22.50 Craig Smith - The Biblical Anatomy of Culture (Part 2)

In today's second installment of his teaching session titled, The Biblical Anatomy of Culture, Craig takes us to both Old and New Testaments to explain what God's Word has to say about human cultures.  Beginning in Genesis 11, he takes us back to where he describes all of humanity, runs into each other at a place called the Plains of Shinar. Here we see our common ancestors demonstrating the effects of the curse of sin as human cultures begin to develop.  Those two things?  Pride and Disobedience!  You can find these deadly enemies manifesting themselves right up to today in every single human culture that were shooed of Shinar's plains and scattered by the Sovereign God over all the earth.  It was here languages were introduced not so much as God's gift but a part of God's judgement on our common single cultural ancestors but then over time we see God giving not only languages, but sovereignly assigned locations for all the nations, all for a divine, redemptive purpose as articulated in Acts 17.  But God not only determines the exact locations of the nations, but also, the times set for them...times when God chooses to show up big time and bring a divine move of His Spirit to do unprecedented work in the midst of various tribes and nations over time.  Craig shares one of the most encouraging tribal stories that affirm this truth as he unpackages the story of the Otovala Indians of northern Ecuador.  Can God do it here as well?  Absolutely.  But Craig leaves us with a probing question that asks, What kind of message will we proclaim should God move mightily among us before Jesus comes again?  Will it be a message of the timeless gospel of the Bible, or some syncretistic compromised message that would not please the Lord at all?  An important question for sure, and one that needs to be considered by the church today.  And that's why this Indigenous Faith series is so important!