FIRM FOUNDATIONS - Creation to Christ

FIRM FOUNDATIONS - Creation to Christ
Trevor Mcllwain with Nancy Everson
1991, New Tribes Mission

We are using this book to teach our JC Kids for the whole year’s curriculum. My summary comes from the Prelude, which was really good, and teach me to have a clearer picture on how to present the Gospel in a historical and systematic way.

The following are some things new I have learnt:

Check the Foundations
The Gospel is entirely objective. The Gospel is completely outside of ourselves. The Gospel is not about the change which needs to be made in us, and it does not take place within us. It was completed in Christ, quite apart from us, almost 2000 years ago. The Gospel is not dependent on man in any way. The Gospel is distorted when we turn people’s eyes to what is accomplished in them. We were not and cannot be involved in any part of Christ’s historical, finished, redemptive work. The sinner must be taught to look completely away from himself and trust only in Christ and His work of salvation.


People Unprepared for the Gospel
According to the Scriptures, however, no person seeks the true and living God or can come to Christ by faith, unless God first seeks him out by His Spirit through His word (John 6:44, 45)

Offering the Gospel on the basis of natural desires of culturally felt needs places man and his desires at the center of our message. Thus, man and his happiness are enthroned; and God’s objective through the Gospel, when presented this way, is to satisfy man’s needs, whatever man feels them to be. This is not scriptural. God does not exist for man. Man exists for God.

Jesus did not try to meet the people of His day on the basis of their understanding of their needs… “From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him” (John 6:66). Most Jews rejected Jesus’ assessment of their needs, for they did not see their great need of a Savior to release them from the bondage of sin (John 6)

Saving faith is well grounded. True faith rests on the sure Word of God


Divine Building Principles
Missionaries should know all they can about the culture, folklore and beliefs of the people they are reaching for Christ, and they should use illustrations and cultural redemptive analogies when teaching God’s word.

These, however, are not substitutes for the preparation of the hearts of sinners through the proclamation of the Scriptures. Cultural analogies and illustrations, regardless of their clarity, cogency, or incredible biblical parallelism, should never take precendence over the scriptural redemptive types and analogies. Cultural redemptive analogies are no substitute for the God-given redemptive analogies of the Old Testament which so graphically typify Christ and His work of redemption