Introducing the book? From Renato Vargens of Franklin Ferreira.
Just as a Reform against the Abuses of the Roman Catholic Church was needed in the 16th century, the Church is now calling for reform against distortions in the teachings of the true gospel.
- This book by Renato Vargens is not only a denunciation of the state in which segments of the Brazilian Evangelical Church are located.
- Its history recalls the description made by the Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
- Referring to the state of religion he found in the United States in the mid-1930s: Protestantismus ohne Reforma.
- “Protestantism without reform”.
Unfortunately, important words of the Christian faith, such as sin, repentance, judgment, justice, the cross, and even Christ and the Resurrection, disappear from the discourse of Brazilian evangelicals.
In some theological faculties and even in some denominations, there are those associated with theological liberalism, who have replaced confidence in revelation with the assumption that truth can be found through rationality, as if, from beginning to end, God had not come to us in revelation Among the new neopentecoscal religious movements are those who assume that they can control the living God , to the Lord of armies, the Almighty Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit through the use of magical words. Christianity has been emptied and replaced by all those associated with these groups.
All have abandoned the gospel, pursuing a different kind of proclamation (Galatians 1:6-9), pure perversion or caricature, but not the good news of salvation that, by the death and resurrection of Christ, sinners can be justified by faith. .
What this book proposes is a call to the foundation of the Christian faith, as found in the famous slogans that summarize the heart of the biblical and evangelical message: God speaks to all only in Scripture (Scriptura only); we are saved only by undeserved grace (single gratia), which reaches sinners only by the death of Christ (solus Christus); and this is received only by faith (single fide); so that in all of him God may receive praise and glory (soli Deo glory).
We must receive and cling to this biblical and evangelical message with the greatest seriousness and we would do well to listen in fear to the reformer Martin Luther, who in 1522 prepared a series of Christmas sermons for his congregation, and in one of them declared:
The guard of a public brothel is less sinful than the preacher who does not preach the true gospel, and the brothel is not as bad as the church of the false preacher (?). Does that surprise you? Remember that the doctrine of the false preacher is only diverted day after day and violates newborn souls at baptism, young Christians, tender souls, virgin wives, pure and consecrated to Christ, considering that evil is done spiritually and not physically as in a brothel. , no one observes him, but God is immeasurably displeased.
May God use this new work of my dear brother Renato Vargens for the breakup, renewal and return to God, who is rich in mercy, not only to renew our joy in Him, but also to give us a new encouragement and a renewed passion for the preaching of Sacred Scripture, is the cradle for which Christ comes to us?(Luther).
Franklin Ferreira
Director of the seminar Martin Bucer
Excerpt from the book? Reform Agora ?, De Renato Vargens, future launch of Editora Fiel for September / 2013