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I'm Elizabeth and I'm with Jorge, who was living during the Spanish Civil war
The young military workers had to bow down and worship Mary
They asked for permission not to do that, as they said they are evangelical christians, but were told they had to do it
The evangelical christians didn't bow down to the '***' Mary... so they were hit and then put in the prison from 6 months, some 1 year and others up to 2 years for not worshiping Mary!
The churches were closed in Spain. But not in madrid. Franco was very clever...
...Franco closed the churches in most of the places in Spain, but not in Madrid, to trick the people (outside of Spain) into thinking there was religious freedom when infact there was persecution!
Story of the Americans sending people to see if there really was religious freedom in Spain... and they came to Catalunya and other places to see...
... but the evangelical churches were closed down and the doors of he churches were blocked, so for the meetings they got in through the windows!
And during this time, you were living in Barcelona with your family? How did the christians there do evangelism if there was no freedom?
There were house meetings, mainly christians, some unbelievers came, invited by believers...
They were sometimes reported and the police came and gave everyone fines
For example: the 3rd time the police came to my uncles house (where I was living), and my uncle was taken to prison
He had the advantage of being English and so he had to be released
Most believers already had bibles, but for the new believers, bibles were brought from France
You couldn't speak about Christ on the streets, and you could be imprisoned for this during the most difficult years (1939 to 1945)
There was a lot more interest in the gospel during this time as many people thought why are the people persecuted if they are preaching Christ??
and why is the bible banned?? The testimony of the christians was very powerful and so many people came to Christ during this time
People had to be baptised out of Barcelona. The police were not so bothered about these areas in the mountains, so there was more freedom...
Now that there is freedom...the churches today are not so interested in evangelism in the towns and going to houses...
Now is the time to evangelize!..
We need to teach believers how to evangelize and go out of our cities into the towns and villages to testify of Christ today!
There are many many towns between Barcelona and Madrid with no churches or christian witness!!
Many years in Spain, there wasn't so much freedom like we have today!
We have a big, large open door to go out (into unreached areas) without getting fined or imprisoned. We can go out and testify of Christ!
Why are we not doing this? I believe there is no vision or money for this...So we first and mainly need a vision. It's normal for churches to do evangelism in their own cities, but we need to get out into other areas
With this freedom, we need to get out into many more areas too and preach the gospel and testify of Christ in all of Spain!
Thanks for your time, you have shown us we have a lot of work to do and as it says (Luke 10:2&3a) the harvest is big but there are few workers...
.. so we need to pray for more workers and also motivate more people to go out and bring the gospel!!