative of the real prices on the street.

The black market could be twice as much and in some cases five times higher than the prices at the pump.

So when we talk to the taxi drivers, we say, so do you buy fuel at the gas station?

And they say, what gas station? It's true, Chris. We saw just in one trip alone in many cities, we only saw like two or three gas stations anyway, because they buy their fuel through the black market using apps like WhatsApp and Signal and these other apps.

They find out where the fuel is and people have fuel. Then they go buy the fuel a little bit cheaper.

See, almost most of vehicles are owned by taxi drivers or people that work in the government.

They have a government job or a big job and they supply a car for them. There's not most cars or taxis.

There's different types of taxis. And the only way to get you is on a taxi. You know, the average church member, they might have to walk an hour to get to church, 30 minutes to get to church.

You could literally plant a church five miles apart, each church, and you would never encroach on someone's so -called territory because people can't afford a taxi.

If you spend $5 on a taxi, again, that's $5 that could be used for five pounds of rice.

And so the people are walking to church. Sometimes they have a taxi with a riding on a motorcycle. We've seen motorcycles carrying several people on the motorcycle to pay for the taxi.

We've seen donkey taxis. We've seen horse driven taxis, large taxis, small taxis, people trying to get around.

But normally people walk. They walk a long way just to get to church, just to be with the people of God for Sunday.

By the way, Reginald, thank you for clarifying. He sent me another email saying,

Scuttle Hole is a region in Watermill, Long Island, New York. Well, thanks a lot for that clarification. In fact,

I would love to visit Watermill again. It's been a long time, was at a wonderful event at a catering hall there.

Remembering my friend that I mentioned was a missionary in Vietnam, it wasn't just the restaurants that were designated, the nice restaurants that is, that were designated to tourists, but there were specific areas where only tourists were allowed to travel and so on.

Your average person couldn't go there. Is that the same thing in Cuba or no? We did not sense that at all.

It seems that travel and all of that seems to be pretty open. If you are on a highway, it is very common for government officials, the army, to be standing on the side of the road and they might just wave your taxi over and they may ask for passports for everyone in the vehicle.

They might want to check to see where you're going, but everything seemed to us to be very available, very free.

That's why I said the people, the regular Cuban people, just seem to exist within the system.

But here's the thing. I want to make sure I say this. The Cuban people know that communism has failed.

They know that. It's an open secret. It's no problem. They get it.

They're not buffoons. They're not fooled by anything. See, in this country, they know they're hungry.

They know they can't find fuel. They know they're walking. The Cuban government did a terrible mistake by allowing social media in because social media showed the people there's a world out there where people are not living like they are.

The people know that it's failed, but they don't know what to do about it.

One documentary said we are like caged animals and we've been in the cage for so long that when you open the cage, you show us the forest.

We don't know what's out there. We don't know how we're going to eat, how we're going to drink, and how we're going to survive.

We'd rather stay in this cage because we don't know any other hope. We have no way of understanding how to proceed from here.

Was there any existing at all anti -American sentiment from any of the average people with whom you conversed and evangelized?

That's an interesting question. I have to answer that with this very simple thing. A man had a phone and on his phone, when you click your phone, there's a picture there on your phone.

I have a picture of my wife. When I touch my phone, there's a picture of my wife there.

When he touches his phone, Chris, it's a United States flag. I asked him, why do you have the

United States flag there? He said, because it gives me hope. He said, because it reminds me that there is a free land.

There is a free place where people can live. See, people from Cuba that come here, they're not coming here looking for welfare.

They're not coming here looking for a handout. They're coming here for a new life so they can get a job, so they can start a business, so they can have a new existence.

They're not coming here looking for a paycheck. They're coming here because they want to have something that's free.

It's very hard to get here. Thousands of dollars. You have to have an invitation from a family member.

The whole process costs thousands of dollars. The problem is in Cuba, you can't save thousands of dollars, and you can't send money there.

Like I mentioned earlier, you cannot access PayPal. You cannot access any credit card website.

You cannot access any type of thing. We understand that the American Union functions there, but at a very high rate of exchange.

It's so expensive to try to send money. People can't get out that way. That's a very preplanned way to exit the country.

One of the things that they tell the world is that we have medical professionals that are sought after the world over.

Now, I am not doubting their credentials. I'm sure they're trained, and I don't know much about it. What we understand is the medical professionals are being shipped out to other countries in lieu of payment.

Cuba owes money to everybody for all the food they get. They send doctors and nurses out, and those doctors and nurses work.

Then the Cuban government makes a situation where they don't have to pay their debt back by giving back the doctors.

By the way, if you're a doctor in Cuba, you might only make $40 to $60 a month yourself. It's not some lucrative thing that you're a part of.

Medical professionals who might try to do a good thing within the system they live in, live under a very bad system.

Healthcare, socialized medicine is a terrible disaster in Cuba. People tell us, if you want rubber gloves in the doctor's office, you have to bring your own rubber gloves.

If you want us to have a syringe, you better bring the syringe, go on the black market, find the medicine that goes in the syringe so we can inject you with what you need.

That's what we've been told by many people. They said, don't go to the doctor unless you're going to die. The doctors, they say, we apologize, but we have no control over the situation.

The average Cuban, again, they know their way of life has failed, their government system, their revolution.

They live in the past, Chris, the huge billboards that show pictures of Fidel that says,

I am the revolution, or billboards that show Fidel and Raul and Che Guevara and this new man,

Canal Bermudez, and they say, we are the revolution, we are the future of Cuba. They want you to think that the history of Cuba began with the revolution.

Here's what we said amongst ourselves. This is a terrible testament, but it's true. If you go to Cuba and you see any beautiful buildings, you see any architecture that you say, wow, that is amazing.

The Cubans didn't build it, Chris. Not that the Cubans couldn't build it, but communism is not interested in building beautiful buildings.

They're interested in military, exporting communism. They wanted to put down their people.

The buildings the Spaniards have built are beginning to literally fall apart because no one is taking care of them.

It was an amazing, amazing situation that they left the buildings up, but the buildings themselves are not built by the commons.

Yeah, that seems to be the opposite story that Tucker Carlson gave when he visited

Russia recently. Now, obviously, Russia is no longer under a

Soviet government. I'm not even sure how far removed the current government is from that, but he was raving about how gorgeous the structures were that were obviously erected during the

Soviet Union days. Sure. Yeah, I don't know much about that, except that when the

Soviets came, they probably helped build roads and that type of thing. But when the wall fell, the

Soviets backed out and they haven't done much for the infrastructure for Cuba at all. We've said amongst ourselves, it's interesting.

If Cuba had put their wagon to the star of China, they might have been better off because China would have probably come in, brought in their money, brought in their engineers, brought in their scientists.

Cuba might be a different place, but it's very possible the United States would not let that happen, even though Cuba is friends with China.

But it seems like the Soviet Union, the little bit they did for Cuba, they've left them to basically take care of themselves.

Now, I know they have ships there in the harbor and all of that, but Cuba, again, is desperate for money and they're desperate for food.

Okay, we've got to go to our final break. Don't go away. We'll be right back. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.

In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

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We have Tatiana in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, New York, who says, here in the

United States, you have ridiculous people who claim to be

Marxists and leftists and are simultaneously homosexuals and transgendered people.

Communist nations have very rarely, if ever, been safe havens for such people, which makes their attitudes and public persona even more moronic.

The same goes with those same people promoting and applauding

Hamas and other Muslims who would desire to see our nation under Sharia law where homosexuals would never survive.

What is the attitude by the government in Cuba toward homosexuality?

Well, the new president has just brought the banner down and is embracing transgender and many of these things that we call gender perversion.

You can Google that and see the new stance on that. We went by a place when we were evangelizing.

By the way, it is free. We can evangelize, pass out tracts, pass out literature, very friendly people, very easy to talk to.

We went by a place that actually did have the corrupted rainbow flag outside.

After a conversation with them and some prayer and activity out there, they actually pulled it down. This is a place that was promoting that.

It is actually being embraced right now. Let me just add this with the time we have.

A gallon of milk right now, they're telling us in the black market, Chris, is $20 American. That's hard when you only own $30.

Can you hear me there, Chris? Yes, I hear you. Can you hear me? All right. Yes, let's find out as long as we keep going.

A gallon of milk in the black market is $20. A pound of rice is $6. There's no incentive to do anything.

Someone told us they sent a box of Bibles in, distributed a box of Bibles, and they were now banned from the nation of Cuba because they sent a box of Bibles into Cuba.

People ask us, they want to know about Cuba. What do we do about Cuba? I'm going to tell you, there is no economic hope for Cuba.

Economic policy will not save Cuba. Anything they change in the civil government might help them.

Getting rid of the totalitarian state will help them, but the final answer is the gospel, the gospel, and the optimistic gospel, a gospel with Christians of Cuba seeking to advance the crown rights of Jesus Christ is the answer.

Churches and leaders of these churches that we counted hopeful are strong in their faith.

They have great faith today that the gospel is the power of God and the salvation. People ask us, why would you go to Cuba?

And this is why I'm on the radio, Chris. This is what I tell them, and this is what we tell the Cuban people when we are there.

Since we do believe that the gospel is the power of God and the salvation, we go to Cuba so that in time to come,

Cuba will become an ensign to the nations and the islands of the West Indies and the

Caribbean, that in this place, Cuba, King Jesus reigns and his law is obeyed.

We have great hope because the churches are strong and growing and evangelism is spreading and the churches are getting more people in.

And by the power of the gospel, that God can do a miracle in a small country, a fatalistic eschatology is of no use and of no hope in this nation.

The only hope is that even in Cuba, that the strong man is being bound and the

Christ church is being established. And that is Jesus reigns in hearts.

Now he will begin to reign also in the seats of judgment as a totalitarian nation is crushed under the rod of Christ.

Amen. With that, Chris, I just want to remind our listeners, cubamissionsatproton .me.

I would be happy to answer any questions that we could not talk about on the air. If they'd like to help us to help these pastors, they can't print

Bibles. They can do hardly anything. We have to bring paper into them. They can put Bibles on the

Xerox machine. They can print literature on the Xerox machine. We go to your prayer meeting.

We get a box of books, a bag of books. They come to a conference. We're able to give them maybe an inch full of pamphlets.

That's the best we can do. So pray for us. Pray that God would continue to bust

Cuba open and that the leaders would bow toward King Jesus. Amen.

And don't forget that email address for more questions to our guests that you couldn't ask on the air or to financially support his labors in Cuba, cubamissionsatproton .me,

cubamissions .proton .me. I want to thank you, Carlos Spurgeon, for doing such a wonderful job today on the program.

I look forward to your return with more updates on your mission trips there. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. I hope you all have a very blessed, safe, happy, and healthy weekend and Christ -honoring