The Shock of the Second Commandment

Our ladies' Bible study group is going through a panorama of the Bible. This week, we got to the chapter that tells of the Ten Commandments. We have a beautiful study book with an accompanying workbook. There are also CDs with recordings of a man's dramatic readings of each chapter and some occasional sound effects. I'm particularly grateful for these CDs as they save me taking my turn and poorly reading out loud in Spanish. The ladies are all very kind and only laugh that I always get the long passages to read - "More opportunity to practise for me!"

We have happened upon a new witnessing technique. One day, we accidentally dropped the CDs off at the wrong house (correct house number but wrong street). It was several days before we realized the error. Then we were a little worried but burst out laughing at our mistake. Those people must have wondered where these CDs came from and they MUST have been curious and listened a bit, don't you think? This situation also provided opportunity to invite this family to our study.

So now that we are again listening to our lovely CDs, we paused at the end of a section to see if there were questions or comments. "Are the Ten Commandments the same in every Bible?" "Well, you have a Catholic Bible there. What does Exodus 20 say in your Bible?" We discovered that yes, each Bible said the same thing. Then the ladies looked at each other in silence for several seconds. "Why does the second commandment say not to bow before a false idol and yet our Catholic churches are full of statues and pictures? Come to think of it, our whole country is full of statues that we pray to. It says very clearly here that we are breaking God's law to do this! Haven't the priests read this?"

Three weeks ago, we were surprised to see the Martin Luther biography movie was being shown on Mexican television. Just as it came to the part where Martin Luther sent his letter to his bishop explaining his deep concerns with current Catholic practise, the movie abruptly stopped! There was a test pattern for 20 minutes and we decided that we'd have to find a DVD of this new movie of Luther's life and watch the rest another time. We flicked back to check if the test pattern remained. It did but then, we saw Luther once again. We watched and realized that they were playing the previous 5 minutes before the interuption of tranmission. We were delighted and watched the movie through to the end.

Like the ladies in our study group, Luther wondered if the other priests had read the Bible as well.

"Word of God speak. Fall down like rain. Causing my eyes to see Your majesty."