A significant in the development of liberation theology is the publication of We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People by Gustavo Gutierrez. Gustavo's book fulfills the promise that was implicit in his A Theology of Liberation which appeared in Spanish in 1971 and soon became a charter for many Latin American theologians and pastoral workers. In that earlier work, Gustavo was already speaking of the need for and the importance of a spirituality of liberation. He realized from the beginning that a theology that does not came out of an authentic encounter with the Lord can never be fruitful. In 1871, he wrote: Where oppression and the liberation of man seem to make God irrelevant a God filtered by our longtime indifference to these problems there must blossom faith and hope in Him who comes to root out justice and to offer in a unforeseen way total liberation.