The Reading Room - History

Salt of the Earth

By: Tito S. Lyro (Pastor of Olympia Bible Presbyterian Church, Olympia, WA)
Pt1 • Pt2

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.” (Matthew 5:13)

On my way to the 1988 National Student Championships in São Luiz do Maranhão (Brazil), the bus that our team was traveling broke down. We were in the middle of nowhere. It was a very arid area and there weren’t very many cars going by. The coaches (the particular bus I was riding was taking the swimming and track and field teams) decided that the best thing to do would be to push the bus till we found a gas station. So, we spent the next two or three hours pushing the bus. We took turns between teams. We would work hard uphill and coast downhill. We finally arrived at a little village on the side of the road. You have to keep in mind that we were in the middle of the poorest region of a third world country. There wasn’t very much in the little village. After pushing a full size bus for so long we were all very hungry. So, we asked the villagers where the restaurant was. They pointed us to a tent and said that we would find something to eat there. The “waiter” showed us to our table (one and only long table with one bench on each side of the table). There was no menu because they only had one dish: carne de sol. Carne de sol is a traditional way of preparing meat consisting of saturating the meat with salt and then hanging it on a clothesline to “soak up” the sun (thus the name carne de sol, or sun meat). When salted, meat can last for a long time without having to be refrigerated, which is ideal for the remote, poor villages of northeastern Brazil. Back 1988, all I was thinking about was how hungry I was and how good that carne de sol tasted. Today as I look back at the salted meat hanging on the clothesline under the midday sun, our Lord’s statement about being the salt of the earth becomes much more vivid to me.

In Matthew 5:13, the Lord Jesus Christ is describing the function of every member of the kingdom of God. We are to preserve the earth. We are to keep it from becoming completely putrid. We are to do that even under the most adverse situation just as the salt that was in that meat preserved it even under the midday sun of equatorial Brazil. Salting the earth is not the individual Christian’s job only but also the job of the Church as a whole. To the Church were given the keys of the kingdom in the proclamation of the gospel and the duty to occupy this earth till our Lord Jesus Christ comes back. The Bible Presbyterian Church has taken this calling very seriously as evidenced by its interaction with the broader culture. I did not find any place where it explicitly stated that one of the objectives of the Bible Presbyterian Church was to impact and redeem culture. To tell you the truth, the Bible Presbyterian Church’s biblical position of ecclesiastical separation is perceived by outsiders as an excuse to abandon the cultural environment that we live in as belonging to the Devil.¹ As matter of fact, even yesterday somebody joked about my turning in a blank page for this article because, according to this person, the Bible Presbyterian Church hasn’t done much to redeem culture. However, even a cursory examination of the history of our denomination demonstrates that in practice the Bible Presbyterian Church has salted the earth and continues to do so.

The Bible Presbyterian Church from its inception has had an evangelistic zeal. Our BP forefathers took the Great Commission very seriously. Missions at home and abroad have been a priority in the history of our denomination. What better way to redeem our culture and impact it for the Lord than to fervently present the redeeming Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ to the masses? Throughout its history the Bible Presbyterian Church has done that. For the first 46 years through the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions and more recently also through the Presbyterian Missionary Union, missionaries have been sent to the far corners of the world and of this nation to proclaim the only message that can redeem culture by redeeming the basic unit of culture: the individual. Within the last two years, new efforts have been made on the part of the Presbyterian Missionary Union to reach cultures that cannot be reached by traditional missionary efforts. PMU created the Venture Guild International, which will bring Christian professionals into countries that would be otherwise closed to the gospel. Is this going to impact the culture of those countries? Of course it will. The Bible Presbyterian Church, through these two approved agencies, has salted the world.

Besides missions, the Bible Presbyterian Church has sought to interact with culture through its educational agencies. Shelton and Highland Colleges were set up not only to train men for the gospel ministry, but also to educate Christian men and women to be responsible members of society at large. This desire to prepare men and women for a life of service was evident in Shelton’s motto “Training Christian warriors.” Shelton College succeeded in preparing warriors to fight for the testimony of Jesus Christ. While preparing to write this article, I searched the World Wide Web to see if I could find one or two things about Shelton College. I was pleasantly surprised when my search returned hundreds of hits! Shelton graduates are serving as pastors, seminary teachers, elementary, middle, and high school teachers, doctors, lawyers, local leaders, fathers, mothers, etc. Highland College also has helped salt the earth although on a smaller scale. How many of our Bible Presbyterian ministers have had Dr. John Battle or Dr. Howard Carlson for a teacher? They are both graduates of Highland College. Thus, as we endeavor to salt the earth in our ministries, Highland College is indirectly working through us. The Bible Presbyterian Church has also salted the earth through its approved seminaries. In the beginning through Faith Theological Seminary and now through Western Reformed Seminary and Cohen University and Theological Seminary, the Bible Presbyterian Church has sought to train its ministers and lay leaders according to the highest standards of biblical scholarship.

Next >
Find More Historical Articles →

WRS Journal Information
The WRS Journal (ISSN 1555-6786) is published semi-annually, with issues appearing every February and August. Circulation is currently approximately 800, with a production run of 1000 copies. Subscriptions for churches and school libraries in the U.S. are free. Individual subscriptions are available for $5 per annum (2 issues) for domestic addresses, and $10 per annum for international addresses (U.S. funds only). Please write or call to subscribe. You may also e-mail your subscription requests and/or comments to editor@wrs.edu. Back printed issues are available for $3.00 each, postage paid.
ADDRESS: The WRS Journal, 5 South G Street, Tacoma, Washington 98405 • (253) 272-0417
Opinions expressed in the WRS Journal are those of the contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the BPC on any given topic.