Cambodia Bound

Just a quick note before I board the plane for Tokyo.

I'm accompanying Dr. Wayne Schmidt and members of their missions team on a site visit to the Wesleyan Bible college in Cambodia. From Cambodia, Pastor Wayne and I will travel on to Auckland, New Zealand. I'll be returning on August 5 after our team invests in training an NZ Wesleyan team in their first church planter assessment center.

So...there is unlikely to be another post until after August 5.

Thank you for all you do to extend God's Kingdom!

Your servant in Christ,
Mark

3211 speeches on 1 subject before success!

Steve Moore, president of EFMA and Wesleyan minister, recounted the following story to illustrate perseverance:

"With memories of the Holocaust still fresh at the end of World War II, the UN passed the Genocide Convention in 1948. It was a pledge that the evil of destroying a national, racial or religious group would never be repeated in history. The U.S. Senate failed to endorse the treaty. In 1967, Senator William Proxmire became convinced that disregarding the treaty was an act of moral cowardice. So Proxmire pledged to speak on behalf of the Genocide Convention every day that Congress was in session until it was ratified. He followed through on this promise for 3211 consecutive speeches over nearly twenty years. The endorsement was finally passed and signed into law in 1988."

As a church leader, what is the "one thing" that you feel strongly enough about that you'd be willing to give 3211 talks on the same subject?

Artifact Supports Accuracy of Scripture

H.B. London's "The Pastor's Weekly Briefing" contained this short article:

"A small clay tablet, that was unearthed near Baghdad in 1920, was deciphered for the first time only last week. The cuneiform inscription, dating from 595BC during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, mentions an official by the name Nebo-Sarsekim, who is also spoken of in Jeremiah 39. 'This is a fantastic discovery ... a world-class find," said Irving Finkel of the British Museum's Middle East Department. "A throwaway detail in the Old Testament turns out to be accurate and true. I think that it means that the whole of the narrative [of Jeremiah] takes on a new kind of power.'

"Dr. Michael Jursa of the University of Vienna, who has been studying artifacts at the museum for over 15 years, found the two-inch-wide tablet among the museum's collection of more than 100,000 inscribed tablets. According to Jursa, who is one of only a handful of scholars worldwide who are able to read cuneiform script, the text of the inscription is basically a receipt, acknowledging the payment of 0.75 kg of gold to a temple in Babylon."