From: Jose and Mary Alvarez [jealvarez@worldnet.att.net]
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2000 4:22 PM
To: Native-Believers
Subject: Bisons

My wife Mary home schools our four children. Today, they were studying about American history.

She showed me part of today's lesson that had to do with the uses of the bison amongst the Plain Indians.

Here are some of the excerpts, courtesy of A Beka Book curriculum, Pensacola, Florida.

The bison's meat and milk were used for food.
Shoes and robes and other clothing were made from the buffalo hide.
Tepees were made out of buffalo hide.
Bison manure was used for fuel. ( My wife says that in the plains and prairies there was no trees and the buffalo manure was used as the source of fuel instead of wood.)
Bison bones were used to make utensils such as needles and knives.
Sinew tendons of the bison was used for thread.
Bison bones were used for ceremonial headdress.

As she presented this little study to me Mary said, "when they killed the buffalo, they killed the Indians".

As a white person I can tell you, that I am very ignorant of the history of Native Americans. However I feel that the wholesale slaughter of the bison for all intent and purposes represented the wholesale slaughter of the American Indian.

I think, that we have only scratched the surface of our asking for forgiveness from, and making restitution to Native Americans.

Since I am pretty sure that the unsaved white population will never do this, it falls on the shoulders of the Anglo church to continue to go forward with this responsibility.

I am amused and disturbed when so many Christian television programs today are excitedly talking about revival, the imminent return of Jesus Christ, and the rapture of the church. My Bible tells me "that the end will not come until every nation has heard the gospel for a witness, and then the end shall come". To hear the gospel for a witness means, to hear and understand the gospel clearly and accurately, so as to make a personal decision for it, or against it. I have always wondered; have Native Americans heard the gospel for a witness, or has the gospel been presented to them in a distorted and most inaccurate way?

Can we except a revival ,without a true understanding of what the Anglo church must continue to do, along the lines of requesting forgiveness and making restitution?

Can Jesus Christ return when hundreds of NA nations have not heard the gospel for a witness? These are my thoughts for the day, thanks to my kids home schooling.

Blessings, Jose

Apostolic Ministries to the First Nations

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