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Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, 
Greetings to you who live in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. It has been an abundant summer for MPC, and we are resounding with thanksgiving for all we saw the Lord do at the schools in Wheaton and Jeju, Korea. I am eager to share this newsletter with you. In it you'll find much encouragement to continue in your journey of becoming in Christ. As Peter wrote to the first generation of Christ-followers, God has given us all that we need in order to be full of life, to "be partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4, NKJV). To live in this Way is a vigorous and courageous lifestyle, a way of being that causes us to attain moral excellence. The world is crying out for a Church formed of men and women who have let God make them into saints. How we need those salty ones, those who are free-flowing channels of God's love and power. As Peter exhorts us,
giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue,
to virtue knowledge,
to knowledge self-control,
to self-control perseverance,
to perseverance godliness,
to godliness brotherly kindness,
and to brotherly kindness love.
(2 Peter 1:5-7, NKJV)
Our prayer is that this newsletter will cheer you on in the daily practice of adding to your faith. Read on to find a beautiful essay by Barbara Byers on the action of Christian surrender that opens us to the fullness of God's life. You'll also find an inspiring testimony from one of the attendees at this July's Wheaton school. And don't miss Leanne's word of encouragement on becoming men and women full of Christ, men and women full of virtue. Our next school is coming up very soon-September 25-30, in Ticino, Switzerland. Please uphold this school in your prayers, and share this invitation with any in your networks who may be called to attend. Your prayers for MPC are evident as we see God carrying us along on waves of His grace, and we thank you for your continuing intercessions. Thank you too for your tithes and financial gifts that enable us to go forward, including by providing scholarships to those with special need to attend the Ticino school and future schools. Surely God has given us all exceedingly great and precious promises, and we thank Him continually for the thrilling privilege of watching Him keep these promises to His dear ones around the world.
Under the mercy,
 Sarah "Un altro vive in me!"
This is how we eagerly anticipate sharing the good news in Italiano - Another lives in me! Registration remains open for our MPC school being held in the Ticino region of Switzerland, September 25-30, 2016. This school will be presented in English and Italian and is being hosted at Hotel Paladina above the shores of beautiful Lake Lugano in Pura, Switzerland.
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The 2016 Switzerland MPCS will once again be held at Hotel Paladina, which offers a spectacular panorama and fantastic views of lake Lugano and the surrounding mountains.
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For more information about the school, click here. Click here for an invitation to the school that you can share with others.. And click here if you'd like to register for the school.
Registration remains open through September 3!
Opening Your Hand - The Art of Obedient Surrender
By Barbara Byers
"It is in learning to persevere through the really tough times that we grow in resolve (the masculine will to choose life and wholeness), in moral and spiritual discipline (the feminine wisdom to choose aright), and in the understanding of our own hearts.... True identity is ... in our ability to obey and respond to Someone far greater than ourselves." "It is when man is obedient, when he wills to unite himself with God, that he finds himself to be one person-a person whose choices are continually changing him from the very center of his being into that perfected person that shall be.... infused by the very power of God" (Crisis in Masculinity, Leanne Payne, p. 93 and p. 81).
At a particularly dark time about 10 years ago I was weeping and praying for my children who were suffering from some painful family circumstances. I imagined I was praying in faith, but truthfully I was just crying out in a self-pitying and very subjective way. My heart was not fully engaged and aware, not resting in a place of trust and hope. Expecting the sweet comfort the Lord so often brings, I wanted Him to commiserate with me. Instead, responding to my real need, He said something that seemed abrupt and even stern at the time, but it was so kind because it was so necessary and objective. God said simply: "Open your hand and give each of your children to Me." I didn't much like this injunction, preferring to hold on and have some illusion of control over this pain.
Uncertain of the outcome except that God alone was faithful and could be trusted, I pried open my fingers in an act of submission to His living word, for this is where true life and peace always are, in that choice of will to unite with God in listening obedience. Naming each of my children, I gave each to Him. I didn't feel immediate comfort; I didn't hear a promise, just that directive much like the one Abraham received over his son. Abraham had waited decades to receive what was promised, his beautiful Isaac, and then was tested. God told him to take Isaac up to a mountain in Moriah and sacrifice him on an altar. Immediately Abraham set out and had three days of what must have been an agonizing journey. His heart was revealed when he told his son, "God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering" (Gen. 22:8 NAS).
As with Abraham, surrender sometimes thrusts us into suffering, into a place we would much rather not go, but which produces the beautiful fruit of maturity. Sometimes suffering is the necessary tool that enables our surrender. As in Hosea 2, we may be wooed into the wilderness, but in that place of relinquishing, a fruitful future awaits us. God does not suppress or control our will; He invites us to unite our will with His in clear and robust choice. "There is all the difference between a will which is extinguished and one which is surrendered. God does not demand that our wills should be crushed out ... He only asks that we should say 'Yes' to Him. Pliant to Him ...we shall never be right till we let Him take, and break and make us" (F. B. Meyer, The Secret of Guidance, as quoted in Leanne Payne, Listening Prayer, p. 247).
"Not my will but yours" was the cry of Jesus just after the plea: "If you are willing, take this cup away from me" (Lk. 22:42 ISV). If He learned "obedience by the things which he suffered" (Heb. 5:8 KJV), how much more must we? When we finally lay down the demand that we must, simply must, have something our way, then life no longer has to be lived on our terms. We live in the obedience of surrender, and as St. Francis de Sales wrote in Finding God's Will for You: "In obedience everything is safe." Then De Sales quoted the psalmist: "'Lord, You have held my right hand, and You have guided me in Your will, and with much glory You have received me. I have become like a horse in Your presence, and I am always with You'" (Ps. 73:22-24). For just as a well-trained horse is gentled and turns easily under the hand of his master, so also a soul that loves is pliable under God's will.
Surrender, coming to the place of a vibrant unequivocal "yes" to God, unifies our will with His. We have settled that He is good in all His dimensions and faithful in all His ways; so the directed action of His will enables us to live more fully and freely. Surrender may be hard won in the battle, but knowing that Another is in control grants sweet relief. This is what Oswald Chambers termed "reckless abandon." We may remain uncertain of the outcome, but we are certain of the love of the One into whose hands we have placed the future. "True abandonment is a simple resting in the love of God. It is like a child lying in its mother's arms" (Francois Fenelon, Let Go). True abandonment is encapsulated in Psalm 131:1-2 (NIV): "My heart is not proud, Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content." What a beautiful image of a child at rest in his gracious mother's arms.
Mature spirituality, the transformation into the true self, involves letting go. But does anyone really want to surrender, renouncing the right to have things his way? "The more we insist on control and the more we resist the call to hold our lives lightly... the more artificial our existence becomes. Our belief that we should grasp tightly what we need provides one of the great sources of our suffering. But letting go of possessions and plans and people allows us to enter, for all its risks, a life of new, unexpected freedom.... How can we live with greater willingness to let go... not clutching what we have, not trying to reserve a safe place we can rest in, not trying to choreograph our own or others' lives, but to surrender to the God whom we love and want to follow" (Henri Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing). Indeed, how can we live with that greater willingness to let go, to surrender and unite our will to God's?
We have to have our hearts softened by grace, and often by suffering, so that we are ready to let go. Operating under our own illusions, we try to clutch at what control we believe we may have. Fear drives us to monitor and manage, and may make us wonder: "If I give this up, can I really trust God to bring good?" We may even fear scarcity. "Will I return empty if I give this up?" A friend of mine, in prayer, had an image from the Lord of this fear. She was holding onto the handle of one door, trying mightily to stretch across to take the handle and open the next door, but couldn't make the connection. Fear kept her grasping the old door handle, but God wanted her to release the old and in faith step across the space to the next door, believing "she knew not what." Fear can drive our unwillingness to relinquish, and unbelief undergirds that fear. We may be fearful or stubborn at first response, but if we trust the One who is asking, we can "give up" because we are "giving in to" Him. Words from the old hymn "Rock of Ages" says this well: "Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the Cross I cling."
So surrender cannot be passive, I must take a faith action - I open my hand, collaborating with the Lord's instructions. Another word for this is relinquishing. It suggests "not the tearing away of treasures but the willing and graceful sacrifice of them" (Goudge, The Bird in the Tree, p. 242). And when we relinquish, we may feel we relinquish into a darkness of we know not what, but our treasure goes straight into the hands of God. And whatever we won't relinquish has not been purified, and we will clutch it to ourselves in idolatry. So every part of our soul-conscience, emotions, will, desires, mind, imagination, passions-must be surrendered to Him.
Like Mary we must say: "Be it unto me according to YOUR will, O God." Paul echoes this prayer in Romans 12:1-2 when he urges us to present ourselves as a living sacrifice in a spiritual service of worship so that we may prove what His will is. How is that possible? He gives us the grace to trust Him! His love is always drawing, always making possible our surrender, always making a way. James 4:6-7 (NAS) exhorts: "God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit therefore to God." One day every knee will bow, but what an honor to bow in surrender now! To do so is an act of worship, presenting to the Lord all that we are, trusting all that He is.
Remember Moses with the staff in his hand? In Exodus 4 God asks: "What is that in your hand?" God wasn't asking for information! God was leading Moses to revelation. God tells him to throw it down. Can you imagine what Moses was thinking? "But, Lord, I've used it for decades and this is all I'm good at, and I can't shepherd without my staff! I must have it, I must!" Don't you know God knew it was time for that staff to be transformed and the desert years to be over? But it would not happen for Moses or for a nation waiting on him, without the choice of obedient surrender. So he opened his hand and threw it down, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran for his life! Then God told him to pick it up, and it was transformed again, no longer the rod of Moses, now the rod of the miraculous, the rod of the sovereign God.
There is no transformation without surrender, nor real power without surrender. If we don't open our hands at His invitation, our willfulness makes it harder later...and that closed fist can become a clinched fist we shake at God. Without surrender, we haven't given God the permission and the place for which He is waiting to work on us, in us, through us, and on our behalf. But we can't dictate the terms of surrender: the how, what, when, if. It's all given to Him, and He then takes our small staff, that thing that is the most important and seems most necessary for our well-being, transforms what is offered, and what is given back is infused with His life and power. Mary offered her womb, Peter and Andrew their fishing nets, Moses his staff, Abraham his son, the boy on the hillside his fishes and loaves, the widow her bit of flour and oil, and Jesus His body. All was transformed! All was infused with God's creative presence.
In Charles Dickens's Tale of Two Cities Dr. Manette had been falsely imprisoned for 18 years and during that long time had only his cobbler's bench and tools to keep him occupied. Even after his release he continued cobbling shoes, living at times within the traumatic memory. The patient love of his daughter began to draw him out of that isolation. But in times of stress, he would still slip back and occasionally occupy himself that way at night or even for some days, not knowing what he was doing, not remembering afterward that he had dissociated. In a particularly difficult time, after a terrible shock, he reverted to cobbling for a week. He was asked by one who cared for him if perhaps he would release the activity so that the fear would also go. He replied, "You see, it is such an old companion."
Fear can be such an old companion. The old ways of thinking, reacting and making decisions can feel so natural. Our old way of coping, our old defenses of holding on because we just can't see any other way, can seem like true friends. But they're not; they're just the familiar that captivated our false selves. And when God calls us to pry our hands open, life awaits. He doesn't want us to manage, He wants us to surrender. But He really does leave us with the choice and will not make it for us. In Deuteronomy 33 He enjoins and invites us: Choose life!
And as we choose life and release what's in our hands, our hands are then open to receive; they are clean but empty. It's a beautiful sight to God when our hands are open and extended to Him in expectation. And He responds: "Abraham, I see you haven't withheld your only son." "Jesus, I see that You have chosen to drink the cup; now come sit at My right hand." "Esther, I see that you will risk death for such a time as this; so I will deliver a nation." "Mary, I see that you have offered your womb for Me to inhabit; so I will come into the world." "Child, I accept your loaves and fish; now I will feed thousands and demonstrate My power." God is now given the freedom, by us, to move as He will. With our open hands, able to fully receive, His will is imparted to us along with the grace to move forward in it. And we mysteriously also find our desires are fulfilled in His will.
Once we have surrendered what we have been clutching, He wants to transform it! In Exodus 14:15, 21, 22 (NAS) the Lord spoke to Moses: "Why are you crying out to Me? Tell the sons of Israel to go forward. [That is, stop praying and go!] As for you, lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it.... Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord swept the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land....The sons of Israel went through." And as for Abraham who didn't withhold? We see a ram caught in brush, God's provision for sacrifice. Abraham receives the ram, God receives the sacrifice, and Isaac is free to eventually become a great nation.
At this stage of surrender we need to be "patient and strengthen our hearts" (Jas. 5:8) to trust that the Lord will act on our behalf and not leave us standing empty-handed. This is where our scarcity mentality, our orphan attitude, and our fear are revealed. At this juncture we may need to see what is blocking our journey of faith....perhaps sin, regrets, fears, and disappointments. If we ask the Lord, He will be faithful to show us any hindrances. This time of the "open empty hand" is an interim season, a time of testing. It's as if God asked Joseph, "Will you serve me faithfully in Potiphar's house, even in prison? Will you wait with open hands of faith, expectant until the dreams can be fulfilled?" The temptation at this point is to grasp back, to falter, to become disappointed and to close our fists again. Yet we are exhorted to persist, to wait, to trust as those "...who through faith and patience inherit the promises" (Heb. 6:12 NAS) As Eugene Peterson wrote, this faith and surrender journey is indeed "a long obedience in the same direction." But if we demand to "... know the entire journey, instead of trusting in God... our road is lengthened and our spiritual affairs get behind. Abandon yourself as absolutely as possible to God and continue to do so until your last breath. He will never desert you" (Francois Fenelon, Let Go).
Faith is a necessary element, but it isn't just a faith that says, "God please give me what I need." It is a faith that says, "I trust You and surrender to Your will because I know You are good and I know You do good! I simply trust You and You don't have to do it my way. You will release the good things to me in appropriate time." Psalm 145:16-17 (NAS) declares: "You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all His ways and kind in all His deeds." And again in Ezra 8:22 (NIV) His word joyously proclaims: "The gracious hand of our God is on [over] everyone who looks to him."
Our hands are now open to receive, but above them are God's hands, now opening to release! We see this in God's dealings with Abraham who opened his hand, even to the offering of his only son for whom he had waited a lifetime! And God responded: "Because you have done this thing.... Indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice" (Gen. 22:16-18 NAS). Abraham obeyed and God's hand was over him to fulfill every promise. Do you see God as good, as giver, as one who delights in giving to you?
We must willingly accept what God brings, how and when He brings it, and relinquish our grasping demands. It is a chilling warning to consider Israel's fate in Psalm 106:15 (CJB): "He gave them what they wanted but sent meagerness into their souls." There is a carnal part of us that demands, and refuses God's way. It results in leanness rather than abundance. But, oh, God intends abundance. And if we surrender, He knows how to keep, enlarge, and transform what we have offered to Him. "When God has begun the work of absolute surrender in you, and when God has accepted your surrender, then God holds Himself bound to care for it and to keep it" (Andrew Murray, Absolute Surrender). God is able to then work His good pleasure in those who have made this choice.
God will never, never fall short of His promises. He will always fulfill His side of what He has promised. As we unlock our hands and truly give God permission to have what's there, He will see and respond. As we stand with open hands, waiting with anticipation and endurance, then He opens His hands over us to bless and create fruitfulness. So what is that you are holding in your hand? What are you most attached to? He doesn't want us to manage, He wants us to surrender. In that movement of surrender, from clutched hands to opened, empty hands, to stretched-out hands, God moves. Will you open your hand in trust? Will you now hold your hand open to receive what the Lord gives back, transformed and pure? Will you declare that, even if you have to wait for that good thing, the one who has promised is good and you will experience a robust fruitfulness as He completes that desire?
Once we surrender, there is one more foundational step that we need to take to stay anchored in trust. We need to be actively practicing giving thanks. Gratefulness is an essential partner of surrender, keeping us God-directed and shielding us from our need to return to control. By maintaining gratitude, by thanking Him no matter what comes our way, we are surrendered to His will: "In everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus" (I Thess. 5:18 NAS). Do you want to know and do His will? Keep thanking Him in everything, keep being filled with the Spirit and praise (Eph. 5:18-20). He is worthy of our praise, of our obedience, and of our surrender as we are infused with joyful expectancy. So let us look to Him with our hands raised in praise, open to all the ways He desires to open His hand and fill us.
The Hope of Glory
Testimony by a 2016 Wheaton MPCS Attendee
I wanted to share my experience at the Wheaton School with your team. It starts off negative and ends with glory. I have attached a picture I took Thursday at sunset that reflects "The Hope of Glory" that I discover by the end of the Friday prayer for healing of memories.
My first two days at the Wheaton College were a bit weird for me. From the moment I got to my room, I had the strongest feeling of acting out sexually, it was overwhelming to be honest and this continued all day Monday and Tuesday. Nevertheless, on Tuesday after the teaching on mothers and the sense of being and well being, I went for prayer and I went to one of the ladies. This is the first healing I got. As I closed my eyes and let her pray for me, her perfume overwhelmed me. I realize that I never smelled my mother's scent. As I continued to smell her beautiful perfume, I received an inner image of me as a baby in a crib and that perfume reaching me and I inhaled it as if I was inhaling my mothe'rs scent for the first time. When she finished praying, I hugged her and it was like hugging my mother. I felt loved. When I sat down, immediately, my own mother texted me a picture of a post card I sent to her many years ago on which I had written: "Star bight, star light, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish tonight. Please, tell my mom that I love her very much". I was so surprised that the Holy Spirit had my mother finding this card as she was cleaning and sending it to me just in the moment that I had that experience. I got up and told the lady that prayed for me all this and showed her the picture.
However, right after the day was over, I continued to have an overwhelming urge to act out sexually and I did in some way. I was very disappointed witht myself because I came with such high hopes to be healed that by Wednesday morning I was retreating into myself, into my false self and started practicing the fallen self. I started thinking to myself that it was a waste of time coming here, a waste of money and I was about to leave Wednesday. I missed the first half of Wednesday plenaries because I was in my room wondering if I should just leave but then I decided to attend the 2:00 pm plenary. In the 2:00 pm plenary, Sarah started talking about "Practicing the Presence of God". There was a lady who also talked with a British accent (loved her) and at the end, she had the older gentleman pray for us. This older gentleman, the one that carried the cross at the beginning, started guiding us to imagine getting a present from the Lord. I jumped in the water and I got my present. When I open it, it was a crown and a bible. When I opened the bible, it was blank with white pages. Then the number 26 slowly appeared and it was clearly seen real big but there were no letters on the pages. Suddenly, from right to left, golden letters started filling the pages till they reach the number 26, they were Hebrew letters. I told the Lord that I didn't know how to read Hebrew and He replied: "Look up the Hebrew words for the number 26". After we stopped praying, I used my phone to look up this up and the number 26 is made out of two Hebrew words: Beth for the number 2 and Vav for the number 6. Beth means "house", "tent", the house is the dwelling of the body of man in the world of duality and illusion. A house also gives protection and shelter. A house is a containing form. In the spiritual sense it contains the Light, the Spirit. Beth as a house is also is the Sanctuary, the Temple. Vav means "nail", "hook", both function for fixing something. The nail's function is joining two parts together. This is my understanding of my inner vision: Beth is house & vav is fixing. Put them together and you get "House Fixing"! This is the meaning of my vision of the number 26. I understood that God was fixing my house, He was fixing me! He was building me up. This was confirmed later on Thursday when a lady of your team shared that she saw the process of a house being built from the ground up to the ceiling during her walks and that is how God builds us up too. God is good. On Thursday, when Sarah asked us to sit closer before she started talking about introspection, I felt led to sit in the front row. I finally started seeing clearly and I started to receive from the Lord even more healing. Finally on Friday, during the healing of memories prayer, the Lord showed me the root of my struggle. I have heard many times that my dad always wanted girls when he married my mom but my mom only gave my dad 3 sons. I'm the middle son. When he got his two girls by his second wife, he was very happy. Over the years, my dad has shown more excitement by the birth of his granddaughters then by his grandsons. He even has told me that he hopes when I get married that I will give him a granddaughter but I told him I want sons. On Friday, the Lord helped me to understand that the root cause of my struggles with my sexual identity and gender is a rejection of my gender by my dad. He rejected my gender. As a child, I didn't know if I wanted to be a girl or a boy, I was very confused. I always felt more secure playing with girls than boys, and I wanted to emulate woman superheroes at times like Wonder Woman. Now for the first time I saw the root, the rejection of my gender by my dad. I took all this to the Cross and by the end of Friday, I felt very clean and free. I know there is no magic wand you wave and poof, all is gone, there is a process for my healing. I know this is the beginning of my healing. I need to continue practicing the Lord's presence and continue in my healing but these 5 days gave insight, knowledge and kindled The Hope of Glory in my heart.
I want to say that the first couple of days, the choice of music was not to my liking at all and it was hard to worship God. However, by Friday it was beautiful music. What I learned from these 5 days is that we don't sit at Jesus' feet anymore, waiting, listening, waiting and listening to receive. We are in such a hurry and we pray fast. I learned a valuable lesson at the Wheaton School and that is to sit at the Master's Feet and listen and wait for His Voice. He is faithful and He is always sending His healing Word, we just need to learn how to sit at His feet and just listen. I thank you and I bless you.
Becoming Virtuous Persons
By Leanne Payne
from her newsletter archives, Fall 1996
Run your lives by the Spirit. Then you will not do what your old nature wants.
Galatians 5:16 Jewish New Testament
To be led by Christ is to walk in the Spirit, and to walk in the Spirit has this ennobling corollary: its wondrous flipside, as it were, is ongoing death to the Old Man.
For the old nature wants what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit wants what is contrary to the old nature. These oppose each other, so that you find yourselves unable to carry out your good intentions. But if you are led by the Spirit, then you are not in subjection to the system that results from perverting the Torah into legalism.
Galatians 5:17,18 JNT
When we walk in the Spirit, the Lord creates in us the fruits and gifts of His character - we become virtuous persons. What a wonderful word virtue is; what a wonderful epithet to have - that of being a virtuous person. And in union with Christ, we can all be that. The biblical texts above were penned by St. Paul, one who before his conversion put Christians to death; yet, he who considered himself to have been the "chiefest of sinners" became one of the greatest men in history. A man full of Christ, full of virtue.
Most moderns have to ask themselves what exactly is this thing called virtue. Well, first of all it is a quality and C. S. Lewis helps us understand this:
A man who perseveres in doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character. Now it is that quality rather than the particular actions which we mean when we talk of "virtue." This distinction is important for the following reason. If we thought only of the particular actions we might encourage three wrong ideas:
1) We might think that, provided you did the right thing, it did not matter how or why you did it....But the truth is that right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to build the internal quality or character called a "virtue," and it is this quality or character that really matters.
2) We might think that God wanted simply obedience to a set of rules: whereas He really wants people of a particular sort. [See St. Paul's words above about perverting Torah into legalism.]
3) We might think that the "virtues" were necessary only for this present life....The point is not that God will refuse you admission to His eternal world if you have not got certain qualities of character: the point is that if people have not got at least the beginnings of those qualities inside them then no possible external conditions could make them happy with the deep, strong, unshakable kind of happiness God intends for us.
Mere Christianity, Book III, Ch 2.
Reprinted with permission, copyright ©1999-2013 by Pastoral Care Ministries, Inc.
Image Credits:
Abraham Sacrificing Isaac by Laurent de La Hyre [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Madonna and Child with Lamb by William-Adolphe Bouguereau [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Baptism of Christ by Anonymous Brazilian painter, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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