August 2013 Update

Greetings from Mexico! 

Oh, that God would rend the Heavens and come down in a mighty outpouring of His blessed Spirit from on high! Biblical missions don't just consist of methods, strategies, plans, and human effort at spreading the Gospel, but of Christ as Lord of all extending His scepter and establishing His Kingdom through the sovereign working of His Holy Spirit by means of the proclamation of the Gospel through human instrumentality. Yet this human element in missions is powerless and ineffective unless it is owned of God and enabled by His grace and power. God's work must be done God's way. His Gospel must advance not merely through plans and programs, but through prayer and preaching in the Holy Spirit. God is pleased to grant success to the cause of missions and grant this power from on high when His people humble themselves, utterly stripped of all confidence in the flesh, and as empty, destitute, poor beggars confess their desperate need for Him so that when He responds and grants success to His work, they recognize that God alone is the sole cause of their success and therefore attribute to Him the glory He rightfully deserves.

A few Brethren have wondered and inquired as to the cause of the small amount of success we have seen in Mexico, as to the conversion of souls and the planting of churches. All I can say is it that is has pleased the Lord to work in this way. We have no secrets. My only real and ultimate method is preaching the foolishness of the cross --and this in a somewhat cumbersome and awkward Spanish that makes me feel insecure as I speak it. We just unleash the Word and it does all the rest. We teach systematically through the Scriptures, explaining words and phrases, analyzing its grammar, explicating its context, expounding on its grand theological concepts, and seeking to apply it with impetu to each individual soul. But God is the One who saves souls. Christ is the One who builds His church. The Spirit is the One who breaths on dead sinner's hearts with the breath of God and infuses life and power into His saints to sanctify them and mold them into the Imago Dei. And since this is all not because of us, but rather in spite of us, it is obvious to me that this is the Lord's work, and therefore it is to His glory alone. 

Therefore, dear Brethren, I earnestly plead with you to please pray for us. I believe we may yet see a genuine outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our day, here in Mexico. We have seen small signs and little tokens of soul-stirring happening among us, but have yet to see the fullness. We must press on and not grieve the Spirit but rather pray with importunity that the Sovereign Giver from Whom the Spirit proceeds would be pleased to pour forth much mercy upon us and prosper His work in Mexico, that we may yet see the glory of the Lord in the land of the living! May God have mercy on our unbelief for limiting the strong arm of the Almighty in our puny thoughts of what we think is possible and stir up in us with a lively faith and a spirit of prayer to press on and seek for "greater works" (Jn. 14:12) until our eyes behold the Majesty of the Lord manifested in multitudes being saved from eternal woe and His missionary cause accelerated so as to fill Mexico with the knowledge of the Lord!

Here is a summarized update of what has been happening lately:

• Our little boy Josiah turned 1 year old this 1st of August! He is growing fast and we are grateful to the Lord for a healthy boy.

• For those who have not yet read Lina's update last month about Angel, one of the four boys we care for, you can read that report here: http://www.puregospeltruth.com/3/post/2013/07/update-from-lina-urban-about-one-of-our-boys.html 

• We have been privileged to witness several more conversions in our midst lately. Within the last months, among those who seem to be soundly converted are two teenage girls aged 14 and 15, and another young girl of 7 years of age, who seem to be demonstrating much fruit worthy of repentance and signs of true piety that have encouraged our hearts. There is also a man who is taxi driver from Mexico City and several ladies between Mexico City and Guadalajara who have recently professed to have been born again. There are also a considerably larger number of souls who were struggling with assurance who have been brought through to joyful victory and consciousness of peace with God. Please pray for the couple of dozen of those who, between Guadalajara, Mexico City and Queretaro, are in an awakened state, realize they're lost, but have not yet trusted solely in the Person and work of Jesus Christ as their righteousness so as to obtain peace with God. The Lord appears to be pricking some hearts and wooing people to come to Christ. Recently in Mexico City, a solemnity and loud weeping fell over some of the congregation as the sermon came to a close, which I believe to be the stirring of the Spirit of God, as there were not any majorly emotional appeals or music playing to provoke such emotions. We are praying for souls to be saved and assurance to be wrought in the hearts of the saints. Please join us in your prayers.

• In the last 2 weeks we baptized 7 individuals in Guadalajara and 18 individuals in Mexico City! Others who had been previously baptized since their conversion but come from other churches were added to the membership. There are others in Mexico City waiting for baptism. Based on requests in Querétaro, though we've not yet started baptizing there, we are calculating that at this time, there are between 30 and 40 individuals desiring and awaiting baptism, and to integrate into the membership of a church plant in that city. 

• The attendance is growing in Guadalajara and Mexico City to about 130 and 150, respectively. Though we have moved the meeting place in Mexico City to a new and larger location, we are already outgrowing it, which is posing a problem due to the difficulty of finding space to hold meetings. We ask for your prayers to find an ideal location for holding meetings that is within our price range. In Querétaro the attendance has dwindled a little bit lately down to about 70 in attendance. People are still visiting from out of state on a regular basis who drive for many hours to spend Sundays with us. We even have members in these churches who are from other states in the Republic because they travel every weekend to be with the church. The famine is great in the land, but the Lord is raising up centers of spiritual refuge for His hungry saints.

• The church in Mexico City, which we recently named "Comunidad Bíblica de la Gracia" is also beginning to form a new Bible study group in the city of Puebla, the neighboring state. I have not yet given any personal attention to the Bible study that has begun there, but hope to be able to in the future if the Lord permits. We are considering the possibility of seeing this raised up into another church plant. It would be wonderful to see a biblical church raised up in Puebla.

• We are about to begin the process to elect men for the diaconate in the church in Guadalajara. I feel that it is time to begin teaching the church on this ministerial office and exhort them to look out among themselves to see if the Lord is raising up some such man, or some such men, for such a work. Your prayers are coveted for this solemn process of discerning the Lord's will for His church and appointing only those who are qualified and filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom.

• By means of HeartCry Missionary Society, we are in contact with a seminary in the Dominican Republic who has some pastors/teachers who are interested in coming to Mexico and hosting an extension module for us to help train some of our men in Expository Preaching. If it all works out, it looks like we will be able to host them in October. For those who speak Spanish, the audios of our previous Academy of Theology can be downloaded here: http://www.cristianismobiblico.com/academia-de-teologia-2013.html

• The ministry of Cristianismo Bíblico is expanding. We are now seeing over 2,000 visitors daily to our website. Requests continue to pour in to preach in places all over Latin America and to help individuals and groups who want to form biblical churches. We are now producing written sermon transcriptions of all our sermons, which I am editing and hope to publish both online and in book form. Yet even though there are other helping hands involved who write down the transcriptions, it is a long and daunting task for me to edit and polish them for publication. We receive news from time to time of pastors who re-preach our sermons in their churches, including one in Cuba! Having a transcription will greatly help them in this process, as they have requested this from time to time. We have also recently been expanding our printing ministry, and are printing THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of little booklets of the sermons of Mr Spurgeon, Edwards, and articles by A.W. Pink, Horatius Bonar, and other historic literature of sound doctrine. We distribute these booklets to believers all over and give them out in our church plants. We now have a man working part time for the ministry who dedicates himself to this printing enterprise under the oversight of another Brother who also works with the ministry. In addition, we are also taking another exciting step toward the divulgation of the Word: we are about to begin a bookstore through which we will distribute published titles of sound doctrine through the ministry of Crisitanismo Bíblico. Our hope is to carry about 50 titles to start with, and to slowly expand it in order to carry several hundred titles in the near future. This is going to allow us to sell discounted books and mail them to people anywhere in Mexico who follow our ministry and trust our book recommendations. All these titles will be carefully selected books whose doctrine is trustworthy .We will carry books by the Puritans, Spurgeon, Edwards, MacArthur, Piper, and more. We will also carry missionary biographies and seminary-level theological books on subjects such as Hermeneutics, Systematic Theology, Expository Preaching, etc. We are already distributing thousands of Gospel tracts to believers who evangelize all over Mexico which we have designed and printed, and we also distribute the resources and tracts of Aguas Vivientes, who is about to release the Third Season of their program "Los Pasos del Maestro" (Way of the Master) in Spanish with professional dubbing.

• We have recieved the first installment of printing we did of Charles Leiter's "Justification and Regeneration" in Spanish. Once we receive all the boxes of books, I will send out an update with pictures! These are 15,000 books which will be distributed and given away to thousands of people, most of which are professing Christians in Mexico.

• I am currently working on a small writing project which is geared as an Gospel presentation and evangelistic appeal to the unsaved. The plan is to print it as an attractive little booklet of about 40 pages. I'm hoping to print 10,000 copies, that they may fly into the hands of God's elect in this nation and be the means of awakening them to the light of the glory of Christ! The goal is to have this project finished in a couple of months.

• I'm also working on a full length writing project which we hope to print and distribute as a book. The theme of the book deals with the weighty themes of the Reformational truths which most urgently need to be understood, taught, preached and promoted in the church of Latin America in our day. It will deal with subjects such as the Biblical Gospel, Biblical Evangelism, Biblical conversion, the Doctrines of Grace, Reformational preaching, Revival praying, Biblical Ecclesiology, etc. It is basically designed to be a scathing indictment of the modern apostasy of the professing church and urgent call to God's people to rise up and understand, live, and proclaim the great truths of Biblical and historic Christianity. While I realize that a whole book could be written on any one of these subjects, the idea is to summarize these truths and emphasize those truths which have been all but forgotten in our day, in order to awaken, stir up, and exhort the church to rise up and labor for a true move of God. It will also provide an extensive bibliography to literature translated into Spanish for those who wish to do more research into the things taught in the book. Your prayers for these writing projects are greatly desired.

• Brother Josué Contreras and his family have arrived in Guadalajara and are settled in. You can read about their trip on his blog here: http://gospelbearers.com/2013/08/our-first-three-weeks-in-guadalajara/. As you can see at the end of the blog post, after arriving here, the missionary-assigned thorn in the flesh pricked him hard. He's been battling with some serious health issues and could use everybody's prayers.

• We recently received a visit from John Systma, one of the elders of our overseeing church, Grace Community Church of San Antonio, Texas. It was a blessing to enjoy his company and receive his Godly counsel and assessment of the work. John preached in Querétaro and in Guadalajara, and stirred up the Brethren to love and good works while encouraging them to engage in Biblical missions.

We send our hearty greetings and heartfelt thanks for all our dear Brethren who pray for us and support us! Soli Deo Gloria! If you have any questions or concerns, or would like to talk with us, please reply to this email. We value your input.

In Christ -Josef Urban
http://www.puregospeltruth.com/
http://www.cristianismobiblico.com/